If you're one of the four people who still play Age of Conan and you've been anxiously awaiting the DX10 graphics (you know, the ones they say the game has on the back of the box since launch but never quite made the cut?) then good news! In the next major update you'll (probably) get DX10 graphics!

In his November letter to the community, Age of Conan Game Director Craig Morrison revealed that with the new PVP system and Ymir's Pass now in place, in the next major AoC update Funcom plans on adding the highly-desired DirectX 10 graphics.
» Read More 

Hoping to resurrect Age of Conan in the hearts of the hordes of gamers leaving to play World of Warcraft or Warhammer Online, Funcom brings us the largest content update ever in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: new area, tons of quests, characters and monsters, as well as a new dungeon.
» Read More 

CVG reports that police in Bradford are on the hunt for a gang of game thieves who made off with 4000 copies of Age of Conan on PC.

Two pallets of games went missing from the back of a lorry some time between 10pm on Tuesday, October 28, and 7am on Wednesday. With an RRP of £39.99 each, we make that out as £159,960 worth of goods. Ouch.
» Read More 

Massively: "Players have been asking for new Age of Conan content for a while now, and one of the biggest content gaps had been the mid-50s. That's the levelling range the new Ymir's Pass zone (previewed some time ago) seeks to fill, and it's now opened on Testlive. The developers want to make it clear that Ymir's Pass is a work in progress, and as such is not complete. We're keen to see what it's like when it's done, because currently it's gorgeous. It's far from being the only new AoC content; we've still to see the Tarantia Commons and the House of Crom yet.

No sooner do you enter the zone than an inhuman bellow echoes through the air and the ground shakes. Something huge is making that sound, and the story of what it is (and why it's suffering) is played out through the zone. The first thing you'll probably be doing is looking for footprints. Colossal ones."
» Read More 

This week's episode of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory prominently featured Age of Conan, and its A-story dealt in a light-hearted way with online gaming addiction. If you're unfamiliar with the show, the premise is as follows: two extremely geeky twenty-something males -- both scientists at Caltech -- move in across the hall from a pretty but not-too-terribly sophisticated blonde woman. Commence unlikely friendship and all the humor that comes with it!

In this week's episode, one of the two geeks is playing Age of Conan when the girl comes over. She starts playing the game and becomes addicted, rejecting responsibilities and basic hygiene for the remainder of the episode. The premise sounds typical, but the episode has a certain wink-like-quality to it. It's all in good humor, and there are a lot of inside jokes that only players of the game could get.
» Read More 

TTH: "The recently released Age of Conan soundtrack album contains two CDs: The first CD in the box is the original soundtrack CD. It's a selection of tracks with a total playing time of about 72 minutes. The bonus CD contains an additional 20 minutes of music from the game as well as three songs by rock group Turbonegro – one written specifically for this soundtrack album.

The game score has a total length of approximately 3 ½ hours, which means there's still a lot of music from the game that's not on the CD. Since there were so many varied musical pieces to pick between, a representative collection of songs could easily become too eclectic. Thus my main ambition for this soundtrack album has been to make it work as an independent musical entity outside the context of the game. The approach to this has been to organize the tracks in the analogy of a journey. An important criterium for choosing the songs has been that each one would constitute a meaningful part of this musical journey."
» Read More 

Strategy Informer had the chance to ask Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director for Funcom, a few questions relating to the recently released MMO Age of Conan, which has been released on the PC, but is also expected for the Xbox 360.

We wanted to know how Funcom felt about the release of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, as its been hailed as the fastest-selling new MMO of all time. Jørgen Tharaldsen told us that he's happy for EA as the MMO genre needs success stories besides WoW.
» Read More 

Strategy Informer recently had the chance to ask Jorgen Tharaldsen, Product Director for Funcom, a few questions relating to the recently released MMO Age of Conan, which has been released on the PC, but is also expected for the Xbox 360.

Funcom has been quiet about the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan, so we asked Jorgen Tharaldsen how development for this version is coming along, and he told us that the Xbox 360 version is not the companies key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game.
» Read More 

Strategy Informer recently had the chance to ask Jorgen Tharaldsen, Product Director for Funcom, a few questions relating to the recently released MMO Age of Conan, which has been released on the PC, but is also expected for the Xbox 360.

We asked Jorgen about the recent server merges that had taken place, to see if he could enlighten some of the concerns that sparked from this announcement, because some people thought that this could be the beginning of the end for the MMO. Jorgen said that he was confident that people playing Age of Conan are happy about the news, and that it was requested from the playerbase.
» Read More 

Massively: "Okay, Funcom, we get it. You're deadly serious about fixing Age of Conan. First the beginnings of the PvP patch went live, 'Patch 2', giving players PvP XP and gear. Then we got to see the reworked notoriety system on Testlive, along with shady camps and six pages of patchnotes. And now we get a lengthy document about coming changes to the crafting system on the Testlive server. Good heavens, anyone would think that Craig Morrison bloke actually knew what he was doing.

Age of Conan crafting had been lacklustre. The new changes, which are scheduled to go live as part of Update 3 - the very same update that will polish off the PvP changes - add much more depth and complexity to the tradeskills. Weapons and armor will now have recipes that drop for city, base and culture versions, depending on whether they require a guild city or not. The 'base' pieces can be worn, and also used up in crafting to produce new pieces."
» Read More