Jim has mastered the art of living simple: his home is very uncluttered and open. It almost looks like it’s perpetually ready for some modern living catalog photo shoot– at least when I’ve been there. Nice furniture, no knick-knacks, all this walking space– it’s a wonderful goal to aspire to for the rest of us.  So when it came time for Jim to decide whether to buy the regular edition or collector’s edition of Age of Conan, the simple, original edition was the obvious choice, from both an economical and clutter point of view.

“What the hell are you going to do with all that crap?!” Jim would ask the other three of us, half-brazen, half-smiling, fully serious.

I guess add it to the pile.    I was on the fence about paying 40 extra bucks for this game, but I’m really, really excited about it. After the 700,000 pre-order number was finally announced (perhaps as a preliminary “oops, you saw our pre-order number, right? That’s why the servers are down!”), I even thought maybe Best Buy would have a little open-at-midnight event for it. They didn’t.

Okay, so I’m really excited about this game, but not as excited as the rest of the world, nor as excited as Best Buy was with its midnight release parties for GTA:IV and, yes, Rock Band. C’mon, Rock Band didn’t have that many pre-orders! And hasn’t Best Buy corporate heard all the whining about AoC‘s pre-release play time fiasco?  We want this game!

So when I drove over to pick up my copy this morning, I still naively hoped that there might be some “barbarous” action to behold at the store. Maybe a cosplay, or at least people shoving at each other to get into the store at 10 AM.  My hopes were a little piqued: there was a strange mix of about 8 people.  A soccer mom, a dad with his six-year-old kid, a younger dude with hair down to his waist, and some other random 40- to 50- something folks. It was a stretch, but I could imagine all of them as half-naked warriors battling through Cimmeria– and on the PVP server, too! Okay, not so much on the half-naked.

But they were just civil. Soccer mom huffily rushed past us all as the doors opened. And none of these folks walked to the table where all the copies of the game were layed out.  Not even the long haired dude, and I thought for sure he was here for Conan!  Nope, he had a couple DVDs he had to get.  The one person here for the game after I found him lost in the PC gaming area? The father with the kid. Go figure.

Best Buy’s the only place you may still be able to get one of the 86,000 collector’s editions (mine’s #80,000-something), since it’s the only retailer that didn’t let you explicitly preorder the collector’s edition.  My store had 3 copies of that and about 20 regular copies. I thought awhile about the collector’s edition– I walked around the store with it and looked at other stuff briefly, Jim’s shout ringing through my mind.  “What are you going to do with all that crap? What are you going to do with all that crap? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH ALL THAT CRAP?!” It was straight out of Carrie.

I looked at the back of the box at what was inside, and decided my answer to Jim’s question was, “I don’t know!”  I bought it, drove back to work and eagerly took a moment to open up the box. It really stinks– literally– like a funky, bad chemical smell from the box and the “leatherette” map. The art book is not “hard bound” in spite of what the game box says– it’s a paperback, and if you’re lucky like me, the corner of 20% of its pages will be bent, as is the black and white, simple game manual. Yes, this is what $90 gets you: extra crap to lay around and gather dust.  But it’s still satisfying for the hardcore fan, and honestly, bent pages or no, the art book is great fun to look through. 

Now, the next challenge: how and when will I free up enough hard drive space to play this on my only machine that will barely handle it…