WHO AMONG YOU STILL FEARS DEATH?
Celebrating 15 Years of Age of Conan
Age of Conan has drenched Hyboria in blood, death, and adventure for 15 years, and we're thrilled to celebrate this milestone with our dedicated community. Join us as we take a trip down memory lane to commemorate this incredible journey:
Always Brutal, Always Sexy:
When developing Age of Conan, our main goal was not just making an MMORPG around Conan the Barbarian, but being truly faithful to Robert E. Howard’s works and vision; of a harsh, unforgiving dark fantasy set within lands some would foolishly call ‘savage’. This meant leaning into mature themes atypical of MMORPGs of its time and embracing the testing of mettle, the clashing of steel, and the allures of flesh Conan’s mythos was known for.
And lean we did! In fact, Age of Conan is the first AAA MMORPG ever to receive an ‘M’ rating from the ESRB for the inclusion of all things carnage and carnal - this personal exhibition expression was a theme we’d later take to the next level with Conan Exiles. Veteran Hyborians may even recall a prominent AoC character featured in a certain adult magazine, too. Search at your own risk, Mitra be damned.
Skulls Split, as a General Thing:
Lascivious temptations aside, spilling blood in glorious fashion is as essential to Hyboria as punching camels, and Age of Conan aimed to deliver plenty of ways to paint the soil red with its combat systems. Regularly cited as a unique system to this day, Age of Conan requires players to actively participate in battles; timing and positioning are crucial factors in achieving success, as characters continually shift defenses and posture.
By executing specific sequences of attacks or inputs, players unleash devastating combo moves with added effects such as increased damage, crowd control, healing, or tearing the still-beating heart out from your slain foes.
Caster classes in particular also have access to the unique Spellweaving mechanic, allowing them to string various spells and effects in succession as they channel their power - at the cost of potentially harming your character if mismanaged.
Your reward for excelling in visceral combat? You crush your enemies in spectacular and gruesome fashion, ranging from simple decapitation to aforementioned heart-eating. Not only were these finishers satisfying to behold, they were also a technical achievement for its time, requiring two character models to act out their gory choreography in unison!
It’s more complicated than it sounds, we promise.
Round the Wheel of Pain:
The entire art of making games is extremely complicated, and of course, no game is perfect. We’ve entertained many fond memories (or harbored trauma) over some of the game’s more notorious, ahem, quirks.
To share one on our end, an old bug we used to encounter is when guild battlekeep structures are able to take a sliver of damage, but are rendered unrepairable due to a rounding error. Game Masters had to go in and manually check and fix the health of individual wall segments to resolve this issue - a process as time-consuming as it sounds. It's fixed now!
Then there’s the more infamous things - yes, we still remember that video about horse-kicking players off a bridge to the tune of Yakety Sax (the original video is, sadly, unavailable as of this writing). Yes, a very unfortunate bug caused many female characters’ attack animations to be slower than male characters.
Oh, and we can’t go without mentioning ‘deaths in Hyboria’. If you know, you know.
Living Deeply:
All in all, we just just want to reminisce about the amazing things we’ve created together over the past fifteen years. From Onslaught mode to Saga Servers, from the Grim Grey God to your humble beginnings washed ashore, to the friendships, bonds, and love forged on the battlefield - it has been an incredible journey to take with you all.
In-game, we’ll be running special Daily Login Rewards and extra Raid Finder rewards until June 6th at 9:00 AM EST.
Do you have a fond memory, heartwarming story, or humorous mishap from your Hyborian Adventures? Share your tales on Facebook and our Forums!
Thanks for reading, heroes and adventurers. Here’s to the 15th Anniversary and many more to come.
We live, we burn with life, we love, we slay, and we are content,
Funcom
& the Age of Conan team
Shadows of the Past
Classic Anniversary content, Shadows of the Past and Acheronian Soul are available for the duration of the event!
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