What does the future hold for the survival genre?

That's an interesting question. I don't know. I feel like these things are all relevant. The MMO genre was really strong for a while, and then it became sort of fractured, and were broken down into MOBAs, battle royale-style things etc. MMOs at one point tried to do everything at once. We now have games that cater to just PvP or just crafting, these very specialised splinter games that do those small percentages of things very well POE currency trade .

In terms of survival, I think it's going strong and is evolving in different ways. You have things like The Long Dark single-player, you have Ark which is constantly piling on maps and player customisation and more and more monsters and abilities. And then you have Conan Exiles that's very much focused on a core combat building experience, where we're encouraging PvP conflict while trying to make the world feel realistic. It's heading in all different places.

Joel, of his own volition, rounded off our conversation by explaining the inspiration of Conan Exiles' dong physics slider. I'll point you in the direction of our news story for more on that.

Conan Exiles is due to launch in full on May 8, 2018.

Today's best Conan Exiles deals$39.99ViewNo price informationCheck AmazonWe check over 250 million products every day for the best pricesPC Gamer Newsletter
Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.

By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Everything you need to know about Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire

Today, ArenaNet announced Path of Fire, the new expansion for cheery non-subscription MMO Guild Wars 2. Two weeks ago, I was at ArenaNet, playing a demo of the expansion, which releases next month. Here's a rundown of what Path of Fire offers, along with comments from some of its developers about key features and approaches. Look out for more Path of Fire coverage in the next issue of the magazine.

We're off to the Crystal Desert
Before I launch into many paragraphs about the big new feature—mounts!—let me first set the scene. Path of Fire takes place in the Crystal Desert, a big, well, desert area to the south of Ascalon. It's a location that will be familiar to players of the first Guild Wars, but Path of Fire is set 250 years after that game. A lot has changed. I was able to visit The Amnoon Oasis, now a major city, and explore the first map, Crystal Oasis. It's big, varied and beautiful. The city is vibrant, and full of open world events and short minigames—I briefly had a go at being a sous chef in pursuit of a mastery point. Outside the centre, there are farmlands and rolling sand dunes.

'Desert' doesn't mean beige and sandy
"The quality hasn't dropped for how huge these maps are," says Horia Dociu, franchise art director for Guild Wars 2. "There's still a ton of variety, a ton of really interesting pockets of sub-biomes. Every type of desert you can dream of is in this game: crystal stuff, toxic stuff, branded whatever. The level of detail and fidelity—just the mature art team combined with the mature toolkit—to do something this big at our most detailed level is something that I'm shocked by. I think the fans are really going to dig it visually buy POE chaos orbs ."