When creating your character, you get to choose from one of three races, and at least 12 classes. The choice of race really only matters on the servers that have Realm vs Realm type rules. On most PvP servers you can attack anybody, anywhere, regardless of race.

The races look mostly the same, as opposed to some other MMOs races. Don't expect to see the flying races like Shadowbane had available here either. While taking place in a fantasy world where magic does exist, the world tries to stay grounded in some sort of a reality.

One of my personal favorite things in this game is the developer's approach to how healers work. In most MMOs, healers become healbots in no time. People find that if they want to heal on a priest, they will be group-dependant for damage. Almost every MMO to date has done this.

Age of Conan decided to break the mold, and they chose to do it in a wonderful way. There is no true 100% healer class. All the healers have strengths and weaknesses, and work well together. However, your priest is going to be dealing out damage as well as healing when out on a raid, or even when PvPing.

Not only can priests deal damage, and even level solo, but mages have a different flavor to them as well. While there are mage with pet type classes, there is also a mage class who gets right up there in the heavy melee on the front lines.

Seeing Age of Conan taking Mages and Priests and twist what is normally expected of these classes is a breath of fresh air into the quickly dying creativity of the MMO genre. This also makes for a more fun game to play, as you don't feel like you've just switched MMOs in order to play the same game with different graphics.