Age of Conan

Age of Conan: Unchained, originally titled Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, is a fantasy MMORPG that Funcom developed and Eidos Interactive published for Windows in 2008. It marks the first game in a planned series, unfolding across the Hyborian kingdoms during Conan's reign, drawing from the world of Robert E. Howard's novels. The game's standout feature is its "Real Combat" system, a first-person melee mechanic that aims to provide more real-time action than the turn-based systems common in Dungeons & Dragons-inspired titles.

In combat, players strike targets from various angles—hacking downward at the head, slashing diagonally from left or right, or slashing upward from either side. These directional attacks can be chained into combinations, with harder-to-execute sequences dealing extra damage and faster strikes. Funcom designed this system to let players target three different areas on each enemy, stringing consecutive attacks together. Player feedback notes that it demands a fair amount of dexterity. While character stats and item bonuses still matter, equipment has less impact on power than in comparable games, so player skill and tactical analysis also play key roles. The goal was to eliminate the auto-attack tedium typical of MMO fighting. This system applies to one-on-one weapon battles, spell-casting, ranged combat, and mounted combat. In larger fights, players can band together, combining their strengths—for instance, standing in line with a 'Conqueror' while he runs grants greater resistance to knockback effects. Large-scale siege operations let adventurers cooperate to build cities with walls, towers, and catapults, protecting player-owned taverns and merchant facilities. In July 2011, a Hardcore PvP server launched for EU and US servers, removing guards from cities and playfields and reopening PvP around Tortage. On this server, players drop loot from their inventory when killed in PvP, can only have one character, and cannot transfer characters, use offline levels, or receive free level 50 characters.

Characters are tied to a unique user account on a specific server, with no cross-server play. During creation, players choose from four playable races, then pick one of four archetypes (in bold) and one of three classes per archetype. The *Rise of the Godslayer* expansion added the Khitan race.