AoC Friday Update: The Bitches of Conan

Friday Update: The Women of Hyboria

- Oct 19, 2007
The women of Hyboria have long been a lively debated topic among the Age of Conan community, even to the extent where many of you doubted their very existence in the game.



Suffice to say Hyboria will be FILLED with women of all kinds, from the “to be expected” female prostitutes to the extremely able female fighters.

As some of you may have picked up during our development, we have chosen a somewhat updated view on women compared to the works of Robert E. Howard. The world circa-2007 is very different, in most places, than the 1930’s in which the original Conan stories came around. Early on in our development, we therefore made a very clear and conscious choice: Namely that any female player in Hyboria should be just as strong and able as any man! The strong, fierce and independent female is perfectly in line with the lore of Howard, however, we have expanded it to include ALL the female players. And seriously guys, you wouldn’t want anything else, now would you? (let the discussions start!)

To this extent, we have put an amazing amount of work into the female characters in the game, ranging from capturing some 2500 “female-only” animations to sets of special emotes to an incredible array of female clothing and armor. We haven’t just re-skinned male armor, but gone about to create something unique, something strong, something sexy, but at the same time avoiding making it tacky. Should you wish, you can naturally also wear nature’s own armor (but you cannot be completely naked inside the game). And, to underline the point stated above again; our goal has been to make any female player in Hyboria just as strong and able as any man!

In addition to a large selection of clothes, armor and whatnot we are also delivering a character creation tool which allows for a stunning variety in looks and appearance. Some of you have seen how flexible and strong our character creation system truly is, and once you can get your hands on it come March, we are sure many of you will spend hours on the various sliders and options in the menu (some sliders might be of more interest to the male players than the female players to be honest ;) ). With more than thirty different “base heads” in the female character creation part you can also go from the cutest of cute to the ugliest of ugly. The choice is completely up to you!

As a side-effect of the incredible work, and wanting it to look “good enough” we have also waited (and waited) prior to showing them in action. The first real glimpse you got of our better halves, besides the NPC’s, was at our community event during Dragon*Con. To let you know what you missed out on there we today therefore follow up with some screenshots, so you can get a sense of what you missed. We have taken the screens this week, but the build stems from August. As with everything in Age of Conan things are constantly being improved and reshaped so things naturally look even better now.

We hope you like this small little peek into some of the female armors you can expect to wear in the game. We have for the sake of demonstration picked a female stygian model. As you enter the game yourself, you will naturally get a much broader selection, but if nothing else, this should give you a small peak in the direction we are going in.

And, once again, and to answer some of the discussions which have been had on the forum; to Funcom it has been, and continues to be, very important to empower the women in our game. To us, ANY female player in Hyboria WILL and SHOULD be just as strong and able as any man (unless he or she role-plays differently that is ;) ).

Have a great weekend!

You can check out those screenshots here.

I've read RE Howard's works in the past and I have to say, he was way ahead of his time in regards to vision. I would go as far to say that without knowing when the books were published before hand, you probably wouldn't guess 80 years ago, not with the sorry ass heroines that we have today. So once again, definitely check 'em out if you're a Conan fan/hopeful player, fantasy lover or just a person in search of some really lush writing, the likes of which we haven't seen in a LONG time. (Trust me, even if the game sucks, Howard's writing does not.)