History: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

The Age of Conan branch of NOR was first opened on June 9th, 2008 on the Thog server.

Dates Occupied:
6/9/2008 – 5/26/2009
9/15/2010 – 10/27/2011

Branch History
This branch was opened under the pall of some controversy. The mature rating for the game and nudity gave the High Council some pause before endorsing it as an *NOR/ branch. Those in favor cited it was a violation of the EULA for minors to play or even purchase the game in the first place and thus; NOR need not police its members on AoC’s behalf. Detractors were concerned that inappropriate screenshots and language would festoon the forums, while others expressed a parochial offense to the entire notion.

Those in favor
Most of the advocates were fans of the books, the genre and the films.

Those opposed
The detractors, few, but vocal, were concerned on multiple fronts. That it would tarnish the image of NOR, that it was contrary to the policy of being “family-friendly”, that it was simply vulgar. These are the arguments they employed at the time, but it seems likely that it was personally offensive to their values and they sought to enforce those beliefs on the guild. When it became clear they were not getting any traction on those arguments, they hung their resistance on the lack of an HC presence or volunteer to serve as Realm Leader. This was short-circuited by Lord Abin, who volunteered the very moment this argument was raised.

Those baffled
Primarily by those opposed on the basis of the gratuitous nudity. Virtually every game NOR was present included barbaric acts of violence: death, dismemberment, organ harvesting, blood sacrifice … yet none of these appeared to contravene the “family-friendly” aspect. That a few bare breasts (virtual breasts, no less) would rise to the same level of objection as say, gutting someone alive or torture, was simply boggling.

Guild Name Hijacking
Just prior to the HC endorsing the branch a former member who apparently had nothing better to do with his time decided to preempt NOR’s formation and created the New OutRiders guild on the server members were already playing on. He also created a Lasarian- character as well, so Las’ name was unavailable to him.

Shortly after forming this pretend guild he informed the guild via our forums that he would cede control of the guild once he had been paid one gold piece of ingame money. This was a sizable ransom in AoC, even now, but particularly this early after release.
A work-around was devised by Emea who formed “New OutRiders of Hyboria” and NOR collectively told our blackmailer to “stuff it”. It wasn’t long before he gave up and New OutRiders became available and we reclaimed our name.

First Opening (6/9/2008 – 5/26/2009)
Second Opening (9/15/2010 – 10/27/2011)
7/1/11 – Game goes Free to Play under the
name Age of Conan: Unchained

Server Merges
In January of 2009 Funcom announced some radical server reductions. North America’s original twenty-five launch servers was cut to six, thirteen European servers became four, six German servers became three, and four French servers became three. Apparently, the French really hung in there – also there is the question in this author’s mind of how exactly Germany and France are not considered “European”.

In 2010 there was another reduction in the North American servers, from six to four. AoC is now down to three servers, Crom (PvE),
Fury (PvP) and Rage (Blood & Glory PvP)