age-of-conan posts

Funcom's fantasy MMO Age of Conan has given its customers a new free content update to check out this week. The updated, titled Night of Lost Souls, has some Halloween-themed content with three new quests that will give players a chance to "challenge the dark and mysterious ghosts of Hyboria's fallen warriors." Special rewards will include gaining a pet demon and a new weapon, the Unholy Backscratcher (and no, we aren't kidding).

A new high level dungeon has also been added in the update and Funcom is also activating the game's new Veteran's Points system where players who have been subscribing to the game for at least a month will get some special stuff by accumulating points and using them via the game's vendors. Finally there are some new subscriber discounts if you pay for more than one month at a time. People who pay for three months get a 20 percent price reduction while six month customers get a 30 percent subscriber discount. If you want to pay for a full year the price goes down 45 percent.

Halloween is still in the future but many of us are already thinking about getting gifts for the holiday season. One gift you can buy will be a big help to many others. It's the now annual MMO Calendar and its 2010 edition is now available to purchase.

The calendar will once again feature original artwork from a number of current MMO games like Age of Conan, EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online and others. Even upcoming games like The Secret World and Guild Wars II will have artwork this year. All proceeds from the calendar will go to the famous St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. Also, each order is eligable to win one of 10 prizes for each game in the calendar. The calendar itself will ship on December 4.

Funcom still would like a few new players to try out Age of Conan so the developer is once again launching a free trial for their fantasy MMO. The free trial version lasts for seven days and has a number of other restrictions compared to the full version but if you have never tried the title now is the perfect time to do so.

Age of Conan launched about 18 months ago and has had issues retaining its player base ever since. Funcom has since cut down the number of servers and most recently cut 20 percent of its own workforce. However, the game's development team is still working to upgrade and update Age of Conan including working on its first commercial expansion, Rise of the Godslayer. The expansion currently does not have a release date.

In what has to be considered very bad news, MMO game developer Funcom has announced that 20 percent of its workforce will be cut, either by permanent headcount reductions or forced leave "to better align the Company's operations to the current marketplace." Funcom employed about 300 people before these new cuts were announced

Specific numbers of how many workers lost their jobs and how many are simply on force leave were not mentioned in the brief press release. It also stated that while development of their expansion pack for Age of Conan will continue as planned (along with their first free-to-play MMO, still unnamed), the development of their upcoming MMO The Secret World "will be some months extended".

Direct2Drive continues to celebrate their fifth anniversary with yet another set of games that they have cut prices on for one week only. You can now download the games listed below for just $5 each from now until September 28. Most of these games are RPG or MMO style titles (although they managed to sneak in a couple of action games as well) and there are some huge bargains to be had in this latest list:

Neverwinter Nights 2
Assassin's Creed Director's Cut
Elven Legacy
Eve Online
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
Titan Quest Bundle
PlanetSide: Aftershock
Drakensang: The Dark Eye
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Massively multiplayer game developer Funcom has largely been based in its native Norway but today the developer announced plans to open up a new studio across the pond in Montreal, Canada.

The new studio will not only hire new people to work at the offices but an unnamed number of Funcom team members in Norway will relocate to the new Montreal studio. While Funcom has yet to reveal exactly how many people will be at the Montreal studio or when it will open it did say that the new team would be working on their two big upcoming projects; the Age of Conan expansion pack Rise of the Godslayer and the all new game The Secret World.

While Funcom is prepping up for the release of their next major MMO game The Secret World they are also planning to release a major commercial expansion pack for their 2008 fantasy MMO Age of Conan. Today Funcom revealed some of the first details of the expansion which is titled Rise of the Godslayer.

The expansion will add a new land to the game, the Empire of Khitai. The land, which is split up into five different zone, looks like it has an Asian design influence by the screenshots that accompany the announcement. The storyline deals with the consequences that were created by the action of a younger Conan Khitai. Players will also be able to replay the game as one of the Khitans themselves. There will also be new abilities, spells and combos added for players and naturally there will be a number of new monsters to slay, by Crom! The expasion does not yet have a release date.

Funcom recently announced the first expansion to Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures at GameCom 2009. Titled, Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer, players are invited to enter the all new Empire of Khitai, inspired by eastern Asian cultures. There, they can choose to join a side among the warring factions and enjoy new features like an alternate character advancement system.

Download HD Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer Trailer (104 MB)
Check out all Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures downloads

Funcom's future plans for their fantasy MMO Age of Conan became a little more clear this week with an update on the game's official web site by the game's director Craig Morrison. He revealed that the next upcoming major content update (the game's sixth) will have a new feature called Guild Renown. Basically the action of one player in a guild will increase and affect the guild's reputation.

While the game update letter goes into a lot of detail on the upcoming Guild Renown feature, Morrison hints that the update will also add two new zones (House of Crom and Thoth-Amon's Stronghold) as well as some new Tower-based PVP objectives. More info on the sixth update will be revealed soon.

Funcom's launch of their MMO Age of Conan was a highly successful one in May 2008 but soon afterwards players began to drop out of the game in droves, forcing Funcom to reduce the number of servers it set up for the game and also lay off a number of workers. However the developer is proud enough of the improvements it has made to the game that it is offering former players a chance to check it out for themselves.

From now until July 22, former players in good standing will find that their Age of Conan accounts have been reactivated and they can download and play the full game for free. This will allow them to check out all the new content that Funcom has added to the game in the months since its official launch.

[Via Massively]