SAN FRANCISCO--It wouldn't be the 2008 Game Developers Conference without games to show, and we took the opportunity to take an updated look at Funcom's Age of Conan： Hyborian Adventures． The upcoming online game takes place in the savage, brutal fantasy world Age of Conan created by author Robert E． Howard, and it's continued to show progress along the course of its development over the past four-and-a-half years． We had a chance to revisit the character creation process, which leads to your first adventure on the island of Tortage and will put you on a path to, as game director Gaute Godager put it, "peeling back the layers of an evil onion," since, over the course of the game, you'll encounter evil factions and monsters who seem threatening enough, but when defeated or escaped, may prove even graver threats．

The famous barbarian roars into the UK with Age of Conan： Hyborian Adventures． This massively multiplayer online role-playing game for the PC has been long awaited by fans． Developed by Funcom--the creator of Anarchy Online--it was revealed at the start of the week that a total of 700,000 copies of the fantasy game were due to rampage amongst the general public on release day． Preorders of the Collector's Edition have now completely sold out--despite a second print run to cope with demand, bringing the total to 110,000．

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．

According to Funcom, the investment will be used to ramp up marketing and operational capacity prior to the game's anticipated October 30 launch date． The developer also announced it plans to investigate the casual MMOG market, though it did not mention any specific titles．

It's impossible to think of Robert E． Howard's iconic Cimmerian barbarian without also thinking of the brutal, lawless, and lewdly wanton Hyborian Age in which Conan dwells． That's exactly the tact Norwegian-based Funcom plans to take with the upcoming Age of Conan： Hyborian Adventures, a fully fledged massively multiplayer online role-playing game in which players delve into a world lorded over by Conan the king．

June 12, 2008 - Hot on the heels of the release of the Age of Conan videogame, Funcom has announced the release of the Age of Conan soundtrack．

In addition to the in-game music the album also comes with a special bonus CD, which includes eight more orchestral songs from the game plus three songs Turbonegro． Amongst these will be "Destroy All Monsters", a brand new song inspired by legendary feats of Conan． This is the first new material recorded by Turbonegro featuring their new drummer Tomas Dahl．

As for the content, things seem to start to tail off in terms of solid quest lines and more engaging content once you hit 40． In the Field of the Dead, the game's zone for those between 40 and 50, things start off at a decent clip with a few quests near the zone's beginning, but then seem to sputter to a slow crawl, offering only a few tasks and meager rewards． Compared to the polished level 1 through 20 experience in Tortage and large number of quest chains available in the 20 to 40 zones, Field of the Dead doesn't really stack up． Leveling is still entirely possible through grinding as downed mobs around your level give out pretty good experience bonuses, but opportunities to gain quest experience rewards that can so quickly propel you along the leveling curve seem to dry up．

At level 20 you get the ability to start harvesting resources, which has so far proven to be mind-numbingly boring． Thankfully the game's auction and bank systems were brought back online last week so there's more of a point to the whole system, as you finally have a convenient way to sell items, but the way the resources are laid out makes harvesting extremely tedious． The game features three resource zones, all of which are set up for you to just run around and chop wood, mine ore, pick cotton, and launch arrows at prey． Resources can be harvested in the questing zones as well, but trying to track everything down and label it on your mini-map isn't exactly entertaining, particularly if there are others roaming around competing for resource nodes, as there frequently are．

The spoils of all this harvesting, crafting at level 40, and eventually setting up structures in your guild's city are interesting, though．