Introduce Age of Conan

Developer(s)	Funcom
Publisher(s)	Funcom Eidos Interactive
Designer(s)	Craig Morrison
Engine	DreamWorld Engine using SpeedTree
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360
Release date(s)	Microsoft Windows May 20, 2008 May 23, 2008 Xbox 360 2010
Genre(s)	Low fantasy MMORPG, online RPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer (some single player gameplay)
Rating(s)	ESRB: M PEGI: 18+
Media	DVD-ROM, CD, Digital download
System requirements	[Minimum] CPU: Intel Pentium IV/AMD Athlon 3200+ or higher CPU Speed: 3 GHz/2.1GHz System Ram: 2 GB Operating System: Windows XP SP2 or Vista Drive Type: DVD Drive 4x Speed Free Disk Space: 27 GB Video Card: 768 MB DirectX 10 Graphics Card with Shader 3.0 support (Nvidia Quadro 5600 or higher or better) Video Card Features: -Video Ram: 128 MB -Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required -Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required -Vertex Shader Ver: Required - 2.0 Supported - 2.0, 2.0+, 3.0 -Pixel Shader Ver: Required - 2.0 Supported - 2.0, 2.0+, 3.0
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse, gamepad

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Norwegian computer video game developer company Funcom and published by Eidos Interactive for PCs. The game launched on May 17, 2008 for those who had pre-ordered the game and registered for early access; the full release of the game for North America was May 20, 2008 and for Europe May 23, 2008 for the PC version. Although originally announced as being available for the Xbox 360, the console version is at least a year behind schedule.
Hyborian Adventures is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan itself takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon. Hyborian Adventures' release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan franchise.

To play Hyborian Adventures, users are charged a monthly subscription fee.

Characters
Characters in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures are created on a user account on a particular online server. Characters created on one server cannot be played on another. Players create characters which function as their virtual avatars in the online world of Hyboria. When creating a character in Age of Conan, the player may choose from three playable races. The character is one of four archetypes (in bold) and one of three class selections for each archetype.

Combat
Combat is based on five directions of attacking an opponent with a sword: hacking down against the head, slashing diagonally down from the left and right, and slashing diagonally up from the left or right. These directions are designed to be naturally strung together in combinations. Difficult combos cause additional damage and faster combat. (You do not get 2 of the lower attacks till level 40).
Funcom has said that their "Real Combat" system, a combat system designed to offer more real-time options than traditional Dungeons & Dragons-inspired "turn-based" combat systems commonly used in RPGs, will be a prime attraction of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. This Real Combat system is a first-person melee approach in which every enemy has three different areas that players can swing at. Combos can be performed by stringing together consecutive successful attacks in particular directions. Feedback from players have pointed out that the use of five directional "Combo-keys" along with the burgeoning amount of skills each character gets as they are developed, makes it difficult to pull off these maneuvers with ease to the player. This criticism has been brought up by not only reviewers, but fans of the game itself, citing "The game's combat system is more for evolved humans, who in the future will grow an additional two fingers to be able to reach the huge amount of key-bindings they'll have to make". Player stats and item bonuses will also play a role in this system, however in most cases, attributes from item bonuses (Strength, Dexterity) make such a minimal visual improvement (1 Dexterity = 0.002 DPS) over the character's progress, that item bonuses are almost completely negatory. The idea of "Real Combat" is to eliminate the dullness of typical MMO fighting, which often consists of an auto-attack feature.
The "Real Combat" system is used in one-on-one weapon battle, as well as spell-casting, ranged combat and even mounted combat. In some situations, however, players will choose to band together and unite their skills to face other bands of players or AI controlled armies or uber-mobs; in essence, "formations", location based effects available for some classes. For example, a character standing in line with a Conqueror when he is running his formation will have a great deal of resistance to knockbacks.
Players are able to take part in large scale siege operations. However, further development into siege battles is still being worked on by developers because of player concerns of its dragging slowness with more than twenty participants in a battle. Adventurers can cooperate with one another to build cities with walls, towers and catapults that can protect player-owned taverns and merchant facilities. The developers have previously stated that the world will respond appropriately to the rise of player cities with AI controlled enemies building their own cities, ensuring a renewing supply of city-vs.-city combat as players try to knock down enemy walls or defend their homes.
The dance moves were made using motion capture on the dancer Hallgrim Hansegård, most known as a backingdancer for the winner song of the Eurovision Song Contest 2009: "Fairytale" by Alexander Rybak.

Community
Due to the game being in rumored development since 2003, an online virtual community had steadily clustered around various fan websites regarding Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. By February 2005, this informal community was still going strong despite no true public announcement concerning the rumored game. Finally, Funcom and Conan Properties LLC jointly confirmed the in-development status of Age of Conan in an official press release on April 20, 2005. Shortly thereafter, a primitive game website debuted and thousands of Conan enthusiasts migrated from their fan sites to the new official forums hosted by Funcom. Many Anarchy Online fans also followed the development of the product due to the involvement of Funcom, who created the Anarchy Online PC series.

When Funcom released a community portal on January 24, 2006, much of the pre-launch community had gathered around the forums and IRC chat of the official Age of Conan website. There were informal events such as IRC chats with the developers and, in summer 2006, community contests.

Further a guild recruitment forum entitled Guild Hall was created in April 2006 for the pre-launch community and, within hours, forum members began organizing their player guilds.

As of January 13, 2009, Funcom cut its 49 servers down to 17 via merges. The remaining servers include each of the various types present at launch.

Each of the 17 remaining servers has an active population base as of July 20, 2009.