As far as the layout of the Sanctum of Burning Souls is concerned, it's evident the designers have had a vast gaming experience themselves and taken the good of what they've seen in other games and put it into 'Age of Conan'. The dungeon is linear enough so you know exactly where you are going and where you are meant to be going, so it would be quite unusual for anyone to have to back-track and look for an area with a particular boss to kill or item to collect. The dungeon areas are also spaced out wide enough so that you can take the minimalist approach in dealing with as few mobs as possible in order to get to where you want to go quicker, or you can all-out and take on all the mobs around, I guess for better reward (experience, loot, etc.).
If the 'Age of Conan' dungeon designers were going for a dark, hellish, dank, and misty look for the Sanctum of Burning Souls, then they well and truly pulled it off (I guess that's their job after all)! The Sanctum (for short) pulls you in, even with each footstep as you hear the squelch of the moist and sticky soil beneath your own feat, and the occasional drip of water off in the distance to remind you that this once glorious Acheronian temple has now turned to ruin and been overruled by tree and undergrowth, and is now a breeding-ground for ominous life-forms and a place inhabited by malicious and opportunistic foes. So on the atmosphere scale, Funcom gets 10 out of 10 from me.
The first boss we faced was the "leader" (I guess you would call it) of the Drowned Ones that was accompanied by three or four spider queens, Acheronian Spider Demons. By the way it looked, if a team was careful enough, you could pull the boss over to you without aggravating the spider demons and ignore them completely. This wasn't the way it worked out for our team, but it was certainly possible to do so. Instead, we decided to pull the spider demons one by one and whittle them down before moving onto the boss.
Thankfully, we were working well together as a team now to take down the boss quite quickly, so for me it was merely a matter of allowing the Guardian, Dark Templar, and Conqueror hold aggro, the melee DPS classes do their thing, and hanging back with the other ranged classes. I set up an attack chain of Firebolt, Flesh to Worms, and Gelid Bones, saving my AoE attack, Glacial Storm, for when I felt a bit safer. Apart from that, my Blighters kept nipping away at the boss, slowly working down its hitpoints as everyone more or less flayed their weapons in a cacophonous orchestra of destruction, and we stood victorious, claimed our rewards and moved on to the next part.
Our eventual goal was the Acheronian Warlord (the very end boss), and there were lots of things to do in between the Drowned One boss and the Warlord, but that's something I'll save to speak about for another time; it's time to speak a bit about Capture the Flag PvP.
Capture the Flag in 'Age of Conan' works the same as Capture the Flag in any other game, but to find it in an MMO I find quite refreshing. PvP enthusiasts will have their own opinion on whether they regard CTF as real PvP or not, and they may even have an opinion as to whether it belongs in 'Age of Conan' or not, but I can honestly say that at least providing the option for it for players that are interested by it is a smart move on Funcom's behalf. No one's forcing you to play CTF, so if you think CTF is the devil you can very easily block it out from your mind and carry on about your business like no one cares. I've always found CTF to be a lot of fun in the games I've played (Quake III Arena, Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast), and if you're at least open to it in 'Age of Conan' I can assure you you're also going to have fun with it in this game.
