The Massively Multiplayer Online market has never appeared as crowded as the present, with a seemingly unending flood of new titles arriving on the shelves (or more likely, waiting to be downloaded) every month. Yet for every successful World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings there are many that fail to take off (recent examples include Archlord and Auto Assault) and these games are expensive to design, launch, maintain and upgrade.

First of all you have to hype it up and convince people to take part in the beta trials; with Age of Conan there was already a fan base for the original stories and the Schwarzenegger movies. The sense of anticipation was so great that developers Funcom could announce with excited relief that they'd shipped over one million copies of the game within the first three weeks of launch, which is the best MMO start since WoW.

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It's also the bloodiest and most ‘adult' of MMO games, with heads being chopped off, hearts torn out and even blood spatters on the screen after an extended bout of carnage. This is a world of rippling muscles, curvaceous femmes fatales and dark, cruel magic where might is all and the weak get stomped on.

You start in the usual way, designing your character's physical appearance, choosing which land he comes from (Stygia, Aquilonia, or Cimmeria) and which one of 12 different classes, which themselves are grouped into four archetypes; Soldier, Priest, Rogue and Mage. Each class has a further three feat trees so there's plenty of variety in skills and abilities.

There are 80 levels to be worked through and you start with an extended tutorial for the first 20 levels in the murky island pirate port of Tortage which lies just off the mainland of Hyboria. You'll notice instantly that both the combat system and the quests have been given a radical overhaul from the usual MMO fare.

Instead of the instant point-‘n'-click style of combat, spells and combos and delivered by hitting a succession of key taps and notice has to be taken of your opponent's shields so that blows can be targeted at their weak sides. The more advanced you are, the more key taps you need to perform so much more thought now has to go into your attacks.

The quests have also been given stronger and more believable storylines, even though most of the time they still involve slaying a set number of foes or gathering objects. In those first twenty levels you also have extensive voiceovers which help to enhance the atmosphere of the Hyborian world. In addition, the gameplay is further divided into night and day missions. The night is your Destiny Quest where you're trying to overthrow the evil Strom and is totally solo play, while the day gives you the option to work solo or multiplayer.

Once you leave Tortage you're on your own to explore the stunningly rendered Hyborian map which includes sweeping desert towns, snowy mountain passes and lush green foliage, the golden towers of Tarantia and the stark, terrifying Stygian capital of Khemi. Not only is the detail some of the best we've seen in this genre but the depth and perspective is stunning. One word of warning however: you will need a top range graphic card and plenty of RAM if you want to make the most of the visuals as even the lowest settings are very demanding of your PC.

You can join guilds, enter epic siege battles in PvP mode and learn crafting skills but there have been justified grumbles about bugs and lacklustre missions once you leave Tortage. Funcom claims to be addressing this, with support for DX10, voiceovers being added to 60 more quests after level 20 and a new fugitive status for high level PvP participants who repeatedly kill lower ranked opponents. If they live up to their promises, this could be the biggest challenge yet to WoW's dominance.

Visually stunning and with a revolutionary new take on combat and questing, Age of Conan could - despite bugs and concerns about later levels - be the jewel in the crown of the MMO genre.