Not to say the game isn’t any fun, but, rather, I wouldn’t know if the game is any fun or not. You see, I was able to get into the “open beta” because I am a fileplanet subscriber. Needless to say, I was very excited that I was going to be able to play one of the most anticipated MMORPGs ever (with over 500,000 beta applications). Hell, the only thing that would have made me more excited was a beta invite to either WAR or the Chronicles of Spellborn. In a rush to play the game, I immediately downloaded and patched the game (12gb download, 2+ hours worth of patching). Finally, after a day or so of downloading I was ready to begin. Just a quick double click and I was going to be playing Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures… or so I thought.

After creating my account and pushing the ever so delightful “Play” button on the patcher I was greeted with none other than a black screen and nothing else. No sound. No intro. No logos of any kind, just black. I was fine with this though. I have been in many betas in my lifetime and I knew what to expect. Games not loading properly are a common occurrence in many betas. So off to the forums I went!

Upon reaching the forums and doing a number of searches to find others who had my same problem I was greeted with these solutions:

1. Change the resolution to the lowest possible setting.
2. Repeatedly mash the escape button.
3. Play in windowed mode.
4. Turn DX10 on.
5. Turn DX9 on.
6. Be patient and wait…

So I changed my resolution, messed with the options, and even tried it in windowed mode. Nothing changed. I was finally left with only the last option to wait and wait I did. For 21 minutes I sat there in front of that black screen. Dismayed and exhausted, I was about to give up when I heard something. A faint sound, but a sound nonetheless. Alas! Thirty seconds later I was greeted with a giant pink FunCom logo, followed by all the usual screens that one would expect to follow.

Glorious in my victory and ready to start my own “Conan” adventure I proceeded, quite hastily, through the character creation. I decided to make a necromancer as I knew everybody else would want to play a combat character to test out the fighting scheme FunCom had created. After deciding upon a name, Blackgem, I clicked the glorious little button that sent me swirling into the world. Or so I thought…

After hours of work and getting to create my character, I am now unable to actually get into the game as I am faced with a loading bar that refuses to load fully. The background music plays, but the game never loads. Attempting to see if my old tricks would work I waited…

10 minutes…

15 minutes…

30 minutes…

60 minutes…

Nothing happened. Desperate to play I attempted to mess around with the more advanced graphics options. Nothing changed. So here I am, unable to play Age of Conan with hours of time vested into just getting into the actual game. My only respite is knowing that I am not the only one as a quick look at the official forums notes that problems like mine are rampant.

So that’s my experience with Age of Conan thus far. While I’d love to regale you with stories of my adventures in Age of Conan, I simply can’t. Hopefully they’ll work out these problems soon as I would very much like to be able to play before the game actually releases in less than three weeks. An alarming situation for FunCom considering their first MMO, Anarchy Online, suffered through one of the worst launches in MMO history…

EDIT: Changed title to better represent this is for the BETA not the retail version of the game.