Two months after its release, Funcom’s massively multiplayer online RPG Age of Conan is overcoming its launch problems and providing players with a world where roleplaying is actually viable.

Based in the sword and sorcery fiction of Robert E. Howard, whose 1920s and ’30s pulp fantasy invented the genre, the world of Age of Conan is just as intense and lively as the prose of its creator.

The game pits players against evil armies, dangerous beasts, wicked cultists and their summoned creatures. It’s bloody combat, which uses a demanding system of combo attacks, often ends with decapitations and fatalities.

Conan’s “low fantasy” setting is much grittier than that of World of Warcraft or Lord of the Rings. There are few real heroes, and every character presented in the opening act has bad qualities.

Age of Conan’s first act tells a story in the manner of traditional RPGs, with both single- and multiplayer content. It sets the game apart from other MMOs, and feels more like Oblivion or Baldur’s Gate.

Each character starts the game as a shipwreck survivor on lawless Tortage Island, a analogue of real world Caribbean Tortuga. Over their first twenty levels, characters explore Tortage, join the local resistance, reveal their destiny, and confront the island’s wicked tyrant before leaving for the mainland and the more conventional MMO content.

Daytime on Tortage is full of other players and standard collect and kill quests, but the player can switch to night at any time and run the story-driven quests. At night, the player can cause real change to a usually static MMO world. Rescued characters stay rescued and wait in the inn to offer more quests. Dead characters stay dead and don’t respawn.

Tortage Island is a much more involving and impressive campaign than most MMO quests, with an immersive plot and full voice acting. It makes your first character very enjoyable but becomes increasingly tedious to try out new classes.

The rest of the game seems unfinished by comparison. It lacks voice-acting, has few single-player missions, and feels more like an ordinary genre offering. Content is entirely lacking for the last ten levels and the endgame.

Character classes in Age of Conan are generally dynamic, with multiple roles to keep things interesting. Healers like the Tempest of Set and the Bear Shaman must juggle combat and healing to capitalize on all their abilities, with the Bear Shaman being a unique melee healer. The Herald of Xotli mage class combines a cloth armored caster with a melee shock trooper.

There are problems, however. Some classes, like the Guardian and Assassin, can do little but their prescribed role, and each class has broken talents and abilities.

There are no fantastic beings or settings in Hyboria. All three playable races are rooted in real world history, and their appearance and the architecture of their cities reflects this. The resulting backdrop is far less creative and colorful than that of World of Warcraft, but it is also gritty, realistic and keeps with Howard’s pseudo-historical style.

Also following Howard, the men of Age of Conan are burly and muscled and the women are slender, curvy, and scantily clad. Character creation is full of options, with many faces, hair styles, colors, tattoos, and body shapes to chose from, including a slider for bosom size.

The diversity of player character appearance makes the world feel much more lived in. I noticed a good balance of available races and classes during my time in Tortage, which added to its realism.

I played on a Player vs Player server, which offers a free-for-all sort of gameplay where anyone can attack anyone else outside of the major cities. A few choice assholes take advantage of this system for their own perverse enjoyment, targeting players half their level for quick and obnoxious kills. Overall people seemed very genial, and the constant threat of deadly combat makes things much more itneresting.

World PvP provides players with a much freer experience. Someone in your group hogging all the loot? Kick them out and take them down. Playing a northern barbarian who hates Stygian magic? Lop off that Demonologist’s head.

Age of Conan’s world PvP, detailed character creation, and dynaic classes allow players can develop their own stories for their characters, which keeps things interesting after leaving Tortage. This requires a level of investment and personal attention to detail outside of the game, but can be well worth the effort you put into it.