Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures PvP Previews
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The lobby offered us two options for PvP: Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. Okay, not exactly reinventing the wheel, but our barbarian was now decked out in some decent togs and had a brutal looking sword - so we had a bash.
First with the deathmatch. We learnt something very quickly: the people who had been playing the beta for a lot longer than us possessed some mad skills. In typical 'stab first, ask questions later' style we sprinted at an opposing team member, sword aloft and tried to cleft them in twain. Suddenly black tentacles, like a tank of eels, covered us and we were frozen still. Lightning then burnt our character within an inch of death and just when we thought we might be able to bugger off and hide, a bunch of zombies killed us.
As our team had lost all the positions one can resurrect from we just had to sit patiently and watch the rest of the match play out. Most impressive was the fact there seemed a real team dynamic going on. Our death was actually delivered by two players working in tandem, first freezing and then frying our poor barbarian.
But we were hungry for blood and headed back to the lobby to sign up for more.
Many humbling defeats later we finally managed to kill someone and seemed to be improving. The much touted "real combat" was a double edged sword (apologies for the pun); we had the immediacy of being able to strike an unwitting foe, however if you didn't do bulk damage straight away the veteran players would quickly muster their superior weapons and spells, sicking their demon pets on us. The same experience occurred with Capture the Flag, although here we could grab the flag and sprint away as if our firm buttocks were on fire (which sometimes they were) but the sheer kinetic pace would sometimes throw us into a panic of keyboard slapping intensity.
