Verging on a year post-launch, Funcom have launched a free trial program following up recent major content updates to Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

Although the game was initially well received, lasting interest in the game faded quicker than other big titles in the MMO genre. Funcom haven't thrown in the towel though and for the past year have been expanding on Hyboria, enhancing the already impressive graphics and tweaking high and low.

AusGamers caught up with Game Director Craig Morrison at the recent 2009 Game Developer Conference in San Francisco for a chat about the state of the game. The interview touches on details of the free trial initiative, the changes since launch, latency for Aussie players and what they're doing to bring old players back to Hyboria.

The trial client is available for download now right here from AusGamers. Big thanks to Funcom for recognising the importance of making sure this client was accessible to Australian gamers at launch and by helping us out by getting it to us well in advance!

You can download the full client (if you have a download manager and are familiar with downloading large files - we also have torrents of these full clients available which is probably your safest bet): Full Client - US/AU | Full Client - EU

Alternatively, you can download the client in parts:

US/AU client: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

EU client: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Although the game was initially well received, lasting interest in the game faded quicker than other big titles in the MMO genre.

That was a nice way of saying "Although the game was initially well received, everyone thought it was s*** and moved on."

Nope, not my intention for that phrasing at all. At launch I personally found it to be at the very least, well worth a play through on the included 30 day subscription and would still recommend that for any RPG fan, MMO or otherwise.

Play up to level 20. 1-20 is really good, and the initial exploration post 20 is kinda cool as well.

1 to 20 was worth the price of admission.

instead of dling the huge file can i just reinstall and patch it or ?

Yeah I thought it was fun just everyone else couldn't stand the bugs and went to WoW therefore so did I!

finally ready to give this a good go now that i have all the other games on my to do list pacified, have always loved the conan universe from ealy comcs days, but 14Gb...tis a bit to much...think i may just go out and buy it...

get broadband dude :(

finally ready to give this a good go now that i have all the other games on my to do list pacified, have always loved the conan universe from ealy comcs days, but 14Gb...tis a bit to much...think i may just go out and buy it...

Drop me a PM and some paypal money and you can have my account!

wonder if my toon is still sitting on that bench...

wonder if my toon is still sitting on that bench...

haha

Mines still wandering around one of the islands trying to resurrect. I died, couldn't res for a 1/2hr and then canceled subscription.

Mine is sitting around for about 3 hours after trying to actually form a raid group to try and kill one of the first raid boss type things without it bugging out and not working.

do you get to hack off james earl jones' head? if so, sign me up!

(if not, its not really conan enough)

Mine was stuck mid animation, but could move. Couldn't cast tho

My characters were stuck in Kheshatta, being constantly buttf***ed by gankers.

One of the PC Mags this month has the full AoC game on the cover for free. Just check out your local Newsagents for the mag with the retail AoC box taped to the front!

Desperate much?