Age of Conan nudity

Over the last couple of days the top Google search term leading people to my site has been "age of conan nudity". Lets tastefully assume that this is all concerned parents who want to make informed decisions of whether they can let their children play this game. :) In any case, there appears to be demand for me to write about the subject. So how much nudity, sex, or nipples are there in Age of Conan? Don't worry, I won't post screenshots, this won't become a NSFW post. :)

When you start Age of Conan, the first quest NPC you meet is a young lady tied to a rack, wearing a kind of strangely shaped gold bikini. The outfit definitely is sexy, but strictly speaking there is no nudity, the essential parts are covered. And that is the most revealingly dressed NPC I've seen up to now, the ladies in Tortage are more covered. There are mature dialogues with sexual innuendo, and you'll meet some NPC ladies of negotiable virtue, but you never see them naked or engage in any sexual acts. There is also a logoff screen with scantily clad girls, but no nudity. Age of Conan has less sex and nudity than a Boris Valejo poster or the recent single-player RPG The Witcher.

So where is all the excitement about Age of Conan having versions with and without nipples coming from? Well, there is a way to see nipples and nudity in AoC, but for that you have to create a female character. In other games, when you remove all clothing from your paper doll, your avatar is shown wearing some sort of underwear. In Age of Conan, if you remove a female character's clothing from the paper doll, you'll see her topless and wearing a G-string. In the open beta version, which I assume is the version the US got, you'll see her breasts including the *shape* of the nipples, but the nipples are the same color as the flesh. In the European version I have now, the nipples have a more realistic looking reddish texture circle. You don't see your toon naked in the character editor, but there is a slider for female avatars that controls breast size up to Dolly Parton proportions. So if you are into virtual sex dolls, you can create a female character with rather preposterous shapes, undress her in the game, make her move with emotes, and look at her from all possible camera angles. I'm not an expert, but I'd guess that for $15 a month you can find better offers on the internet, virtual or otherwise.

And as a guild mate of mine remarked in guild chat recently when we discussed these "features": "Tobold wishes to inform you that he only looked at all this for blog research!" :)