Tag Archives: Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures

As part of the celebrations for Funcom’s Age of Conan 5 year anniversary, brutal boss monsters will be roaming and rampaging through the world of Hyboria for five days in a row.
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Craig “Silirrion” Morrison hinted last month that there was something interesting in the works for Age of Conan. Now, forums for the game are a-buzz with the idea that two new lands may be in development, filled with a multitude of new zones.

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If you were still holding out for a 360 version of Funcom MMO Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, now may be the time to hang up your axe: Funcom’s Erling Ellingson has told VG247 “there are no plans on releasing an Xbox 360 version any time soon”.

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This may be an offer you can’t refuse. Funcom is allowing anyone that creates an Age of Conan account and logs-into the game before January 1 to play up to level 20, over an unlimited time period, for no charge whatsoever.

There are a few caveats: “Please note that a trial account has some limitations to avoid ‘spam’ and ‘gold farmers’,” said the firm.

“You cannot trade with others, use in-game mail, public chat channels and you can not post on the forums.”

All that gets cut away if you go full-blown, however. You get extra treats when you sub up, in addition.

“If and when you decide to upgrade your account you will receive an immediate boost to your progress through an exclusive and powerful beginner’s item that increases both XP gain and your chance of performing fatality moves,” the dev added.

Hit this.

This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

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Funcom has announced that players who used to have an Age of Conan account can come back for free.

From now until July 22, former can players re-activate their accounts with no obligations and receive 2 weeks of additional free playtime.

Hopefully all the improvements made over the months and the upcoming expansion will sway opinions on it.

More through the official site.

Age of Conan’s first expansion will be revealed during GamesCom in August.

“We will be revealing the first expansion for Age of Conan at the GamesCom show in August,” said Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen.

“We have lots of exciting stuff to reveal and Conan players and gamers in general are in for a real treat, but for now, our lips are sealed until then.”

Attendees can expect to see in-game footage, new quests, monsters, environments and other goodies.

More over on Massively.

Funcom is has launched a free trial for Age of Conan.

In an attempt to reel in more subscribers to the struggling MMO, the game’s director has posted an open letter on AoC’s official site, detailing the plan.

Also mentioned was AoC’s new update, expected to land on the test servers sometime this week with the only hints at content being a new gem crafting system and some class changes.

The development team also talked about the possibility of changing the game’s “Combat Combat Combat” scheme to “Content, Conflict, Characters and Community”.

Thanks, IncGamers.

Funcom CFO Olav Sandnes has resigned after Funcom’s Q4 results showed a $23.3 million loss.

A stumbling Age of Conan was blamed for the decline. E24′s estimated today that subs for the MMO are now as low as 100,000.

“Funcom is a company with a substantial potential based on a unique combination of skill sets in a fast growing global market. I wish Trond Aas and the rest of the organisation all the best in realising the full potential of the company,” said Sandnes.

While Funcom’s cash position remains solid at $39.4 million, the company reported a full-year net loss of $33.8 million.

Thanks, GI.

A big PvP fix for Age of Conan will patch next time you log into the game. The update includes four new dungeons.

Three new instances for maxed-out players include wing three of Black Ring Citadel, Slaughterhouse Cellar, and Xibaluku. Cradle of Decay is for mid-level players.

Class tweaks, new emotes and crafting drops have also been added to the patch.

Ton of release notes over on the AoC forums.

Funcom’s posted details on how Age of Conan’s servers are to be merged.

“The first servers that will be merged are the US servers ‘Bloodspire’ and ‘Hyperborea’,” said US community manager Glen ‘Famine’ Swan.

“The list of servers for the next merges will be published shortly.”

More on Massively. Thanks, Blue.

This TenTonHammer post is rumouring that Funcom’s dropped 70 percent of its American staff, totalling some 60 jobs.

Apparently the cuts were made on Wednesday, with the bulk of the redundancies coming from customer service and QA.

There’s little detail there so this goes under “rumour” for now. Expect it to be firmed up next week.

Funcom’s put a large content update live in Age of Conan, claiming it’s the biggest since the game launched.

The update introduces a new area in Ymir’s Pass, which opens up a host of new quests, characters, monsters “and a dramatic new storyline to unravel”.

Screens and video on CVG.

According to this EG story, Funcom’s Age of Conan’s first Asian release will be in Korea.

Korean firm Neowiz will be handling the port.

“We are very excited to introduce the world-class large-scale MMORPG Age of Conan with its popularity and great reputation in the industry,” said Neowiz boss Choi Gwan-ho.

“This will be the first large-scale MMORPG for Neowiz Games and both companies will also work tightly together to adapt and implement a fully localised game for Korean users,” he added.

More through there.

Never saw this coming. In an interview with Strategy Informer, Funcom’s admitted that the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan it’s been promising for the last couple of years may not be top of the “things to do” queue.

“Development on the Xbox 360 version is not our key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game, and we rightly have the focus on them,” said product director Jørgen Tharaldsen.

“While there is a dedicated specialist project team working on Xbox, the PC version will remain our top priority for now.”

The console version’s supposed to be out next year. Not entirely sure we believe it’s going to make it, if we’re being honest.

More through the link.

Funcom co-founder Gaute Godage has quit Funcom after becoming “dissatisfied” with Age of Conan, the company’s announced.

“I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with,” said the exec.

“I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom.”

Godage is to be replaced by Anarchy Online game director Craig Morrison, who previously worked at Funcom as a community manager.

“It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig,” added Godage.

“I have had a fantastic time these last 16 years, and I am very proud of the many things Funcom has achieved. Funcom and Conan will always be a big part of me, but as I now look to new ventures outside the gaming industry I am certain Age of Conan’s future is in the best of hands.”

Press release after the link.

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Funcom’s put out episode four of Hyborian Insider, it’s movie update on Age of Conan, showing upcoming DX10 graphical features in the MMO as well as new high level content.

Dynamic tree shadowing, improved parallax mapping, rippling grass, specular reflections, underwater God rays and tons more are shown off in the movie, which you can see after the break. The DX10 stuff starts at about 3:10.

No dates on when this stuff’s going to be added to the game, but it’s well worth a look. So do. Be mindful of a few spoilers in there, though.

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Valve’s announced that Funcom MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is now available on Steam.

The game “will be available for an additional 10 percent off for one week until Sept 11.”

Go buy it, if you haven’t all ready. Everyone needs to wear a bit of fur and mess around with a giant sword once in their life.

Funcom has told Eurogamer that an Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan will definitely be released.

“The Xbox 360 version is still very much set to happen and we are working on it,” said company man Erling Ellingsen.

“However, there are no dates set, even though we aim for a 2009 release. Our big priority now is, of course, the PC version and fixing the issues with it and improving it for our current players.”

More through the link.

As you can see in this onlinewelten.com movie from Leipzig last week, Funcom’s Erling Ellingson has confirmed that Age of Conan has more than 400,000 paying subscribers.

The news comes after a Funcom financial report put the number of “customers” playing in the MMO at 415,000, but confusion reigned as to whether or not this included people playing on their free trial.

Thanks, Massively.