Since it was released in fall 2004, World of Warcraft has been the subject of many publishers' envy. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game helped the revenue of Vivendi Games, owner of WOW's developer-publisher Blizzard Entertainment, climb 18.6 percent year-on-year during the first quarter of 2006.

Funcom announces that 'Age of Conan' is entering the first phase of beta testing. The 'Age of Conan' Beta will evolve gradually with more and more external testers being added as the game moves closer to launch.

Though Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and World of Warcraft are hogging most role-playing gamers' attention at the moment, there are many other fantasy-themed RPGs in the works. One of the most anticipated is Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, a massively multiplayer action RPG based on Robert E. Howard's influential series of Conan the Barbarian stories.

The Internet has gotten a little more barbaric. Funcom has announced that the official Web site for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures has been redone and is now up and running. The Internet destination has the latest news on the game, interviews with the game's developers, various screenshots and videos of the game in action, and more.

Though hardly the center of world finance, the Norwegian capital of Oslo does have its own stock exchange. So it's little wonder, then, that one of the country's top game companies will soon be listed on the national market of the oil- and fjord-rich country.

For the rest of us, Age of Conan will let players take their level 20 characters into an online version of the savage world of Hyboria, made famous in Weird Tales contributor Robert E. Howard's classic Conan fantasy novels. The game actually takes place just after Howard's Hour of the Dragon novel, in which the mighty barbarian has ascended to the throne of the kingdom of Cimmeria and his neighbors of the rival nations of Aquilonia and Stygia have begun to consider an uneasy truce in the face of an all-new threat. This online portion of the game will let players advance all the way to an experience level of 80, which will involve at least one additional specialization into an elite character class.