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These are exciting times in the world of Hyboria, and adventurers are in high demand to fend off the forces of doom and evil that is invading the lands. In an effort to attract a steadier stream of heroes willing to lay down their lives, Conan is handing out points to anyone who can prove their commitment to surviving in the brutal world of Hyboria!

Okay, so that's the in-character version of it. Funcom is now introducing the concept of Powerpoints. These can be spent on various different exclusive benefits, services and items! Powerpoints are generated over time in various different ways, as detailed later.

Let's first take a look at what these Powerpoints can get you:

* You can buy Powerfeats – exclusive feats that can buff your character and provide you with new and very powerful spells and abilities!

* You can take gathered pearls and turn them into Powerpearls. These can be put into weapons and armor to make them even more powerful!

* You can obtain special offers that we will put into the game regularly, but only if you have enough Powerpoints! This can be anything from mounts to spells!

* You can convert Powerpoints into so-called rested experience, effectively allowing you to level up faster than you would otherwise!

* You can purchase exclusive weapons, armor, potions, recipes, ingredients, and other times using a mix of ordinary gold and Powerpoints.

The good thing is that Powerpoints are retroactively applied to new characters. So points you have generated will also befall new characters you make, making it easier to level up and play with new characters. This is simply to improve replayability for you.

So how can you acquire Powerpoints? Here are some of the ways:

Having an active subscription

You will earn one Powerpoint each week for all characters on your account as long as you have an active subscription. You do not have to actually log in and play the game; we will simply reward you for your aid in allowing Funcom to improve Age of Conan.

Having many guild members

Once your guild reaches a high number of members, you will start seeing the benefits. If one hundred unique members log into the guild at least once every week, all members in that guild will be granted one Powerpoint that week. So make sure your guild grows!

By owning a battlekeep

If your guild is lucky enough to own a battlekeep, every member in your guild will receive one Powerpoint every week you have that battlekeep. Of course, holding on to such a keep will prove to be a formidable task, so be sure to protect your property!

Post-level 80 reward system

Okay, so you have reached level 80 and there are no more experience levels to reach. But with the Powerpoint system you will now earn one point each time you were supposed to reach a new level, effectively rewarding you for continuing to develop your character!

By winning PvP mini-games

After having reached level 40, you will get one Powerpoint for every 40th mini-game you win. This is basically a way for us to reward you if you put a lot of effort into partaking in mini-games with other players and, of course, making sure you win as well!

Please keep in mind that these details might change over time as the game grows. We might also choose to include new ways of earning Powerpoints later.

Please note that you can start earning Powerpoints once your free month of play is up, but the actual benefits will not be available in the game until later this year. However, we encourage you to start saving up Powerpoints as soon as possible! When we do launch this service later, you will be at a serious advantage if you have points to spend!

Following the launch of Age of Conan we sat down immediately and started fleshing out some ideas for what we wanted to do with the PvP (player vs. player) features in the game, and now we are ready to reveal it to you. All of these changes, additions and improvements are expected to hit within the end of June or very early July.

Here are some of the exciting things you will see pop into the game any day now.

PvP consequences – the fugitive system

No longer will evil misdeeds go unpunished. Of course, Hyboria is ruthless and barbaric so don’t expect anyone to deal out justice just because someone smacks you about with a very heavy axe, but some justice is actually now being introduced to the world.

This is where the fugitive system comes in, presented in a set of colors defining your fugitive status – from blue to orange and eventually the deadly red.

Everyone is by default classified as “blue”, but your actions as a player killer will affect your fugitive rating. If you kill someone way under your level, you will notice that you will very quickly move to red. So will actions such as killing someone repeatedly, or other general unfairness. The more serious the crime, the quicker you rise in fugitive.

Obtaining red status will be quite painful to you. This means that other players can kill you without rising in fugitive level, and if they manage to kill you while you have red fugitive you will actually drop one of your better items and gold that they can loot!

Of course, turning red will be a double-edged sword. Sure, it will get you a lot of attention and many will probably see you as a danger to be avoided. But at the same time, people will hunt you down for your items and your gold so be very, very careful!

PvP levels, ranks and PvP gear enabled

Now it is very important that we underline the fact that the fugitive system is not meant to punish player killing. It is only meant to punish unfair player-killing. Player killing in general is a central part of Age of Conan, so we also want to reward you for it!

That's why we are now activating PvP levels. Soon you will be able to gain PvP levels by simply engaging in such activities, and there will be 10 such PvP levels in total.

However, that's not all. Once you have reached the 10th PvP level you will be able to earn special PvP ranks beyond that. These are very hard to acquire, and you will lose ranks if you get defeated so it's a constant battle to keep you rank up. And you will want to both gain PvP levels and keep your PvP rank up, as this will give you very exclusive benefits.

That's because we will be introducing PvP specific gear in this update. You will be able to seek out a special vendor that sells this gear, and if you can afford it and you have the required PvP level (or PvP rank for some higher level items), then you can buy it!

PvP gear will come in all shapes and sizes. Some will be class and race specific, while some will be usable by everyone. Below you can take a look at some of the gear that we have available in our internal builds right now. Of course, a lot more will be available!

General fixes and improvements to PvP

Of course, improving PvP in Age of Conan is not only about introducing such high-profile features and content. It's also about making various small changes, fixes, improvements and additions needed to make it a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

We will be doing various fine-tuning, and the patch notes for this update will of course contain the specifics. But let's take a look at some of the changes that we are making.

First off, we are introducing a dueling functionality. This allows players to duel each other, both on PvP and PvE servers, without any serious repercussions. It also allows players on PvE servers to engage in PvP without having to go into the PvP mini-games, allowing them to test their grit (or solve an argument) against each other directly!

We are also doing major changes to the way damage is handled in PvP (without going into any more specific details right now), and we are also making it so that you can not attack members of your own guild (now you can duel instead, of course).