Quest for Conan…

I recently mentioned to my nephew, more or less in passing, that the Age of Conan massively multiplayer game was about to ship. I expected this to result in a “ho hum” sort of response: both he and I have become somewhat jaded over the years from consuming a half score or so different online roleplaying games in the last decade. We play EQ2, there are other decent games, but nothing worth getting excited about.

For reasons unexplained, my nephew ran out and bought two copies of AoC, one for his wife and one for himself. Suddenly the clock was ticking: he was playing the game and enjoying it… using up all those gaming enjoyment quanta, leaving less for me! Thus began my quest to acquire a copy of the game (which I will likely give some sort of review to in the next few days).

  1. Off I go to Best Buy: not my favorite store, but they are big, and often have stuff I want. And it was at Best Buy’s subsidiary, Future Shop, that my nephew acquired his copy- the Chilliwack Future Shop, to be precise. Since I live closer to Vancouver, in the Langley area, I went to the Langley Best Buy. A scan of the lengthy shelves there revealed… no Age of Conan. A second and third scan did not change this fact: the program did not suddenly leap out and present itself to me. I hailed a Sales Associate (shudder) and asked “whither is Age of Conan?”, to which she responded “Huh? Oh, well, no, that isn’t out yet. May 22nd is the ship date. Sorry.” I replied “Your knowledge is faulty- it is available, so says the Age of Conan website, several games sites, and the Future Shop in Chilliwack”. My sales associate replied “No, they are wrong- see, it says here, in our weekly flyer- not available until May 22nd. Sorry.” I walked away, muttering curses upon the sales associate, and choosing my next possible source…
  2. Across the road to London Drugs: London Drugs has a small games section, but periodically I’ve found they have games on the shelf that no one else has in stock, probably because most people don’t think to look there. The sales person there had no idea what Age of Conan was, but at least she didn’t try to convince me that the world is flat purely because the sales flyer says so- instead she shuffled through several boxes of new inventory on my behalf, but also came up empty. Steeled by a new sense of resolve, I moved on to…
  3. Electronics Boutique #1: This particular EB Games store resides in a strip mall sort of midway between Best Buy and London Drugs. They specialize in console games, so I was unsurprised when they had no idea what I was talking about and had no copies upon the shelf. My destiny lay further beyond, perhaps in the realm of…
  4. Electronics Boutique #2: Ah, the “EB Games in the mall”. A much more PC-friendly EB store, the one in the mall almost always has pleased me by having new games on day one of release. And lo, I was not disappointed: yes, they did have Age of Conan on day one of release… which was the day before I got there. When I arrived, they were completely sold out. By Crom! Truly the dark Gods conspire against my quest. There is only one course left open to me…
  5. Future Shop, Langley: where I dislike Best Buy, I generally despise Future Shop. I have often received some of the most pathetic and uncalled for “advice” from their sales trolls, which has led to my patented “I know exactly what I want get out of my way or I’ll run you down and stomp your twitching corpse into the linoleum” shopping method. I strode across the floor, my steely-eyed gaze and unpleasant grimace driving away wave after wave of sales trolls before they could venture within my personal “space”. At last, I stood before the game shelf, scanned its length and… upon it lay my prize, a singular copy of Age of Conan. As my hand closed upon it, I swear I heard the peal of holy trumpets, and felt the touch of the Gods upon my credit card as I strode back with my prize to the checkout counter

And there you have it: my personal quest to acquire a copy of Age of Conan is complete. The game itself now resides upon my hard drive, calling to me as I sit here typing this post…

2 thoughts on “Quest for Conan…”

  1. It’s funny that you mention going to London Drugs when the “big” stores are out of games, I have done the same out here, and come up lucky too.

    I won’t say anything about AoC, and potentially spoil your future review of it, other then “WOW”.

  2. Heya, Shane- long time no see here on the old Blog 🙂

    I have a strange relationship with London Drugs regarding technology. They don’t necessarily have a great selection, but their sales people are generally unobtrusive, they don’t outright lie to me, they never seem to want to sell me a “service agreement”, and their prices aren’t too bad. They somehow maintain a broad enough selection of stuff, without necessarily having the shelf “depth” of other stores, that I can often find something hiding there that everyone else is sold out on.

    Regarding Age of Conan: I’ll write up some sort of review shortly. Summary: if you like MMOGs, and also like single player RPGs, try AoC- it is truly something “new”. Just beware that you’ll need a pretty beefy computer system to play it: unlike World of Warcraft, you can’t play Age of Conan on your cell phone or Grandma’s old PC.

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