Massively^™

It's been a long time coming - some four and a half years for the developers at Funcom. But finally, finally, the gates to Hyboria open. Today Age of Conan officially launches. We've got an enormous wrap-up of all the recent content we've had here on the site. We've also got a few more pieces up our sleeves for later today, just in case you didn't take the day off of work to play. For the moment, though, you'll have to be happy with Massively's "best of": Age of Conan.

	Six reasons to be excited about Age of Conan Everyone seems to be aware of one or two great features coming with Age of Conan, but we realized that not everybody has a complete view of some of the coolest ones -- which has led us to sort of a blind men and the elephant situation.
	Ask Massively: Age of Conan survival guide (for your computer) I have been playing the Age of Conan beta, and, like you, I had some fairly severe issues with frame rate. I was able to tweak a few settings in the game that improved my game play experience immensely. In fact, it improved it so much that I created a new character and leveled her to 10 in the time it used to take to load a zone in some of the older beta clients.
	Player vs. Everything: Age of Conan closed beta impressions Everyone and their brother seems to be writing about Age of Conan over the last few days, but hopefully you're hungry for a little more. I've spent the last day and a half trying out different classes and playing through the various starting missions, and I'm ready to serve up some impressions.

Read on below the cut for our full coverage roster.

In his post-launch developer wrap-up, Flying Lab CEO and co-founder Russell Williams talks about how Pirates of the Burning Sea went from an idea to a game, and what they learned after it launched. Their great idea: kick-ass ship combat, PvP that affected the world, a robust economy and great stories. In 2002, that was all they had -- an idea and a sense that the player should never have to look around too hard to find the fun. What followed was six long years of progress and setbacks as they put that simple idea into code and watched World of Warcraft completely change the face of MMOs.

Players who played PotBS once it went live played completely differently than the beta players. They had tuned the game based on beta testing, but that led them false as players who might, in beta, have spent a substantial amount of time on the open sea, instead spent it on land or in instanced missions. Without the needs of world PvP-ers driving the economy, the economy itself hit a reef. They have a solution for that about ready to go. Williams feels the game plays well to its strength -- ship-to-ship combat, though he acknowledges that many of missions were created with a template, and look it. Could the avatar play better? Yes, he says: and they plan to reduce the instancing in towns and open up more combat options in upcoming patch 1.4.

Players are eager these days to try the new game, play it for awhile, then move on to something new. It's hard to get a hook into these people, but Flying Lab has seen what people actually like best about the game now that PotBS has launched, and will keep playing to strengths and addressing weaknesses as it settles into its niche.