Why I will never play the Age of Conan MMO

Conan as he is meant to be: covered in blood, holding two gore-soaked swords, with a barely-dressed woman jonesing for a helping of his steely thews. (ironically, image taken from a video game)

Some people, particularly people who know about my fondness for both computer games and Conan, have suggested that I might look into the new Age of Conan Massively Multiplayer Online game. I've heard that the graphics are great and that the gameplay will be a lot of fun. To begin, let me say that I don't think I'll ever play any MMO again; at least, I hope I won't. To say I got burned playing World of Warcraft is an understatement: I got flame-charred. Games like that only give you the illusion that you're playing; you're just pushing the game through its paces, either succeeding in killing-this/going-there or going back to try again, like a glorified version of Chutes and Ladders.

So then, why does a Conan MMO offend me so much? When I was a lot younger, I used to look forward to the coming of the "Bookmobile" because the library in my little desert military base wasn't much for adventure stories, but the Bookmobile had so many fun books, not least of them books with a strong, brave man on the cover holding a sword! And so I was introduced to Conan, and I thrilled at the far-fetched tales of his wanderings and adventures, swept away to a heroic time and place. I must have read a dozen of those novels at least. Conan will always have a place in my heart assured for him just for that.

Now, I have rediscovered Conan in the stories by the man who created him: Robert E. Howard. Unlike the novels I read as a boy, these stories aren't just "doing Conan," expanding a world of adventure and fantasy. To Howard, Conan meant something: it was about the heroic struggle of a single man against the world, a real man, as Howard himself might have put it. Howard believed that civilization was a corrupting influence on what it really meant to be human, and he used Conan to strike back against a world he hated for its destruction of individuality and spirit. A Howard Conan story is more than just a remarkably visual and gripping read that I see reflected in the fantasy genre all over; it's a deeply-felt story of a time Howard longed for, when a man's worth truly mattered. And it's come to mean much the same for me: I, too, wish for a time I could be something more than just a nearsighted, skinny lad with no prospect of anything magical in his life. Sure, Conan would have bent me in half like a blade of grass, but at least I would have had that chance to stand up and be something.

And that is why I will not be trying the Age of Conan MMO.