The guys at Funcom have been pretty busy in the last few months. Not just with Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and The Secret World, but with a little expanding, too. While live support and additional production teams will remain in Oslo, Norway, the rest of the team has packed up and hauled it over to Montreal, Canada.

Now, they’ve set up shop and are continuing to work on Age of Conan’s next update. The new patch won’t be much of a content overhaul or feature introduction, but rather a series of tweaks and fixes. Tier 3 & 4 Raid content is being examined in light of a few overly arduous encounters. The “Keeper of Artifacts” in particular is mentioned as being toned down in an effort to smooth out the difficulty curve. In addition, Tier 3 Raids will offer higher mastery rewards, and a couple instances have been tweaked to fix disappearing loot.

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This is a message to all past and current Age of Conan players.  Funcom is asking for your help, and it’s your job to assist them! A series of online surveys relating to Age of Conan has just been released.  These surveys are directed at the players and are meant to bring Funcom some feedback on what the next major update for the game should include.  Funcom has stated that this is the planning phase of the year for them and is looking forward to hearing from a mass amount of players.  These surveys will hopefully reach a wider audience due to the change in approach Funcom is using.  Instead of e-mailing these surveys to subscribers online, they will all be accessible through the Age of Conan forums.  Each survey will take approximately 10 minutes each to complete.  There are a total of 5 surveys and no you don’t have to complete all of them, but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t.

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The first expansion pack for Funcom’s Age of Conan, titled Rise of the Godslayer, was released in May but if you’ve been putting off checking out Hyboria, this is your chance! From now until July 15, both active and inactive players will receive 10 days to check out both classic Age of Conan and the Rise of the Godslayer expansion for free.

Players interested in using this offer should visit or create their account page on the official Age of Conan website.

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In this month’s Age of Conan Letter from the Game Director, Craig Morrison talks about the break they are taking from content production to integrate a new technology platform.  The developers periodically take time to do integrations with their Dreamworld techology and that is something they are doing this summer.  He wanted to let the players know why Funcom was taking this time to do something that we won’t necessarily see tangible results in, and he does a very good job of doing so.  Essentially, in taking the time the time to do the integrations, it actually makes the team more efficient with the addition of new tools, and keeps the game on the cutting edge by allowing them to continue to update it with new graphical effects and features.  It also allows them to keep on top of performance.  While most players won’t see these upgrades as something as substantial as content, in the long-run, the game and the players will be better off for it.

Also of note is that update 2.0.5 will be going live shortly.  This update adds quite a bit of new content, including 50 quests, changes to the Shrines of Bori PvP feature and an adjustment of the token drops for faction armor (which will make the tokens about 25% quicker for players to obtain.)

I’m pleased to hear Funcom talk about looking towards the future with the games by staying on top of technology.  It bodes well for the future of its franchises, including Age of Conan.

The folks over at MMORPG.com have released a detailed review of Funcom’s Age of Conan latest expansion, Rise of the Godslayer – one of the coolest expansion titles ever birthed. Most people saw Conan largely as a dissappointment and the game quickly lost subscribers because of its lack of appropriate content to compete with some of the best MMO’s on the market.

It may of taken two years, but with this latest expansion, Conan has finally stepped it up to compete with the big boys and become one of the more impressive MMO’s to date. For the full review of Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer, click here.

The highly anticipated expansion to Age of Conan is available now via both retail and digital distribution. The retail release comes bundled with the original game. The original Age of Conan was a smash hit in retail and ended up selling 1.2 million copies around the world.

Trond Arne Aas, CEO of Funcom commented;

“We are very excited about seeing ‘Age of Conan’ back on the shelves in retail as a renewed and revitalized experience comprised of both the original game and the expansion, exactly two years after the launch of the original game in May 2008. We feel very confident about the level of quality offered in this expansion, and the initial reactions from press and players so far only serve to confirm our confidence in the game.”

Keep on checking MMOCrunch for all the latest news on Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer.

Funcom has announced via a press release that the expansion to Age of Conan, titled ‘Rise of the Godslayer‘ will be released on May 11th. Funcom also announced that the expansion will receive both a retail and digital release. The retail version will come bundled with the original game, alongside with several exclusive in-game items.

Funcom is proud to announce the launch of the pre-order campaign for ‘Rise of the Godslayer’, the first expansion for the highly acclaimed massively multiplayer online role-playing game‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’. The expansion, set in the eastern empire of Khitai, builds on an already extensive Conan universe and will let players travel to a unique part of Conan’s world where an ancient traditional culture clashes with dark forces.‘Rise of the Godslayer’ expands on an already massive game world, and will also introduce entirely new and exciting gameplay mechanics.

For more information on Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer, be sure to check out the official website.

It’s been a long time since we heard the latest numbers for Funcom’s Age of Conan, however with the release of update 6 and their guild ranking system, we can now guesstimate how many subscribers AoC really has.   As I did last week with CrimeCraft when I guesstimated there numbers were below 10,000, I went to Age of Conan’s guild ranking system, imported all the guild member numbers from each server and added up the totals.  Surprisingly it seems that Age of Conan is well above the 100,000 subscriber count which many people though it was below.

Adding up the guild member numbers came out to 97,167 players.  As I did with Crimecraft’s estimate I’ll double this number as many people do not join guilds and like to solo.  So then the number of active AoC players comes to 194,334 players. I would bet that is an over estimate, I would seriously doubt that 50% of AoC players are soloing without a guild.  So maybe it’s closer to 150,000.

This estimate should obviously be taken with a grain of salt as I am unsure what guild member numbers really means. Do guild members equal active subscribers?  Or is Funcom adding inactive accounts into the guild count?

Regardless, I think it is safe to say that Age of Conan is above the 100,000 subscribers mark.  It might very well be that Age of Conan is seeing its member base grow now that they have had some time to iron out the kinks.   No official word from Funcom.

Guild Renown Feature

Funcom has released update 6 for Age of Conan entitled Return of Thoth-Amon. Although not a new feature to MMOs, this update primarily focuses on guild rankings. Funcom described the update as:

Update 6: ‘Return of Thoth Amon’ introduces the much anticipated guild renown feature, where any guild on any server can acquire renown points that unlock exclusive rewards. Anything that the members of that guild do – fighting monsters, fighting other players, crafting items – will generate renown for the guild. Renown points will unlock guild levels, and will for instance allow the guild to decorate their guild city with new buildings, statues and banners, or allow the guild’s members to gain access to exclusive item rewards. Players can view a list of the top ranking guilds on all servers from inside the game as well as through the new guild rankings website available on the community portal.

The update also features a new dungeon entitled Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold.

As the release date for the first expansion of Age of Conan draws ever closer, Funcom have decided to shed some light on one of the new mounts that Rise of the Godslayer will introduce – the wolf mount.

The wolf mount is just one of the many new mounts Rise of the Godslayer will feature, including the tiger and Hyrkanian horse. In order to receive a tiger or a wolf mount, players must enter a long and difficult quest-line, starting with capturing them as. The idea behind this is to create a bond between the players and their mounts. Next comes training and raising them to full grown animals.

“Some of the thinking behind this new system is that players will create a connection with their new mount,” says Lead Designer Joel Bylos. “Raising the mount from a cub and teaching it how to hunt, track and fight is a long process, and by the time players have proven themselves worthy of riding it a bond has been created. When you see players riding a tiger or a wolf you’ll know that it is not just a right to do so, it’s an earned privilege.”