Age of Conan fans plunder Collector's Edition

Gamers have been waiting a long time for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Originally slated to be released in the first half of 2006, the game has finally gone gold after repeated delays, and is now due in stores on May 20 in the US and May 23 in Europe.

Funcom today boasted that the limited Collector's Edition, which includes two in-game items, a map of Hyboria, a 124-page art book, and an exclusive documentary DVD, has now completely sold out--despite 110,000 being sold after a second print run due to popular demand.

A total of 700,000 copies of the game are being shipped on day one, and Funcom says that due to "equally impressive preorder numbers" and "server capacity limitations," it has not been able to fulfil all orders for the game. It has ordered extra servers to make it possible for more players to join.

Funcom also added that the copies of the game shipping will not support DirectX 10 at launch, saying, "As Microsoft's DirectX 10 is undoubtedly the future of PC gaming, Funcom has decided to ship only the DirectX 9 version at launch, giving the team more time to focus on building a DirectX 10 version worthy of Microsoft's great vision for the future of PC gaming."

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fantasy-action MMORPG developed by Funcom--which also developed Anarchy Online--for the PC and Xbox 360. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's prelaunch hands-on.