it's it's own game. age of conan was an MMO, this is a survival/rpg lite. i enjoy it for what it is, it's pretty buggy, but nothing necessarily game breaking...
basically you start out as someone who was captured and found guilty of crimes you may or may not have committed (there isn't an answer, but when you create your character there are random crimes varying from murder, to theft, to lewd acts, to punching camels. conan comes and rescues you and wanders off while you have absolutely nothing in the middle of the desert. there's a "journey" which is really the only hand holding the game does, but it gives you the basics on how to play and some sort of goal to move towards, but it's pretty unintrusive.
beyond that, the gamespace is yours to do what you will with it. you can build (almost) anywhere, and generally speaking, you can build what you want. there are some EXTREMELY creative buildings people have made. there's a loose story that's actually pretty interesting but it's all done through notes and items that you find (and a couple of npc's but it's pretty scarce dialogue). you can choose to follow the story and see where it goes, or you can just build a giant castle and terrorize and make slaves out of the locals. it's kind of one of those games where despite the bugs, despite the simple gameplay, despite the barebones of it all, it's greater than the sum of it's parts.
also, it's COMPLETELY playable solo. there's a solo game and a multiplayer game that are identical except that... well, one of them has other players in it. there's also a bunch of different server settings that the admins can mess with (faster building times, more or less materials from each node, faster exp gain, etc)