Game Director Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison updated the Age of Conan community today on the next game update, which is currently on the test server and will go live over the next couple weeks.

Perhaps the biggest change is a new consequence system for PvP. As we reported late last month, it will add moral consequences to your actions.

Players will be now run the risk of becoming a criminal or even a murderer depending on their actions in PVP. ... It will be possible for those evildoers to redeem themselves, however.

Morrison also gives an overview of the changes to trade skills, including new armor and weapons and an overhaul to the Alchemist profession. In addition to GUI adjusments, he also briefly mentions changes to massive PVP sieges, mounts, quests, raid encounters, items and tradeposts. His full post can be found here or below.

Age of Conan Developer Dave Williams recently discussed some new Culture Armors that would be introduced to the game very soon on AoC's official Web site.

Williams focused on crafting and said that the new content will allow players to enjoy ehanced character customization and ecnourage them to tell their own stories.

With the introduction of the new crafting content, players will find that tradeskills as a whole has become more cognizant of Conan lore and the rest of the game in general. One important direction we wanted to take was creating synergy between the different crafts, so that for each pair of professions there is some extra benefit for picking those specific two.

The full article is available below or here. Also, check out a couple screenshots of some Culture Armors in our gallery.

Age of Conan Game Director Craig Morrison has written a letter to the AoC community outlining some of the updates that will be coming in the near future, including confirmation that they are actively working on an approach to merge servers. The letter is quite long and focuses on both immediate changes and long-term plans.

The AoC team's immediate focus will be on Ymir's Pass and a big change to the PvP system. Ymir's Pass is a large zone that may stay on the test server through several updates to work all of the bugs out of the large amount of content. As far as PvP is concerned, the upcoming consequence system will create ramifications for your actions, adding a "real world" feel to fighting. For example, if you constantly gank lowbies, you may be turned away from some "orderly" areas, but will be able to change your play style by networking with shady camps.

For the full letter and Morrison's take on some of his long-term goals, check the official news post or keep reading below.

So I go out of town and the whole industry goes nuts!  A Funcom employee, a GM in their Age of Conan game, got caught being inappropriate with a player, and is now no longer employed with the company.

The screen shots and chat, including a helpful transcription even, are available on MMORPG.com.

Funcom only stated:

We are aware of this matter, and necessary measures have been taken against them. We have clear guidelines for all employees in Funcom, not least those who work with customer service, and if the guidelines are broken there are consequences

A quote from Age of Conan product manager Erling Ellingsen (Sorry no direct link as I don't speak Norwegian) is being passed around from Itavisen as: This is the behaviour that is not accepted by Funcom."

It won't be possible to get a quote from Funcom until Monday, and we'll try to get what we can, but it's good to know quick action was taken.

Since Funcom is worse then CCP about deleting uncomplimentary posts from their forums, there's not a lot of places to talk about it officially, but you can head over to our AoC forums and discuss !

Gaute Godager, game director of Age of Conan , has published an open letter to players outlining upcoming plans for the game's near future. He focuses on bugs, stability, performance, and new content coming up in the near future.

Greetings fellow players.

While it has been some time since I last gave you an update, I wanted to touch base and let you know what we are working on at the moment and where we are going in the times to come. I want this update to focus on what is actually happening to the game now, what we have done, and also some of the reasoning behind our choices going forward.

As you all know we have been live for some seven weeks by now, and what a period it has been! While Conan has sold more and performed better than even we could have hoped for, we also know that there have been things we had to work on. I will not try to hide from this fact, but I hope you have seen our steady stream of improvements and additions, in fact, even more than I would have thought possible! I am definitively proud of the team and what they have done after launch, and I think everyone agrees that we are making Conan better, all the time. We are also keeping almost the entire development team ON the Age of Conan live team for the foreseeable future, meaning we can make exciting new content updates on an ongoing basis. Still, let me underline that our main - main - focus at the moment are bugs, stability and performance! I might not talk very much about the details here, but the frequency of the patches and their contents speak for itself.

Read the letter in its entirety here .