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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Norwegian computer video game developer company Funcom for PCs.The game launched at 11 p.m. (GMT) on May 17, 2008 in a limited way, being available to those who had pre-ordered the game and registered for early access. The full release of the game for North America was May 20, 2008 and for Europe May 23, 2008 for the PC version.Although originally announced as being available for the Xbox 360, the console version is at least a year behind schedule.

Hyborian Adventures is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan itself takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon.[8] Hyborian Adventures' release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan franchise.

To play Hyborian Adventures, users are charged a monthly subscription fee.

Combat is based on six directions of attacking an opponent with a sword: hacking down against the head, slashing diagonally down from the left and right, thrusting against the torso, and slashing diagonally up from the left or right. These directions are designed to be naturally strung together in combinations. Difficult combos cause additional damage and faster combat.[9]

Funcom has said that their "Real Combat" system, a combat system designed to offer more real-time options than traditional Dungeons & Dragons-inspired "turn-based" combat systems commonly used in RPGs, will be a prime attraction of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. This Real Combat system is a first-person melee approach in which every enemy has five different areas that players can swing at. Combos can be performed by stringing together consecutive successful attacks in particular directions. Feedback from players have pointed out that the use of five directional "Combo-keys" along with the burgeoning amount of skills each character gets as they are developed, makes it difficult to pull off these maneuvers with ease to the player. This criticism has been brought up by not only reviewers, but fans of the game itself, citing "The game's combat system is more for evolved humans, who in the future will grow an additional two fingers to be able to reach the huge amount of key-bindings they'll have to make". [10] Player stats and item bonuses will also play a role in this system, however in most cases, attributes from item bonuses (Strength, Dexterity) make such a minimal visual improvement (1 Dexterity = 0.002 DPS) over the character's progress, that item bonuses are almost completely nugatory. The idea of "Real Combat" is to eliminate the dullness of typical MMO fighting, which often consists of an auto-attack feature. [11]

The "Real Combat" system is used in one-on-one weapon battle, as well as spell-casting, ranged combat and even mounted combat. In some situations, however, players will choose to band together and unite their skills to face other bands of players or AI controlled armies or uber-mobs; in essence, "formations", location based effects available for some classes. For example, a character standing in line with a Conqueror when he is running his formation will have a great deal of resistance to knockbacks. [10]

Players are able to take part in large scale siege operations. However, further development into siege battles is still being worked on by developers because of player concerns of its dragging slowness with more than twenty participants in a battle. Adventurers can cooperate with one another to build cities with walls, towers and catapults that can protect player-owned taverns and merchant facilities. The developers have previously stated that the world will respond appropriately to the rise of player cities with AI controlled enemies building their own cities, ensuring a renewing supply of city-vs.-city combat as players try to knock down enemy walls or defend their homes.

Due to the game being in rumored development since 2003, an online virtual community had steadily clustered around various fan websites regarding Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. By February 2005, this informal community was still going strong despite no true public announcement concerning the rumored game. Finally, Funcom and Conan Properties LLC jointly confirmed the in-development status of Age of Conan in an official press release on April 20, 2005. Shortly thereafter, a primitive game website debuted and thousands of Conan enthusiasts migrated from their fan sites to the new official forums hosted by Funcom. Many Anarchy Online fans also followed the development of the product due to the involvement of Funcom, who created the Anarchy Online PC series.

When Funcom released a community portal on January 24, 2006, much of the pre-launch community had gathered around the forums and IRC chat of the official Age of Conan website. There were informal events such as IRC chats with the developers and, in summer 2006, community contests.

Further a guild recruitment forum entitled Guild Hall was created in April 2006 for the pre-launch community and, within hours, forum members began organizing their player guilds.

As of January 13, 2009, The amount of active players has diminished so significantly that Funcom has cut its 49 servers down to 18 remaining via merges. There is currently one server of each type active for each region in which the game is available;

Five principal individuals have worked on the music and audio for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The Audio Director is Morten Sørlie, who created the soundtrack for Anarchy Online - Shadowlands. Simon Poole (Lead Sound designer on "Dreamfall - The Longest Journey") took over as Audio Director in May 2007, and saw the project through to completion. The sound designers is Tord D. Nikolaisen and Fredrik Martol, and composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen wrote the musical score for the game.[16] To create a musical score for the Hyborian universe, composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen turned to many different sources: For the music of the different ethnic groups, Haugen studied traditional music from relevant parts of the world. For the overall sound of the Hyborian Age, Haugen studied ancient and medieval music as well as the romantic orchestra repertoir and film scores, while avoiding conventions that connect too closely to specific historical periods.[17] The female vocalist heard in the score is Norwegian singer Helene Bøksle.Norwegian punk rock artists Turbonegro contributed three bonus songs to the soundtrack CD. One of them written specifically for the album.

Knut Avenstroup Haugen won the IFMCA award for Best Original Score for a Video Game or Interactive Media for his score.

Over 40 actors voiced the large cast of characters.[3]They were recorded at Side UK [4] in London, England UK, Side LA in California, USA and at Funcom in Norway;