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Age of Conan
- director Gaute Godager has revealed how long it takes players to reach the game's maximum level: A paltry 250 hours on average.
To the average person, 250 hours of playing any game seems like an astronomically large figure, but when compared to other MMOs, it's a positively anemic amount of gameplay time.
By comparison, World of Warcraft's level cap is reached after an average of 500 hours in-game. Personally, my first WoW character hit the cap after 330 hours.
This number, more than anything, worries me about the future of Age of Conan.
Ever since the game was revealed, its staunchest supporters were the most hardcore of the hardcore MMO gamers, the PvP fans.
These gamers absolutely demand the sort of deep, time-consuming, life-stealing gameplay that World of Warcraft shied away from in favor of courting the mainstream gamer -- a tactic that earned Blizzard's title a record-shattering fanbase.
While the brief period necessary to reach a character's full potential does not necessarily mean the game lacks depth, it certainly hints, at the very least, that the characters themselves lack the complexity of other games' avatars.
I just can't help but worry that this revelation will ward away the game's hardcore fanbase -- a group the title absolutely requires if it hopes to be more than a mere footnote in virtual world history.
Age of Conan will take "250" hours to get to level 80 [Videogamer]
Image courtesy Funcom
