Hellforge posits that 2008 was the worst year on record for MMOs. But the "collapse" had nothing to do with the genre's viability, and everything to do with hubris and poor decisions by game-makers. The wreckage includes three titles whose names are either punchlines by now or dangerously close: Hel...

With Wrath of the Lich King out, everyone's forgotten Age of Conan ever existed. But Funcom's level design gave its own title a head start to the trash can. Writer Nelson Williams over at Vox ex Machina gives a detailed takedown of how an MMO goes from 700,000 subscribers to nearly zilch in six mont...

Finally! Death and destruction all in one two hour session. Yes, I've been handing guilds their asses and sieging all week. There is nothing like the smell of hard work smoldering beneath raging fires, with the owners of the disaster looking upon you trying to figure out how to stop their impending ...

Funcom's Gaute Godager is pretty ballsy for a guy sitting on top of an unfinished MMO. The Age of Conan director cheap shotted his Blizzard rivals in an interview over at Eurogamer, where he compares World of Warcraft to fast food. "But you know... I'm going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you've bee...

Get ready for difficult-to-pronounce names. Composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen has done a two-disc soundtrack for Age of Conan, featuring a variety of Scandinavian musicians, including Helene Bøksle, folks from Norway's State Opera Choir, and three songs kicked in by rock group Turbonegro, who perform...

I didn’t expect to have such a hard time choosing a class in Age of Conan. My main is always a caster of some sort and preferably one with a pet. When you like to solo as much as I do, having a pet provides more options for setting up encounters. Even a weak pet can be used to pull or distract mob...

Filed under: PC, MMO With the amount of hype, advertising, positive reviews and media attention Grand Theft Auto IV has received over the past few months, we wholly expected it to remain on top of the software sales charts until our video game consoles grew sentient and attempted to purge humanity f...

Reader Allison sends a chuckleicious play-nice — "just my advice, nothing official" warning— from an Age of Conan GM to a Something Awful guild member. (.jpg of the chat after the jump). Remember that large-scale player-vs-player? Well, just don't make it too large-scale. The GM more or less ask...

Since posting my impressions and my first steps into the Age of Conan, I've gotten daily emails from folks who would like to point out that the launch hasn't gone smoothly for everyone involved, and I figured I would take a moment to acknowledge this. Yes, some folks in Europe had bad key codes in t...

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser. I've spent a lot of time on Age of Conan this weekend, mainly because I am quitting smoking (4 days now) and it gives me something else to obsess over. I've met many new friends, though none of them are quite as cool as this guy her...