Age of Conan - Hyborian Insider - PvP

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Robert E. Howard and Conan

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Age of Conan 2.0.7 coming today after extended downtime

by Jef Reahard Oct 6th 2010 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches, News items

If you had your heart set on a little Hyborian hooky this afternoon, go ahead and cancel that sick day and head on in to the office. Funcom is in the process of uploading Age of Conan version 2.0.7 to the live servers, and according to a post on the official boards by senior community manager Tarib, the downtime has been extended from six to a full eight hours (it began early this morning at 7:00 a.m. EDT).

The good news is that the patch looks to improve performance in Khitai's Northern Grasslands zone (often called Northern Crashlands due to its low framerates and frequent lockups). While the jury is still out on the success of this aspect of the patch, it's gratifying to see Funcom taking action on the matter. 2.0.7 is also tweaking the ranger class (yes, again), in the seemingly neverending struggle to bring Hyboria's bow and crossbow crowd into line with the rest of the classes. This time it's not a nerf but rather a series of mini-buffs, including more damage for the deft stabs skill, a better snare effect on pin down, and more.

You can view the patch notes from the Test Live server, but you'll need to sign in with a Test Live forum account.

Tags: 2.0.7, age-of-conan, aoc, buffs, deft-stabs, funcom, lag, northern-grasslands, patch, performance-optimizations, pin-down, ranger, rangers, snare, tarib, test-live, update

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Craig Morrison on success and failure

by Jef Reahard Sep 27th 2010 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, MMO industry, Warhammer Online, News items, Opinion

Last week's Craig Morrison blog topic brought a wave of interesting comments from readers and writers alike, illustrating why MMO number-crunching is always a hot-button issue. The Age of Conan game director takes another crack at a controversial topic with his followup post, and attempts to deconstruct the logic of fans who insist on labeling games "successes" or "failures" despite not having the information necessary to make such a judgment.

"Whether any title that displays a numbers trend similar to another can be deemed a success or a failure depends entirely on the budget, ambition and infrastructure of the project," he writes. While that's common sense to most folks, there are still some who insist that AoC and Warhammer are "failures" despite the fact that they remain open for business and profitable. Morrison acknowledges that both titles fell short of their ultimate subscriber goals, but also cautioned that equating lower-than-desired numbers to failure "is a very dangerous assumption to make."

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, blog, craig-morrison, dev-blog, failure, fan-logic, funcom, mmo-numbers, opinion, silirrion, success, Warhammer, Warhammer-Online

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Conan the Cimmerian #1 & #2

September 11th, 2008 hexsane Posted in Conan Comics |

I decided to hold off on discussing the first official issue of Conan the Cimmerian until I had more of a story to work with. In these 2 issues the reader is introduced to Connacht, Conan’s grandfather, through the mysterious hermit. The hermit assists Conan by frightening away some Vanaheim raiders seeking revenge for the carnage Conan delivered to their kin in Conan the Cimmerian #0.

In Issue #1 (”Hunter’s Moon”) the hermit begins the tale of how Connacht saved 2 children from a gruesome death at the hands of the marsh folk by being bound and tossed into the depths of the marshes.

In Issue #2 (”Mark of the Wolf”) the hermit continues the story of Connacht with the discovery of the grizzly remains of Connacht’s horse. Forced to travel by foot the trio come upon a farm and Connacht attempts to make the children look hard working and useful in hopes the farmer will take them in. When night comes the farmer’s daughter and one of the children go missing…

The story so far is good. I’m not thrilled about the art used in the tale about Connacht. I’m wondering if it was intentionally drawn this way. Many of the characters seem to be distorted or caricatures and the creatures are, in a word, terrible. I’ll admit to not being an art critique but I would like to hear from someone else. Is it just me or is that art really just that bad?

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The Age of Conan First… That wasn’t.

October 3rd, 2008 hexsane Posted in Age of conan news |

Today’s announcement of the first tier 3 city missed the mark by nearly a month. In reality Lords of the Dead completed their tier 3 in early September on the DeathWhisper server. Oops… Congrats to both guilds as it is an achievement. I guess someone fell asleep at AoC central and missed the Lords of the Dead achievement.

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The Anvil of Crom: Hives of scum and villainy

by Jef Reahard Oct 24th 2010 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Culture, Opinion, The Anvil of Crom

Once, a long time ago, I stood on the summit of a sandy cliff with my MMO mentor. His sage-like eyes took in the desert around us, surveying the burgeoning multiplayer landscape. On one side of us were MMOs; on the other, FPS titles and social networking games.

Surrounding us from all directions I saw a writhing, rioting mass of digital humanity, overlapping chat bubbles floating toward the horizon for miles around. Some of these bubbles were legible, though many featured bizarre butcherings of the king's English as well as certain phrases that I couldn't even begin to decipher. Almost all of them sported excessive punctuation and some variation on LOL.

Squinting his eyes against the glare and covering his ears with both hands, my mentor inclined his head down the slope. "Global chat," he said, a weary sign escaping his chapped lips. "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."
Ah yes, global chat. That anonymous playground where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents... er, wait, that's the internet in general (or at least it was years ago when it was still primarily populated by neckbeards, nerds, and night owls). As online culture has expanded to cover a more representative swath of the population in recent years, it has also softened a little bit. That said, there are still places in the deepest, darkest dungeons of the internet where anonymity reigns and asshattery plays a very close second fiddle.

One of those places is the global chat of your favorite MMORPG, and Funcom's Age of Conan is, unfortunately, no exception. It doesn't really matter what server you're on -- spending more than a few minutes in global chat is guaranteed to offend, irritate, or otherwise induce eye-rolling.

The question is why do game developers even make global chat channels available to their playerbase? Particularly in a game like Age of Conan, where the player economy is a running joke and there is virtually no trading to speak of, it stands to reason that the entire exercise is unnecessary. AoC has a separate looking-for-group channel; it has regional channels for Cimmeria, Aquilonia, and Stygia; it has a trade channel; and it has an out-of-character channel. One thing it doesn't have is the ability to make your own chat channels (a convenience most appreciated for custom guild chats), but that's another column entirely.

The point is, Age of Conan has about four global channels too many, not counting global itself. The problem is that eliminating global number one would likely cause the troll convention to move to one of the other aforementioned channels, so in my estimation, Funcom might as well do away with all of them. Beyond the occasional instance of LFG being used as intended, I'd argue that the glut of global channels detracts from the game experience rather than enhances it.

Why?

Let's call it the 4chan effect, with a substantial helping of the Greater Internet F*^kwad Theory (NSFW) on the side. On any given night in Wiccana's global chat, the topics range from politics, to religion, to more weighty matters such as the ever-present "WoW was the first MMO" debate. In fact, I'd venture to say that World of Warcraft is discussed in more detail (and certainly with more frequency) than Age of Conan, which raises the question of why the conversationalists aren't playing it. The answer, of course, is for the lulz. Most of the genre's global chat trolls have probably played WoW, and it's infinitely more fun to rile up the anti-WoW populations of smaller games that it is to go back and grind another Azeroth toon.

So, assuming you agree with me and aren't one of those folks who actually like Age of Conan's global chat, what are the alternatives? Well, if you're using it solely as a LFG tool, you can safely disable it and use the actual LFG channel. People do use it properly on occasion, though it often gets lost in the global spam that clutters the default chat window. Also, if you're looking to sign up for PUGs, Killiki or Vissy raids, or Khitai 6-mans, there's nothing stopping you from simply showing up at the encounter start locations and asking to join the groups that constantly gather there (though, omgzors!! you might actually spend a minute or two on the outside of the efficiency curve).

Another alternative, though admittedly out of the player's control, is for game companies to actually use their GM staff to keep an eye on chat channels. This is a double-edged sword, as you run the risk of over-moderation (and of course it costs more money), but when it's handled correctly, you're left with global chats that offer some real gameplay value and good advice. EVE Online's help channel and Fallen Earth's global chat are prime examples of moderation done right. Funcom GMs are, sadly, nowhere to be found in Age of Conan's public channels. Whether it's because of the game's M-rating or some other factor, anything goes in the game's global chats, and I do mean anything.

Ultimately, I'm pretty sure my (formerly) secret desire to see all global chats die horribly gruesome deaths will fall on deaf ears. People simply enjoy trolling too much, and those who don't have grown accustomed to the convenience that global channels occasionally provide. We've forgotten what it was like to live without those channels, just like we've forgotten how to live without cell phones and texting. While some smaller sandbox-ish games like Darkfall and (purportedly) Earthrise get by with regional/racial chats instead of true global channels, Age of Conan and most other MMORPGs will likely continue to suffer epidemic levels of troll population explosions. It's not the end of the gaming world of course -- and for many people, it may even be the primary reason they play -- but it is relatively easy to curb if only developers cared enough to do so.

Until next week, I leave you with a screenshot of last night's Wiccana global chat.

Jef Reahard is an Age of Conan beta and launch day veteran, as well as the creator of Massively's weekly Anvil of Crom column, which chronicles one man's journey through Funcom's global chat. Feel free to suggest a column topic, propose a guide, or perform a verbal fatality via jef@massively.com. Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, chat, chat-channels, featured, funcom, funcom-age-of-conan, get-off-my-lawn, global-chat, l33t, l33t-sp33k, leet-speak, opinion, slang, the-anvil-of-crom

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Craig Morrison talks MMO numbers (or the lack thereof)

by Jef Reahard Sep 23rd 2010 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Age of Conan, MMO industry, News items, Opinion

Ah, the numbers game. It's often quite comical when it comes to MMORPGs and their die-hard fans (or detractors, as the case may be). Aside from Blizzard, very few MMO development houses release real numbers relating to their playerbases, and forum jousters are thus relegated to citing guesstimates and, in most cases, pure supposition sprung from the likes of wildly inaccurate measuring tools such as Xfire or the late MMOGchart.

Funcom executive producer and Age of Conan game director Craig Morrison weighs in on the perplexing state of MMO number-crunching on his personal blog, offering a bit of insight as to why hard data is, well, hard to come by. He cites a lack of context for the near-universal reticence of developers when it comes to publicizing their community sizes. "Without standard definitions everything ends up in that vague, murky and entirely subjective middle ground... and a middle ground that very few could reasonably be expected to accept as being worthwhile exploring in a business sense," he writes.

So what's his solution? In broad terms, he mentions a rating system, citing television's Nielsen metrics as well as cinema box office figures as semi-comparable standards. While such a system probably wouldn't stop the endless fan bickering, it might at least provide an answer to the question of how each individual company defines success.

Tags: age-of-conan, blog, craig-morrison, forum-warriors, funcom, numbers, numbers-game, opinion, ratings, subscription-numbers, subscriptions, success, xfire-is-not-accurate

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The Perfect Ten: Halloween MMOs

by Justin Olivetti Oct 28th 2010 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Fallen Earth, Events, in-game, Warhammer Online, Wurm Online, Hellgate: London, The Secret World, Humor, World of Darkness, Perfect Ten

We're only a few days away from Halloween, and already the Massively office staff is dressing up in anticipation. Shawn's post-apocalyptic gear is at odds with Rubi's tastefully modest Guild Wars Elementalist outfit. Greg's Squig is in the corner battling it out with Larry's Chewbacca. Bree is dudded up as a giant red corrective marker; Jef's free-to-play outfit requires microtransactions to view in full; and Kyrstalle is photographing it all with her Poloroid One-Shot camera. I think Eliot showed up in full plate armor and riding a mechanical bull, but that just may be his normal work attire.

So as everyone else is goofing off in the spirit of the holidays, it remains to me, your lovable intern, to hack out a top 10 list in honor of All Hallow's Eve. It's the least I can do since they're paying me in candy.

While every MMO incorporates horror at some point (even, yes, Hello Kitty Online's Cat-Tastrophie zone), and it's nearly impossible to escape a clutch of giant spiders in any game you visit, I've picked out 10 MMOs that best deliver a slice of October 31st. Some are old, some new, some canceled and some yet to come, but these are 10 of the spookiest MMOs in the world.
1. WURM Online

Are you afraid of the dark? No, not the normal MMORPG "dark" that's merely the daytime overlaid with a blue filter -- I'm talking about the pitch-black, inky darkness in which you cannot see your hand waving right in front of your face. Or more importantly, the wolf that's 10 feet away and preparing to pounce.

WURM Online may not look like a horror game (because it isn't, not really), but the developers tapped into a primal fear that many share. The combination of extremely vulnerable player characters, the danger that comes with the night, and the need for sanctuary and safety is straight out of the horror story playbook. If you've never heard of WURM Online and would like to learn more, please consult your local Free for All columnist.

2. The Secret World

If a mishmash of Lovecraftian mythos, zombie uprisings, Stephen King, sinister conspiracies, vampires, demons and the promise that "dark days are coming" doesn't get the heckles on the back of your neck, um, a-heckling, then just move along. For the rest of the class, The Secret World is one of the first major MMOs to take place in a horror setting, offering a subgenre buffet from the creepy to the bloodsplattertastic and everything in between.

3. Age of Conan

Age of Conan entrenched itself deep in an M-rating, which meant blood, bosoms and terrifying visages of what lurks in the shadows of this gritty fantasy world. Not only is this a place where angels fear to tread, but Hyboria is populated with monsters eclipsing anything you can watch on SyFy (although I have to admit that Mansquito was pretty boss).

I asked our resident Age of Conan expert, Jef Reahard, what monsters creeped him out the most. "Onyx Chambers is a pretty nasty horror show in terms of mobs," he replied. "And frankly, the player necromancers (actually their pets) gross me out with regularity."

4. World of Darkness

We may not know a whole lot about CCP's upcoming World of Darkness, but we have a surplus of information about Vampire: The Masquerade, on which WoD is based. Expect vampires, vampires and even more vampires in as many varieties as Crayola has colors. When an MMO is based around the non-romantic, non-sparkly side of bloodsucking undead, I'm guessing that it's going to be perfect for late-night gaming with the lights turned off.

5. Requiem: Memento Mori

Requiem should have stuck with its original subtitle -- Bloodymare -- considering that nearly all of the promotional screenshots of this F2P MMO feature gallons of the red stuff. I'm not even going to pretend to understand what Requiem: Memento Mori is about, seeing as how the Wikipedia story entry has more capitalized words than non-capitalized ones. The gist I got is that the world is now a horror theme park filled to overflowing, and you're tasked with culling the customers. However, since Memento Mori means "Remember you will die" in Latin, chances are you're going to join them sooner or later as well.

6. Fallen Earth

Newcomers to Fallen Earth are often surprised at the peanut-butter-and-chocolate combination of black humor and grim horror that exists here. Of course, what did you really expect to find after the world went to hell and is barely starting to come back? Cute fluffy chickens or freakishly mutated birds? Don't answer; that was rhetorical.

From prison rooms stuffed with corpses to a dog who ate his last owner (but, y'know, not all of him), Fallen Earth has a lot of fun with the world as a giant haunted house. It helps that it's so big and you often feel quite alone and unprepared for what may lie around the next corner...

7. Dungeons & Dragons Online

One second -- the above picture is making the lyrics to "Thriller" go through my head: It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark... Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart...

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, that's right, spooky MMOs! I couldn't in good conscience leave out Dungeons & Dragons Online, seeing as how DDO sends adventurers into a multitude of scary places, from crypts to more crypts to -- steel yourself -- even more crypts. Players become so immune to the horror they marinade in daily that they don't even blink when they walk right up to a dead girl's ghost and demand loot. Callous!

8. Undead Labs' unnamed zombie MMO

I have a theory as to why zombies are so popular in video games. I believe it's because the devs never have to justify why you are going around slaughtering these people, nor do the devs have to give zombies elaborate backstories so you know that they're ultra-evil and deserve the swift chainsaw of justice. No, zombies are the stinking undead, and everyone knows that they don't believe in a live-and-let-live world. Heck, you're doing a community service by taking them out!

This is why I believe that Undead Labs' zombie MMO has a shot at glory. A world full of human-looking things that we really must unload all of our pent-up aggression on, all in the name of civil duty? Perfection.

9. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Like its tabletop brethren, WAR is gritty, nasty world that sees its fair share of chaotic gods, walking skeletons, and people impaled on things that probably really hurt when it happened. There are plenty of zones in this game where hanging corpses, vicious beasts and mutated wonders make for splendidly spooky decorations.

I always felt that the Chaos beginner zone is one of the most atmospherically haunted locales in the game, especially if you take the time to wander off the beaten path and see the little Easter eggs the devs planted here and there.

10. Hellgate: London

If you want to find true MMO horror, then there's no place better to look than Hellgate: London. It wasn't just scary enough to portray the modern(ish) world overcome by demon spawn -- it is perhaps one of the few MMOs that can lay claim to making players pass out, scream and void their bowels when they discovered that their $200 lifetime membership went up in smoke when Flagship Studios folded.

Tags: age-of-conan, ccp, chewbacca, ddo, dungeons-and-dragons-online, easter-eggs, elementalist, fallen-earth, featured, flagship-studios, flagshipped, fluffy-chickens, free-for-all, guild-wars, halloween, halloween-2010, halloween2010, hellgate-london, hello-kitty-online, humor, hyboria, lovecraft, mansquito, microtransactions, one-shots, onyx-chambers, personal-record-best-for-number-of-tags, post-apocalyptic, requiem-bloodymare, requiem-memento-mori, squig, stephen-king, syfy, the-perfect-10, the-perfect-ten, the-secret-world, top-10, top-10-list, undead-labs, vampire-the-masquerade, war, Warhammer-Online, world-of-darkness, wurm-online, zombie, zombie-mmo

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The Anvil of Crom: Class guide #1 - The Demonologist

by Jef Reahard Nov 7th 2010 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan, Classes, Opinion, The Anvil of Crom, Guides

This week I'd like to kick off something a little bit different. Thus far The Anvil of Crom has been somewhat reactionary, meaning things happen in the Age of Conan game world that make for good discussion, or things happen in the community surrounding the game that do likewise. Aside from my semi-regular Hyborian travelogue series (and an occasional guide or two), the column has basically reflected the current game-related news.

Initially that was by design, as I didn't want it to be yet another gaming blog that talked about more of the same stuff you'd find at 100 other destinations. The problem is, Age of Conan doesn't feature a large internet presence, and every time I look for a guide, I'm reminded of the fact that I should write one.

Beginning today, I'm going to embark on a series of class guides designed to give newbs and vets alike the information they need to determine whether a particular archetype is right for them. My initial thought is to offer three guides per class: a 1 - 40 examination, a 40 - 80 synopsis, and a look at the class at endgame. Obviously this will be an ongoing experiment, since Age of Conan boasts a hefty complement of classes (12 as of this writing), each of them fairly unique from the others and their conventional MMORPG counterparts.

Join me after the break for a look at the life and times of a young Demonologist, as well as a brief gameplay video of the class in action.
Ah, fire. Or, as Beavis would say, "fire, fire, FIRE!" Age of Conan's Demonologist is the penultimate firestarter, and I've spent the last couple of weeks burninating the Hyborian countryside to gather some impressions for this initial class guide. In the interests of accuracy, it's worth noting that the Demo also makes use of electricity-based magic (particularly at certain endgame specs), but for most of your leveling grind you'll be setting things aflame far more often than not.

So you want to be a Demonologist?

Demos are good for one thing and one thing only: blowing sh*t up. Feat specs vary (more on this below), but the long and short of it is that this class is for you if you like casters, extreme DPS (of both the AoE and single-target variety), and don't mind dying in a few quick hits in both PvP and challenging PvE situations. Demos are Age of Conan's proverbial glass cannon. Don't let the fact that they have demon pets fool you; if you're looking for a true pet-handling class, you should go with the Necromancer. Demo pets are primarily buff bots (though there is a pretty spectacular high-level self heal that can be feated, which we'll cover later in the Demo endgame guide).

Feats and builds (1 - 40)

The Demonologist is rightly considered one of the easier classes to play in Age of Conan, at least prior to endgame. Now, before all the Demo fans burn me at the stake, I mean that as a compliment. While there's something to be said for AoC's novel approach to combat button-mashing, circle-strafing, and situational awareness, there's also something to be said for a class that doesn't require you to have a Ph.D. in astrophysics (or a lot of time on your hands) to figure out a viable leveling build. If you're new to Hyboria, you'll notice that the game grants you skills automatically as you level. What you may not know is that at level 10 you can start earning (and distributing) feat points. The feat system works similarly to the talent system in World of Warcraft in that it gives players a range of specialization options under a particular class heading.

Each class has two feat trees, plus access to a third general tree that is shared among all classes of that particular archetype. In the case of our Demo, we can choose from the Havoc feat tree, the Conflagration feat tree, and the General tree shared with the game's other mage types.

It's generally accepted in the AoC community that putting all of your feat points into the Conflagration tree is the most efficient way to level a Demo. You certainly can dabble in the Havoc and General trees, and doing so will give you a better idea of what the class is likely to play like once you hit level 80, but for pure unadulterated speed, Conflag is the way to go.

I said before that the Demo is an easy class to play. This is due not only to its impressive DPS capabilities but to the fact that it relies much less on feat builds for its power when compared to other Age of Conan classes. Most of the Demo's utility is a result of powerful base spells, which makes your feat build something of an afterthought (particularly while leveling). It's a great class for those who are new to AoC or new to MMORPGs, simply because it's really hard to do it wrong. Check out my level 40 Conflag build in the margin for an idea of what I did on my latest character.

Skills and buffs

As I mentioned already, many of your skills come automatically as you ding. A few, such as Living Firestorm or Detonation, must be acquired using feat points as we discussed above. For the majority of your 1 - 40 grind, you'll be making use of Fires of Gehenna, Hellfire Stream, and occasionally Inferno of Amher (a large AoE effect). FoG in particular is the Demo's bread and butter, since it does an obscene amount of damage, has a quick recast time, and inflicts both a lingering incinerate effect and splashes nearby targets (and both of these aspects can be further enhanced via feats). You'll also want to find a place on your hotbar for Storm Chains, as its 10-second root effect will save your squishy hide when you pull a few more mobs more than you can handle. In terms of a spell rotation, again it's hard to go wrong as long as you're using some variation on FoG, FoG, and a bit of FoG. Throw in the occasional root and Wave of Flame and you'll routinely solo three to four even-con mobs.

Skill points, not to be confused with usable skills, are a matter of opinion. At the risk of repetition, this is also hard to mess up -- and you can respec -- so press "P" and click on the "Skills" tab at the far right to distribute your points (which you earn as you gain levels). You'll want to keep Casting Concentration and Run Speed maxed. I also dropped 200 points into Climb on account of certain ladders on certain Gateway to Khitai quests. Other than that, Renew Mana and Mana Attractor will probably speed you along.

In addition to your offensive and defensive skills, your demon pets offer worthwhile buffs, and you should never be out and about among all those crazy mobs or PKers without a pet by your side. Pet damage is negligible, but the buffs -- as well as the distraction they can cause in PvP -- make pets a must.

You can summon either a demon familiar, guardian, or slave, and each of the three gives you a specific four-hour buff (mana, health, and various regeneratives, respectively). Your pet's sex is purely a matter of personal preference with regard to eyecandy; there are no statistical differences. It's also worth noting that the Rise of the Godslayer Collector's Edition Loyal Kappa pet can be called simultaneously with your demon and offers several beneficial buffs including armor penetration, spell penetration, critical damage, magic damage, and more. Keep casting it until you get the buff you want (visible in the buff bar at the top center of your screen).

Finally, food and drink buffs are invaluable, and you can gather these via quest rewards or from the auction house. Various types of drinks (like sagewine) generally increase your total mana pool as well as your regen time, and certain types of food (crow-foot pie, for example) give you health pool and regen buffs. Roll over any of the items on the auction house for a full description. Be sure to check the level requirements as well. Items with an orange background are usually too high for your character or class-restricted.

Where to level

Leveling 1 - 40 is one of my favorite aspects of Age of Conan. There's a lot of variety after you're through with Tortage (generally at level 20, but earlier if you really know what you're doing). For newer players, I'd recommend rolling a Khitan character, which will take you to the Gateway of Khitai zone after you've defeated Strom. The quest lines here are well-written, and there are virtually no gaps in the leveling curve. You can easily go from 20 - 38 on nothing but quests, and you'll just as easily make 40 in the zone if you do a few repeatables and/or grind mobs for an hour. Cimmeria's Conall's Valley and Aquilonia's Wild Lands of Zelata are viable destinations as well, but the quest progression isn't as tightly focused as the newer Khitai zone. Stygia's Knopshef Province is your last option, but I'm saving comment on that for a future column, as it's the last newb zone that I haven't played (or written about).

Also new this week is my first attempt at using Fraps and some editing software, and the result is a brief look at the Demonologist in action. Check out the video below to see some solo PvE combat in the shadow of Khitai's Great Wall, and look for further video escapades detailing the high-level Demonologist, PvP, and other Age of Conan classes in future columns.

That's about all the info I've got for you budding pyromancers. Let me know about your firestarting (and demon-conjuring) exploits in the comments, and feel free to drop a message in ye olde inbox if you think I've missed something, messed something up, or if you've got any freshly baked white chocolate chip macadamia cookies. Until next week, I leave you with a room full of folks who wish they were Demonologists.
Jef Reahard is an Age of Conan beta and launch day veteran, as well as the creator of Massively's weekly Anvil of Crom column, which chronicles one man's journey through Funcom's Hyboria. Feel free to suggest a column topic, propose a guide, or perform a verbal fatality via jef@massively.com. Tags: 1-40-guide, age, age-of-conan, aoc, aoc-class-guides, class-guide, class-guides, demonologist, demonologist-1-40, demonologists, featured, funcom, guide, guides, opinion, the-anvil-of-crom, video

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