The Age of Conan monthly game director's letter has been rechristened "Monthly Development Update". This month's version has arrived on the official site with some news about the forthcoming 2.1 update. Devs outline some of the new PvP content coming with 2.1 including the Call of Jhebbal Sag mini-game and also spend time describing some new social content in the form of guild events and horse racing.

The Guild Events are new social mini-games held in guild city taverns ("outdoor") or in the guild city cultural retreats ("indoor"). There are five Event types introduced in this patch:

• Treasure Hunt - (outdoor only) Pick up randomly scattered treasures across the zone for the highest point total.
• Demon Hunt - (outdoor only) Find your compatriots that have become demons and catch them for points. As a demon, survive without being caught for points.
• Ymir's Hunt - (indoor only) Freezetag! Run away from the Ymirish or you'll be frozen. Survive or unfreeze others for points.
• Storytelling - (indoor or outdoor) Take turns telling a story and vote for the finest storyteller over multiple elimination rounds.
• Insult Contest - (indoor or outdoor) Skillfully insult a given target using the theme provided and vote for whoever you feel is the best at slinging the proverbial mud to give them points.

Check out the full Monthly Development Update HERE.

Thanks AmazingAvery for the tip!

Lame. No need to even expand on crticism of this game anymore.

Originally posted by mCalvert

Lame. No need to even expand on crticism of this game anymore.

 Must be since the general consensus on this game has pretty much changed. Most people believe that its pretty good. Only real criticism left is how horrendous the launch of the game went.

[Mod Edit]

These are old school MUD-ish ideas, particularly the storytelling and insult contests. Interesting.

best game out there and still getting better each patch

Originally posted by mCalvert

Lame. No need to even expand on crticism of this game anymore.

 Gotta agree with this guy despite everyone else.  Seriously, a new battleground?  That's not what pvp'ers want at all.  And the games.......I don't even want to comment.  Funcom mislead everyone with this game from the start and they don't have their development priorities straight at all.  I'm glad I left when I did.

Cujo, well played.

I love Conan personally. It had a rough start but they have improved the game and it is alot of fun for me now. More people should give it another chance.

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Seriously, a new battleground?  That's not what pvp'ers want at all.  And the games.......I don't even want to comment. 

They held a very extensive survey a few months ago to gather information about what the players wanted, and actually new minigame battlegrounds were exactly what players wanted; at least those who did make the effort to contribute to the survey and not just complain.

Thats what I wanted.

Agree with mCalvert.

lol

Someone have had a bad day.

I love the sound of this new PvP game. It's 12 vs 12 ALterac Valley style just that you also will have mounts, and buffs (curses from the gods or blessings from the gods) on various locations.

Also fun to see horse racing (betting) and like 3-4 other games getting implemented. Seriously, people not finding something to do now in AoC must have veryveryvery special taste. game have kept me in now for 15 months straight (small breaks here and there but always subbed and ready).

I easily recommend the game to anyone, even my best friends (but they play it already). :)

Having recentely gone back to this game after a long time, i have to say it is rather polished and great to play.I,m not a pvp kinda guy so i dont care about that..its also very stable unless you play on windows vista 32 bit.you will just have the old memory leeks..well i did anyways.thing is£70 for a years sub+ at time of this posting you get +60 days if you sub for a year..pretty good value for money imo.all servers seem pretty packed..easy to find grps at all lvls i have found.i think only downside is that you have offline leveling which means that you can acrue lvls and use em on chars at lvl 30 or higher.that to me is wrong..really takes the fun out of levelling.

WoW players certainly spend a lot of time putting other games down.  Conan is the best around at the moment.

@Kevjards

I agree with you on many things,, but your remark on Vista 32 is fare from correct :) I play Vista 32 actually, wiith 8800 GTX. I play on a bit downgraded high and have great FPS. No problems here. But of course if I try to turn graphics up to a level that my hardware can't deliver on , of course things should start to go slow and get weird. AoC is a game that give most hardware a real challenge... even today, so you kind of have to be reasonable and run the game at medium when your hardware is only medium. Another thing, there is a lot of home made funny PC solutions out there, with funny software setups and bottlenecks of all colours and styles. If you clean up and make those processes your hardware have to run efficient, you can get a long way with Vista 32 and other medium setups.

I like the sound of these additions, might have to resub to check this stuff out, or better yet how about some free time FC, it's been a while? :)

The big RP guilds have already left the game, although some of these features are interesting, they treat sympthoms and not causes, i.e. non RP'rs on the RP server griefing and a broken criminal and murder system.

As long as level 80s gank lowbies the game is broken.

Sorry, I should probably just stop commenting on the continued wrong track Conan is taking. Its just a big dissapointment.  Lots of potential, very little of it realized from the grind to the lack of meaningful pvp to the focus on magic to the long loading screens and heavy instancing. I understand lots of people like it. But the proof is in the pudding. Subs keep going down.

Definitely the best mmorpg out atm. Refreshingly dark and brutal, with less elves and rotating neon glowing weapons than the majority of other mmos.

Originally posted by mCalvert

Sorry, I should probably just stop commenting on the continued wrong track Conan is taking. Its just a big dissapointment.  Lots of potential, very little of it realized from the grind to the lack of meaningful pvp to the focus on magic to the long loading screens and heavy instancing. I understand lots of people like it. But the proof is in the pudding. Subs keep going down.

 

Your comments here make me sincerely wonder how long it's been since you last played the game for any length of time.  Focus on magic?  Are you kidding me?  Assassins, Rangers, and Barbs can trounce magic users while barely breaking a sweat.    Heavy instancing?  Maybe in Tortage, but the zone beyond there are huge, especially so in the Khitai expansion regions.  No idea about subs, but both Cimmeria and Wiccana's server populations are very healthy currently, and I'm seeing new players appear around the forums/in global every day.

Looking forward to this patch.

Conan is not the best game out there. It is good but not the best. Everquest2 and Lotro are very well on the best side, but conan dont think so( i have 4 max levels) and its tedious at top levels