This weekend we had a chance to participate in GameSpot's Age of Conan PvP Weekend, and I managed to capture a few screenshots of things I thought looked fairly cool. I've separated the thumbnails below based on what the screenshot contains / where it was taken, so read on to check them out. You can also find all 32 of them here.

NOTE: AA and character shadows were disabled during many of the screenshots as I was troubleshooting a client/PC crash at the same time. It turned out later to be an issue with SLI, so I disabled SLI and the game ran fine.

PC Specs

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Video: 2x SLI Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT 384mb (SLI was disabled during most of the playtest, though)
RAM: 2GB DDR2
Hard Drive: 150GB Raptor drive
Resolution: 1680x1050

Classes and their Armor

Lost Temple -- Capture the Skull

Blood Ravine -- Capture the Skull

Team Deathmatch

Miscellaneous

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Check back later for a writeup of my impressions of the weekend.

In part four, our final coverage of the Age of Conan Community event, we thought we would save some of the most exciting news from the event for last -- especially for a website with a background like Curse has.

During a special developer panel, Gaute Godager announced that the game will be shipping with the ability to modify the look of interface elements; changing the graphics and so forth. However, post-launch, Funcom plans to add the ability to interface with the Age of Conan UI API, allowing the ability to create unique and new UI elements, similar to what World of Warcraft currently employs.

Funcom also graciously released their CES 2008 Tech Demo to the public. This video was created to show off the enhancements being introduced to the Dreamworld Graphics Engine with their "Cheetah 2" update, which we talked about here.

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Another interesting tidbit of information is that Funcom is borrowing a piece of technology from Anarchy Online for dungeons. Certain quests will be repeatable throughout the life of a character, allowing them to enter special instanced dungeons. These dungeons will scale with the character's level, increasing mob levels to match the player, and of course offering appropriate rewards.

Of course, crunch time isn't just about getting those last-minute features into the game. Funcom's beta process has provided them with invaluable feedback on the beginner experience, and they do plan to make improvements to the Tortage Isles as part of their polish phase before releasing the game. The biggest improvement is that players will have access to "smugglers" that will allow them to leave the Tortage area prior to level 20; Funcom received quite a bit of feedback from players who were disenchanted with the inability to explore the world, regardless of level, so this new smuggler system brings that ability back to life.

Secondly, the initial area of Tortage Isles that players start at is being increased in size -- especially the beach portion -- where Funcom plans to add additional content for new players to explore and tackle, before heading into the city of Tortage itself. And that's not all, there are also possible plans to allow players to skip the first five levels of the game once they've run through the experience a few times. The team realizes that the first five levels are essentially the tutorial for the game, and once a player has done it before, they may not need to sit through it a second time around.

Finally, during a chat with Evan Michaels he revealed that the team is currently reviewing the Priest of Mitra to improve it. They realize that it's been one of the least popular classes in polls and through internal testing, so they want to address concerns prior to launch.

We hope you've enjoyed all of the new information Funcom has provided to the community as much as we have bringing it to you. We'll be here to bring you all of the Conan news leading up to release, so be sure to keep checking back!

It's only been two days now since we visited Funcom in Oslo, Norway to chat about and check out Age of Conan at their homely design studio. This is part three of our article series covering all of the information shared, and it contains details on armor graphics, animations, sound and mounted combat.

One quick piece of information to pass along before getting started is that female character models will be in the beta very soon -- probably the next build -- so players will be able to create a female version of their class if they so choose. Funcom was adamant about wanting to do the Conan era female justice, and felt that players experiencing anything else would dampen the enjoyment of the game. They feel they've reached that point now, so they're prepared to unveil them to the beta populace.

Armor Graphics

In recent years, there have been MMOs released that lacked visual quantity -- keeping the number of unique armor graphics low and simply tinting them a different color. This is luckily not the case with Age of Conan.

During our tour of the office on January 18th, we were shown some of the different pieces of armor in the game. Many of these armor pieces are designed to fit in with pieces from other slots, to give the look of wearing a matching set of armor.

In total, there are over 1500 unique armor piece graphics in the game to-date, many of which are stylized to specific regions of the world, giving them flavor and ensuring that a Stygian will look different from an Aquilonian. Of course, female armor is being created to look different from male armor, too -- adding even more to the uniqueness in character looks, based on your gender choice.

Animations

In a similar vein to armor graphics, we had the chance to meet the team that does all of the motion capture work for Age of Conan and then turns that into the animations you see in the game. Over 8,000 animations have been captured in the Funcom Motion Capture Studio, located within the Funcom office building. All of these animations have then been put through their paces and converted into something that looks good in-game; the typical animation can take anywhere from several hours to a couple days to implement, depending on its complexity.

Each class will be receiving their own unique fatality animations, too. And for those concerned with the run animation, Funcom agrees that it needs work, so they've been optimizing and capturing the run animation again recently, to hopefully improve upon it and make it seem like something more natural than it currently does.

While motion capture animations add to realism, there are of course instances where it's simply not possible to motion capture something -- like the mammoth mount, or many of the boss encounters in the game. When's the last time you've seen a blood fiend running around? Yeah, I haven't either!

In the case of the mammoth, Funcom did some tricky manipulation of available animations to make it fit with the model, and in the case of many of the bosses, their animations have been hand-created.

Sound

The tour also lead us into the sound room where Funcom creates all of the sounds for Age of Conan. Players can expect to be overwhelmed with music in the game -- over three hours worth has been recorded so far, and there's still work yet to be done prior to the game's launch.

Conan's sound is in Dolby 5.1, meaning it supports surround sound; great for those times when you want your neighbors to hear you decapitating your foe! It doesn't stop at 5.1 sound, though -- there are also three distinct sound source options: from the character, from the camera -- giving more of a cinematic feel, and experimental. Age of Conan's Sound Director explained that experimental was created for those cases where players don't want to hear sound from a specific source each time it's played. Instead, the game will choose which best fits the situation and play the sound from the appropriate source.

Mounted Combat

Finally, a bit of information on mounted combat was shared with us. We met the folks in charge of designing mounted combat in Conan, and they gave us some juicy details on why you'd want to ride a mount around.

First and foremost, mounting a horse, rhino, or mammoth -- the three mounts that will be available in the game at launch -- gives you unique opportunities to use the mount in combat, not just fight from it. Your horse, for example, can be controlled to kick with its front or hind legs. A mammoth on the other hand can be used to slam something with its tusks, be it a ground unit, or buildings.

Additionally, mounts will grant you bonuses to health, armor, etc. You can consider them an addition to your character; while the mount can't be killed separately from you, they do require to be killed along with you. Examples of buffs given were an armored horse that might increase your health slightly, while also increasing your armor. Mammoths, since they don't wear armor, would give fairly substantial health boosts, but very minimal or no armor boosts.

That said, there are also disadvantages of mounting, which is honestly a good thing since it will provide strategical reasons for using certain mounts in PvP, and ensures you won't run around seeing everyone riding a horse. The primary disadvantages for the horse is that you cannot use melee combos; you'll also be at a disadvantage terrain-wise in PvP battles when obstacles that a ground unit can pass through exist, as your horse may prevent you from doing so -- forcing you to go around the obstacle while you take fire from rangers and casters.

Mammoths on the other hand are slow-moving, poor-cornering beasts that are primarily useful for sieging, so don't expect to run around dominating in open field PvP with one. You also lose the ability to attack completely with a weapon, though casters will still be able to cast their spells (NOTE: You can either cast or attack with the mammoth, you can't do both simultaneously). Because the mammoth turns so slow, you'll be completely defenseless on your sides and rear -- adding to the strategical value of flanking players who choose this as their mount, performing "hit-and-run" tactics on them.

Funcom's mount system is set up to allow for very dynamic, unique mount options in the future. While the game will ship with three to make sure they're complete and polished, they're considering introducing a camel mount for Stygian players, and other possibilities for creatures to be used as mounts are there as well. The sky is essentially the limit, as Funcom can easily customize a mount's attributes to give it a specific role in gameplay.

While we work on compiling more information from Friday's Age of Conan Community event, we wanted to give everyone a taste of what can be expected from the Age of Conan Art Book; over 120 images, most of which have never been seen previous to today. Enough talking, though -- enjoy the pictures!

A Taste of the Art Book

Classes

Monsters

Magic

There's a lot more where they came from, so head over and check out the Art Book images by clicking here.

Raiding

Raiding in Age of Conan will be fairly familiar to players of previous MMOs, as the player cap is 24 members per raid, and the raid content will be designed to have players progress through multiple tiers of difficulty. Initially there will be 8 raid dungeons in total, with 21 raid encounters, as well as other events that may play out during the progress of clearing a dungeon. Gaute Godager mentioned that these are "encounters" that can be made up of multiple bosses per-encounter.

These dungeons will be split up into three tiers of difficulty; three for Tier one, three for Tier Two, and two for Tier Three. There's also a bit of linear progression through the difficulty tiers; unlocking one of the dungeons in Tier Two will require you to defeat a Tier One dungeon, and unlocking one of the Tier Three dungeons will require the defeat of a boss in a Tier Two dungeon. Of course, there's also item progression that will require sticking with a tier of difficulty longer than one clear as well; Funcom expects there to be well over 200 hours worth of raid content in the game at launch, with a dungeon typically taking 2 1/2-3 hours for an experienced raid group who has done the dungeon before.

Finally, these dungeons will all be instanced, with lockout timers which are currently set to one week, meaning once you've been locked into a dungeon, that's what you'll zone into each time for a week -- giving you ample learning time to conquer each dungeon and tier before they reset. The good news is that Funcom is also going to be saving the state of the dungeon, and most of the monsters will not respawn for that week once they've been killed -- meaning that for the most part, you'll only have to kill each particular trash monster or boss encounter once a week and then you're done with it.

During our tour around the Funcom office we had the opportunity to meet and chat with many of the members of the Funcom team -- everyone from the folks who do all of the motion capture for animations, the sound director, members of "strike teams" who are teamed up to work on specific areas of the game like 1-40, end-game raiding, PvP, mounted combat, etc., and the folks who are working on the Cheetah 2 improvements and additions for the Dreamworld graphics engine.

Cheetah 2

The good news is Cheetah 2 looks great; we finally got to see it in action, rather than a preview video set up to show it off at trade shows. Cheetah 2 is receiving some new stuff, like water ripples to make the water more realistic, a day and night cycle with proper directional shadowing from light sources, and a new level of quality for textures. There are also rendering improvements being introduced, which will drastically increase framerates in polygon-dense areas like larger cities and forest areas where vast numbers of trees are present. The increase we were shown by one of Dreamworld's programmers, in a comparison by switching between Cheetah 1 and Cheetah 2, was close to 100% for one of the largest cities in Hyboria.

PvP

PvP will take place in several different ways in Age of Conan with not only the border kingdom, massive city sieges and tower capturing, but also in the form of instanced PvP matches between smaller numbers of players. The PvP match we took part in during the gathering was one fairly similar to World of Warcraft's Warsong Gulch, though this was stylized heavily toward Stygian architecture. The gameplay itself involves battling it out with the other team in an 8 player, 4-vs.-4 format where you have 10 minutes to win the match completely, of which involves capturing the other team's flag three times before they capture yours the same number. There will also be a Team Deathmatch type of instanced PvP, both with Ranked or Skirmish options. In Ranked matches, dying means you lose "PvP experience," as Evan Michaels put it.

Gaute Godager added that there will be multiple tiers of ranks which players can attain, though because of the PvP EXP loss for dying, only the best of the best will be able to reach the highest ranks -- making it something that is truly an accomplishment. During Funcom's internal testing of the ranking system, they've noticed that it's popular to gun for the highest ranked players to see if they can be knocked off of their pedestal. Being ranked fairly high will be quite lucrative as well, with access to unique PvP-based items being granted.

For those looking for hardcore PvP, Godager told us that they're very close to finalizing the PvP server rulesets and opening it up for testing in the Beta. PvP servers will have open PvP in many locations throughout the world, not just the border kingdoms and instanced battlefields. Funcom has designed a system in which they can flag certain areas as being open to PvP, so the possibility of unique ruleset servers in the future is there, but they want to get the basic PvP ruleset in for launch and see where they can go from that point. And for fans of corpse-looting in PvP, Funcom is considering some kind of penalty for dying on PvP servers, but Godager mentioned that they're being very careful in what, if anything, they do because the PvP in Age of Conan is being designed to feel as if you can jump into it and play for a bit, then take a break -- similar to Quake or other competitive FPS games -- rather than a system that feels as if there's permanant loss like perma-death.

For roleplayers, there will also be a PvP-RP ruleset at launch, and the server will be set up slightly differently than the normal PvP server, with special rules for names and guild names, as well as other rules that must be followed on the server type. Funcom hasn't finalized these rules yet, but they do plan to draw them up prior to launch so that there's an understanding of what you're getting into if you decide to make a PvP-RP server your home.

Check back for part three of our adventures in Oslo, where we'll cover details on armor graphics, sound, animations and mounted combat.

On January 18th, Funcom held a community gathering of fansites at their offices in Oslo, Norway. The agenda for the day was quite hectic, with a number of different activities planned, so we got started early with a meeting in the Funcom conference room, where we had a chance to meet with Gaute Godager, Erling Ellingson, Jørgen Tharaldsen and several other members of the team to talk about crafting and a few other new pieces of information.

Introduction to Crafting in Age of Conan

Crafting -- a topic not talked about previously -- is quite different from other games. The system is being set up as a story-driven, quest-based crafting system where advancing your skill is done through completing quests. These quests then reward you with recipes and take you through the crafting progression -- no grinding through recipes over and over is required at all.

The major trades available will be Alchemy, Gem Cutting, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith and Architect. There are also secondary trades which are essentially the gathering trades that bring in the items you'll need to craft weapons, armor, potions and other various player-made items. The gathering primarily takes place at resource nodes in special regions -- one per nation -- created specifically for tradeskillers. You'll be able to head to the camp in these areas to pick up your advancement quests for your specific trade, then head into the fields to search out nodes to gather wood, ores, gems, etc. The nodes are specially designed with particle effects to make it easier to notice them -- especially in the case of trees which can be chopped down for wood -- and also show up on the game map, allowing you to locate them quickly and efficiently. Resources will be available in other areas, though very sparsely, and some bosses can drop rare resources as well, allowing you to create special items out of them.

You can also find rare items from the resource nodes, which when used in a normal recipe, will allow you to craft an even higher quality item -- all using the same exact recipe. The only difference is that you select the recipe, then choose to craft the item from the material list that includes the rare item. One great change to crafting in Conan compared to other games is that you can craft an item anywhere in the world; there's no need to head into the city and be forced to find a forge or an anvil to make your sword -- if you have the materials on you, you can make it.

Enhancing Crafted Items

Crafted items can be enhanced above and beyond the version you get when creating them by way of special gem sockets, which items can have anywhere from one to four of. Placing a gem in the socket -- either acquired from a Gem Cutter, or found as a drop from creatures -- will provide additional bonuses for the item. Some examples given were enhancing combos, spells, feats, or giving an edge against a specific creature type through increasing your damage done to them. All of these bonuses have special PvP versions as well -- as do other bonuses in the game -- allowing Funcom to create items tailored to PvP gameplay.

These gems cannot be removed once inserted into an item, though Gaute Godager did say that it may be possible in the future for rarer or higher quality gems to be removed, but it will probably only be in very special cases -- if at all.

Two classes condensed, cutting the class count to 12

This bit of information will no doubt be unwelcome news to some fans, but Funcom feels it's in the best interest of the game to condense two classes into others so that they can ensure every class is going to be fun to play. So which classes are gone? Well, if you've seen recent beta leaks, you'll recognize that the Lich and Scion of Set have both been missing from Beta, and this is why: Funcom felt the two classes simply weren't unique enough in their own right to make them fun, so they've chosen to merge most of their abilities into other classes, bolstering them in the process -- making them more enjoyable to play.

The Stormcaller is being merged with the Scion of Set, which will now be called the Tempest of Set. Many of the Scion's abilities and feats will appear on this new class, making it a very powerful DPS-oriented healing class. Casting damage spells will sometimes give the Tempest of Set a buff that makes their next healing spell instant cast, cost no mana, or even double its potency. Evan Michaels, a game designer at Funcom, told us that their goal with the Tempest of Set is a class that starts off a fight doing damage, and ends it with their healing -- a dynamic that should be welcomed by many players dijected by healer class dynamics in other games. Finally, a healing class that can contribute both damage and healing successfully and efficiently in the same fight.

The second class being condensed is the Lich, though this time its spell and feat recipient isn't receiving a new name. The Necromancer will now gain many of the Lich's spells and feats, as well as a new ability to sacrifice their pet -- turning them into a Lich, and increasing the potency of their damage spells.

City Sieging -- it's not for the faint-of-heart

City Sieging in Age of Conan is being designed from the ground-up to be the hardcore pvp player's paradise. Guilds will no doubt struggle in conflict over the city plots in the game, as the border kindgoms will only contain 9 of them in total across the entire world of Hyboria -- making controlling one and owning a city an incredibly valuable opportunity, filled with perks and bonuses.

Once you've built your city, it can become vulnerable to attack two times a week; a calendar will display when each city is vulnerable and will tell you the dates in advance. While your city is vulnerable to attack, a guild may enter your region and lay siege to it through the creation of siege camps. These siege camps cost resources to create, and once erected allow other attacking players (or the player whom created it) to produce various siege weapons out of them: a trebuchet, a ballista, or a catapult.

Players can only control one siege weapon at a time, so you'll need to bring a lot of friends if you're looking to tackle a guild's keep. There are of course mounts which can be used as siege weapons as well; both the mammoth and the rhino lend unique tactical opportunities to the battlefield.

Once you've decided to attack a guild's city and entered their region, you will then have 90 minutes to storm the keep and kill the keep lord. You'll also have to destroy the other buildings in the city if you want to keep it as your own; simply breaking down the walls and then rushing the keep will only give you the ability to pillage some of the guild's property if you succeed.

There was quite a bit post-meeting that occurred, so check back later for information on mounts, armor graphics, end-game raiding and a whole lot more.

The 2008 edition of the Computer Electronics Show kicked off this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Funcom was there to show off Age of Conan. Today we have for you ten new screen shots direct from the electronics show, showing off the game in stunning detail. You can check them out below, but be sure to head over to our Age of Conan portal to see all of the Conan images released thus far.

It's been a bit over five months since our Age of Conan Hands-On, but luckily it wasn't the last. Funcom invited us out to the Eidos studios recently to show off the game once again, and I have to say that it's changed quite a bit since then.

The game is, as Jørgen Tharaldsen put it, on track for a March 25th, 2008 launch -- with over 10,000 beta testers currently plugging away at the game's content, helping find bugs and provide invaluable feedback. Some of that feedback has helped to change and improve the game drastically since our last sneak peek; the combat system has seen an overhaul to be less confusing to new players and less cumbersome at higher levels when it comes to determining just which combo you're going to trigger.

Character creation was enhanced greatly as well, as was the settings section of the interface -- Audio, Video and Interface options all have been greatly improved with advanced settings typical to a Next-Gen game. The video options, particularly, are very robust, but at the same time aren't overwhelming like some games -- the settings are all to-the-point and easily understood. Sound options have a cool feature that I haven't seen in many MMOs to-date; you can choose where you hear the sound from in the game, e.g. you can select to hear it from your camera (cinematic style), from your character, or an "experimental" option.

Class selection has also been overhauled -- gone are the days of starting as a Commoner and slowly working your way to your final class. You choose your final class from the start, and advance through a special single-player quest series that unlocks new skills for your class. While it's called single-player, you do it all online -- in a nighttime version of Hyboria, whereas the multiplayer version of the game is played out during the day. This "Destiny Quest" as Funcom is calling it, will continue all the way up to level 80; a quest chain that continues throughout the life of your character, unfolding the story of Hyboria and King Conan himself.

So what's new, you ask?

A feat system has been introduced, which will be somewhat familiar to World of Warcraft veterans, as it's vaguely similar to the talent system, with multiple tiers of feats which become available as you sink more feat points into the tree. One difference here is that each class gets two trees, and a third, which is tied to the class archtype -- a tree available to multiple classes. Feat points become available beginning at level 10, and you receive 65 in total. Unlearning feats is well... not a feat in itself -- you simply click on the "Unlearn" button and a timer is activated which must expire before you can unlearn them again. As of now, there are no plans for a monetary cost for resetting your feats -- time is a simple enough penalty for Funcom's tastes.

Something else new is the character customization. At our previous hands-on, we didn't really get a chance to check it out, but this time... wow. Not only will your character be differentiated by the three unique nationality choices, but there are also over 35 different customization options, each with a slider bar -- allowing some truly unique looking characters. The likelihood of finding someone else on your server that looks the same is fairly small.

As far as combat goes, it's been streamlined at lower levels to be easier to get into -- only three directions are available at the start, down from the previous five, and combos are also changed a bit; you must activate the combo you want to trigger first, then follow through by swinging in the appropriate direction, which is lit up in a yellow tone. There was also a new feature added this time around -- an intelligent "shielding" system, which was talked about previously but wasn't available. A graphical notification will warn you of your target defending themselves in varrying degrees, and you can even protect yourself in the same way, but suffice to say -- if you attack the same location on an NPC multiple times, it will begin to defend itself against that attack -- reducing the damage you do to that location dramatically.

PvP: You can decapitate players too!

Sadly, no, it's not permanent -- though that would be pretty hilarious if it were. Player-vs.-player combat in Age of Conan will not only take place in the vast world of Hyboria, in the form of sieges and world PvP, but also in mini-games that players will find familiar if World of Warcraft was their previous MMO. The mini-game we participated in was a five-vs.-five Capture-the-Flag map, though with one limiting factor that Blizzard missed. This map has a time limit, meaning that the days of sitting around hopelessly protecting a flag isn't going to cut it -- you have 10 minutes to win or lose, so you better be ready to bring the pain.

When I asked, Jørgen Tharaldsen said that mini-games will come in two types: ranked and skirmish, with ranked unlocking benefits unique to PvP play. Ranked matches will also, of course, give you ranking for winning -- pitting you up against similarly-ranked teams. One excellent evolution to the "queue for PvP" mechanic that Funcom has brilliantly introduced, is that you can join the mini-game queue from anywhere in the world by opening the PvP search window -- you don't have to stop what you're doing and head into town. The system will intelligently place you back where you joined the match from, as I so painfully found out when I loaded into being pummeled by several NPCs that had respawned during the CTF excursion. So yeah, while it's cool that you can queue from anywhere, be careful!

These mini-games also temporarily balance player levels, meaning a level 12 can join the queue and be matched up against a level 26; they'll both be bumped up to level 39 and can fight it out as normal, without concern of one being stronger than the other in terms of level.

End Game Content

While we didn't get a chance to see any specific content just yet, I had a chance to talk with Jørgen Tharaldsen, and this of course was one of the things on my mind. There will be end game content for both PvP and PvE players; items specific to those styles of play will also be available. In terms of PvE content, players can expect two dungeon types in the game: outdoor dungeons like forts, etc. that are set up similarly to the areas they're located in terms of terrain, and then the indoor dungeons like those dark halls of the Black Ring Citadel. Many dungeons will also scale in difficulty based on group size, which is very cool, to say the least.

Next up was a question about raids; they're going to be capped to 24 people, since as World of Warcraft has proven in their change from 40 to 25, bigger isn't always better.

Finally, I asked about the patching process. For now, the team is focused on launch, of course, but Funcom will maintain two teams simultaneously -- one working on live content for large patches, and another working on expansion content. Funcom plans to put out major content patches several times a year, but Jørgen was quick to squash any hopes of time lines, by stating that quality is most important and it'll be done when they're ready.

We have a veritable cornucopia of concept art, renders and screen shots from the hands-on, so if you want to check them out, head over to the Age of Conan Hands-On images here on Curse. If you want in on the beta, head over to the Age of Conan website to sign up.

Oh, let's not forget the Age of Conan Bar Story -- a trailer released in preparation for this Hands-On preview. Check it out, it's pretty cool.

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The latest Clan of Conan is available on the Age of Conan website. Issue 11's special feature takes a deeper look into character development, plus tons of other cool content. You can find all of it, including quick summaries by clicking here.

That said, here's a list of everything that can be found in this issue, for quick access to anything of interest.

• This month's feature: Character Development
• Location: Black Ring Citadel
• Beastiary: Excorant the Golem Master
• Beastiary: Yarekma the Soul Eater
• The Age of Conan Comic
• Developer Profile: Elliot Kingdon
• Screenshots: Black Ring Citadel
• Wallpaper: Black Ring Citadel

We've also added the new Black Ring Citadel screenshots to our Age of Conan Image Gallery, so head over and check them out along with all of the other images available.

The Age of Conan Friday Update is out this morning. This week's edition gives Conan fans a glimpse into the women of Hyboria. Here's a short preview of the article, with some of the new screenshots tossed in as well!

Head over to Friday Update: The Women of Hyboria to read more.

The latest Clan of Conan is now available over on the Age of Conan website!

Here's a quick recap of what can be found in this month's newsletter:

• French and German 'Age of Conan' community portals open
• 'Age of Conan' wins "Best Online Game" awards at Games Convention 2007
• This month's feature: Player-versus-player siege warfare
• Location of the month: Purple Lotus Swamp
• Beastiary Update: The War Mammoth
• Beastiary Update: Killer Rhino
• People: The Darfari
• The Age of Conan Comic
• Clan of Conan Guest Comic
• Developer Profile: Joel Bylos
• And a whole lot more, so head over to the Clan of Conan newsletter to check it all out.

This is the moment all Age of Conan fans have been waiting for: City Sieges. We have a video presentation from the Leipzig Games Convention where Jorgen Tharaldsen shows off high-end PvE content created for 24 players, PvP and city Sieges designed for massive armies of players to fight against each other in attempts to wrest the control of land from one another.

The video is 18 minutes long and chock full of blood and violence - everything that makes Conan what it is.

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Stay tuned for more videos from the Games Convention in the coming days, including an Age of Conan Q&A session.

The latest Class Preview on the Age of Conan community website takes a look at the Guardian - one of the "tank" classes in Age of Conan - sporting heavy armor and a choice of using a mighty polearm or a one-handed weapon and shield.

If you're looking to find out more about this class, then head over to the Class Preview article now!

In today's Friday Update on the Age of Conan website, they've released a new article talking about one of the high-level dungeons in the game, The Black Ring Citadel. You can even find two screenshots showing off architecture and an NPC in the dungeon!

If you want to read more, all you have to do is click here.

Also, for those of you wondering: yes, that is a real NPC in Age of Conan. Yes, it is censored so they can display the screenshot on their website. Age of Conan is tentatively set to be rated as Mature.

The official Age of Conan Community website added additional lore today to the Characters section. The lore additions include The Ymirish, and their champion, Grimnir Stormbringer.

As an added note, we've updated our lore section with this new lore as well. You can check it out here or by clicking the link below.