http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2861&table=CONTENT

Indeed.

For those too lazy to paste above link in a new window:

Funcom is proud to announce that ‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’ is now available as a free trial.

Funcom, Fileplanet and Ausgamers have teamed up to provide gamers everywhere with the opportunity to download and play ‘Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures’ for free for a period of seven to fourteen days. This is the chance to experience the brutal, savage and sexy world of Conan where you can live, fight and explore in the world of Hyboria together with thousands of people from across the globe.

“The time has finally come for us to open the flood gates,” says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. “There is a world of gamers out there who have never played ‘Age of Conan’ and we want them to experience what hundreds of thousands of gamers have before them. The game has matured tremendously since launch, and we feel confident that this is the time to launch a trial. ‘Age of Conan’ is simply bigger and better than it ever was, and we want both new and previous players alike to experience that!”

All you have to do to start playing ‘Age of Conan’ today is visit the www.ageofconan.com/trial website, download the game and off you go. Funcom has also teamed up with Fileplanet and Ausgamers, and depending on which source you download from you will receive between seven to fourteen days free play time and a host of special rewards. Various websites across the world will also be doing exclusive give-aways where gamers can receive a special key that will unlock rare virtual items in addition to the free trial play time.

 (from: http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=117101)

Indeed!  And make sure to use our special MMORPG.com keys to get in game goodies with your trial:

North America: CLICK HERE FOR MMORPG.com NORTH AMERICA TRIAL KEYS

Europe: CLICK HERE FOR MMORPG.com EU TRIAL KEYS

First thought was April fools day was yesterday, but I found the thread on the forums so I guess it is real

forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php

I will probably give it a try to see if the "much improved" version of DX is true or not, but on the other hand I think I should probably hold off till 1.05 goes live. In February the DX10n was pretty sad as far as performance.

Kind of interesting they dropped this before patch 1.05. Either one of two things, (A) subs are still dropping and they need a big boost in the numbers before the 1st quarter report comes out or (B) they are having issues with 1.05.

Interesting news whatever the reason.

This has actually been on my schedule for quite some time now

Sooner than i expected. \o/

I was thinking maybe after 1.5 is sorted, but already?

wonder if you have to enter credit card info to get in. Just thinking about some of the threads I have seen on here lately.

Originally posted by Jackdog

First thought was April fools day was yesterday, but I found the thread on the forums so I guess it is real

forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php

I will probably give it a try to see if the "much improved" version of DX is true or not, but on the other hand I think I should probably hold off till 1.05 goes live. In February the DX10n was pretty sad as far as performance.

Kind of interesting they dropped this before patch 1.05. Either one of two things, (A) subs are still dropping and they need a big boost in the numbers before the 1st quarter report comes out or (B) they are having issues with 1.05.

Interesting news whatever the reason.

First of all Q1 is officially over, so anything they do now to boost subscribers will not be shown as profit in the q1 report at all. 1.05 are in final testing internally and the GD said in the recen newsletter I think it was they hoped to push this patch to testlive this week or next week. I'm sure the trails have been planned some time from Funcom, as you don't just decide over night to push them live. Specially not when you cooperate with other companies for the distribution and ingame items to follow the trial accounts.

Making trial accounts availble have been in the pipeline for some time. I'm surprised they didn't wait until patch 1.05 is ready, but seeing the amount of people who have been talking about trials on different forums I'm not surprised they put it out now. After all getting more people ingame will be good for both servers and Funcom, and if this gives them more players it is a win/win situation for both Funcom and the players.

When it comes to Dx10 Test the performance is still not very good, I guess we need a few patches with optimalizations to get it where it should be. So I would wait if I were you and check the patch notes to see if there is any changes to this there.

Nice one... looking for a further boost to pop levels when ppls see with their own eyes how nice it is to play AoC.

And at last finaticd can change his sig lol!
 

The actual time to start with the free trials was a decision that was discussed in detail internally. Many points need to be taken into consideration and update 1.05 was also a topic there of course. We felt however that the game is in a very good state right now already and it does make sense for new interested players to check it out. All the changes and improvements since launch do make it a different experience. It is a fact however that the game will be improved further in the future. Update 1.05 is a big step there but it will of course not end with that. So in the end there would probably always be a reason to wait a little longer until another improvement has been made. But that would also mean that free trials would then never be available. So we are confident that new players as well as returning ones will like what they see.
__________________

Funcom Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

source: http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=1255067&postcount=20

Good stuff, was about to make a thread about it.

Direct link:

http://www.ageofconan.com/trial/

Anyone tested the free trail and can tell us how it works?

How big is the download?

Does it cost anything to download?

Can you install from friends dvd and enter the trail info?

What limitations do free trail have?

Originally posted by Jackdog

wonder if you have to enter credit card info to get in.

Think you can use the option"pay by  cash" or something when regisering. Need conformation dogh:)

Originally posted by Crashloop

Originally posted by Jackdog

First thought was April fools day was yesterday, but I found the thread on the forums so I guess it is real

forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php

I will probably give it a try to see if the "much improved" version of DX is true or not, but on the other hand I think I should probably hold off till 1.05 goes live. In February the DX10n was pretty sad as far as performance.

Kind of interesting they dropped this before patch 1.05. Either one of two things, (A) subs are still dropping and they need a big boost in the numbers before the 1st quarter report comes out or (B) they are having issues with 1.05.

Interesting news whatever the reason.

 

First of all Q1 is officially over, so anything they do now to boost subscribers will not be shown as profit in the q1 report at all.

Should have made myself more clear. When they issue the report next month, and if the numbers are still declining, they can tell the stockholders they anticipate a surge in the second quarter due to the free trial.

1.05 are in final testing internally and the GD said in the recen newsletter I think it was they hoped to push this patch to testlive this week or next week. I'm sure the trails have been planned some time from Funcom, as you don't just decide over night to push them live. Specially not when you cooperate with other companies for the distribution and ingame items to follow the trial accounts.

I agree,  like you pointed out the second quarter started yesterday. They timed the trial to start at the beginning of it. Good planning on tiier part. Should have a significant impact on their second quarter numbers. If 1.05 does what I think it will do they should get a good amount of retention.10% retention from free trials is considered a success, I will be surprised if they don't meet or exceed that after 1.05 hits the servers.

Making trial accounts availble have been in the pipeline for some time. I'm surprised they didn't wait until patch 1.05 is ready, but seeing the amount of people who have been talking about trials on different forums I'm not surprised they put it out now. After all getting more people ingame will be good for both servers and Funcom, and if this gives them more players it is a win/win situation for both Funcom and the players.

When it comes to Dx10 Test the performance is still not very good, I guess we need a few patches with optimalizations to get it where it should be. So I would wait if I were you and check the patch notes to see if there is any changes to this there.

yep, I think you are right again. I am holding off till 1.05 goes live at least.

Originally posted by ObliviousX

Good stuff, was about to make a thread about it.

 

Direct link:

 

http://www.ageofconan.com/trial/

ye saw it just now at another site and came here searching for the thread, downloading EU trial.. just to see if those who say the game has changed so much is right, or wrong. Is it fun or is it like beta

It's great that a free trial is released, but considering the huge changes that will be applied with 1.5, I don't exactly understand why FC would want to introduce new players a RPG system that's going to be completely revamped in a little while.

Oh well... Great news all the same

I thought they were waiting for the stat fix patch in 1.05 for the free trial.  This is a mistake IMO.  Oh well.

Does anyone know if previous customers can use our accounts to check it out?  I'm not going to download a trial version and start from scratch, and I'd like to know before I reinstall and do 10 months worth of patching.

This is very great news but i have no clue why not wait till 1.5 this looks like funcom is shooting in their foot again.

Peoples that will try game now and subscribe will get whole RPG system revamped crafting revamped even class balance revamped it would be better if they started with this than watch everything gone diffrent in front of their eyes.

Or maybe funcom have nothing to lose because 1.5 is too far away and they need more subscribers now.

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

I thought they were waiting for the stat fix patch in 1.05 for the free trial.  This is a mistake IMO.  Oh well.

Does anyone know if previous customers can use our accounts to check it out?  I'm not going to download a trial version and start from scratch, and I'd like to know before I reinstall and do 10 months worth of patching.

Unfortunately these trials seem only to allow new account creations and not reactivations of existing accounts.

There is an official reason why they did it now as posted by Tarib on the AOC EU forums.

See above