Don your loincloth, polish your bastard sword, and get ready to invade Germany as Funcom announces their plans for Age of Conan at next week's Games Convention in Leipzig. They'll be showing off new locations, new content, and new features of their massively-multiplayer swords & sorcery title during live stage shows at the convention, with Blue Orb on hand to show players how to work the game with a gamepad and the TripleHead2Go guys granting hands-on time with the game on a three-screen setup. There's also loot to be had in the form of free game trials, limited edition game DVDs, and inflatable swords - because giving out real swords would have been pricey, and things would have gotten ugly rather quickly.
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Edge writes: The Netherlands-based Funcom says its recently released MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures currently boasts over 415,000 customers.
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Behind the tall walls of the King's fortress press and gamers alike can play the game, meet and chat with the developers, collect amazing give-aways and observe live stage shows where Funcom will reveal and demonstrate brand new and never-before-seen locations, content and features that will be put into the recently launched massively multiplayer online game 'Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures' in the months ahead.

"We are very pleased with the tremendously successful launch that we had," says Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom, Morten Larssen. "But this is where the real journey starts for 'Age of Conan'. In the months ahead we will be putting a lot of effort into expanding and improving on the game, and we look forward to using the Games Convention to unveil some of the locations, content and features we have in the pipeline."

During the live stage shows Funcom will present new locations, content and features coming to 'Age of Conan'. Blue Orb Inc. will also be present to demonstrate how you can use their software to play 'Age of Conan' with a gamepad, while the guys behind 'TripleHead2Go' have prepared a machine with a three screen setup so that gamers can come and play 'Age of Conan' in all its unprecedented visual glory using cutting-edge technology. Funcom will also be giving away exciting loot such as the legendary inflatable swords and free trial accounts together with limited edition DVDs containing the entire game. This is the first time Funcom hands out free trials and the supply is limited, so we encourage you to make your way to Conan's outpost as soon as possible!
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It seems that somebody has been sticking their sword into the wrong dungeon. The story goes that an Age of Conan player summoned a GM and convinced them to engage in a little "role-playing". The GM then took the player to a more secluded portion of the game world and (after a bit of hemming and hawing) proceeded to describe a sexual scenario in graphic detail.

Best of all? The whole thing is a setup.
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Massively reports: Last night a new patch went to Age of Conan's Testlive server. As well as making the usual slew of fixes and changes, including addressing memory leak and crash problems, and introducing a revamped version of the Catacombs in Old Tarantia, there were some tweaks to the PvP consequence system.
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Via Massively: As of this morning's small patch, a fix has been put in place: 'Altered the loot table of the Beguiler Demons in Potain so they are now dropping more appropriate loot.' Several days' worth of wanton purple looting has already taken place, so this is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has... well, not so much bolted as seduced your wife, stolen the family silver, drunk all your cognac, smoked your cigars, lost interest and ambled off.
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From gameplayer, news that German 'Fantasy Metal' band Blind Guardian will perform in Sacred 2: "This whole farrago sounds like something Spinal Tap would get up to!"
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Warhammer Online creative director Paul Barnett has said that it will be "very sad" if Funcom's Age of Conan collapses, saying that the game's "rhythm, longevity, gameplay and style" may not connect with the market in general.
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Funcom and 1C Company announces the signing of a Service Partnership Agreement for a Russian version of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. According to the agreement 1C will fully localize voice and text and operate local customer service, communities, websites and in-game support for Age of Conan in Russian, while Funcom takes care of back-end technology, server infrastructure and continuous development of the game. A dedicated Russian realm is to be created, giving the Russian community an opportunity to stay together and communicate with each other in their native language.
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Edge Online writes: "You might say that it's an accomplishment in itself to pry a few World of Warcraft players away to try a different MMO.

So Funcom should be commended for apparently drawing some of those WoW players away to play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, which launched in late May.

Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call on Thursday, "Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft."

In about a month's worth of time, Funcom's Age of Conan garnered 700,000 subscribers, according to the developer."
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Patch Notes for the July 31st update to Age of Conan are now available.
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Funcom have green lighted the Buddy system for the MMORPG Age of Conan.
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GamingShogun writes, "Direct2Drive, IGN Entertainment's digital retail store, today announced that Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is now available for digital download via Direct2Drive. Starting today, users can go directly to Direct2Drive to immediately download and begin playing..."
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Everyone who plays Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has been on the lookout for what improvements Funcom will be making to the game.

Well, we're not going to have to wait till tomorrow to get a glimpse of what the July 10 patch will contain because the preliminary update notes for the upcoming update have been posted on the AoC test live forums.

While going over the notes for yourself, be advised that the developers put in a disclaimer saying that the notes may not necessarily reflect the final version that will be released on the liver servers.

Anyway, enough talk. Here are the patch notes. Enjoy!
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GamesIndustry.biz reports that Electronic Arts and Vivendi are dominating sales of PC games in the US, according to the latest data from NPD.

EA's budget title Spore Creature Creator is the top seller for the week ended June 28, with two other EA titles ¿ The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff Expansion and The Sims 2 Double Deluxe ¿ at two and three in the charts.

Vivendi's World of Warcraft Battle Chest is at four, with the original World of Warcraft at six. Sandwiched between the two is Eidos' plucky upstart MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.
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Funcom admits that female characters do less damage in Age of Conan. According to Funcom's game designer Svein Erik Jenset, this is because of the different animations. Funcom is already working on the problem but it will take some time to adjust all of 1,000 animations that have to be altered.
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Svein Erik "Sharum" Jenset of Funcom today let loose a lengthy explanation of the Male versus Female attack speed issue that players have noticed in recent weeks, and just how soon players can expect a fix. TenTonHammer has the entire post.
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According to Eidos and Funcom, Age of Conan is now the #2 MMO in the Western World with a subscriber base of 700,000 users.
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Monday's Age of Conan patch saw some hefty nerfs to area effect spells for both the Tempest of Set and the Necromancer. System designer Jayde elaborated on the Necro changes and also discusses the future updates to the class, which may give some hope to those that were thinking of ditching their mains.

Half of the upcoming changes that Jayde lists nearly made it into Monday's patch, but seeing as they missed that one, they should almost certainly be included this Thursday.
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In a recent forum post, Funcom developer Twicer acknowledges that Age of Conan's crafting professions are completely behind the curve, and are currently the subject of intense scrutiny by the development team. Considering that Alchemy in its current state is completely broken (meaning it crashes your client when you try and do it), this message is certainly long overdue.
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