Tag Archives: Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures

Eurogamer has seen an as of yet unreleased teaser image pertaining to be the first expansion pack for its MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

The expansion pack is expected to release sometime in 2009.

Funcom had no comment.

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Massively is reporting that the reason for the Age of Conan server downtime this morning was because Funcom’s MMO was being patched.

From the piece:

In today’s patch, among a host of class changes and other crunchy bits, there are a lot of fixes and alterations to massive PvP, which should make a big difference for the players who have reached level 80 and were looking forward to this feature working properly.

Full patch notes through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Missed this yesterday. Buried in Funcom’s financials was confirmation that Age of Conan currently has 415,000 customers, classed as those either paying a subscription or playing on the first month’s free time that comes with the box.

The game sold in 1.2 million units, and sold through (customers who have entered game client key and billing info) 800,000 copies to customers.

More on Edge.

Funcom’s showing of upcoming DX10 features of Age of Conan at Games Convention, the company announced today, as well as offering up “thousands of exclusive giveaways, including free trial accounts and limited edition game DVDs” at the German show next week.

Never-before-seen locations, content and features from the MMO are going to be on show in Leipzig, so barbarian fans have every reason to be cheerful.

Press release after the link.

More »

According to this Avison story, Funcom’s sacked an Age of Conan GM for cybering with a player.

“We are aware of this matter, and necessary measures have been taken against them,” said a Funcom rep. “We have clear guidelines for all employees in Funcom, not least those who work with customer service, and if the guidelines are broken there are consequences.”

The worst part of all this is that the GM was set up. Read the transcript of what happened here, complete with screens. It’s not pretty.

Thanks, Destructoid.

Both Funcom and Blizzard have announced Russian release dates for their spearhead MMOs today, with Age of Conan hitting the country in “late 2008″ and WoW getting all vodkarish in August.

The new WoW release is the fifth European-language version, complementing the existing English, French, German, and Spanish versions. More here.

Age of Conan is to be distributed in Russia by 1C. More on GameDaily.

Big-name MMO? Sizeable player base? Stock value dip of 55 percent? One of these things is not like the other. According to Massively, Age of Conan publisher Funcom has seen a mystifying downturn in its stock value since Age of Conan launched.

Dropping from $54 to $24 per share, you’d think Funcom would have serious cause for concern. However, as Massively points out, Funcom shares were sporting a consistent $25 price tag before the Age of Conan pre-release hype began. Odds are, this sharp drop is merely a return to normalcy.

For more analysis and a chart just begging to be made into a level for Line Rider, check out the link.

By Nathan Grayson

Kotaku‘s spoken to Erling Ellingsen, product manager for Age of Conan, who answered in “about a month” when asked when the game would be ready for review.

From the piece:

“When will Age of Conan be complete enough for a full review?” His answer? “About a month.”So there you go folks, directly from the product manager. Age of Conan should be review ready in a month, when the PVP portions are firmly in place.

The game has been available at retail since June so we find that comment rather puzzling, but there you go.

By Mike Bowden

As you can see here, Funcom’s Age of Conan is now available for direct download. Good for those with an aversion to discs, people with shop phobias and the legless, the file weighs in at 15Gb.

Take a look.

Funcom put out a press release today saying Age of Conan “continues to hold the #1 spot in most markets” and is now the “undisputed #2 subscription MMO in the western world”.

“That Age of Conan remains #1 in retail stores several weeks after release is of incredible importance to us, and proves that the game has a large potential beyond the early adopters,” said Funcom marketing head Morten Larssen.

“With more than 700.000 accounts created so far we have a fantastic platform to build from, and we will continue our marketing spend to further drive numbers in the months to come. It also means that Funcom can dedicate significant development resources on evolving the game even further, naturally giving us a great hope for the future of Age of Conan.”

Hardcore. Press release after the link.

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Conan’s mighty strength wasn’t enough to heft the prodigious weight of his game’s masses, seemingly. Massively’s reporting that Age of Conan’s servers suffered a proper outage today, causing user trouble on an official thread you can only see if you’ve got a game key.

Fortunately, Funcom’s now confirmed that the servers are back up and ready to go, so get in there. You’ve got ages of lost time to make up for.

By Nathan Grayson

According to NPD, Age of Conan’s still the top selling PC game in the US. Last week’s data here. Figures are for the week ending June 7.

1. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
2. Mass Effect
3. Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
4. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
5. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
6. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff Expansion Pack
7. World Of Warcraft
8. BioShock
9. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
10. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack

According to this Gaming Today piece, Funcom’s announced that Age of Conan’s been nominated for several Golden Joystick awards, including best MMO. Obviously.

You can cast your votes for the shortlist here.

As promised, Funcom has announced a heap of new features and additions to Age of Conan, designed to keep those million buyers playing beyond the free month they got with the game.

Major updates include Guild Alliance Warfare and a PvP addition called To the Death, which adds ten PvP levels with additional ranks will be introduced, as well as specific gear and weapons for character-on-character combat.

All this is happening in the “months to come”. Press release after the link.

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Speaking to videogaming247, Age of Conan product manager Erling Ellingsen has said the recent reaction to an accidental breast nerf in the MMO left the company stunned.

“We were very surprised,” said the developer. “It’s just a bug, actually. We didn’t reduce the size of the breasts in intentionally. It was a side-effect of another bug we fixed. in the beginning, when people first started talking about it on the forums, we sort of laughed at it and said, ‘Well, we’re going to fix it, don’t worry.’ But then media from around the world started reporting this story and conspiracy theories were all around, saying that we had intentionally reduced breast sizes to reduce the amount of mature content in the game.

“But yes, we were very, very, very surprised. It only goes to show that that type of news is well-read, I guess.”

Certainly does, Erling. Virtual breasts and child-men, eh? Make the world go around.

Shock Horror. The US PC charts for the week ending May 31 are headed by Funcom’s Age of Conan. As you can see below.

1. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
2. Mass Effect
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
4. World of Warcraft: Battle Chest
5. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design expansion pack
6. World of Warcraft
7. The Sims 2 Free Time expansion pack
8. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
9. Sins of a Solar Empire
10. World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade expansion pack

By Mike Bowden

Funcom announced this morning that more than 1 million copies of MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures have shipped since the game released at the end of May.

“Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft,” says Funcom Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Morten Larssen. “The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history.”

Press release after the link.

More »

Speaking to videogaming247 this morning, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures product manager Erling Ellingsen has confirmed that a raft of new features and content for the MMO is to be announced next week in an effort to pull players past their first free month of game-time and into subscription.

“We have no idea how many people are going to continue subscribing, but we are of course going to make certain efforts to keep as many as possible by introducing new content,” he said. “Next week we’re going to announce what people can expect if they stick with us for another month.

“It’s going to be new areas, it’s going to be new features. There’s going to be a PvP revamp, for instance.”

Funcom announced today that Age of Conan has now passed the million mark for units shipped, claiming the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft.

The game released worldwide at the end of May.

Eidos MMO Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has gone top of the US PC chart in its launch week, NPD data’s shown, for the seven days ending May 24. List below. Thanks, MCV.

1. Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures – Eidos
2. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest – Vivendi
3. Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Collectors Edition) – Eidos
4. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe – EA
5. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Stuff – EA
6. World Of Warcraft – Vivendi
7. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade – Vivendi
8. Call OF Duty 4: Modern Warfare – Activision
9. The Sims 2 Freetime Expansion Pack – EA
10. Crysis – EA

What with Age of Conan going a bit bonkers since it launched at the end of May, Funcom’s decided to take on a bunch of new community managers and customer services reps, three in Europe, and four in the US.

The European positions are based in Zurich and Oslo, the American jobs located in Durham, North Carolina.

Barbarian costume supplied. Orgies optional.