Age of Conan delayed

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 August, 2007

Bit more time to buff it up.

Funcom and Eidos' upcoming PC MMO Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has been bumped back to 25th March 2008 in order to spruce things up.

"After careful consideration, and analysis of recent Beta feedback, we believe that the new release date is in the best interest of the gamers, our company and our owners," said Trond Arne Aas, Funcom CEO.

"We are fully committed to delivering games with absolute qualities, and in the current MMO marketplace we know that only the best is good enough to truly succeed. With the new release date we have therefore given ourselves more time to meet and deliver on the massive expectations for the game."

Producer/director Gaute Godager added that the added development team would allow the team to "deliver something even more unique and powerful".

Age of Conan is also in development for Xbox 360. We're expecting to get another look at the PC build during this month's Games Convention in Leipzig.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dizzy #1 5 years ago

    March 2008?

    Way to close to WoW expansion... they will get slaughtered.

  • orakio #2 5 years ago

    WoW will be, you mean? ;-)

    WAR versus AoC. Let the fight begin!

  • miiiguel #3 5 years ago

    off-topic/on-topic: Kurt Busiek's Conan series from Dark Horse is amazing, highly recommended.

  • asphaltcowboy #4 5 years ago

    Age of Conan - Superfluous Adventures

  • Gurgeh #5 5 years ago

    The delay makes sense as they haven't been able to keep the test server up with only a couple of hundred players, and no-one's seen the siege game working yet.

  • evild_edd #6 5 years ago

    I'm interested in this for the 360 as I feel there's room for a decent MMO on the console. FFXI and PSU, good as they may be, haven't been full 'next-gen' experiences... and the reception to Two Worlds wasn't particularly endeering.

    Fingers-crossed this title produces the goods....

  • asphaltcowboy #7 5 years ago

    Er... is it coming out on 360?

  • Dizzy #8 5 years ago

    >Er... is it coming out on 360?

    Yes... but a lot later.

  • Kropotkin #9 5 years ago

    Oh look. Another much sought after title gets bumped from the autumn release schedule. Granted this is an MMO but its not much unlike many other titles that are slated for 'fall release' as so many publishers spouted out during this year's E3.

    I found it to be quite tragic every time a journo asked the question 'when will the game be out' and the standard response was 'fall'. It's as if the entire industry unleashes all of their games within a 2 month window at the end of the year. Oh wait, they do.

    So what's the affect of all this? Well this year is going to be particularly bad for a bunch of top notch titles all appearing within weeks of each other. Some will get buried yet not deserve such treatment and then the publisher will loose money on what they regarded as a sure fire hit which it would have been if they hadn't have put up against all the other amazing games that are appearing within the 2 month period the industry thinks people buy games in.

    The other solution of course is to just bailn as Rockstar and now Funcom have done. The usual 'spring next year' stuff happens at this time of year as publishers realise that there is a huge risk their titles will get buried so they push their game into the following year. They say spring to appease the masses but in reality it will more than likely find itself in the next 'holiday season' i.e. autumn again with the hope that they might get more sales then due to the fact that other titles around at the time won't be up to much. Morons.

  • Azazel #10 5 years ago

    Needs more camel-punching.

  • Emortal #11 5 years ago

    If you ask me, theres way too much good stuff coming out before christmas anyway, so its only a good thing that some games get pushed to next year :)

  • wired009 #12 5 years ago

    I'm surprised there aren't more quality MMO's out to challenge WOW. The industry is really handing all the customers over to Blizzard. Conan is a great theme for a game, but from what I've seen and heard, Funcom/Eidos have a long way to go to make me want to purchase this title. For starters, the graphics and character models need improving. Also, I need to know that the gameplay will be more interesting than some MMO hack and slash.

  • SleepyMagpie #13 5 years ago

    "For starters, the graphics and character models need improving."

    wired009, the graphics are currently the highlight and strength of AoC development! IMO the graphics piss on any other current offering from a great height! And if you think WoW's saccarine, candyfloss, lo-poly visuals are the paramount of MMOG graphics then you've been watching too much teletubbies or downing too many from your moms paracetamol bottle. The color palette, the shadows, the sheer artistic vision - all the visuals shown for AoC up to now are more mature and darker than that of any other, and much anticipated.

    What they most likely need the dev time for is to sort out the "arcade" fighting, which is supposed to be a first for MMORPGs - although SWG after the NGE (dread), and now Tabula Rasa are already playing at it. I'm really apprehensive about this feature, and am in no way certain they can pull it off. Atm, the visuals for the fighting in AoC look completely off - swords flailed madly about without any noticable connections made, to flesh or otherwise, just copious amounts of blood splashing everywhere.

    More power to Funcom though, hope they do manage to pull it off, and that it wasn't all hubris.

  • wired009 #14 5 years ago

    I went over the video clips for AoC and there is clearly a progression in the quality of the visuals as the game goes into late stage development. The world terrain looks great but sometimes the characters and equipment look out of place. It is all work in progress so I must reserve judgement. Still, it doesn't look quite the way I want it to look yet, so I stand by what I said about the graphics needing improving. WOW may be low poly but everything looks consistent, and the game still looks good despite its age and cartoony style. The music for AoC is my favorite aspect of the game so far. It looks like the budget wasn't held back for AoC, I hope the same is done for the voice acting. (/agrees with Azazel!!!)