SANTA MONICA, Calif.--It's summer in Southern California, and that of course means press events for video games like Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The massively multiplayer game will feature violent, bloody sword battles reminiscent of the motion picture 300, as well as sophisticated high-level play for online role-playing veterans.

For the first time, publisher Eidos and developer Funcom are showing Age of Conan's "pet" system, which lets certain magic-using professions in the high-fantasy game summon "pet" creatures to accompany them into battle. Apparently, characters that can summon pets will be able to accrue up to eight "pet points," which can be alloted to summoning pets of different levels of power; for instance, a high-level necromancer character can use all eight points to summon eight medium-sized scorpions as pets, or the character can summon two magic-wielding spirits that cost four points each. Different pets will have different functions; the scorpions are straightforward combat drones, for instance, that leap into the melee, while the robed spirits we saw summoned bolts of lighting to hurl at their enemies from a distance.