As part of the process of testing its new patches, Age of Conan recently unveiled its new Testlive Server, where players can try out the weekly patches in advance and provide feedback, thus helping find and crush bugs. As of last night, the Testlive Forums are now open. Although anything that happened in Beta is still under NDA (amazingly enough, given how often people talk about it!) the Testlive Forums are open to all active players, and thus are under no NDA.

Players who want to try out various classes at higher levels will also be able to do this on Testlive, as there will be facilities for rapid leveling and automatic gear aquisition. QA manager Nophex explains: 'In order to streamline the testing process we will be placing out special Testlive vendors that will allow you to level up your characters to various levels. This leveling process will also give you appropriate equipment for your level. These vendors will appear on Testlive in the next few weeks.'

The forums are open to both US and EU players, meaning the communities will be sharing a forum for the first time. Age of Conan players can log in to the Testlive Forums with their usual forum name and password.
If you play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you don't wanna miss out such rock bottom price of AoC Gold (age of conan gold)in the world!

Charlottesville, VA (May 27, 2008) - PayByCash®, a division of Internet Payment Solutions, Inc., will provide non-credit card payment services for Funcom's much anticipated, award winning Age of Conan massively multiplayer online game for PC. With the support of PayByCash, Funcom can offer Age of Conan subscribers throughout the world access to premium content through more than 70 payment methods not requiring a credit card.
"Funcom is pleased to expand its relationship with PayByCash. Their product and support services integrate seamlessly into the Age of Conan website, allowing us to tap into a vast customer base that chooses not to use credit cards," said Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. "We are incredibly proud of the Age of Conan game and can't wait to see players experience the amazing adventures we have created."
Added Kevin Higgins, CEO of PayByCash, "We are excited to be a part of the Age of Conan release. We have seen the excitement generated by the million beta subscribers and phenomenally successful early access programs. We know that PayByCash increases the ability of Funcom to reach more premium subscribers worldwide through our partnership. Our business has a global reach, allowing players from every region of the world reliable access to Age of Conan's premium content, using the payment method of their choice."
About PayByCash®
PayByCash, a division of Internet Payment Solutions, Inc., has been empowering non-credit card customers and the Internet businesses that want to reach them since 1998. PayByCash serves merchants who understand the importance of allowing any customer anywhere in the world to use the payment method they prefer, in their own currency, to buy digital goods and services online..
PayByCash® offers more than 70 payment methods with a global reach, typically with no transaction fee to the merchant. Most payment methods are not reversible. One straightforward integration gives merchants all the PayByCash payment options. PayByCash handles all foreign currency acceptance and alternate payment option support.
If you play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you don't wanna miss out such rock bottom price of AoC Gold in the world!

Ok, before you skip to the bottom of this article and post a comment, please read the post since I know that a lot of people who play MMORPGs will immediately have a knee jerk reaction to this rather touchy topic.

Now that that's out of the way, I've always wanted to talk about how depressing the forums can be to a player. For the record, I know that it is pretty much the same in all popular MMORPGs like Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures or even World of Warcraft, but that doesn't make me or any of the other players who agree with what I have to say happy about it.

Simple fact, there are people who feel that they can post whatever the hell they want on the forums, confident that their anonymity will protect them. For those of you who will protect these people's actions by saying that they have the right to their opinion, yes they do have a right to their opinion.

However, stating one's opinion by politely disagreeing with someone is not what some posters have been doing. Sense of decency? Who cares about that, I'm hidden behind my avatar!

I've heard people defend these individuals who are antagonistic by saying they are simply "passionate" about the game or what they are saying. Well, to be honest, being passionate about something doesn't give anyone the right to act like a total jerk the moment someone disagrees with them.

Now moving on to trolls. These guys post things just to get a reaction from the community. Why? They give out different reasons but one of the more common answers you get from these individuals is they do it to "get a laugh."

So if you hate these guys as much as I do, please ignore their posts and don't reply. Let them have their brand of "fun" on their own. Hey, maybe they'll start flaming themselves out of boredom, or even better, leave and never return.

Now, I've always been an advocate of the whole "don't post if you've got nothing to say" school of thought but that's just me. What do you guys think?

If you play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you don't wanna miss out such rock bottom price of Age of Conan Gold in the world!

Real-life scientists recently overran World of Warcraft and wrapped their brains around trogs and intracellular signaling. One mind trip from the mad scientist James Wallis intrigued us with his experimental astronomical calculations in Azeroth. However, there is another real science underneath the brilliant theory-crafting bringing these worlds to life and players across the Globe and that is the computer infrastructure.

One entity responsible for this science is the The9, a leading MMORPG operator and developer in the Chinese market, and with over 5.5 million World of Warcraft gold subscribers that's going to take a lot of computer power to feed the PC baang frenzy. According to the UK edition of The Register, The9 ranked on China's Top 100 supercomputer list taking half the top ten spots with 12 machines overall in the top 100. The 1950-core clusters taking the top spots were built by HP, and when taking all 12 machines into account The9 has a least 18,032 cores of processing power dedicated to keeping MMOG players all across China fixated on: World of Warcraft, Soul Ultimate Nation, Granado Espada, and Joyful Journey West.

The9 accounts for at least 10% of the supercomputer machine power in China all dedicated to online gaming. It is amazing to see super computers that divvy out virtual worlds ranked right alongside mainstream industries such as oil and gas. It's important to note that the PRC appears to keep many government systems hidden, and despite how super these computers are they do not come without problems as many players frequently experience server crashes and lag particularly at peak play times. World of Warcraft is so popular in China that back in April, The9 boasted one million concurrent users were reached.

In an interview with the director of Age of Conan, Gaute Godager, he told Eurogamer that his game is like steak and wine, while World of Warcraft is like McDonald's.

Gaute reveals that he enjoys playing Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft... However, then he said:

"I'm going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you've been to McDonald's for four or five years, and had your burger and your Coke, sometimes it's great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine."

And continues with...

"I think that's what we're trying to do. It's more expensive, it's not for everyone and perhaps it's not as easily accessible as WOW is. But it could be more meaty."


While Age of Conan is doing very well and their launch was a huge success, there's unfinished content which was expected to be in with the release and there's many bugs which players keep complaining about -- how do you feel about the statement by AoC's Game Director? Is he right? Do you feel that playing AoC is like drinking red wine and entering Azeroth and Outlands in WoW is like drinking a Coke? Hmm.

If you play Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you don't wanna miss out such rock bottom price of Age of Conan Gold in the world!