Age of Conan

Did You Know?

• Knut Avenstroup Haugen won the IFMCA award for Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media for his score.
• The game received 'generally favorable reviews' according to Metacritic.
• Seth Schiesel of The New York Times opined that the game would have benefited from a few extra months of production.

Setting

The Hyborian Age, a low fantasy pseudo-historical world created by Robert E. Howard, is the setting for Age of Conan. The warlord Conan has taken the throne of Aquilonia, but ancient evils plot his downfall. Lead artist Terje Lundberg explained that the game's look comes from Howard's stories, which depict a gritty realm of dark, ancient forces and mighty, decaying civilizations. The world feels heavy with history, seen in crumbling mortar and ruins. Its majesty is monolithic, brutal, and primitive, not a clean, new-looking high fantasy. At launch, the game includes three countries: snowy, highland Cimmeria; Aquilonia with green hills, lush riverbeds, and the city of Tarantia; and desert Stygia with some beautiful cities. The island of Tortage offers diverse geography from jungle to harbors.

Development

Between March 2005 and January 2006, Funcom periodically revealed concept art and screenshots from Age of Conan. The art director for the project was Didrik Tollefsen, previously known for The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online – Shadowlands, which won the Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction award in 2003. In January 2006, Funcom unveiled the community portal for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. By that time, much of the pre-launch community had gathered around the forums and IRC chat of the official website, with informal events such as IRC chats with developers and community contests in summer 2006. In April 2006, Funcom created a forum for guild recruitment called the Guild Hall. In January 2007, Funcom announced that the original twenty-three classes had been merged down to fourteen classes to avoid lack of diversity. On February 7, 2008, Funcom and Eidos announced that over 500,000 people had signed up for beta testing. Five principal individuals worked on the music and audio. The audio director was Morten Sørlie, succeeded by Simon Poole in May 2007. Sound designers were Tord D. Nikolaisen and Fredrik Martol. Composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen wrote the musical score, studying traditional music from relevant parts of the world, ancient and medieval music, romantic orchestra repertoire, and film scores. The female vocalist was Norwegian singer Helene Bøksle, with lyrics in Old Norwegian from the Völuspá. Norwegian punk rock artists Turbonegro contributed three bonus songs to the soundtrack CD.

Release

Funcom delayed Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures on January 21, 2008 and again on March 24, 2008. Once released, the game sold over 500,000 copies worldwide by June 1, 2008, and one million copies had been shipped in total six days later. Since release, Funcom made improvements to performance and changes and additions not ready at launch, including new adventuring zones and revamps of existing dungeons. On May 19, 2008, GameZone.com presented a series of original fictional stories by Michael Lafferty, stemming from the game world, written with permission and cooperation of Funcom. In September 2008, producer and game director Gaute Godager resigned from his role and from Funcom, stating he was not happy with elements in the game's development since release. He was succeeded by Craig Morrison. On June 30, 2011, Funcom began marketing the game as Age of Conan: Unchained and altered the subscription model to a hybrid one incorporating free-to-play and premium plans. On February 22, 2013, Age of Conan was released on Steam.