Age of Conan begins 7-day free trial period

by Shawn Schuster on Apr 2nd 2009 10:00AM

During last week's GDC interview with Craig Morrison, the Age of Conan game director spoke with us about the future of the game and the new direction the team is taking to get new players in and old players back. One of those methods he mentioned was a free trial "coming next week". The prophecy has come true, and the Age of Conan free trial giveaways have begun!

You can head over to the AoC main site to download your very own 7-day trial (and promotional video), or look for site-specific trials popping up on various MMO fan outlets. Such examples include MMORPG.com and Eurogamer whose limited free trials come with three exciting in-game bonuses: a Totem of Origins which lets you teleport back to your cultural city, a Bag of Holding which improves inventory space and an Enruned Kosalan Ring that increases the damage output of its wearer. Comment below to let us know about other promotions tied in with this free trial period.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, free-trial, funcom, in-game-item, mmorpg.com, promotion

Reader Comments (22)

I played this game during beta and on launch, and it was incredibly buggy, even on my high-end gaming PC. However, I think it has a lot of potential, and I'm willing to give it another shot.

Despite my misgivings, I too will give it another try. It was visually and aurally great, and Tortage was extremely well done. The rest, well...a lot will have to change to keep me beyond the trial.

My problem is that there are some things that will never change that I don't like. The 'instanced' feeling of the world, for one, I never came to enjoy. I understand its use given that some people want to just PVE sometimes and want to grief/counter-grief other times, but it feels wrong. Also, the lack of continuity between areas. WoW and LOTRO got it right with mostly seamless region transitions and fewer loading screens. I've often wondered if given the dense graphical nature of the game this wasn't possible for AoC, but whatever the reason, it sometimes felt more like I was jumping through warp gates rather than traveling across a vast land.

Having to do Tortage every time is kind of dumb. Have they changed that yet? Not a big gripe, but still. A second starting zone or the option to skip them entirely once you level a character to max level would be cool.

DX10 is live right now. Going to take a look tonight. It wouldn't be the first game to rebound or, as they optimistically put it, grow steadily. Lineage 2 had a great beta, a terrible launch, and eventually did alright after they finally put in everything that was supposed to be there at launch. But ultimately, L2 was a very pretty grindfest. Let's hope Conan doesn't fall into that same trap.

Previous 20 Comments