Barbarians at the Gates

An Extensive Preview of the Age of Conan

Robert E. Howard would be proud. The author of the Conan novels and subsequent post-mortem name behind the entire Conan franchise would be amazed at how his world has come to life on the PC screen with Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The man who created a world full of barbarians, demons, and unabashed sexual appetites would be happy to know that his lore and fictional history is in safe hands. With only a few months till launch, the Norway-based Funcom team already has a visually stunning, compelling, and immersive Hyborian world on their hands.

Recently, I had an opportunity to see a first in the Age of Conan experience. Rather than preparing a video or giving us a demonstration on a closed server, Jorgen Tharaldsen, Conan’s Product Director, and Designer Thor Bjorno loaded a character onto a running server where a few hundred closed beta testers were churning through the developed content, pointing out any errors or inconsistencies with the gameplay.

As long as Jorgen wasn’t cheating, the game ran splendidly. “Every time I cheat, the game crashes,” he said with a chuckle. By cheating, Jorgen was trying to augment his character’s level artificially in order to show off some of the more interesting effects in the game. With a developer’s tool, he would raise his level to 32 and enhance his stats and gear. “Maybe it’s the horse,” he said, smiling. “Every time that horse comes in the game crashes.”

Even with the crashes, which weren’t terribly prevalent, it was clearly evident that Age of Conan was a superior game. Over the span of two days comprising a pair of sessions and three hours of actual time discussing, Jorgen and I hashed out some things that hadn’t been extensively discussed on the website, and I have split the following feature into sections to showcase the specific topics that we discussed. Also, be sure to return to this page as new sections will be added over the next few days.

The topics are listed below, thus the choice is yours…

• Magic
• Melee Combat
• Siege Warfare and PvP
• NPCs, AI, and Dungeons
• Quests, Gameplay, and the History of the World


• Images

Ten Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for all news and images concerning the Age of Conan!