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This is the case now with Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. According to many reports, the game has been losing players steadily, since release. In an effort to perhaps draw some new wanna-be barbarians, Funcomm is now offering a free 7 day trial in “the most savage world ever.”

While this gamer has not played since its release, it would seem likely that now a days, Age of Conan is far less buggy, and has more late-game content, than everyone was complaining about when it came out almost a year ago now, on May 18, 2008.

If you have a beefy enough rig you might want to give them game a spin and see what it is all about. Here are the requirements:

Minimum configuration (1024×768, detail reduced)

• OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
• RAM: 1GB
• Video card: ATI Radeon 9800/nVidia GeForce 6600
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• Hard drive space: 32G

Recommended configuration (Up to 1280X960, most features on)

• OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
• RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
• Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or equivalent
• Video memory: 512MB
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• Hard drive space: 32Gb

The game received “generally favorable reviews” according to Metacritic.^[42] However, promises not kept by Funcom’s initial launch marketing such as DX10 compatibility and subsequent NDA blunders have led to a huge backlash by players of the game. To date, Funcom plans on releasing a free content update that promises much of the content that was not ready for release, as well as new adventuring zones, PvP rewards, and revamping of current dungeons - refreshing news to many of the players.

Many publications^[who?] would not give the game a rating until it had come out of Beta such as Thirteen1 online gaming zine who said it ‘wasn’t fair’ to do so. ^[44]

Seth Schiesel, writing for the New York Times, felt that the development of the game would have benefited from a few extra months of production. Age of Conan did not receive the widespread mass-appeal of other games that are offered on home consoles, although Funcom has promised a version for Xbox 360 in 2009. ^[45]

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.^[6] The game launched at 9 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.^[10] Although originally announced as being available for the Xbox 360, the console version is at least a year behind schedule.^[9]

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 Howard’s sole Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon.^[11] Hyborian Adventures’ release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan franchise.

Like many other MMO games, there is a monthly subscription fee. The suggested retail price of an Age of Conan subscription card is $29.99 (€19.28) for two months. Another available option is a recurring monthly subscription plan paid online by credit card, usually costing $14.99 (€9.63) a month. Discounts can be obtained when subscribing online by purchasing multiple months of play time simultaneously; however, the first month is free.