Age of Conan definitely wants to get you hooked for months to come, if not through its exotic Rise of the Godslayer expansion, then by dangling sacks of goodies for availing the long-term premium subscriptions.

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It’s been a month since Age of Conan launched its Rise of the Godslayer expansion, but developers are already hard at work on their next major project: Upgrading the Dreamworld engine, which serves as a pillar for the game’s gorgeous graphics.

More details surfaced this week when AoC Game Director Craig Morrison described the main objectives of the engine upgrade.

In his June letter to players (prepare your reading glasses–it’s a long one), Mr. Morrison said:

In general our Dreamworld technology integrations provide two or three things for us:

• Improved performance (whether that is rendering, network latency, server CPU or memory usage or something else)
• New tech features (which might tie to performance or might be purely new additions, like deferred lighting or other new rendering features)
• Improved tools for the developers in the back-end (that in turn facilitate better and more efficient content production)

The game director broke down the graphical benefits into two categories: immediate visual and long-term back-end.

For the immediate visual category, players may see a “visual improvement” from deferred lighting options that will improve the look of indoor areas. Aside from deferred lighting, the Funcom development team can offer other rendering features once a new engine is in place.

For the long-term back end category, developers can “create better content more efficiently” with the engine, although Mr. Morrison stopped short of claiming faster updates. It’s only logical though that if the engine makes it easier to craft content, then patches may roll out faster or will come packed with more offerings.

Given the “complex code integration” attached to the engine upgrade, Mr. Morrison predicted it will take longer than usual to test it before going live. Just not too long we hope because a glossier, smoother-running Hyboria should let us slaughter more foes in brutal, ultra-def style.

Rise of the Godslayer, the much-awaited first expansion for Age of Conan, went live today with minor hiccups usually seen in major content releases. The undisclosed glitches seem to be centered on the EU community and will have a domino effect on the US release, according to a post from Senior Assistant Community Manager Oliver ‘Tarib’ Kunz:

We are extending the downtime for the US servers by 4 hours due to the issues that have cropped up during the EU deployment of the expansion. Unfortunately, the EU regions have already been delayed and we are expecting their release to come very close to their expected uptime.

This means that we must delay the US uptime so that we can fully launch EU first and the follow up with the US launch like every other major update released. Overall, we are aiming to come up within the 2 hour extended delay, but it highly depends on how the EU deployment goes when it’s fully launched.

Rise of the Godslayer is set in the Asian-inspired continent of Khitai, and opens up 12 new team dungeons and quests for Hyborian heroes. Funcom Game Director Craig Morrison also said in an interview that progression will revolve around the 12 new factions in the expansion. Players will have to deal, scheme or battle against these factions to obtain faction armors and other rewards. With so many factions advancing their own agenda, it becomes crucial to choose the side that offers greater rewards or a more exciting storyline.

The land of Khitai is a sprawling landscape broken down into five game play regions. Newly made characters will still have to start in Tortage before heading to the Gateway of Khitai for level 20-40 quests. Existing players will be taken straight to Gateway of Khitai via caravan in Khemi then proceed to explore the level 80 quests hubs in Northern Grasslands, Chosain Province, Kara Korum and Pai Kang. Be sure to get tiger and wolf mounts which lend and exotic feel to Khitai travel.

Check out the full Rise of the Godslayer patch notes to learn about the cool new features, including the Alternate Advancement System that grants bonus abilities when you’re logged. Yeah, how cool is that?

Delays have been pretty much par for the course in Age of Conan, but its developers have been trying very hard to turn a new leaf.

Another win for them is speeding up the release of Shrines of Bori, an outdoor PvP pack originally pushed back due to production clashes with the upcoming Rise of the Godslayer expansion.

In a blog announcement yesterday, Game Director Craig ‘Silirrion’ Morrison said Shrines of Bori will be part of the 1.07 update being released in the next few days.

This means AoC players can soon capture shrines and bash altars all day long in the Border Kingdoms: Cimmerian End. Guilds who can hold one of the four altars long enough to trigger a “sacrifice” will earn PvP xp, tokens, glory Renown and a 15-minute buff.

Judging from its mechanics, Shrines of Bori requires a lot of teamwork to accomplish smoothly (or if you’re lucky, very low participation from the opposing team). But hey, that’s the way we roll in Age of Conan right, spoils and glory to the best facebasher!