Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer

Lore & Background

The expansion is set in the lands of Khitai after the events of the short story The Tower of the Elephant, when a young Conan killed the 'Elephant God' Yag-Kosha at Yag-Kosha's own request. The game invents the title 'Godslayer' for Conan based on this act. Yag-Kosha had been imprisoned and tortured by his student Yara, who was later slain by the Heart of the Elephant. After Conan became king, strange events began in Khitai, and the player character must explore the empire and walk the path of the Godslayer.

Reader's Guide

Rise of the Godslayer introduced the Alternative Advancement (AA) system, allowing characters to progress beyond the level cap with three types: Mastery (PVE), Prowess (PVP), and Expertise (special tasks). It added the Khitan race, 12 new factions (including the Scarlet Circle), and new mounts such as the Demon Howler, Vaaghasan Slaughter Steed, and Hyrkanian Horse. The expansion expanded raiding with Tier 4 and the Jade Citadel, a level 80 raid instance. Critical reception was generally favorable, with an 83 Metacritic score; IGN gave 7.9/10, GameSpot 8.5/10, and Eurogamer 8/10 after withdrawing an initial negative review.

Did You Know?

• The expansion was announced on August 18, 2009, and released on May 11, 2010.
• It adds the Alternative Advancement (AA) system with Mastery, Expertise, and Prowess types.
• The Khitan race in the game features a variety of skin tones, not a single 'yellow' skin color.
• Eurogamer withdrew its first review of the expansion after criticism, then gave it 8/10.

The 'Real Combat' Philosophy

Funcom designed the combat system to shatter the auto-attack monotony that defined much of the MMO landscape. They branded it 'Real Combat,' a first-person melee framework in which every opponent presents three distinct targetable zones. Players strike from varied angles — a downward hack at the head, diagonal slashes from either side, or upward diagonal cuts — and these directional inputs are intended to flow organically into multi-hit combinations. More demanding sequences reward the player with greater damage and quicker strikes, and community feedback confirmed the system genuinely demands hand-eye coordination. Importantly, gear bonuses carry less mechanical weight than in comparable titles, so a player's dexterity and tactical reading of a moment matter more than a superior item loadout. The same directional logic extends into spell-casting, ranged engagements, and mounted combat. In cooperative scenarios, characters amplify one another's strengths; for example, standing in line with a running Conqueror grants increased knockback resistance. The July 2011 Hardcore PvP server for EU and US took this philosophy further by stripping city guards, re-enabling PvP around Tortage, introducing loot drops on death, and restricting each player to a single character with no transfers or offline levels.

Hyboria as a Living World

The game unfolds in the Hyborian Age, a low-fantasy pseudo-historical setting originating in Robert E. Howard's fiction. It is described as a dark, decadent, twisted reimagining of Euro-Asian history, weaving together Roman imperial grandeur, Mongolian cultural texture, Babylonian mysticism, and 1930s-era myths of uncharted Africa. Lead artist Terje Lundberg stressed that the visual language was drawn straight from Howard's prose: a world of 'monolithic, brutal and primitive' majesty where crumbling mortar and ancient ruins carry the weight of centuries. He explicitly rejected a 'high fairie' aesthetic in which everything appears freshly built and stripped of context. At launch, the playable world spanned three distinct nations: Cimmeria in the north, defined by snow and highlands; Aquilonia, featuring green hills, lush riverbeds, and the city of Tarantia; and Stygia, dominated by deserts punctuated by striking cities. The island of Tortage added further geographic range, stretching from jungle to harbors. The narrative picks up one year after the events of Howard's novel The Hour of the Dragon, with Conan seated on the Aquilonian throne while ancient evils scheme to unseat him.

Development, Art Direction, and Pre-Launch Community

Funcom shared concept art and screenshots periodically between March 2005 and January 2006, building anticipation over an extended development window. The art director, Didrik Tollefsen, brought a strong pedigree from The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online – Shadowlands, the latter having earned an Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction award in 2003. By January 2006, a community portal went live, and a pre-launch audience had already coalesced around official forums and IRC channels. Informal developer chats and summer 2006 community contests deepened engagement, and in April 2006 Funcom opened a dedicated Guild Hall forum so members could begin organizing player guilds before the game shipped. A pivotal design decision surfaced in January 2007: the original twenty-three classes were consolidated into fourteen, a move Funcom framed as eliminating redundancy and ensuring genuine diversity among playable options. The Rise of the Godslayer expansion later added the Khitan as a fifth playable race. On December 13, 2012, the free-to-play model was broadened so every class became accessible without payment, removing earlier restrictions that had limited the free tier.

Character Identity and Player Agency

Players craft avatars within Hyboria, registering them to a unique account on a specific server; characters cannot be played across different servers. During creation, players select from four playable races — expanded to five with the Khitan in the Rise of the Godslayer expansion — and then choose one of four archetypes, each offering three class selections. This layered structure gives a character cultural context through race, a broad role through archetype, and specific capabilities through class. The design philosophy deliberately reduces the mechanical weight of equipment bonuses compared to other MMOs, so a well-gear-loaded but passive player is not automatically superior to a skilled one who reads the battlefield and executes precise directional combinations. In cooperative play, characters complement each other tactically: a Conqueror's running charge, for instance, grants adjacent allies increased knockback resistance, encouraging positioning over raw stat stacking. The Hardcore PvP server amplified this emphasis on skill and consequence. With city guards removed, PvP re-enabled around Tortage, and loot drops on death, the server rewarded aggressive, skilled play while restricting each player to a single character and disallowing transfers, offline levels, or free level-50 accounts.