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We've already had a look inside the latest Clan of Conan newsletter, finding that there were shiny Kosalan talismans for everyone these holidays. Free jewelery aside, the newsletter also contains a great deal of information about what's coming in Age of Conan's Update 4, and a video of the new dungeon Xibaluku to boot. Xibaluku is intended for a full group of max-level players, and will be situated in the Thunder River area. After reading about it in the newsletter, you can click the "read more" link for an in-depth writeup of the dungeon.

Players won't just be free to walk into Xibaluku. They'll first need to complete a new solo dungeon called The Slaughterhouse Cellar, also located in Thunder River and to be released in Update 4. Those that venture deep enough into Xibaluku might find one of two new Undead social pets that are being introduced to the game, which are good for "spreading gloom and dreadfulness", and probably scaring newbies in town.

Expect the PvP system to receive some tweaking in Update 4 too, with the "PvP resources" system set to debut. If you're holding PvP resources to bring to an architect and get player-killed, you have a chance of them being looted by your assassin. Architects will need the resources to build and repair battlekeeps, and the hope is that epic battles will take place over the humble gathering nodes.

After the rumors of staffing cuts at Funcom turned out to be true last week, many of you may have been predicting bad things for the future of Age of Conan -- or at least, enough of you to have Erling Ellingsen provide MTV's Multiplayer blog with a short statement regarding the health of their flagship title:

Our aim is for this to not affect development of 'Age of Conan,' or any of our other games, at all. We are sticking firmly to our plans. The Xbox 360 version of the game is still in production, but as before we are not committing to any specific dates. I wish I could give you more information, but I can't at the time being.

This backs up what Funcom had to say last week, that this is simply "business as usual" and not anything to be concerned about. It is good to hear about the Xbox 360 version once in a while, even if essentially nothing was revealed other than "it's still coming". We're pretty sure, however, that most of our readers that are interested in AoC haven't been held back due to waiting on the console release, because let's face it -- if you're an MMO-fan, you've got a PC. The 360 release stands to reach a new audience, one which will cause Conan's roleplaying-racism to join together with real-life racism through the magic of Xbox Live, and might just make the internets spontaneously combust.

Word is that there will be a new Conan movie next year, and that Age of Conan will tie in with it. Of course, the movie isn't based on Age of Conan; both are independently based on Robert E. Howard's pulp fiction stories. Nevertheless, the Massively office is now full of ideas for MMO-based movies.

There have been rumors of EverQuest and World of Warcraft films in the past. Some would say there's a fundamental problem with the idea though: there's no story to adapt! Let's face it: movies adapted from computer and video games have usually been pretty damned terrible. But if there is a disconnect between the two different styles of storytelling, then maybe MMOs are the perfect games to adapt to film. Since they only provide a setting, screenwriters, directors, and producers can create a medium-appropriate story of their own.

Then again, isn't that what they do most of the time anyway? What do you think; could an MMO be adapted into a good movie? Why or why not? And if it can, which virtual would would you lke to see on the silver screen?

We have to admit, we were a little bit surprised when this particular Age of Conan screenshot landed in our One Shots in-box. While we have no way of verifying if the person in question is actually a Funcom GM or if they're just really good at Photoshop, we still thought this one was highly amusing. Confused? We were too, until we read the attached note:

After a long hard day of assisting players, sometimes a Game Master just needs a good sit. Where better than the throne of Conan himself? It's good to be the king.

-- your friendly neighborhood Funcom employee who happens to read Massively

If that really is a GM, we think that's a pretty funny/cool thing to do after a long hard day -- and we certainly don't begrudge them the chair! If you're a GM in a game, feel free to send us screenshots of your particular game (no names required) and if not, feel free to send your screenshots in anyway! All games are welcome, from indie to mainstream! Just send those cool screenshots to us here at oneshots AT massively.com along with a note describing what we're seeing. Pretty easy way to give your favorite game exposure, no?

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is the naughty charismatic pontificating stallion behind Zero Punctuation, the hilarious weekly videogame review web program. It's not often Croshaw will review an MMORPG, so it is apropos to share the latest Zero Punctuation with the new roast target being Age of Conan. The review itself contains naughty words making it: NSFW.

Reviewing MMORPGs isn't an easy endeavor. The MMORPG is a beast, various systems, game mechanics, and time sinks to wade through to get from beginning to the end. To give an honest and fair shake it takes hundreds hours of investment for the reviewer to familiarize and formulate a real knowledgeable opinion. MMORPGs aren't fair in that regard, and reviews aren't very sticky since most MMOs are undergoing constant development. But come on, it's Zero Punctuation!

Yes, it's time again for another edition of undocumented Age of Conan patch notes. We briefly mentioned them in the invisible hotfix edition that took place shortly after the latest Age of Conan patch. The list maintained on the official Age of Conan forums has grown since then. We know some of our reader's favorite Age of Conan moments were canceling their accounts (very funny guys) but not everyone is a quitter, and this time around there are a lot more fixes reported.

There are two forum threads that players maintaining the undocumented changes from the latest patch. One on the US player forums and a bug thread on the EU player forums. We took a little heat last time we reported on the last undocumented changes so please keep in mind that Massively can not confirm or deny the submissions reported in the undocumented patch note threads. The reports and feedback presented are done by the Age of Conan playerbase and their intentions are their own. The full list from the US player forums continues after the cut.

General

• Custom-made saddle listed in the patch notes did not make it in. 1 Update: Saddle in game

GUI

• Right clicking to someone's name on chat will result in 5-6 duplicate system spam, including the info about that person. 1
• Mouse autowalk with mounts doesn't enable other controls. 1
  

The never-ending quest and struggle to improve Age of Conan continues. Yesterday's patch introduced a multitude of changes including partial remedies to the female avatar DPS bug. Age of Conan players are well aware that not every patch goes according to plan. In fact, after a new patch goes live, players create and maintain a thread detailing the undocumented changes and also report on its aftermath. This is a great service performed by Age of Conan players, and it keeps everyone informed of the unintended changes and mishaps.

The latest dissection is underway and on the surface it's not looking very good for Funcom. There are two threads representing the latest changes and issues on both the US player forums and the EU player forums. The patch builds are identical thus the results from each report mirror each other. Listed below are some of the more significant items present. It's important to note that both lists are continuously updated as more changes, bugs, and yes even fixes not listed in the official patch notes are uncovered.

• Invisible walls everywhere
• Mapping keys seems to no longer work. [Example: Can't change W to Y]
• Stances getting stuck
• Stamina regeneration decreased
• Rare resource drops increased

There's plenty of doom and gloom discussion surrounding Funcom's Age of Conan. The hours played and reported by X-fire users plummeted since it hit desktops. Possibly the wackiest and most critical bug ever seen in an MMOG ever won't be fixed anytime soon. Unfinished content has diminished Age of Conan's reputation in the later parts of the game. The rap sheet goes on; however, a strong demand exists for a new MMOG as an astonishing 700,000 accounts were registered in the first month alone. That number is quite a feat, but the overall number of subscriptions four or six months down the road comes into question as most players that leave after their first month tend to be very unforgiving.

Stropp, an MMOG blogger, remains optimistic in his post entitled "Why Age of Conan Will Succeed" and points out all the advantages that Age of Conan and Funcom possess. While Stropp did cancel his Age of Conan account he believes the game will not die anytime soon and projects long-term success. Funcom is certainly a capable company with experience, but how many subscribers are needed to claim rousing success or do the crude pitfalls from an all-to-soon-launch already make Age of Conan a failure from a business standpoint? You decide.

Norwegian punk rock band Turbonegro have added their Age of Conan soundtrack contribution "Destroy All Monsters" to their Myspace page. From reading the group's website, it becomes clear that they're at least a little bit loopy; but that's the way we love our rock-stars, right? They sat down for an interview with IGN, in which we find out that the band has ruthlessness, masculinity, and of course, swordsmanship in common with old Conan, and that they have progressed to the child-eating stage of their careers.

The track was performed live at the Age of Conan launch party, and we're told that a high-def clip of this occasion will be available soon. The soundtrack for the game will launch in Norway on the 30th of June, and in August for the rest of the world.

You got bills to pay, no computer upgrades in a year, heck maybe it's been two or three, and here comes along Age of Conan with eye-dazzling effects that you must play. It also comes with launch bugs that don't ease the stress on your computer or your nerves for that matter. Crash after crash will leave you infuriated, the problem could be drivers, maybe the PSU can't handle the load, or it's poor optimization code -- whatever it is let the debugging process begin.

PC Gaming really does need some better standards, especially MMOs, but let's get back the basic computer hardware needed to run Age of Conan. What hardware will make it run like a champ, and what hardware will even run the game at all in case Grandma wants to chop some heads off in Hyboria on the most sluggish computer. Everything you need to know is available in this in-depth, fantastic hardware performance guide by Gamespot.

Age of Conan has received acclaim from all quarters, especially for the quality of the Tortage quests, dialog and voiceover acting. The credit for a bewilderingly vast amount of this material goes to Aaron Dembski-Bowden, a young British writer already known for his work in the tabletop roleplaying field. We tracked him down and managed to secure an interview. Despite the look in his eyes above, which is the sort of thing you see immediately before your character's arms and head are cut off, he proved a very approachable guy...

Let's start with your background, your work to date, what position you held in the AoC team, and what responsibilities that entailed.

I've done a bunch of pen 'n paper RPG work (primarily for White Wolf on their World of Darkness game lines) and Mongoose Publishing's various Fantasy genre licences. I'm currently alternating between videogame work and writing Warhammer 40,000 novels for the Black Library, Games Workshop's publishing house.

Also, in the few moments of clarity that reach me through the haze of over-coffeed sleepless nights, I still cling to the shreds of useful lore I picked up from my writing degree.

This is the part where I should say I've always wanted to be a writer. That's not entirely true. I wanted to be a writer in my teens, when I realised I was too much of a coward to be a paramedic. All that lifesaving sounded like hard work, y'know? And before I wanted to be a paramedic, my only ambition was to be one of the kids that got to hang out with Optimus Prime. In my defence, I was about 4 at the time.

Your Tempest of Set has been set down and your Dark Templar's gone dark. You've really gotten into this whole Conan thing but the Age of Conan servers are down for maintenance. Now what are you going to do? Well, you're sitting at your computer so you could check out the wealth of online forums, fansites, wikis, whatever, that are devoted to the game. But if you really want to dig into Conan and his world you're in luck because there has never been a better time to immerse yourself in Hyboria.

Of course, the best way to learn about Conan is to read the stories written by Robert E. Howard. Howard completed 21 Conan stories between 1932 and his suicide in 1936. Although his writing style may sound somewhat stilted and some of the cultural attitudes about women and non-Europeans prevalent when he lived may be offensive to the modern reader, his work holds up remarkably well. Howard was an exceptionally evocative and imaginative writer with a marked ability to bring his extravagant settings to life. There's a reason why the creation of a pulp fiction author living in a small rural Texas town has not only survived for decades but has become so well known that it's the basis for a best-selling MMO from a game company based in Norway. The original Conan stories are well written and exciting. The problem has been finding them.

GameZone is producing a series of original fiction set in Age of Conan's Hyboria, which deals with the world's characters and lore. The series is created by Michael Lafferty and is a blend of short fiction, comic art, and graphic panel storytelling using in-game screenshots. Lafferty has Funcom's blessing on this; an announcement at the official AoC community site leaves no doubt that they've given their express permission.

Lafferty's fiction begins with 'In Service to a King' and continues with 'Deliverance from the Sea' and 'In the Shadow of the Volcano.' More stories are to follow. GameZone has one caveat about the series, though: "Some of these stories may contain spoilers for quests, so by Crom, be forewarned!" It's doubtful that spoiler quests will keep people from checking out the series, so have a look at Michael Lafferty's work and sound off if you like what he's doing.

So far there have been two major updates to Funcom's still-new Age of Conan. The third has re-added a much-missed feature: the Trader. Traders are a combination bank, auction house, and mailbox. If you haven't yet had the chance to use them, all you have to do is drop your wares into the bank and set the item as 'for sale'. There's no option to do a traditional auction; other players can purchase your items at the price you list, or not.

Additional tweaks to the game correct a leveling exploit formerly available via the apprenticing system, correct a few class ability issues, and smooth out a number of UI issues. Interestingly, Bear Shamans have had a number of abilities moved to an earlier level, correcting a bug where class representatives weren't getting certain spells at all. For the full notes, read on below the cut.