Age of Conan

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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures


Developer(s) Funcom
URL http://www.ageofconan.com/
Software license Proprietary
Status Active
Platform PC, Xbox, Xbox 360
Type MMORPG
Minimum Subscription Cost USD 14.99 Per month
Free Trial] No
Year released 2008
Avatar-based Yes
Multiuser Yes
Interactive Yes
Immediate Yes
Persistent Yes
Use and Demographics
Primary use(s) Community, Gaming
Type MMORPG
Active users 700000
Target Audience(s) Adults
Language(s) English
Features
Graphical and Content Features
Communication


Management and Privacy

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 for PCs.[1] The game launched at 11 p.m. (GMT) on May 17, 2008 in a limited way, being available to 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.[2] Although originally announced as being available for the Xbox 360, the console version is at least a year behind schedule.[3]

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 the Cimmerian novel, The Hour of the Dragon.[4] Hyborian Adventures' release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan the Cimmerian media franchise.

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

Contents


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 avatar virtual reality 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.


Aquilonian Cimmerian Stygian
Rogue
  • Assassin
  • Ranger
  • Barbarian
Rogue
  • Ranger
  • Barbarian
Rogue
  • Assassin
  • Ranger
Priest
  • Priest of Mitra
Priest
  • Bear Shaman
Priest
  • Tempest of Set
Soldier
  • Guardian
  • Dark Templar
  • Conqueror
Soldier
  • Guardian
  • Dark Templar
  • Conqueror
Mage
  • Necromancer
  • Herald of Xotli
  • Demonologist

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 the Barbarian 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, The amount of active players has diminished so significantly that Funcom has cut its 49 servers down to 18 remaining via merges. There is currently one server of each type active for each region in which the game is available. [5]

Setting

Age of Conan is set in a low fantasy, pseudo-historical ancient world called the Hyborian Age created by Robert E. Howard. The warlord Conan has seized the throne of Aquilonia, but ancient evils seek to overthrow him.

“ The [Hyborian Age] is like a dark, decadent, twisted and corrupt version of Euro-Asian history. Mix a bit of the Roman Empire, Mongolian culture and Babylonian mysticism with '30s-era myths of undiscovered Africa...[6] ”

The lead artist Terje Lundberg said that the look and feel of Hyboria was based on the interpretation of the stories written by Robert E. Howard. "When you read Howard's work you're immediately drawn into a gritty world of dark and ancient forces, and mighty and decadent civilizations. You feel the great weight of the ages and sense the very history in the crumbling mortar and the ruins. Therefore we've been mindful from the outset to create a world which is true to Howard's writing. There is majesty in Hyboria but it's of a monolithic, brutal and primitive kind - it certainly isn't "high fairie" where everything appears as though it was built only yesterday and is devoid of context."[7]

Lundberg said the game at launch will contain three countries, Cimmeria, a northern country with snow and highlands, Aquilonia, which contains "green hills, lush riverbeds, and the marvelous city of Tarantia", and Stygia, with mostly deserts and "some beautiful cities" — as well as the island of Tortage which "has a diverse geography ranging from jungle to harbors."[7]

Music and sound

Five principal individuals have worked on the music and audio for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The Audio Director is Morten Sørlie, who created the soundtrack for Anarchy Online - Shadowlands. Simon Poole (Lead Sound designer on "Dreamfall - The Longest Journey") took over as Audio Director in May 2007, and saw the project through to completion. The sound designers is Tord D. Nikolaisen and Fredrik Martol, and composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen wrote the musical score for the game.[8] To create a musical score for the Hyborian universe, composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen turned to many different sources: For the music of the different ethnic groups, Haugen studied traditional music from relevant parts of the world. For the overall sound of the Hyborian Age, Haugen studied ancient and medieval music as well as the romantic orchestra repertoir and film scores, while avoiding conventions that connect too closely to specific historical periods.[9] The female vocalist heard in the score is Norwegian singer Helene Bøksle.[2] Norwegian punk rock artists Turbonegro contributed three bonus songs to the soundtrack CD. One of them written specifically for the album.[10]

Knut Avenstroup Haugen won the IFMCA award for Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media for his score.[11]

Over 40 actors voiced the large cast of characters.[3]They were recorded at Side UK [4] in London, England UK, Side LA in California, USA and at Funcom in Norway.[5]

Technology

The game makes use of following innovative technologies:

Cheetah 
Shader-oriented proprietary render engine re-written from scratch by Funcom featuring a phong per pixel lighting system. This engine allows for improved graphics and ambience. This is coupled with a trapezoidal shadow system, an in-house system developed by Funcom that allows all objects to cast shadows onto everything.[12]
Perlin noise-based cloud generating system 
Five-layered procedural system that enables multiple layers of dynamic clouds; thus, visually realistic cloud behavior.[12]
SpeedTree 
Programming package that aims to produce high-quality virtual foliage in real time.[13]
DirectX 10 
A major update of DirectX API. Although advertised on the boxes, the game did not include support for DirectX 10 at the time of launch. A preview of the DirectX 10 features was given at the Games Convention in Leipzig in August 2008, but no release date is known yet, [14] it is still in internal testing.[15]
Umbra 
Umbra is GPU accelerated occlusion culling software developed by Umbra Software Ltd. Umbra's aim is to speed up the rendering of large worlds with a lot of overdraw.

Resignation

In September 2008, Gaute Godager, the Producer and Game Director resigned from his role in Age of Conan and from Funcom, a company he had been involved in for over 16 years[16]. In his press release, he revealed that he was not happy with elements in the game's development since release. He was succeeded by Craig Morrison, previously live Game Director of Anarchy Online, and community manager for various Funcom community forums.

Expansion pack

An expansion pack is in production, planned for release in the later part of 2009. Although no information has been released, some concept art has been shown [17]

Cultural references

The game was referred to in the third episode "The Barbarian Sublimation" of the second season of television show "The Big Bang Theory". In this episode, a character from “The Big Bang Theory” named Penny sees Sheldon Cooper playing Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, in which he calls himself "Sheldor the Conqueror". Penny then starts playing the game, and gets addicted to it. At the end of the episode, she realizes her addiction and throws her laptop in disgust at how she's been acting. Various in-game references are used throughout the episode.



Screenshots

References

  1. ↑ Age of Conan Confirmed for Xbox 360 - December 10, 2006 - retrieved on December 12, 2006
  2. ↑ Funcom sets new release date for Age of Conan to be August 31, 2008. - retrieved on January 21, 2008
  3. ↑ Age of Conan 360 a year behind. Eurogamer.net. Retrieved on 2008-02-22.
  4. ↑ Age of Conan is set after The Hour of the Dragon. - September 16, 2006 - retrieved on January 25, 2007
  5. ↑ Server Merges: List of Servers - January 9, 2009 - retrieved on February 24, 2009
  6. ↑ OGaming Interview with Gaute Godager (Page 1 of 3) - January 20, 2006 - retrieved on July 25, 2006
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Interview with Terje Lundberg by MMOG Welten. onlinewelten.com. Retrieved on 2008-05-29.
  8. ↑ Sound and music in Age of Conan. - retrieved on April 13, 2007
  9. ↑ Music in Age of Conan - November 22, 2005 - retrieved on July 22, 2006
  10. ↑ Age Of Conan: Age Of Conan Gets Scandinavian Punk Rock Soundtrack
  11. ↑ IFMCA announces its 2008 winners for scoring excellence
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Peek #3 (Page 2 of 3) - November 24, 2005 - retrieved on July 22, 2006
  13. ↑ Funcom Brings SpeedTree©RT into Age of Conan - retrieved on July 22, 2006
  14. ↑ Age of Conan DirectX 10 content looks stunning - August 28, 2008 - retrieved on September 23, 2008
  15. ↑ Letter from Game Director September 30. 2008 "I also wanted to mention that we‘ve come very far with the DirectX 10 version, which we unfortunately had to keep on internal test-servers for launch. It’s now almost ready for the full test server. Once the next game-play update is out expect to start to see the DX10 functionality coming to the test environment. How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course, but it’s starting to shape up nicely."
  16. ↑ http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1321&table=CONTENT&item=1004. Retrieved 1-10-2008 “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."
  17. ↑ [1]

External Links

In the News

Scholarly Research

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