At last, the first portion of the promised PvP improvements are starting to appear over on Age of Conan. The Testlive server, where new patches are tested out prior to their going live, now has a new patch, and the developers have taken the opportunity to describe the basic elements of the new PvP system.

Keeping up the new Funcom focus on communication (so far so good), Tarib has given us a look at what's coming this week and next week in Age of Conan. Funcom are apparently aware that a big stumbling block for AoC players is the existence of memory leaks, so those are first in the firing line for bugfixes.

Buddy Keys have been a long time coming, but they're finally part of Age of Conan. Funcom assured us last week that they'd be going live this week, and they've made good on that.

Details have now emerged of the Age of Conan changes announced yesterday, and a new patch is currently in testing over on Testlive. As promised, two of the popular AoC dungeons - Pyramid of the Ancients and Toirdealbach's Tomb - have been revamped.

Just what does it take to kill a rumor, anyway? Not so long ago, we investigated rumors that the mature content in Age of Conan was being 'scaled back', and came away unconvinced that any such thing was happening.

Naturally, this fight will seem completely different when Atzel's Fortress sends its own army to avenge the bandits and the players are forced to defend their fledgling village against a tide of mongrels.

We hope it will add a lot of action to the game. The need to understand the opponent, including his or her weaknesses and strengths, and then exploiting them should be paramount in the game. This hands-on direct combat system also plays well with a tactical system of formations and teams, as well as in larger siege combat.

Add to this the guild classes that you choose at level 40. There are four different guild classes accessible to you, regardless of what your main class is. The guild classes are like an overlay class, with mostly social functions.

There is a lot of lore that I need to explain in order to describe the game, but for those interested in learning more, there are a lot of good sites on the Internet. So read up on these dark locations, their cruel peoples, and sinister gods.

The setting of the Baracha Isles is the canvas for the first part of the game. You are completely alone in the beginning, but gradually you meet others, perhaps in a tavern or other places where being social is important. The game remains single-player, though, with four different story arcs tied together--one for each archetype class. This gives you replay value if you care to create more than one character.