Age of Conan Update 5.6 has been announced by Funcom! The new update will have an all new high-level dungeon and will activate the new veteran reward points system!

Here's more from Craig Morrison on the latest content addition to Age of Conan:

"It being that time of year, we employed a few tricks to provide our players with some special treats," says Craig Morrison, Game Director and Executive Producer on `Age of Conan'. "In this update we have added new seasonal in-game content where players will have to progress through three brand new quest lines and get to challenge the dark and mysterious ghosts of Hyboria's fallen warriors in order to collect the seasonal rewards. We are also very excited about introducing the Veteran Points system, which allows us to reward those players who have been sticking with the game for longer periods of time."

The new seasonal content will allow players to acquire appropriately themed loot such as the Unholy Backscratcher weapon as well as their very own pet demon. Players will also be able to discover a mysterious new location in Tarantia, a villa where dark and gruesome events are taking place. Another addition to the city of Tarantia is the Iron Tower, a high-level dungeon towering over the rooftops of Tarantia Commons the city's slum district. The addition of the new dungeon, featuring a host of new and exciting encounters and loot rewards, brings the storyline of Tarantia Commons to its final conclusion. The Tarantia Commons location was added to `Age of Conan' in an update earlier this year.

Launching in May last year `Age of Conan' quickly became a smash hit in retail, shipping over 1.2 million copies around the world. In North America, the most prominent online gaming market in the west, `Age of Conan' became the third best-selling PC title of the year only beaten by `Spore' and `World of Warcraft'. In the weeks after launch `Age of Conan' simultaneously topped the charts in 17 countries, and the game received critical acclaim from gaming press across the globe. `Age of Conan' is now available in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Polish localized versions, and is being prepared for launch in Korea as well. A free 14-day trial is currently available on http://www.ageofconan.com.

Age of Conan remains one of the most visually stunning games available to MMO players. (See screenshot of tiger mount below!!!) At PAX 2009 we were able to get an up close look at the new expansion that will expose AoC players to a new world unlike anything they've experienced! In the new expansion the immortals of Hyboria will embark on an adventure to the land of Khitai. The new expansion will be dubbed: Rise of the Godslayer.

This new wave of content will take players to the mysterious country of Khitai, an Eastern-inspired land full of mystery and wonder. The world of Khitai was never fully explored by Conan author Robert E. Howard before his death; however, Funcom is striving for authenticity with this expansion. Khitai and its people are based on descriptions Howard included in his letters with friends and family. Rise of the Godslayer is shaping up to be the real deal.

The game itself has been vastly improved over the already-impressive Age of Conan. Different zones are now easier to traverse between: instead of teleporting via an NPC, players can simply explore the massive plains of Khitai and cross the border between areas themselves. Khitai is designed to feel like an even more believable world than the Hyboria that was explored in Age of Conan. There are twelve different factions dotted throughout Khitai, and each of them have their own distinct culture. Visually, each faction is striking, and the groundbreaking Age of Conan graphics engine really shines within these new areas. Towns are filled with intricate buildings and lively characters, as well as dazzling sunlight, and Funcom says it are striving to make these places feel alive by opening up as many doors as possible. Players can wander through wonderfully lit shops, inns, temples, and other establishments, without having to pass through a loading screen. The exploration appears to be some of the smoothest in any MMO.

While no new classes or races will be playable in Rise of the Godslayer, the amount of new content is still huge. Each of the twelve factions will have their own quest lines, with exciting rewards for players who make it to the top. Special new armor will be available, including a fourth tier of equipment for high-level players to seek out. New special skills will also be trained, although the exact details of these are still up in the air – suffice to say that they will be exciting and powerful.

The various warring factions of the game will tie into the player's relationship with the world. Beating up thugs from one group won't make you too popular with their superiors, leading to possible future scuffles with NPC enemies looking for revenge. Interestingly, it's possible to betray the people you call your own, and ally yourself with a rival faction – just another line of quests to add to the massive array of new content! However, making your way to the very top of a faction's quest line without betrayal definitely has its perks. For example, one group trains tigers. Stellar players will be given the opportunity to have their very own tiger as a mount or a pet. In true Conan spirit, they must venture naked into the jungle and fight the beast with their bare hands!

 

The original Age of Conan struck a chord with gamers looking for a darker MMO. It was intense, brutal, and steeped in Robert E. Howard's Conan lore – a major plus for fans of the classic works. Rise of the Godslayer seems to be on the right path to continue that spirit of exciting action, whisking players away to a gorgeous open world full of risks and adventure. The massive realm of Khitai and its promise of new quests, new gear, new friends, and new foes looks to be a worthy successor to the throne of Conan.

Last month's letter from Craig Morrison mostly covered initial hints on Age of Conan's next patch. This month, however, those features are nailed down and being prepared for Game Update 1.06. The release date is still to be decided, but it will definitely appear on the test server prior to release. Check out the August Letter from the Game Director below!

It has been a hectic month here with preparations for the reveal of the new expansion, visits to several key games shows and of course preparing the next set of live content updates.

Rise of the Godslayer

The most important news this month is of course that we revealed the first expansion pack for Age of Conan – Rise of the Godslayer. I am very excited to have been able to see people’s reactions to the expansions plans and what we were able to show. The team has done a wonderful job in being able to bring the land of Khitai to life. I think that the adventures people will be able to have in the expansion will be interesting and fun, and we have strived to make sure that our approach to this new continent reflects some of the key feedback from players when it came to the layout of the original game playfields.

This is a great example of where your feedback and input truly helps shape the development process. With the expansion areas we wanted to address a couple of areas that people raised regularly about the existing playfields – that they often felt too linear and that there are great distances between them that sometimes breaks with the immersion of the setting.

Going to Khitai does give us much more freedom with the map. Whereas Howard had fairly carefully mapped out the layout of the kingdoms in Conan’s world, that isn’t the case with Khitai and that has allowed us to address the second of those issues by ensuring that all of the playfields lead on from each other. You will be able to see where you are going and moving from region to region in the expansion should feel much more like a coherent journey.

Then we also approached the actual world design differently and have made sure that we maximize the playable area much better than we have in the past. While technically the same ‘grid size’ as our largest existing playfields, the expansion areas will have much more playable game-space, roughly some 30% more. This is done through creating more open and spacious areas with less of a focus on mountain passes and having large impassible areas. We really wanted to give players that feeling of exploration and discovery that comes with visiting this foreign and mystical land.

Then we have the new armors, it was also driven by player feedback that we really want to ensure that every last piece of armor created for the expansion can be acquired by the player, whether it is simple social clothing or the faction armors themselves. It is very important to us to deliver on that element that the players really want and be able to use the expansion to increase the diversity of the armors that players acquire and use.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to demonstrate that the feedback does end up influencing design choices we make, in particular for larger content like an expansion. While of course we won’t always agree on all things, the feedback can play an important role in our decision making process.

Of course the expansion is only half of the story and the live development process continues apace


What’s coming up?

We are currently working on three separate live updates at the same time. There is an update imminent for the Conquerors (should hopefully be on the test servers very soon! )then we have a more significant update with the new Iron Tower level 80 instance and then beyond that the 1.06 update itself that includes the features revealed last month in the shape of Guild renown, the Tower PVP system, House of Crom and the tier three raids. The 1.06 update will be deployed to the test servers once we are done with the 1.05.x updates and Iron Tower is released. It is a significant update and I do expect that it will need some time on the test server, in particular as we want to test the rate and progression of the new Guild renown systems and will be enlisting your help there!

Before we wrap things up for this month there are a couple of clarifications and answers from questions I have noticed after last month’s details on 1.06 that are worth covering.

Update Schedule for 1.06: We might split the update up into smaller parts to mean some elements come before others, but we haven’t decided what order that might be yet, and it will very much depend on testing. There is a lot in this update cycle so rather than wait on everything we currently think it might be better to split it up, which would mean it will be slightly longer before you get everything, but you would get parts sooner too.

House of Crom: House of Crom is a level 80 instance that will have social elements. So what does that mean exactly? That means that we are aiming to have two parts to House of Crom, one which is more open and supports several teams in a social dungeon setting (and will have co-operative goals) and a part that will be a regular single team instance. I think the mechanics the team is cooking up for this will make for a very interesting experience!

Tier Three Raiding: Yes, the new raids will come with new loot and third tier new armor sets (and maybe a little more time permitting ;))

Veterans System: I know I have hinted at this before, but now I can confirm that yes, there is something coming for veteran players, and the current plan is that we are trying to release it with the current 1.05.x series rather than wait for 1.06. This will be a new system that will allow veteran players to earn a new currency based on how many months they have subscribed for  that can then be spent on a special vendor who will offer a wide range of items, both convenience items (like additional travel options or cheaper mounts for your alts), fun items and cosmetic items. The points will be on a character basis, so you will be able to spend your veteran points on each character. (i.e. if you are eligible for one hundred points as an example, all of your characters will get that number of points each)

So there you have it, we are looking forward to the coming months and some really exciting updates. The great thing about getting to do the trade shows and conventions is that you get to meet up with and chat to players and it great to get to meet so many of you enjoying the game. We will be working hard to continue to realize that potential!

See you in Hyboria!

Age of Conan has been driving players, by the Wooly Mammoth load, back to the most brutal MMORPG in the world! We recently posted our "Age of Conan Re-Visited, Re-Analyzed, and Re-Reviewed!" commentary on some of the amazing changes they've undertaken since launch. They've received wide spread press coverage for the campaign and have recently put together a set of four amazing new videos to highlight some of the changes in the game. The videos are broken down into four areas, Technology, PVP/Sieges, Content, and Gameplay. Each of the links below will take you to the appropriate area and give you a look at what's new for the game in that respect! Enjoy!

Technology: Groundbreaking visuals plunge you into a world of breathtaking  beauty, with characters and environments sporting unprecedented detail.

PVP/Sieges: Jump into quick PvP mini-games, ambush unsuspecting players on the open road, or engage in epic battles between guilds for control of battle keeps. Earn experience for PVP battles and earn exclusive equipment!

Content: Journey across the rolling fields of Aquilonia, the snow-capped mountins of Cimmeria and the burning deserts of Stygia, and delve into the darkest pits of the earth where you must battle the very demons from hell itself.

Gameplay: Take on the role of a Demonologist, Barbarian, Bear Shaman or any other of the twelve exotic classes, as you face the challenges of Hyboria alone or in groups of other players!

Visit Age of Conan for a free 14-day trial or get your old account activated for a limited trial and see what's new in Hyboria!

Funcom sent us word of the latest Letter from the Game Director of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Craig Morrison. Morrison provides details on changes coming for the next major Age of Conan patch, including Veteran Rewards and Guild Renown!

This months letter reveals the incoming veteran reward system and new guild changes coming into Age of Conan from the Game Director Craig Morrison

As the summer months, here in Norway, bring with them a short period of rest and recuperation for the development team, I wanted to take the opportunity with this month’s letter to both thank people for all their support this year, and to start to lift the veil on the changes for the next update cycle that we have only teased about so far!

Coming Back to Hyboria

Firstly, I want to say thank you to veteran players and returning players alike, who have been playing during this re-evaluation period.

While we, of course, still have work ahead of us and are doing our best to continue to refine and improve the game even further and add even more great new content, we are very pleased to see so many people enjoying the game, and continuing their adventures in Hyboria. It has been the culmination of lots of effort on behalf of the development team to get to the point where we could give people a good impression of what the game is and where we are taking it in the future.

Veteran Rewards Incoming

On the subject of veteran players, I can also confirm that we will be introducing new veteran rewards in the near future. As part of the next major update cycle, a new veteran reward system will be introduced that gives veteran players access to special vendors who will offer them a host of veteran benefits ranging from social status items to special items that will provide extra convenience items to veteran players. As an example of the latter, exp potions and similar bonuses, while not increasing the power of your characters, will provide veteran players with great time-saving rewards and options not available to new players. There should be something for everyone!

Guild Renown

Now we get to the good stuff!

We have talked for a little while now about the fact that guild gameplay would be a focus for the upcoming update cycle. Today, I wanted to give you the first look at what shape those changes are going to take. The main feature of this area in the update will be the addition of the new Guild Renown system.

So what is Guild Renown?

Guild Renown is a system whereby the actions of any individual player count towards their guild’s reputation. Collectively, guild members can level up their guild in three distinct categories to gain access to new guild rewards and bonuses. The system has two primary components, the Renown level, and also Renown rankings which place guilds against each other and measure your successes against those of other guilds on your server.

Let’s take a look at the Renown levels first, before moving on to the rankings. Renown levels act much like the levels for your character, i.e., as you accrue Renown points through your actions in game, you will in effect ‘level up’ your guild.

Almost every action in the game will earn some form of Renown points for your guild. There are three categories of Renown points that contribute to your overall Renown level:

• Valor points: Earned from PVE gameplay, killing mobs, doing quests, beating bosses and raids.
• Glory points: Earned from PVP activities like winning mini-games.
• Artisan points: Earned through crafting actions.

Your Renown level is a combination of all three of these totals, which allows you to level up your Renown level in any way you choose. You do not have to do all of the categories if you do not want to. It will be perfectly possible to try and level up your Renown level with any combination of the above actions.

This will add another dimension to your everyday gameplay, and even a short ten minute session will be contributing towards your guild’s Renown pool and put them closer to the next reward tier! For example, getting a team together for a dungeon run, or doing a raid will both have the extra benefit of contributing towards your Guild’s Renown level.

As your Renown level grows, you will earn new rewards for you and your guild and access new features for your guild cities, like new pet or mount vendors, and even another new building type for your city, among other amenities. Some of these new rewards will benefit every member directly, and some will be for the guild as a whole. You will get more details on the rewards themselves when the update goes to the test servers.

So that is the Renown level. What about the Renown ranking system I mentioned earlier?

Renown rankings are where the competitive element comes in. People like to claim bragging rights, and the Renown ranking system will allow players to see how their guild has compared to others both on the overall Renown earned and also in each individual category. You will be able to see which guild has accrued the most Valor, Glory, or Artisan points in any given period.

The rankings will reset after each ranking period (currently planned to be weekly, but that may be adjusted during testing), and everyone starts on equal footing.

One area we have considered here is that we don’t want to have players feel ‘forced’ into merging guilds to compete for ranking placement. Thus, we will be making the ranking calculations only count the top X contributions from members in the ranking period (the value of X to be determined during testing). So let’s say we decide the contributing cap will be 50, then the top 50 contributors within the guild will be the ones whose efforts are counted for ranking purposes, even if you have 100 members. Please note that we plan for all members to be able to contribute to the Renown level, so larger guilds may level up quicker, but they won’t necessarily do better in the rankings - they might - but it is important that success in the rankings is down to effort, not just due to overwhelming numbers. With this, we hope that even small and medium-sized guilds will be able to make appearances in the rankings.

Likewise, by having ranking for all three of the categories, we hope to able to give those guilds that choose to focus their gameplay a chance to shine. So, even if your guild focuses only on PVP, and might not gain enough Renown in the overall rankings, you will be able to push up the Glory leader-board, if you are truly successful at PVP.

With the rankings being reset regularly, we hope to avoid guilds being able to ‘bank’ and constantly top the rankings. These rankings should reflect your current status as a guild, and your current dedication to your chosen causes!

The rankings will confer status bonuses to the winning guild - mainly cosmetic items or bonuses for bragging rights. Gold, Silver, and Bronze positions, for example, will be visible in your character’s guild tag.

The rankings are not something we intend to be about bestowing extra power on the winning guilds - they are meant to be an additional part of the system that allows players to prove that their guild is up there with the best on the server, either in their chosen area of expertise, or in all areas!

In Closing

So there you have it, a little bit of insight into what is coming up in the near future for Age of Conan. Of course, there are also a couple of other significant additions coming in the next update cycle, namely new zones in the form of House of Crom and Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold, as well as new Tower-based PVP objectives in the Border Kingdoms, but those will be the subject for future letters!

Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director Age of Conan

 

Age of Conan has launched a "re-review" campaign among several top fan sites, and approached us to take a second look at the game and highlight for our users some of the benefits and enhancements seen at AoC since launch. They're currently running a "Tell your friends to come BACK to Hyboria" campaign that gives players 2 free weeks playtime to experience some of the changes!  Recently, with Update 5, a new area came into the game known as Tarantia Commons.

Tarantia Commons offers level 70 and up players new exciting game features that take place in the area including gang wars, riots, and several new encounters. Encounters can occur differently depending upon your standing, how you've gotten to where you are now, what is going on in the area, and previously encounters that could have lead to the encounter you're fighting now. There are also a few new factions in the area that fight for control of Tarantia, one gang owns the rooftops and the other the streets, you're able to take on missions for either group and improve or hurt your standing with them based on the missions you choose to play. By giving both the rooftops and the streets their own unique set of missions and events the game creators have added double the content into the same amount of real estate, and allowed players to mingle with these factions in the way that they see fit.

Here's a developer introduction to Tarantia Commons:

While Update 5 brought lots of new content into the game, there have also been major improvements over the past several months that are worthy of a mention; we've done our best to detail some of them below:

1. Character Statistics Updates: The statistics system has been changed to include a new functionality that allows a players core stats to interact with their armor and weapon ratings adding meaningful usefulness to specific classes that utilize them the most.

2. Improved Itemization and Abilities: Items play a larger role now than they originally did. The addition of statistics to items and abilities make weapons and abilities useful and an important part of gameplay.

3. New Social Pets and Improved City Life: As your guild city grows, its population becomes more dense and varied with new vendors, animals and patrolling NPC’s that make cities more enjoyable and rewarding. There are also new pets such as cats, dogs, and snakes that can be purchased from those vendors the follow you on your epic journeys.

4. Technical Stuff: Lots of scalability has been added for visual options, allowing for users with great systems to see great visual detail, and those without them to turn down settings as needed. They've also fixed some of the memory leaks and technical issues that caused difficulty early in the life of the game.

5. New Content: Ymir's Pass, Xibaluku, and Tarantia commons offer players hours and hours of fun playtime.

Ymir's Pass is one of the most expansive areas in any MMORPG and reaches a climax when you try to free the Frost Fathers son who's bound in shackles on top of a massive structure. He flails and slams around the whole time the you're trying to cut his chains and ward off the evil that captured him!

Xibaluku has several instances and an amazing design of traps and puzzles that must be worked for you to make your way deeper into the dungeon. Several of the instances have unique gameplay opportunities that players can take advantage of or ignore, and you're able to re-play instances that really appeal to you.

Tarantia Commons is, of course, the latest addition to the game and offers players the ability to take part in events that are happening in the area in real time. You might find yourself facing off against another player who's actively trying to squelch the rebellion you just incited or vice-versa, and area wide updates are communicated through the chat channel to give you up-to-date intel on how the event you're involved in is proceeding.

6. PVP/Sieges: A notoriety system now exists that will lets players who commit murders be hunted or achieve legendary status by having their name feared by all as they become a notorious murderer! Other advancements include the ability to earn experience in PVP situations, improved performanc of siege gameplay with expanded tools for guilds to carry out these assaults, and changes to city building and battlekeep construction including live guards!

These are just some of the updates we've seen from running around and doing a little research on Age of Conan. These and many more await those who give this game a second chance or try it out for the first time via the Age of Conan Two Free Weeks preview!

Age of Conan recently went through a fairly substantial revamp of numerous systems with update 1.0.5, including major changes to attributes, combat, and a new playfield: Tarantia Commons.

If you enjoyed Age of Conan before, Funcom is hoping you'll give it another go with this update, and thus are offering two weeks of free time to old players with no obligations.

Be sure to check out the updates if this piques your interest! The re-evaluation period ends on July 22nd, so make the best of your two weeks by conquering all there is to be had in Hyboria!

 

Age of Conan has undergone some massive changes since it was first released, including a recent expansion dubbed Update 5, and we were able to have a sit-down with Craig Morrison, the Game Director and Executive Producer for Age of Conan, about these new additions to the game. Our interview touches on everything from the recent Update 5 expansion that includes the Tarantia Commons area, to strategies and development aimed at getting players back in the game. Craig provides excellent insight into the new expansion and what the future holds for the most savage game on the internet!

Here's a look at the our Curse Interview of Craig Morrison:

Thanks Craig for your time and good luck with all the exciting news for Age of Conan!

Age of Conan had a major release this week with the Tarantia Commons added in update 5! The Tarantia Commons area offers several new and exciting adventures for players, including a riot that takes places in the area where you're able to help or hinder the peasants as they race towards the castle, and unique new quests and bosses available!

To introduce the new area we've got a video narrated by game director Craig Morrison which explains the area, its story and the gameplay within:

Visit the official site to learn more about Age of Conan!

Age of Conan has posted a developer introduction for Jarle Snertingdalen who's in charge of the team responsible for combat, class design, character development, RPG systems, and items and loot tables. You can safely say Jarle does a lot. The introduction includes some of the day to day duties he manages and what it's like working on AoC!

Here's the  Developer Introduction of Jarle Snertingdalen from Age of Conan:

Today we bring you the developer introduction of Jarle Snertingdalen the Associate Producer on Age of Conan Systems Team.

You'll take a ride inside the mind of the man who helps manage and drive all of the game systems under the rainbow from within the world of Hyboria.

"Famine: For those who might not know, can you tell us what an Associate Producer actually entails?

We have a few Associate Producers on Conan responsible for different areas of the game. Without getting into too much detail, my team is responsible for combat, class design, character development, RPG systems, items and loot tables. We are also involved with any feature that’s produced for the game.

My job is to make sure our plans are followed, well thought through, out on time and of quality. It’s also my task to ensure that the people on my team are able to work as efficiently as possible and that everyone has the right focus.

A normal day for me involves reading and discussing feedback, attending production, planning and design meetings, following up on tasks, coordinating with other teams and departments, and reviewing work we have done inside the team. I try to squeeze in time for playing the game, which I also do after hours..."

Find the exclusive peek from the latest developer blog Message from the King on MMORPG.COM

Age of Conan has undergone several changes since the original release date, and the people are coming back to the game in droves! The recent addition of Ymir's Pass has raised lots of questions about what all is available to the player in this region. The Guide to Ymir's Pass is fixing that! The guide shows you how to get there and then highlights all the cool stuff to do once you're there.

Guide to Ymir's Pass

Ymir’s Pass introduces hours upon hours of adventure into Age of Conan. Let’s take a look at some of the locations you will explore, characters you will meet and quests that you will embark on in this short-and-quick guide to Ymir’s Pass.

“It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.”

- Cimmeria, Robert E Howard -

Getting there!

If a man wishes to travel the distance from Cimmeria to the southern kingdoms, the fastest route is through Ymir’s Pass. It is a journey that captures the raw beauty of the northern lands, from the ice-tipped peaks which shadow the land to the snow-covered planes that lead further south through rocky valleys. Once through the mountains, the land slopes downward to the rocky expanses of the Border Kingdoms and the great plains of Nemedia beyond.

But would-be travelers must be cautious. Not all is well in Ymir’s Pass and the wind that sweeps down the mountains and howls across the plains carries with it the stench of war and death. It begins with the self proclaimed bandit-king, Atzel. Thoth-Amon returned Atzel to life after his death at the hands of Conan. In return Atzel swore to help the sorcerer carry out his plans.

Those plans are beginning to come to fruition.



 

Clan Maugh

Atzel’s men have moved into Ymir’s Pass, driving back Clan Maugh, the Cimmerians who make their home in the region. The Clan makes the bandits pay dearly for every swathe of land that they take, but life is cheap in the eyes of Atzel and even cheaper in the eyes of Thoth-Amon. The leader of Clan Maugh, Caden Chieftain, has decreed that his people will give no more ground. They will retake the land of their forefathers, or die in the attempt.

But Caden has other worries. His headstrong daughter, Ula, has gone missing in the wake of the attack and he doesn’t dare ask any members of the clan to risk their lives searching for her in enemy territory.


The Battle of the Frost gate

Further north, a skirmish has taken place between Atzel’s men and a band of Aesir travelers. In the region known as the Frost gate, a great battle was fought, with great losses on both sides. Little is known as to the fate of the Aesir. If they do still live, they are deep in enemy territory and their relations with the local Cimmerian tribe are strained at best. But for now, the corpses of their fallen comrades lie tumbled in the snow.

Those who travel will shift uneasily as they remember the legend of Atali, the Frost Giant’s Daughter. It is said that she comes to the fields of the dead she comes and walks among the dead, her naked body gleaming like ivory. She lures men from stricken fields into the wastelands to be slain by her brothers the ice-giants, who lay men’s red hearts smoking on Ymir’s board.


The Ghost Kings

In the southern swamps of the region, which the local clan has long avoided due to its dark reputation, something is stirring. Three ancient ghosts wander the landscape, wearing the crowns of long dead Acheron. And where they wander, they drive the denizens of the swamp before them, forcing the normally timid swamp demons to migrate from their beloved swamps.

Whence came these kings of Acheron? The answer lies in the ruins to the east.


The Ruins of Karutonia

The ruins which dominate the southeastern portion of the region are those of Karutonia, once the northern-most city of Acheron. Karutonia was a great city, ruled jointly by three kings. The frontier city held back the barbarian hordes and thousands of barbarian slaves were sacrificed in their great amphitheatre.

But this enraged the barbarian hordes. They stormed the city and razed it. It was the beginning of the fall of the Acheronian Empire. Today, the ruins are full of Black Ring Sorcerers and their allies, searching the ruins for the relics of Acheron. It is rumored that they have opened the way into the Amphitheatre of Karutonia and they feed upon the dark legacy of the sacrifices that once occurred there.


The Amphitheatre of Karutonia

The Amphitheatre, once the site of such horrible sacrifices, now serves as a nexus for the evil in Ymir’s Pass. Black Ring member’s come and go freely, and a few of Thoth-Amon’s greatest allies remain in the Amphitheatre.

The Dimensionalist dwells in the ruins. With the flick of his wrist, this master sorcerer can summon an entire army from the depths of the void. His creations are loyal and incredibly lethal. The Abyssal Keeper cages the spirits that he raises from the darkness. He raises the souls of the animals that once fought for sport in the amphitheatre, and trains them to do his bidding.

Age of Conan 7 Day Trial

Age of Conan is BACK! with a vengeance we might add, they've started a free 7 day trial program to get people back into the game. Recently the Director of the Game, Craig Morrison, posted a full update on all the MAJOR improvements since launch that was absolutely designed to let old and new players know that AoC has made leaps and bounds in the past few months to put out a product they're confident players are going to thoroughly enjoy.

Age of Conan MAJOR Improvements

Craig Morrison, the Director of Age of Conan, has sent us an update on the amazing face-lift the game has undergone since it first came out; and they're excited to tell people about he changes they've implemented. We've been playing it here internally and the experience is much smoother and it's been really easy to get back into the game and start kicking butt. For a list of improvements read the MAJOR improvements since launch we recently posted.

We've also obtained and exclusive "How-to-play" guide for AoC that we think you'll enjoy reading. Whether you've played the game before or not, there's lots of good information here for you to get lost in.

AGE OF CONAN: HYBORIAN ADVENTURES

HOW-TO-PLAY IN 1-2-3! 

Introduction

You're only a few moments away from entering the brutal, savage and sexy world of the world's greatest fantasy hero. Feel free to flip through this how-to-play guide, explaining to you some of the things that are good to know before setting foot on the burning beaches of Tortage Island – where the game will start out for you. For more assistance on getting started you might also visit the official Age of Conan forums where you can pick the brains of other people playing the game right now! 
You can also download a .PDF version of the complete Age of Conan manual HERE!

1. Getting started

 

Updating your game - After having downloaded and installed the game, running it for the first time you will be greeted with the Age of Conan updater. The updater will download any changes Funcom have done to the game, ensuring that your installation is always up to date. Once updating is completed, the game will start and you will be prompted to log in using your account information (you can register at http://register.ageofconan.com).

Choosing a server – After logging in you will have to choose a server. If you are planning on playing with friends, make sure you start on the same server as them. Servers are divided into two different ruleset categories:

      PvE – player vs. player activities are present but restricted to certain areas, and as  such this server type is encouraged for new and inexperienced players.

      PvP – player vs. player activities are prevalent everywhere in the game world,  making life there a lot more challenging – but also a lot more exhilarating!

      PvP-RP – these servers employ a ruleset that encourages role-playing between   players, as well as the ruleset used for the regular PvP servers.

Creating a character – Next you will need to create your first character. Here you will choose your character’s name, gender, race, class and even appearance. While name, gender and appearance have no impact on gameplay, choosing a race and class most definitely will. Your race determines what class you can play, and your class determines what weapons, armor and abilities you can use as well as the general style of gameplay.

You can read more about races and classes on the official Age of Conan website.

2. Understanding the interface

Your journey starts on the burning beaches of Tortage Island after you have finished creating your character. The interface and the amount of information you are presented with might seem daunting at first, but understanding it is the key to success in Age of Conan. Here are the very basics you need to know before heading into the game.

1. The main viewport – This is where all the action is displayed.
2. The top menu bar – These buttons opens various windows that display information on your character such as equipment, skills and abilities.
3. Shortcut icons – These icons represent spells, abilities and combos that you can trigger during gameplay (usually while fighting someone).
4. Chat window – All chat with other players is displayed here, and some information messages regarding gameplay are also represented in this window.
5. Mini-map – The mini-map shows your immediate geographical surroundings as well as representing nearby enemies and friendly characters.
6. The combat rose – These arrows represent the directions you can swing your weapon in, allowing you to take advantage of the game’s innovative combat.
7. Character vitals – Your character’s health is shown in red, your stamina is shown in green and your mana is shown in blue. Your name and level is also shown.
8. Target vitals – Represents the vitals of your current target.
9. Experience bar – This represents how much experience points you have earned, counting towards your next level. Experience is gained through gameplay.
10. Social buttons – These buttons opens various social windows such as a tool that allows you to search for other players and join PvP mini-games.
11. Active effects – Effects that are active on your character (such as spells you have cast on yourself) will be displayed here for your convenience.
12. Quest tracker – Tracks the objectives of your currently active quest.

 3. Preparing for combat

The very core of Age of Conan is combat. Through combat you will develop your character and progress through the levels, hopefully earning you fame, fortune and a whole lot of adventure on the way. Soon after arriving on Tortage Island you will be faced with great challenges – all solvable by force or by magic, of course!

Basic attacks 
To attack a target all you need to do is start hitting in one of the directions with your weapon, or fire a spell at them (depending on your class). Move up to your target and use the directional combat arrows (as described in the interface section of this guide) and your character will automatically enter combat mode. Alternatively, if you are a spell caster, an offensive spell might already be on your hotbar ready for use. In that case, click on the target you want to hit and fire off the spell. This is the basic essence of combat.  You can also use the 1, 2, and 3 keys on your keyboard to hit in various directions. 

Advanced targeting 
Targeting in Age of Conan works somewhat differently than in similar games. You do not necessarily need to click on an enemy in order to target them; you can also simply move up to them and start fighting. As you get deeper into the game you will see that magic casters have a particularly wide array of targeting possibilities, such as “cone targeting” that allows you to cast a spell at anything in front of you. If you are an archer you can even zoom into first-person mode and manually target and shoot your enemies!

Combo attacks 
Many classes receives so-called “combo moves”. These are abilities that will allow you to deal out greater damage, and they are access from the abilities window (use the top menu bar to display this window), but you have to move combos down to your hotbar to use them. To trigger a combo, simply click on it using your mouse cursor or hit the corresponding keyboard key (usually from keys 4 to 9). You will notice that one of your directional combat arrows will light up, urging you to hit in that direction. Finishing a combo will result in greater damage and a unique combat animation.

Wrapping it up

Good work! By finishing this tutorial you should know a whole lot more about how Age of Conan works, allowing for a smoother transition into Hyboria once you log in. Keep in mind, however, that these are only the very basics of how the game works. As you get deeper into the game you will discover that Age of Conan offers unparalleled depth! 

Here are a few tips that you should bring with you on the road:

Gain experience! Progression in Age of Conan is measured in experience and levels. As you kill enemies and complete quests you will gain more experience and thus also levels. You can track your progress by looking at the orange bar at the bottom of your screen. 

Equip yourself! Soon you will realize that the basic weapon in your hand and the scraps of clothes on your back is not sufficient for a life of adventure. Complete quests to get better equipment – or buy them from a vendor. You will look cooler and perform better! 

Go exploring! A lot of the fun to be had in Age of Conan comes from exploring. For the first twenty levels you will be “stuck” on Tortage Island, but even here there is a whole jungle to explore! Pretty soon you will have the opportunity to explore more of Hyboria. 

Pick up a trade! Later in the game you will have the opportunity to become a crafter. Ask other players how to get started, or use the in-game help system. You can become anything from a weaponsmith to an alchemist – creating items other players want to buy! 

Socialize! Massively multiplayer games such as Age of Conan are all about socializing. Soon you will stumble upon other players that you can communicate with. Talk to them by using the chat window, and why not go out and face the challenges together? 

Join a guild! Social interaction will also lead you into guilds. Guilds are large groups of players that have formed a society, usually sporting a creative name. Guilds can share a common chat channel, as well as construct entire cities – and fight other guilds! 

Fight other players! Fighting monsters is all well and good, but for that extra level of challenge you should try fighting other players such as yourself! Mini-games are an easy way of getting into combat with others (use the in-game help tool for more information). 

Build and destroy! Once you reach the later parts of the game, you will most likely be helping your guild constructing an entire guild city or a battlekeep. You can even launch attacks on other guilds’ battlekeeps, opening up a whole new world of gameplay!

PS! Use the official Age of Conan website to find even more information about the game, such as elaborate information on player vs. player combat, guild cities, mounts, advanced combat, economics, and more. You can also download the complete manual in .PDF!

Good luck in Hyboria, adventurer! 

Today we received an update from Age of Conan by Craig Morrison, the Director of Age of Conan. The game has had an amazing face-lift since it first came out and they're excited to tell people about he changes they've implemented. We've been playing it here internally and the experience is much smoother and it's been really easy to get back into the game and start kicking butt.

We've posted the official release about the new content and changes to Age of Conan; for your reading pleasure:

Age of Conan's Game Director has posted an update detailing all kinds of new changes coming to the game. The update will include changes to items and statistics and will come with the next major update (after 1.04). We've got the post here for you followed by a link to the official AoC Forums so you can get to voicing your opinion!

Here's the original post:

Letter from the Game Director February 2009

It’s that time again for a little peek into what’s coming up for Age of Conan. As mentioned last time the major part of this Director’s Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it’s the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.

Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn’t possibly cover everything, and it won’t. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won’t be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.

Revamping the RPG System

It’s also worth repeating why we have been working away on these changes in the first place.

After we looked at the feedback after launch we concluded that we had misjudged the importance of items and statistics to character progression. While the intention had always been to be less item-centric than other titles, we probably went a little too far in the other direction. Therefore we have set out to expand and develop the RPG system so that it offers better and more interesting character progression and customization.

So, now that the preamble is out of the way, let’s get rolling and take a peek inside the mechanics of the RPG system so you can start to understand where we are taking it. So, how best to provide an overview of the changes? At a basic level what we have done is add an additional range to the attribute budgets, this additional range comes from items and trickle down from your primary attributes. Mobs and encounters have been rebalanced to account for this increase. The end result is that items and trickle down now account for up to fifty percent (give or take a couple of percent variance here and there) of your overall budget for any given attribute. For comparison that contribution did not exceed twenty five percent before the changes, and ‘trickle down’ barely influenced it at all.

Our goal is that players in ‘average’ gear (if you will forgive the subjective nature of using the word ‘average’) will not feel a great change in the game, but will have the potential to get better by working up towards the higher end gear. Where you will notice a change is if you remove your armor and weapons and use lower level gear. The new system does incentivize keeping your gear up to date!

That’s not the end of the changes though. This is really just the ‘brief overview as it were. In order to achieve our goals in a good, solid way that gives us room for future development we also went through the attributes and statistics and made them meaningful, clearer to understand, and hopefully better laid out.

The new character statistics

The best way to demonstrate this in this first look at the new system is to go through the new character stat screens one by one and actually show you what your new character sheet looks like! The interface is now tabbed so that you can all your stats without having to scroll down by switching between tabs. It also means they are organized in logical groupings.

Firstly please note some of the numbers displayed in the screens are not what a player would really have, and are still subject to change through testing, but I really wanted to visualize it for you as it’s better than the text alone!

So let’s take each of these in turn and explain the new attributes and stats. On the first screen, the ‘General’ tab, you see the basics of your character. Most of this tab is self explanatory, but it does show the first of the totally new statistics – Armor. Your Armor rating is now what is used in the combat calculations to decide how much damage you avoid from a successful attack. This has replaced the old combination of resistances and invulnerabilities as the main source of mitigation of non-magic damage (we will get to magic damage shortly!).

You will still see invulnerabilities offered in some buffs, in those cases those are an additional mitigation above and beyond what the outcome of your armor calculation is.

Next up we have the Combat stats page that shows your new combat stats, both as a rating, which is what item bonuses will add to, as well as what that equates to as a percentage chance (or the percentage increase as appropriate). All of these new stats will have explanatory tool tips and we think moving to using ratings makes the system clearer and easier for you to gauge the relative worth of items.

Next we have the ‘Physical’ tab that lists your health and stamina regens and taps clearly.

Then we have the ‘Magical’ tab that displays your magic related skills, bonus spell damage and the next of the new statistics – your protections. These effectively replace the old resistance percentages and are displayed both as a rating (which again, is what appears on the item bonuses) and as the translated percentage that shows you how much damage that potentially mitigates.

Lastly we have the PVP tab that shows your PVP achievements and rankings as well as your PVP specific stats. Here as well you will now find the new PVP version of Armor and Protection that will be offered on PVP items.

Attributes and what they mean!

So what do the main attributes do now? As I mentioned above we have significantly changed how these attributes ‘trickle down’ into your actual performance. This should make the addition of stats in these areas much more visible. You will find that these are now a deal more important than before and now confer the following bonuses to your character:

Every one point of Strength
 

• Increases Combat rating when using melee weapons (except daggers) by 3
• Increases Armor by 2
• Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
• Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
• Increases Stamina by 2
• Increases OOC health regen by 0.15 

Every one point of Intelligence
 

• Increases Spell damage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Intelligence attribute (mage spells)
• Increases Mana points by 3
• Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
• Increases OOC mana regeneration by 0.38
• Increases Protection from Electrical/Fire/Cold magic by 0.5 

Every one point of Constitution
 

• Increases Health points by a number depending on class, roughly 5-8
• Increases Stamina points by 2
• Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
• Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
• Increases OOC health regen by 0.15 

Every one point of Dexterity
 

• Increases Evade rating by 0.5
• Increases Stamina points by 2
• Increases Combat rating with ranged weapons and daggers by 3
• Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
• Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15 

Every one point of Wisdom
 

• Increases Spelldamage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Wisdom attribute (priest spells)
• Increases Mana points by 3
• Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
• Increases OOC mana regeneration by 0.38
• Increases Protection from Holy/Unholy magic by 0.5 

Just the beginning…

In addition we have worked to make the item stats display better in the GUI and make the comparison of items better.

This is really just a teaser for the information that is to come. These changes have also allowed us to look at each of the classes and make changes to feat trees, skills and spells. Some of these changes were necessary due to the changes above (like the new Armor system) some for balance concerns and adjustments. A lot more information in this vein will be released as we prepare the update for the public test servers. In addition there is also a complete new gem system for crafting items that I haven’t touched on here that will also be revealed soon.

The items themselves, in particular those at high levels have received a lot of individual attention and tweaking to get the most benefit out of the system.

So as you can see there will be a lot to talk about over the coming weeks and months, which I expect, will start right about now!

Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison

Game Director Age of Conan

You can discuss this letter of the Game Director here (EU).

You can discuss this letter of the Game Director here (US). 

Craig Morrison has been appointed as the new Producer and Game Director for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

Craig Morrison has served as the Producer and Game Director on Anarchy Online for several years, as well as working as the Funcom Community Manager prior to that. Funcom believes he is the perfect candidate to take Age of Conan to the next level. Mr. Morrison will replace former Producer and Game Director Gaute Godager.

Prior to starting at Funcom in 2004, Craig Morrison worked as an Operations Executive at the Telegraph group, the respected UK newspaper, taking care of operational aspects related to IT and Customer Service. Due to his passion for MMO games he simultaneously worked as an Associate Editor at IGN’s Vault Network, managing dedicated websites for several MMO games. He has extensive experience in managing various sized teams and complex projects across large media based environments. He has also played, written about, managed, produced and directed MMO games for over a decade by now. With his passion and unique skill-set he brings proven MMO experience to his new position, and during his years as Producer on Anarchy Online he has shown a unique ability to tailor development according to the needs and requirements of the players.

“Taking on the position as Producer and Game Director on Age of Conan is a great challenge but also one I welcome. I have a clear conviction I can lead the further development in a good way, evolving Age of Conan into something even better. My main priority now is therefore to listen to, and act on, player concerns, while ensuring we add additional great content to the game,” said Craig Morrison. “At heart I will always be a gamer, and the coming changes and additions to Conan will always be done with the gamers in mind. Together I am certain we will shape an amazing future for Age of Conan.”

Former Producer and Game Director Gaute Godager has chosen to resign from Funcom after working on Age of Conan since the initial conception, and he leaves the company after 16 years. Godager was one of the original founders of Funcom, and leaves a large legacy, having contributed to making Funcom the largest MMO company in Europe. “I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig. 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.”

In this edition of the Hyborian Insider Funcom take a look at some of the content to come, as well as giving you an exclusive first look at upcoming DirectX 10 features.

With todays update the first step of the PvP System Update has been introduced to the Age of Conan live servers. Read here what exactly this includes and what future updates have in store.

PVP levels and statistics

This update now activates the PVP leveling system. You can now gain PVP levels by engaging in your normal PVP activities, be it world PVP, siege encounters or defeating your foes in the PVP mini-games. There are ten PVP levels in total that you can work through to prove your worth on the battlefield.

Your PVP stats are now also active in your character tab, keeping track of your performance in PVP.

In addition your new PVP armor ratings come into play now that the system is active. These provide additional mitigation of damage against damage that comes from other players. The new PVP armors will be the primary means of raising these ratings, although we will look to add additional means of raising these PVP defensive ratings in the future.


Diminishing Returns
Diminishing returns have also been set on PVP XP. This means that you receive less and less of a benefit from killing the same person in quick succession. This is an area that we will most likely continue to tweak and adjust over time. It is the type of feature that will require some additional feedback from the live servers to get exactly right. For the launch we have tried to set it a little conservatively to ensure that it isn’t abused or exploited. That doesn’t mean though that we aren’t open to adjusting it further in the future once we see how people progress with the current system in place.


New Armories and PVP rewards

So other than the obligatory bragging rights what will the new PVP levels provide? That’s where the new PVP specific gear comes in. Each class has a special new set of blue armor for PVP levels one to five

You will be able to visit new armory locations in all the racial hubs, these special shops stock new PVP based items for players to access. Vendors in the armories will stock you up with great new items starting as low as level twenty, as you progress through your normal levels and the PVP levels then you will find more and more accessories and armor and finally weapons that you can purchase in the armory.

Different vendors appear in the armory as you level up so be sure to check back as you progress.


PVP gear will come in all shapes and sizes. At level eighty there are new blue armor sets that are class specific, while for those not yet at the maximum level you can find an armor set for each of the armor types with upgrades available as you level up. Maximum level players will also get access to a great new set of blue weapons.

All of the PVP items introduced in this update reward players for levels one through five in the PVP progression system. New epic items that serve levels six through ten will be introduced in coming updates, and on the subject of coming updates…


Future Updates

This update is just the start of the planned PVP updates. Next up will come the PVP consequence (or Notoriety) system. Now we had hoped to include both at the same time, however the consequence system needed some extra work to be fully realized. Since we took the decision to support the idea of players being ‘notorious’ in PVP and including consequences for their actions we felt it was important to ensure we did it properly. We saw from the feedback on the test server that we needed to make sure there are more than just penalties to notoriety system when it arrives and want to take a little extra time to account for as many of the scenarios as possible so that the PVP game-play itself isn’t diminished on the servers.

Keep your eyes peeled for more information on this over the next few weeks as we get closer to rolling out the second part of the PVP update to the test server.

Also, as mentioned above, you will see more PVP items added to the game in the form of the rewards for the PVP levels six through ten. These class specific epic armor sets will also have great new visuals and be a prestigious reward for those who battle up the PVP levels.

The vice president of Mythic Entertainment and the lead of Warhammer Online; Mark Jacobs spoke with Tracey John over at MTV.com regarding Age of Conan and also Hellgate London.

Things discussed were why Marc wanted to see Age of Conan succeed and also how he feels that they should have delayed the release of the game so it could have been polished further.

“If you look at the numbers, MMOs have the highest failure rates of any entertainment product,” Jacobs said. Going all the way back 11 years to the release of “Ultima Online,” the first MMO to reach 100,000 subscribers, he said that there have only a been handful of successful MMOs compared to the number of them being developed.

• Read more here

At Games Convention in Leipzig Funcom released a Concept Art image which serves as a teaser for their upcoming expansion to Age of Conan.

Check it out:

The preliminary patch notes for Age of Conan's August 27 patch have been released.

It's split into two sections, one part that was posted very recently today and one which was released a little bit earlier.

GENERAL

• Tradepost - The sales commission is now added to the price of the item and withdrawn from the buyer.
• Tradepost - You will no longer be charged a fee for changing the price of your item.
• Corrected several typos in dialog in many areas.

CLASSES

• Rogue (General)
• Agile Mind is now a clickable. The cooldown is 9 minutes, and is reduced by 3 minutes per rank.
• Escape Artist will now always work. The cooldown is now 3 minutes, and is reduced by 1 minute per rank.

Barbarian

• Thirst For Blood will now properly increase the player's Stamina Regen values.
• Arcane Marauder will now properly drain mana with 4 feat points invested.
• Buffs from Reaver Stance will now display a stack count in the GUI.
• Buffs from Blood Rage Stance will now display a stack count in the GUI.

Bear Shaman

• Blood Champion will now give the proper buff effect when one point is invested in the feat.
• Blood Champion will now proc off Blood Flow (Rank 1).

Conqueror

• Rend and Tear will now improve the damage over time effect from Bloodbath I.

COMBAT

• Frenzy and Defensive stance no longer persist after zoning.
• Pressing ESC to abort a fatality will not make it appear that your opponent is dead anymore.
• Pets will now teleport with you when you zone.
• When you die, all the pets that were alive will respawn when you ressurect.

GUI

• The time display while in Tortage Underhalls at night should now be correct.
• PvP health/mana/stamina taps will now be displayed as intended in tooltips.
• The red skull should always appear over your own head when you are murderer.
• Items that you can not use no longer prompt you regarding their BoE status.

GUILD

• /guild should now always work after zoning.

MOUNTS

• When you dismount a horse, your regular runspeed will always be applied.

NPCS

• (Lacheish Plains) Farghan no longer has looping dialog.
• Emotes and camera angles have been implemented to all 11 tradeskill dialogs.

PVP

• PvP XP is now only given if the opponent player is above gray con to you ( ie. no more than 7 levels below you or higher, and cons a color to you).
• Murderpoints are now given if the player you kill is more than 7 levels below you. (ie. that player cons gray to you).
• If under attack while you have Shield of the Risen active, out of combat regeneration is no longer stopped. This stops a griefing technique where spawn campers could stop you regenerating.
• Grouping or trading with criminals will reset your criminal timer.
• PvP levels gained will be shown as an onscreen message.
• PvP damage has been further tweaked to do less DPS than the damage done in PvE.

Massive PvP

• The gate will now display a message when the damaged state is preventing you from opening it.
• City gates are now functional until the gate is heavily damaged.
• The city gate will no longer receive an extra lever after repairing it.
• It's no longer impossible to repair a destroyed city gate.

QUESTS

• (Conall's Valley) The Gambler's Gambit - The collision in the Spider Cavern has been fixed, and it is once again possible to pick up the debt money to finish this quest.
• (Destiny Quest - Priest) Awakening II - The Red Hand Inquisitor Leader will no longer spawn above level 20.
• (Destiny Quest - Rogue) Awakening I - You should now be able to stealth without every guard spotting you.
• (Destiny Quest - End Battle) The Red Hand High Priest will no longer spawn above level 20.
• (Khopshef) The Roots of the Earth - Quest goal has been updated with correct name, Darkroot.
• (Lacheish Plains) Brandoc Village - The waymarker for this quest has been made more visible.
• (Pyramid of the Ancients) Dangers of Decadence - The key is now removed your inventory when you free Shali.
• (Tarantia Noble) Paetus and the Nemedian Crown IIII is now named Paetus and the Nemedian Crown IV.
• (Tortage Underhalls) Gold and Gore - Looting rings from corpses should work correctly.

TRADESKILLS

• Reduced the bonuses granted by all Invulnerability, Evade, Fatality, Offhand Chance, and Damage gems by a significant amount.
• Alchemist Cache no longer contains the easily accessible vendor-bought resources.
• The Skinner dialog now works,and resolves the quests to allow you to continue in the class.

GENERAL

• Several client crash and assertion error causes were addressed.
• The Noble Villas have been optimized. Some players should experience a noticeable increase in performance.
• Shield of the Risen will now be given to new characters when they reach level 5.
• Facial expressions have been added to a number of emotes.
• Female characters can now use the "pointdown" emote.
• The following emotes now work for both male and female characters:
  • cheer, excitedclap, excited (formerly jig_f), flirt, hugefish, lightheaded, pushaway, trance.
• Players will now use the crawl animation when sprinting while swimming.

CLASSES

• You may now have up to two Team Heal effects (Renewal, Healing Lotus, Emanation of Life, and Martyrdom) running simultaneously.
  • Priest (General)
  • Vindicator will now properly affect Soldiers who joined a group in Defensive Stance.
  • Rogue (General)
  • Quick Dismount will no longer go on cooldown if used while moving.
  • Quick Dismount will now work even with weapons drawn.
  • Using Quick Dismount while riding a mammoth or a rhino will now result in an actual dismount, rather than just an ability cooldown
  • Assassin
  • Assassination (2) buff will now properly appear in the Buff GUI instead of the debuff GUI.
  • All Assassin combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced to match some newly adjusted animations.
  • From the Darkness and Ambush should now occur correctly, when performed from stealth.
  • Barbarian
  • Cyclone of Steel II is now usable only with the correct weapon type.
  • Ambidextrous will now increase off-hand chance by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% per respective rank.
  • Conqueror
  • Rend Flesh's bleed effect will now stack in the proper order.
  • Changed the name of the feat 'Improved Wrath' to 'Improved Fire Weave.'
  • Changed the name of the feat 'Lingering Wrath' to 'Lingering Fire Weave.'
  • Changed the name of the feat 'Skirmisher' to 'Fleet of Foot.'
  • Dark Templar
  • Invulnerable Soul now increases the amount of damage absorbed by Covenant of Invulnerability by 2/4/6/8/10 points per respective rank.
  • Demonologist
  • Fires of Gehenna will now have a 1 second cooldown applied to it after using Greater Flames.
  • Chaotic Blast's damage component can now perform critical hits.
  • Guardian
  • The Defiance heal effect will now use the proper icon in the buff GUI.
  • Impale combo now has a squelchy fleshy sound when used.
  • Herald of Xotli
  • Tweaked the animation played for Pillar of Infernal Flame.
  • Burn to Death I, Molten Steel Slash I, Pillar of Infernal Flame I now have new icons.
  • The duration of the Flame Tongue buff has been increased from 8 seconds to 10 seconds.
  • Necromancer
  • Blasphemy's cast time has been reduced to 2 seconds.
  • Touch of Winter will no longer overwrite Ice Shackle's snare effect.
  • Priest of Mitra
  • Empowered Repulse should also increase the length of the knockbacks by 1 meter for each point.
  • Holy Conquest's bonus holy damage on the Devotional Prayer spell will now properly affect teammates.
  • Channeling spells now use correct amount of mana per tick. Players should no longer be able to cancel spells early and recast them for a reduced mana cost.
  • Ranger
  • Cripple and Cripple Enemies now have new icons.
  • Flesh Ripper and Piercing Shot IV now have new icons.
  • Leghold Trap should no longer ignore Root Immunity.
  • Traps should not triggered by corpses anymore.
  • Tempest of Set
  • Inner Charge will now properly remove its effect after casting Lightning Strike.
  • Set's Life Spark will now wait until you are fully dead before trying to resurrect you.

COMBAT

• All Channeling spells now use mana, even if it is a small amount...
• The base Immunity chance on all players is now 5%.
• The base Immunity cap on all players is now 15%.
• Sidestep will now increase the player's Immunity Cap by 10%.
• You can no longer go into hiding while fighting a much lower level NPC.
• Fixed a bug where, if your current target went into hiding, you wouldn't be able to target him again when he reappeared unless you'd targeted something else in the meantime.
• Combat transitions for all characters dual-wielding any combination of weapons should now be smoother.
• Female polearm users who double tap should see a correct animation.
• Charge can no longer be used on non-alive targets.
• All weapons should now work correctly with the combos available to that weapon type. (ex. Guardian combo Slaughter).
• Combo timers are now adjusted to not time out when the server lags.
• The female charge animation has been corrected to not throw the female backwards anymore.

GUI

• When shift-clicking a character name in chat, information about that player will be shown in yellow in the same window you clicked in.
• Players should no longer see duplicated buff icons for some abilities on their clients.
• The modified damage multipler in various tooltips now shows up with percent values, as intended.
• Combo and spell tooltips should always display with gray text now.
• Maps updated for Tortage Island, Tortage Day, Tortage Night, and the volcano.
• You will now see an onscreen message when you cast a targeted spell without a target.
• Combos should now show more information about what they are doing. Also, the order in which this information is displayed has been changed.

GUILDS

• Fixed some visual issues for player city buildings.

ITEMS

• Fixed an issue with tier 5 one handed edged weapons. These can now all be dual wielded.
• All vendor-bought resources purchased will appear in the "Bag" tab and not the "Resource" tab of the inventory.
• Sacrarial Cabochon Iolite will now give the proper invulnerability bonuses.
• Cotton and Cottonwisp can no longer be found on NPCs.
• Guardian tier armor wrist and gauntlet pieces will now give bonuses to polearm and 1h weapons.
• Fire and Glory spear is no longer tiny.
• Loot has been distributed to the new chests in Atzel's Fortress.
• Bloodsire Boots should no longer cause weird ankle animations.
• Dark Templar raid armor, such as Gauntlets of Baleful Blood, now only gives bonuses to 1h weapons.

MOUNTS

• Mounting rhinos while having your weapons drawn should now work.

NPCS/MOBS

• Removed long range bows from NPCs.
• Npcs will not try to attack players that have left the playfield anymore.
• (Eiglophian Mountains) Chief Uruk'A has dinged, and is now a higher level!
• (Imirian Ravine) Blade Champion Krol should now reset properly.
• (Imirian Ravine) Deatheater Setmorpok has had his name changed to Deatheater Setkanh.
• (Kheshatta) Scorpion Archers should now behave normally, and exit stealth when agroed.
• (Kheshatta) Selkhetite Archer spells damage has been changed, and has been nerfed to proper values. They should also no longer bypass damage deflection (Such as PoM Hand of Mitra)
• (Scorpion Cave) Scorpion Abomination should now regenerate health less frequently.
• (Tarantia Noble) Fading Black horses should now have animations.
• (Tarantia Noble) Aviton's pants are no longer clipping with his tunic.
• (Tarantia Noble) The Nemedian Archers have decided to use arrows again.
• The spell Sabazio's Constriction cast by the Blood Constrictors in the Sabazios encounter will now damage players as intended.
• Agroed deer should once again have animations while chasing you.
• Yetis have had their textures corrected.
• Gameplay in the Tarantia Noble Disctrict Villas has been updated.
• Bosses in the Main System are no longer mezzable.
• Har-Shebesh should no longer become passive in some rare situations.

PVP/ MASSIVE PVP

• Massive PVP
  • You will no longer incorrectly learn a siege camp resurrection point when you are not in a guild.
  • Ballistas will now properly despawn after a tower is destroyed.
  • You can now attacking Siege Buildings with melee, spells, and siege weapons.
  • Several collision fixes done for Battlekeep buildings.
• PVP
  • All members of a murderous group now receive the full penalty, instead of sharing it.
  • Minigames - You will no longer be able to have different tier players in your team when your team joins a match.
  • Minigames - Buffs for carrying the Skull have been renamed to 'Carrying Skull.'

QUESTS

• Destiny Quest (Priest)
• Awakening II: Defend the townsfolk - Waymarker changed to an area waymarker so it's easier to spot.
• Destiny Quest (Rogue)
• Awakening III: The Tortage Keep instance has been revamped slightly.
• Awakening III: Ulric should no longer sleep with his eyes open.
• General Quest
• (Atzel's Approach) War Standard - Should have a slightly more interesting quest ending.
• (Atzel's Approach) Kidnapping and Torture - Added feedback when interacting with the last palisade.
• (Conarch Village) Rotten Molars - The drop rate on teeth has been changed. Now 2-4 teeth will drop per mob.
• (Eiglophian Mountains) Flowers of the Snow - Corrected waypoint for returning to Nola.
• (Eiglophian Mountains) Rithrall will now speak to the player in the quest 'Convincing the Hunter'.
• (Field of the Dead) The Price of Treason - Quest item added.
• (Field of the Dead) The Rescue of Isobail II - Now has a more accurate waypoint.
• (Field of the Dead) The Curse of the Werewolves - Now has a larger area waypoint.
• (Kheshatta) Grim Grey God - Added animations for interacting with the sarcophagi and pedestals.
• (Kheshatta) "Heady Kaphil Liquor", "The Spice in the Sand", and "Anuket Spring Water" quests have had item respawn rates tweaked.
• (Kheshatta) The Abomination - Item rewards will now be given out correctly.
• (Khopshef) The Aberration - Hamadi should now patrol correctly at all times.
• (Khopshef ) The Dead Devotee of Derketo should no longer be selectable when you are not on the quest.
• (Khopshef) The Slave Rebellion - The cage key will now drop correctly.
• (Scorpion Cave) Quest "The Four Accursed Keys" has had it's goal coordinates set properly.
• (Tarantia Noble) Catus for the quest "Nobles of Tarantia" has been moved, and the quest coordinates updated.
• (Thunder River) Moonshine - An Empty Bottle will now be spawned in the player's quest inventory when starting the quest.
• (Thunder River) The Kitten - The bottle of milk now has an icon. Also, the cat now correctly patrols and eventually despawns
• (Villa Verde) The quest "Noble Valuables" has been changed. Vandal Despoilers will drop the loot bags now.
• (White Sands) Garden of Cursed Mysteries can no longer be completed outside the search area.

TRADESKILLS

• Slotted gems should now appear in armor consistently, even after zoning.
• "Padparasha" gems have been renamed "Padparadscha".
• The tradeskill merchant Graehm in Lacheish will now sell Common Thread.
• Resource & Gathering: The chance to get rare resources from tier 1 and tier 2 resource nodes has been increased.
• Teardrop Amethyst now requires the correct gem, Flawless Amethyst.

WORLD DESIGN

• Atzel's Fortress has been re-textured and re-lit.
• (Poitain) Rocks near buildings can no longer be scaled.
• (Tarantia Noble) Several texture issues on buildings were corrected.
• (Tarantia Noble) The climbing point in Villa Amiel is now functional.
• (Tarantia Noble) It should no longer be possible to clip your camera through the wall in the Catacombs.
• (Tarantia Noble) Both Torches and Braziers have had their names fixed.
• (Tarantia Noble) Numerous collision fixes done here to improve movement through areas.
• (Tortage) The Seadog Mansion now has a proper roof.
• (Tortage) Added some fish in the ocean outside the beach.
• (Tortage) The Coastal Caves have been revamped to make it easier to find your way around.
• (Tortage) All ladders should be usable and work correctly.
• (Tortage Night) Players should no longer be able to climb outside the playfield.
• (Wild Lands) Fireplace flame effects should no longer be visible on house floors.

Funcom have revealed two brand new zones and also new and revamped dungeons and itemization. One of the dungeons getting revamped is the Black Castle and also the Commons district of the capital city Tarantia will get revamped. There are even more juicy details, such as new social dungeon called House of Crom and on the horizon another zone named Thunder River.

For the full article, go here!

With today's Age of Conan patch there's numerous of new additions, changes and adjustments. Among the things you can expect are content additions, tweaking and changes to all classes; some more major than others. Also the process of adding new voice acting outside of the destiny quest lines have begun, you'll be able to find quite a bit of new voice overs already.

We all know how buggy the Massive PvP was at the start, but now several patches later it's much more playable and today's patch improve upon the Massive PvP further. Tweaks to the siege weapons are one of several improvements that are included and you can also expect changes to the rules which are meant to make the PvP experience more enjoyable overall.

The ongoing work on updating certain quests and npc's are quite visible with this patch, the majority of the focus have been on Atzel's Approach, Kheshatta and also the Khopshef Province.

PLAYFIELDS

• The Catacombs in Tarantia Nobel district offers a host of new quests and encounters to challenge you in this group instance.

CLASSES

MAGE (General)

• Dark Meditation will now properly expire.
• Dark Meditation should now be removed from the spell list after untraining feats.
• The description for the general feat Purge no longer refers to multiple targets.
• The feat "Purge" has been renamed to "Spell - Purge".
• Mirrored Iron's proc, Set's Shield, now hits using the correct damage type based on the Magic Rating buff running.
• Mirrored Iron's proc, Set's Shield, has had its damage readjusted to the proper amount.

ROGUE (General)

• Ambush ability will no longer increase the damage of the next strike.
• Mountaineer feat's decrease to the duration of the Bruised Body debuff has been changed from 50%/100% to 45%/90% per respective rank.
• Mountaineer feat's decrease to the duration of the Broken Bones debuff has been changed from 25%/50% to 30%/60% per respective rank.
• Quick Dismount will not go on cooldown unless you are mounted.
• Cheat the Reaper will now work 25%/50% of the time per respective feat point spent.
• Cheat the Reaper can now only activate once every 5 minutes.

SOLDIER (General)

• Brutal Enraging Wound and Enraging Wound will now always tick 3 times.
• Brutal Enraging Wound now displays the proper damage over time value in the combo tool tip.
• Spell damage will now properly trigger Cunning Deflection.

Assassin

• Grim Corruption I's debuff will now stack with the other Grim Corruption debuffs.
• Grim Corruption will now debuff Unholy and Poison Invulnerabilities by 5% at each rank.

Barbarian

• All the Savage Rage combos now use the same animation as Savage Rage IV.
• Impale's cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds.
• Impale's bonus damage will now scale consistently with feat points invested.

Bear Shaman

• Aspects - Blood Fever, Skulk, and Untamed Regeneration will no longer be removed after zoning.
• Claws of Life will no longer be removed after zoning.
• Spirits of the Debased proc buff now uses the proper icon in the buff GUI.
• Spirit Totem: Profane will now always give Unholy Invulnerabilities with each rank of Spirits of the Debased trained.

Conqueror

• Conquest's bonus to One-Handed weapon damage has been increased across all ranks.
• Deep Wounds will now stack properly.
• Deep Wounds' proc rate has been slightly increased.
• Deep Wounds now displays a stack count in the target's debuff GUI.
• Deep Wounds' DPS has been increased slightly.
• Feint Attack I will no longer scale past Feint Attack II at any level.
• Frostbite will now debuff magical damage in addition to melee damage.
• Frostbite will now have an additional larger debuff component versus PvP targets on top of the normal debuff.
• Frostbite's chance to apply off of a Hoarfrost proc has been doubled.
• Hail of Furious Strikes II will no longer scale past Hail of Furious Strikes III at any level.
• Lacerate will now proc off all non-unarmed melee attacks.
• Lacerate's proc rate has been slightly increased.
• Lacerate now displays a stack count in the target's debuff GUI.
• Lacerate's DPS has been increased slightly.
• Lingering Wrath's damage has been slightly reduced.
• Lingering Wrath will now always tick 5 times.
• Offhand Precision's bonus has been doubled at all ranks. It will now increase Offhand Chance by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% per respective rank.
• Rend Flesh's duration has been increased to 15 seconds. The cooldown has also been increased to 1 minute.
• Rend Flesh's damage over time effect will now last 5 seconds.
• Rend Flesh now displays a stack count in the target's debudff GUI.
• Rend Flesh's damage over time effect will now scale better with more feat points invested.
• Improved Rend's direct damage hit will now scale better with more feat points invested.
• Two-Handed Master's bonus to Two-Handed weapon damage will now scale more consistently.
• Renamed Auras & Battle Crys, and included level up info in descriptions.

Dark Templar

• The name of the feat "Spell - Dooming Presence" has been changed to "Combo - Dooming Presence", since it actually does grant a combo and not a spell.
• Pact of Malacodor should now be removed from the spellbook after untraining feats.
• Reaper of Malacodor should now be removed from the spellbook after untraining feats.
• Covenant of Arms will no longer be removed after zoning if you have the appropriate feat.

Demonologist

• Chaotic Blast's damage component can now perform critical hits.
• Demonic War will no longer be removed when zoning.

Guardian

• Guard I will no longer scale past Guard II at any level.
• Lowered the damage of Stagger I slightly.
• Increased the damage of Stagger II slightly.

Herald of Xotli

• Undying Glory of Xotli should no longer be removed when zoning.
• Fixed a tool tip issue causing the wrong information to be displayed in the Burning Words feat.

Necromancer

• Despoil the Soul will now show the proper duration when viewing the tool tip of the spell.
• Despoil the Soul duration has been increased to 1 hour.
• Spellweaving buff 'Death God' duration has been reduced to 20 seconds.
• The cabal debuff will now use the proper icon in the target's debuff window.

Priest of Mitra

• Armor of Faith will no longer be removed by Hand of Mitra.

Ranger

• Incapacitating Stabs I will never scale past Incapacitating Stabs II at all levels.
• Marked Target will now stack properly when 2 points are invested in the feat.
• Piercing Stance, Shattering Stance, Sniper Stance, and Fire Stance will no longer be removed when zoning if the appropriate feat is trained.
• Shattering Shots will now properly remove the directional shielding in the target GUI.
• Immolation should work more consistently.

Tempest of Set

• Lightning Cast will now properly put Lightning Strike on a 5 second cooldown.
• A book in your offhand will no longer spin during attack animations.

COMBAT

• The attack at the end of a charge can no longer be aborted.
• Transitions between 2H-attacks for male & female characters should feel smoother.
• The male UP-attack animation for staves should now work correctly.
• Charge, Ursine Rush, Impale (Guardian), Stunning Charge, and Hellstep can no longer be used while Hidden.
• Melee pets will now do splash damage.
• Knockback should have a proper animation again.
• Using an ability while charging (such as Cunning Deflection) should no longer lock up your movement.
• You should no longer be able to damage or heal dead targets with spells or combos.
• Fixed a cause of sliding during combat.
• Initiating chat with an NPC while performing attacks will now stop your attack animation as intended.
• You can no longer de-apprentice while in combat.

MASSIVE PVP

• If the attacking guild takes over a battlekeep, any city guards that are left will now despawn.
• Players can now only spawn a ballista while the city is vulnerable to attack.
• Catapult progress bar no longer shows Trebuchet Blast.
• Once the siege battle is finished, the siege weapons and siege camps will now be properly disposed of.
• Ballista siege weapons will no longer cycle between all targets they have. They will use the last target instead, making them more useful in combat.
• If you get teleported out of a battle you will now end up in the nearest NPC village of the connecting resource and building playfield, instead of ending up in the nearest city.
• The siege camp in Burnheim which previously spawned at the wrong location will now spawn at the proper location.
• It's now possible to get a replaced siege targeting module if you lost one. Simply target the weapon and press the use button to get a replacement.
• Only the defending guild can talk to the ballista builder NPCs.
• The siege camps will now give a message when they are used when the city isn't vulnerable.
• Player city guards are now friendly to the guild that owns the city.
• Siege Weapons should no longer fail to initialize properly.
• Ballista NPCs should always spawn when the city becomes vulnerable.
• Vendors should no longer spawn if the vulnerability window opens when the building has just finished being built.
• Members of the attacking guild should no longer get teleported out of the instance when zoning into a siege that is already in progress.
• Siege Weapons should no longer report that the target is out of range when it's not out of range. A different error message will appear if the siege weapon was unable to fire at the target for some reason.
• Massive PvP city NPCs should only be usable by the owners of the city.
• Defending players in a siege will no longer get points for character kills.
• Time left in the siege battle before it ends will now display correctly in Score window.
• If no guild applies for a battle queue before the 24h prior to the siege are over, that battle queue will be locked and no guild will be assigned the Attacker role.
• Mammoth Sweep and Rhino Sweep damage increased and changed to Siege damage to properly damage buildings.

Last Friday Funcom released their quarterly financial results, which revealed information about their results post launch for their flagship MMO, Age of Conan. If we are to believe the report, AoC currently has around 415,000 customers but the play time in the game for each customer has been less than they expected.

Furthermore, over 800,000 copies of the game have been sold to customers and Funcom's Revenues increased even higher than expected. Operating loss is still something that is the case, but overall Funcom feels it is in a good financial shape with quite a bit of cash available.

There are many plans to expand the Age of Conan world and squashing bugs is one of the main focuses, not to mention bringing forth updates to the PVP.

At Games Convention end of August Funcom will be there and showcase the Directx 10 version of their flagship MMO Age of Conan. Along with the DX10 version you will also be able to check out new content and features, not to mention take part of thousands of exclusive give-aways that feature free trial accounts and also limited edition game DVDs.

“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.”

The Leipzig Games Convention will be held between August 20 to the 24th and will feature a lot of interesting information -- stay tuned for further details!

The preliminary patch notes for Age of Conan for next weeks patch was recently made available.

Every character class will see quite a few changes. GUI, quests and the game world itself get adjustments where Funcom see fit as well. Don't worry – there's also a batch of Massive PVP and PVP changes as well.

GENERAL

• Removed the Miss Chance from Shield of the Risen.
• You will no longer be zoned after speaking to a Feat Fixer.
• Several combat related animation issues - such as sheathing and unsheathing spears, holding swords - have been tweaked.
• Added a male animation for the dance_sexy_f emote, and renamed it to dance_sexy.
• Many typos corrected in quests and dialog.

CLASSES

• MAGE (General)
  • Dark Meditation will now properly expire.
  • Dark Meditation should now be removed from the spell list after untraining feats.
  • The description for the general feat Purge no longer refers to multiple targets.
  • The feat "Purge" has been renamed to "Spell - Purge".
  • Mirrored Iron's proc, Set's Shield, now hits using the correct damage type based on the Magic Rating buff running.
  • Mirrored Iron's proc, Set's Shield, has had its damage readjusted to the proper amount.
• ROGUE (General)
  • Ambush ability will no longer increase the damage of the next strike.
  • Mountaineer feat's decrease to the duration of the Bruised Body debuff has been changed from 50%/100% to 45%/90% per respective rank.
  • Mountaineer feat's decrease to the duration of the Broken Bones debuff has been changed from 25%/50% to 30%/60% per respective rank.
  • Quick Dismount will not go on cooldown unless you are mounted.
  • Cheat the Reaper will now work 25%/50% of the time per respective feat point spent.
  • Cheat the Reaper can now only activate once every 5 minutes.
• SOLDIER (General)
  • Brutal Enraging Wound and Enraging Wound will now always tick 3 times.
  • Brutal Enraging Wound now displays the proper damage over time value in the combo tool tip.
• Assassin
  • Grim Corruption I's debuff will now stack with the other Grim Corruption debuffs.
  • Grim Corruption will now debuff Unholy and Poison Invulnerabilities by 5% at each rank.
• Barbarian
  • All the Savage Rage combos now use the same animation as Savage Rage IV.
  • Impale's cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds.
  • Impale's bonus damage will now scale consistently with feat points invested.
• Bear Shaman
  • Aspects - Blood Fever, Skulk, and Untamed Regeneration will no longer be removed after zoning.
  • Claws of Life will no longer be removed after zoning.
  • Spirits of the Debased proc buff now uses the proper icon in the buff GUI.
  • Spirit Totem: Profane will now always give Unholy Invulnerabilities with each rank of Spirits of the Debased trained.
• Conqueror
  • Conquest's bonus to One-Handed weapon damage has been increased across all ranks.
  • Deep Wounds will now stack properly.
  • Deep Wounds' proc rate has been slightly increased.
  • Deep Wounds now displays a stack count in the target's debuff GUI.
  • Deep Wounds' DPS has been increased slightly.
  • Feint Attack I will no longer scale past Feint Attack II at any level.
  • Frostbite will now debuff magical damage in addition to melee damage.
  • Frostbite will now have an additional larger debuff component versus PvP targets on top of the normal debuff.
  • Frostbite's chance to apply off of a Hoarfrost proc has been doubled.
  • Hail of Furious Strikes II will no longer scale past Hail of Furious Strikes III at any level.
  • Lacerate will now proc off all non-unarmed melee attacks.
  • Lacerate's proc rate has been slightly increased.
  • Lacerate now displays a stack count in the target's debuff GUI.
  • Lacerate's DPS has been increased slightly.
  • Lingering Wrath's damage has been slightly reduced.
  • Lingering Wrath will now always tick 5 times.
  • Offhand Precision's bonus has been doubled at all ranks. It will now increase Offhand Chance by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% per respective rank.
  • Rend Flesh's duration has been increased to 15 seconds. The cooldown has also been increased to 1 minute.
  • Rend Flesh's damage over time effect will now last 5 seconds.
  • Rend Flesh now displays a stack count in the target's debudff GUI.
  • Rend Flesh's damage over time effect will now scale better with more feat points invested.
  • Improved Rend's direct damage hit will now scale better with more feat points invested.
  • Two-Handed Master's bonus to Two-Handed weapon damage will now scale more consistently.
• Dark Templar
  • The name of the feat "Spell - Dooming Presence" has been changed to "Combo - Dooming Presence", since it actually does grant a combo and not a spell.
  • Pact of Malacodor should now be removed from the spellbook after untraining feats.
  • Reaper of Malacodor should now be removed from the spellbook after untraining feats.
  • Covenant of Arms will no longer be removed after zoning if you have the appropriate feat.
• Demonologist
  • Chaotic Blast's damage component can now perform critical hits.
  • Demonic War will no longer be removed when zoning.
• Guardian
  • Guard I will no longer scale past Guard II at any level.
  • Lowered the damage of Stagger I slightly.
  • Increased the damage of Stagger II slightly.
• Herald of Xotli
  • Undying Glory of Xotli should no longer be removed when zoning.
  • Fixed a tool tip issue causing the wrong information to be displayed in the Burning Words feat.
• Necromancer
  • Despoil the Soul will now show the proper duration when viewing the tool tip of the spell.
  • Despoil the Soul duration has been increased to 1 hour.
  • Spellweaving buff 'Death God' duration has been reduced to 20 seconds.
  • The cabal debuff will now use the proper icon in the target's debuff window.
• Ranger
  • Incapacitating Stabs I will never scale past Incapacitating Stabs II at all levels.
  • Marked Target will now stack properly when 2 points are invested in the feat.
  • Piercing Stance, Shattering Stance, Sniper Stance, and Fire Stance will no longer be removed when zoning if the appropriate feat is trained.
  • Shattering Shots will now properly remove the directional shielding in the target GUI.
• Tempest of Set
  • Lightning Cast will now properly put Lightning Strike on a 5 second cooldown.
  • A book in your offhand will no longer spin during attack animations.

COMBAT

• The attack at the end of a charge can no longer be aborted.
• Transitions between 2H-attacks for male & female characters should feel smoother.
• The male UP-attack animation for staves should now work correctly.

GUI

• Descriptions for Bandaging, Fast Healing, Mana Attractor, and Fast Recovery have been tweaked to be more consistent with actual function.
• Added descriptions to a few of the more obscure potions in Hyboria.

GUILDS

• The Barracks in Player Cities will now spawn the correct amount of guards after being upgraded.
• Only the guild that owns the city will be able to use the NPCs inside their city.
• Renamed some player city feats to be in line with the names of the buildings.
• Barracks should now always show up in the guild feats window after being built.

ITEMS

• Sunsteel Half-plate Vambraces now have the proper full-plate requirement to wear, and can no longer be worn by everybody.
• Basic and Advanced Riding Training items will properly be comsumed on use.
• Pyramid of the Ancients: The essence trap can now only be used within the pyramid.

MOUNTS

• Rhino Charge should no longer go on cooldown unless successfully activated.

NPC/ MOBS

• Due to popular demand, we've forced some of our female Derketo followers to burn their bras.
• Tavern patrons in the Armsmans Tavern should no longer play strange animations.
• Deli in the Pyramid of the Ancients now looks poor, and possibly insane.
• Spiders will no longer jump back several feet when getting hit.
• Travel NPCs should offer correct dialog options for travel.
• New and updated loot has been placed in the Catacombs!
• Acheronian Ruins - The Pict Bat Shrieker will now patrol with pets. If attacked, he will keep spawning pets so that he always has 3 pets with him. If he leaves combat, he and his pets will resume patrolling.
• Acheronian Ruins - - All picts now have a specified class, and fitting weapon to this class. Added more mobs.
• Conarch Village - Removed a loop from Rhiderch, and Ryarm's dialog.
• Commander Zoria's costume and weapons have been revamped.
• Kalanthes will no longer stand on chairs in his house.
• Kyllikki's Crypt - The White Hand Priests will now use their healing and damage abilities.
• Lacheish Plains - Screamer Wolf, Wailer Wolf, Baying Wolf, and Whimpering Wolf NPCs now have the proper death and attack animations.
• Oasis of Zaara - Lions are no longer easy to defeat.
• Pyramid of the Ancients - The Master Torturer will no longer spawn multiple times in a row.
• Tarantia Noble District - Lady Verde's Bodyguard now looks the same both when seen on the outside and the inside of the villa.
• Tarantia Sewers/Catacombs - Putharjath should now have more interresting abilities.
• Treasury of the Ancients - Corrected a typo in Thuthmekri's dialog.
• White Sands Isle - Asapon will now correctly spawn at all times outside the Atlantean Cave.

PVP / MASSIVE PVP

• Massive PvP
  • If the attacking guild takes over a battlekeep, any city guards that are left will now despawn.
  • Players can now only spawn a ballista while the city is vulnerable to attack.
  • Catapult progress bar no longer shows Trebuchet Blast.
  • Once the siege battle is finished, the siege weapons and siege camps will now be properly disposed of.
  • Ballista siege weapons will no longer cycle between all targets they have. They will use the last target instead, making them more useful in combat.
  • If you get teleported out of a battle you will now end up in the nearest NPC village of the connecting resource and building playfield, instead of ending up in the nearest city.
  • The siege camp in Burnheim which previously spawned at the wrong location will now spawn at the proper location.
  • It's now possible to get a replaced siege targeting module if you lost one. Simply target the weapon and press the use button to get a replacement.
  • Only the defending guild can talk to the ballista builder NPCs.
  • The siege camps will now give a message when they are used when the city isn't vulnerable.
  • Player city guards are now friendly to the guild that owns the city.

QUESTS

• Atzel's Fortress: Kidnapping & Torture - Any leftover Flasks of Oily Pitch will be removed when you complete this quest.
• Atzel's Approach: Revenge of the Ape God - This is now a group quest.
• Atzel's Approach: Power Behind the Throne - Item "Orders with the Mark of Set" no longer tells the player to right click on it to get a quest.
• Conarch Village: The Downtrodden - Croiss will no longer confuse a sword with an axe.
• Khemi: The Guardian statue will no longer send you into a dialog loop.
• Kheshatta: The Grim Grey God - You will now reset to the location where you zoned in if you log out in the instance.
• Kheshatta: The Grim Grey God - Sarcophagi and pedestals will have a progress bar when they’re being used.
• Kheshatta: Heady Kaphil Liquor - The flowers to be collected now have visual effects to help identify them.
• Kheshatta: Hunting the Waste - Weapons for this quest will now have a visual effect.
• Old Tarantia: The Aquilonian - Fixed the dialogue so that the quest resolves if and only if the player has actually told Varinia about her husband's infidelity.
• Pyramid of the Ancients - The teleport altar behind Lord Atum-Keket will now be visible at all times.
• Pyramid of the Ancients - Solving the quest "Emerald Eyes" will actually give emerald eyes to the Guardian Statue.
• Tarantia Sewers: The Orphans in the Hovel - Quest now updates for the entire party after talking to Galeria.
• Thunder River: The Kitten - The cat now correctly patrols and eventually despawns.
• Wild Lands: Old Secrets - The password has been corrected in the quest journal.

TRADESKILLS

• If you go linkdead while in the middle of a random encounter at a resource node, you will now be able to log back in with time to prepare before your next random encounter.
• Fixed a small typo that occured in an onscreen message when harvesting is interrupted.
• Vendor bought resources have been reduced in price.
• Added and adjusted drop rates of leather resources to animals residing in the Resource & Building playfields.
• Droprate for all Wild Lands of Zelata animals have increased.
• Droprate of Wild Dagga has been slightly increased in the world.

WORLD DESIGN

• Several collision fixes in Massive PvP Battlekeep playfields.
• Corrected a few areas where players could previously get stuck in the Tarantia Noble District.
• Conalls Valley night time environment has been altered to brighten the playfield slightly.

GENERAL

• Cash has been removed from the levelup NPCs.
• Fixed a case when the game stopped running after restoring from minimized state.
• Some assertion failure, memory leak, and crash causes were addressed.
• Black Castle: Player zoning rotation from Khopshef Province has been fixed.
• Voiceovers should no longer continue to play when you zone into another playfield.
• Shield of the Risen no longer displays its particle effects on hidden players (unless they're on your team)
• Typing /channelname followed by a space and no other text in chat will no longer crash the client.
• You will not be charged for resetting your skills unless the skill value is >= 150
• Zoning from Black Castle to Khopshef Province will now show the Epic Mode selection box.
• Fixed an issue where single player playfields would not reset.
• The'Out Of Disk Space' error should be fixed.
• Falling very large distances will no longer make you end up standing in mid-air.
• Tortage: Fixed lighting in the Thirsty Dog Inn.

COMBAT

• Charge, Ursine Rush, Impale (Guardian), Stunning Charge, and Hellstep can no longer be used while Hidden.
• Melee pets will now do splash damage.
• Knockback should have a proper animation again.
• Using an ability while charging (such as Cunning Deflection) should no longer lock up your movement.
• You should no longer be able to damage or heal dead targets with spells or combos.
• Fixed a cause of sliding during combat.
• Initiating chat with an NPC while performing attacks will now stop your attack animation as intended.
• You can no longer de-apprentice while in combat.

CLASSES

• Soldier (General)
  • Spell damage will now properly trigger Cunning Deflection.
• Priest of Mitra
  • Armor of Faith will no longer be removed by Hand of Mitra.
• Ranger
  • Immolation should work more consistently.

GUI

• The Combo Sequence Indicator should no longer get stuck when failing to complete a combo.
• Hide my helmet/cloak options should work again.
• Improved GUI Modifications to support the new PvP Consequence System.
• Corrected the names of some chat channels to be more accurate. Added a few new chat channels.
• The PVP XP bar can be toggled on and off. (Interface -> HUD)
• Floating healing numbers over the character's head are back.
• Fixed weird messages when teleporting in the massive PvP playfields.
• The optional GUI component Combat Rose will now react to every keypress in a fight instead of just the first one.
• Players can now use / to talk to different channels.
• Items will no longer show +0.0 to any stats.
• A cause of flickering icons has been corrected.
• Fixed an issue with building model requirements failing when the models were stacked in your inventory.
• Crafted items will now display the "created by" name. (NOTE : This is a work in progress)

NPCS

• Khopshef Province: Hamadi should now patrol correctly at all times.
• Khopshef Province: Hidden Bandits will now dual wield.
• Khopshef Province: "Fine Potions" Merchant Nekhbet is now easier to interact with.
• Some bosses were using combos they weren't supposed to. This has been fixed.

PVP / MASSIVE PVP

• Massive PVP
  • Siege Weapons should no longer fail to initialize properly.
  • Ballista NPCs should always spawn when the city becomes vulnerable.
  • Vendors should no longer spawn if the vulnerability window opens when the building has just finished being built.
  • Members of the attacking guild should no longer get teleported out of the instance when zoning into a siege that is already in progress.
  • Siege Weapons should no longer report that the target is out of range when it's not out of range. A different error message will appear if the siege weapon was unable to fire at the target for some reason.
  • Massive PvP city NPCs should only be usable by the owners of the city.
  • Defending players in a siege will no longer get points for character kills.
  • Time left in the siege battle before it ends will now display correctly in Score window.
  • If no guild applies for a battle queue before the 24h prior to the siege are over, that battle queue will be locked and no guild will be assigned the Attacker role.
  • Mammoth Sweep and Rhino Sweep damage increased and changed to Siege damage to properly damage buildings.
• PVP
  • No PvP XP will be awarded for killing characters below level 10.
  • Characters will not gain any PvP XP before they are level 10.
  • Characters may achieve PvP level 5 (the second stage of PvP progression where you can lose PvP XP) at lower levels, but may not progress further until they are at least level 40.
  • Trading with NPCs is no longer possible if you're a criminal.
  • Trading with a criminal will inform you of the consequences and prompt you to confirm to continue.
  • PvP XP updates on your gui should be more prompt and consistent.
  • Grouping with a murderer in a minigame should no longer flag you as a criminal.

QUESTS

• Kheshatta: Wanted , The Blasphemer - Ashka should now spawn correctly.
• Khopshef Province: The Slave Rebellion - The cage key will now drop correctly.
• Khopshef Province: Blessed Caves - Anata's Key should no longer remain in the player's quest inventory.
• Khopshef Province: Trapped by Lions - We have added a few new, interesting encounters. In addition, Lisimba now moves a bit quicker. The quest is now level 21 to reflect the surrounding mobs.
• Tortage Underhalls: Players will now be able to re-enter Raboz's Cell after finishing the quest Gone with the Wine, but before starting on the quest Ruins and Demise.

CATACOMBS

• Mobs should no longer lose interest in you and reset randomly.
• The corpse of Jan Vermis will no longer teleport after he is dead.
• Destroying an urn will now make any affected NPCs hate you.
• All urns will now damage mobs.
• The Iron Bars should no longer reset after a party wipe.
• Aturballon - Flame of Acheron is no longer linked to lesser mobs.
• Demonic Concubine will no longer go invisible at times.
• Egg sacs will no longer protrude through areas they should not.
• The Stalker Queen will no longer despawn if your group wipes.

CLASSES

• Conqueror
  • Renamed Auras & Battle Crys, and included level up info in descriptions.

NPC

• Traders in Conarch Village and elsewhere should always be available for use.