Morrison issued a two-part statement yesterday regarding some of the upcoming gameplay changes that will be occurring over the next few weeks, which mostly entail added content and an enhanced PvP consequence system which can result in a players no longer being welcome in certain parts of the game should they choose to gank another player. These changes have been expected for quite some time now, but the most interesting thing Morrison addressed was the possibility of a server merge which had been discussed by gamers on the forums. Said Morrison:

"I can today confirm that we are actively working on an approach to merge servers, both in Europe and North America. It's important for us to ensure the best gameplay experience for you all, and more healthy populations on each and every server will make sure we maintain healthy communities for the game in the future.

"That work has now started, and we are naturally making sure that guilds and players can get to new servers in the best possible way. We will come back with more info on this, but I hope that this will serve as a positive injection to the social scene in the game."

This could mean one of two things: an easier way to manage aoc gold the servers from an IT standpoint or that Funcom is losing money on Age of Conan. I would almost assume the latter is the case. According to some research by Joystiq, stock in the company has fallen to $5 per share, down $20 since July and down $50 from Age of Conan's pre-launch. Stock in Funcom was already headed downward before the current economic crisis.

Also mentioned by Morrison in the forum post was that the long-awaited DirectX 10 version of the game was almost ready for launch. This version has been kept on an internal test-server for quite some time now, but when the next update is made players can expect to see some DX10 functionality in the test environment.

"How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course," stated Morrision, "But it's starting to shape up nicely. Having done some reviews of it internally over the last few weeks I can admit that a few of the features really do give some added visual punch."

Hopefully, both the merging of the servers and the launch of the DirectX 10 version will give Funcom the much-needed boost it needs to keep Age of Conan going and draw newcomers to the fold. I know a lot of gamers out there who actually enjoy the game, and I would hate to see an MMO with so much potential go by the waste side so soon after a promising launch.