Age of Conan expanding in '09

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Aug 22, 2008 12:15 pm PT

Funcom tells Leipzig audience that it is "aiming" to release the first retail add-on to its popular fantasy MMORPG sometime next year; first teaser art raises possibility of Khitai addition.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

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Today at the Leipzig Games Convention, Norwegian developer Funcom showed off some new content updates for the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. As outlined in GameSpot's hot-off-the-presses impressions, the presentation covered several new areas that will soon be available to higher-level characters in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

While interesting, the presentation was overshadowed by another announcement. Almost casually, Funcom reps on hand revealed the first Age of Conan expansion pack is currently in the works for a tentative 2009 release.

"We are working on an expansion and that we are aiming for a release next year," Age of Conan product manager Erling Ellingsen told GameSpot. (Emphasis in the original.) "We have released the artwork, which I'm sure you have seen, but we are not ready to reveal any other information at this point. We just want to get the speculation going at this point!"

The teaser art Ellingsen mentions (pictured) shows a masked warrior not unlike the Persian Immortals from the film 300. In the atlas of the Hyborian Age, the fantasy realm Age of Conan is set in, author Robert E. Howard created two realms based on ancient Persia: Hyrkania and Iranistan. However, the presence of pagodas, dragon motifs, Eastern weapons, and jade-like armor makes Khitai, Howard's take on the China of antiquity, a more likely suspect.

For more on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, read GameSpot's full review of the game, which currently boasts over 400,000 subscribers. Released in May for the PC, the title is still in the "early stages" of being ported to the Xbox 360.

113 Comments

  • Arern

    Posted Jul 22, 2009 3:19 am PT

    This would give Age of Conan the boost they need. They have to bring it out fast.

  • IncipitOmega

    Posted Apr 22, 2009 12:14 am PT

    The game is very good now,quite polished..most of the bugs are gone,the game has a lot of new things in the MMO genre.I will definitely get this expansion...

  • Julenissen55

    Posted Jan 8, 2009 6:22 am PT

    i hope the entire expansion is one huge polish of the original, cuz the game needs it badly....

  • Knoar

    Posted Oct 20, 2008 5:33 pm PT

    lol... aoc is so beyond help it's pitiful.

  • Baldur3272

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 12:22 pm PT

    conan is so awesome! All hail Crumb!!!!

  • Abs0Iute_Zer0

    Posted Sep 14, 2008 9:53 am PT

    Im looking forward to see the improvements

  • vortex_gw

    Posted Sep 10, 2008 11:33 am PT

    WAR has bad graphics. I'm not a graphics whore but WAR ist's just ugly. AoC has potential, I hope they fix the bad stuff in the game.

  • 69Kameleon69

    Posted Sep 4, 2008 5:47 pm PT

    I think WAR will outsell AoC, mainly due to fan base. The lore for WAR is way better than that of AoC. I just hope WAR keeps everything up to date as WOW does. Right now, WOW is still king but eventually a game has to come out to dethrone it.

  • invictuslemming

    Posted Aug 30, 2008 9:47 pm PT

    Too little too late in my opinion, AoC had some amasing features, the zones for one were absolutely beautiful, they did a phenominal job, same with low end content. The lack of polish and high level content killed the game for a lot of people though causing many to quit early.

    With warhammer on the horizon and wotlk only two months away I think funcom's going to have a difficult time drawing back players.

  • Elhan posted Aug 30, 2008 6:21 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Elhan

    Posted Aug 30, 2008 6:21 am PT (hide)

    Warhammer has already dethroned Wow. Before it's even out.

  • ac1dwarrior

    Posted Aug 27, 2008 5:27 am PT

    well funcom really fails... They should fix the problems they have already, not throw out a xpac and create MORE problems.

    I am a AoC player myself.. I've had it since its launch and it is getting slightly, VERY slightly, better. But now they decide to tear there time away from the real problems by trying to distract you with more problems. I will probably be one of those people who will try to ride out the storm instead of bailing off the ship, why you may ask? because this game has the potential to overthrow WoW, or at least damage it.

    Now BRING ON THE FLAME!

  • gfile

    Posted Aug 26, 2008 10:52 am PT

    All hail to king Conan and Funcom, you just made my day...can`t wait for expansion

  • deesnutts25

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 5:17 pm PT

    @ThugNMe

    First off, WoW can be taken down by other games other than itself. Have you checked the sub count on WoW lately? I do believe they have lost a lot of subs due to people being pissed off that they are messing up the lore. War will not surpase WoW, I'll be surprised if it passes up AoC and keeps their numbers after release. War is due to have bugs and tech problems just like AoC when it releases. What you guys playing the beta fail to realize is, BETA IS NOT THE FULL GAME!!! Beta is just testing some things out for bugs, its not the whole game by any means. Once the beta is over and the actual game comes out, I'll browse the forums there and see how many people complain. I'm sure the number will be just as big if not bigger than AoC. WoW was not perfect on release, it was very far from it. It took blizz almost 2 years to really get WoW going to where it is now and most of you guys expect a new mmo to be just like WoW. Its not possible to releae a full mmo without having issues at the start, all mmo's have had issues when they were released and some have stood up to the test of time and players waiting around for fixes, and some haven't.

  • ThugNMe

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 2:36 pm PT

    @ LiontamerV

    LOL WoW will only be dethroned by WoW itself, AoC wont/cant EVER come close to the giant know as WoW, Only real competition WoW will get will be from WAR, which in my opinion is better then WoW. I played AoC for the first 3 months after release, and it leaves much to be desired.

  • aggelet

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 2:11 pm PT

    FAILCOM!

  • deesnutts25

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 1:54 pm PT

    @Social_D

    Yes, they were in game, but not accessable at launch, meaning, no end game content at launch. Patch 1.1 came out like 6 months after release. It was the big patch that introduced bg's and what not that added end game content to WoW. If you played WoW at launch, they day it came out until the patch, you know there was no end game at all. If i could log onto my account acreen and show when i first activated my account, you would see that it was way before the 1.1 patch that came out in Nov 2004.

    Also note that Ubrs and Lbrs were raid instances when they becamse accessable. Lbrs was a 10 man at first and Ubrs was a 40 man. Blizz noticed that the instances were way to easy that way and lowered the amount of people that were allowed in the instance at the same time.

  • Social_D

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 12:19 pm PT

    @deesnutts25

    At the original release of WoW, MC and Ony were already in the game. They were patched in with version 1.1, which was put out before the physical release of the game on 23 Nov 04.

    ref:
    http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_1.1
    http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraft/index.html?tag=result;title;1

  • valcrist09

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 12:16 pm PT

    and stop comparing new MMOs to wow at the start.. This is a different era. I am sick of restarting MMOS and it not even having the basic content it should have.. I am tired of waiting for years to get content it should of had with the game.. How can you expect players to go from nearly 4 years of definded and tweaked content in WoW to these newer MMOs that dont even have what they promise and just get delay after delay and show nothing for it.

  • valcrist09

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 12:13 pm PT

    lol this game wont even Phase WoW... All the highly anticpated MMOs were flops.. AOE lacked major content, and has way to many bugs.. Warhammer which i am in beta right now, is a horrible grind, worse graphics then wow and poor gameplay.. As of Now blizzard has no worries, with 11 million people, a new expansion that is adding way more content then BC... It cant be stopped until someone raises the bar and brings in something fresh.

  • LiontamerV

    Posted Aug 25, 2008 12:00 pm PT

    Good to see some MMO's finally trying to take down WoW's throne. I'm excited

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