By Crom, it's the first issue of the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Weekend Warrior! This week we're going to be talking about a pair of patches, downtime, a free day of gameplay, and a special shoutout to a guild on the Wiccana server!

So let's get cracking and take a look at what happened this week in Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures...

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First up on the list is the June 23 (Tuesday) patch. This update fixes a number of the issues that players have been complaining about, specifically the problems with siege warfare. In addition, the developers also double the sizes of the bags in the game. A good move if you ask me considering the really high costs the vendors are charging for the bags!

As expected, the developers also threw a couple of undocumented patch changes into the game as well. Perhaps the biggest change that they didn't mention is a ninja fix for the Wounded Child quest. Anybody who has tried to complete this quest before this fix knows how frustrating it can get, well, the problem is over and the little girl now spawns on a regular basis.

Link: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - June 23 patch notes released
Link: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Undocumented patch notes for June 23 update

Moving on, we have the June 26 (Thursday) patch which actually caused quite a bit of problems for the EU servers and had the U.S. servers down for almost one whole day.

No worries though as Community Manager Glen "Famine" Swan released a formal apology to the players and said that Funcom will be giving out one free day to every player with an active account!

Perhaps the biggest change in the patch notes are the fixes for spellcasting while on a mount, a revamped blocking system (which players on the official forums have been complaining about ), and the split of the Honored Dead questline into four different quests. Not a bad update overall, but it would have been better if it didn't cause the game to be unplayable for almost a day.

Link: Age of Conan update: patch notes for June 26, 2008
 

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Under the Loincloth: A QJ.NET guild? Why join a guild anyway?

Yes, it was a patch filled week for Age of Conan subscribers, but we're not going to be focusing on that since the official forums have been generally very busy from players screaming about the nerfs to their favorite class, to trolls trying to get some attention from the more intelligent players.

Today we're going to talk about the advantages of guilds and the possibility of a QJ.NET guild.

That said, I'd also like to give a shoutout to an awesome guild on the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Wiccana server called Ravens of Memory. This family-friendly guild is perhaps one of the most accommodating on the server and features a plethora of cool players.

Now, I'm not saying that joining a guild is for everyone, as some players have a tendency to prefer soloing through most of the game (which isn't a bad thing, mind you). However, joining the Ravens of Memory really helped my character complete some of the quests and introduced me to some really nice players.

To give a concrete example on how they helped me out, one of the members, Sholk, even gave me (note, not lend, gave) one gold and a couple of silver to help me get my mount. While you shouldn't expect people to do this for you, I have to say that the offer he made to help me out was a very nice move on his part and is a common thing in the guild.

Joining a guild is a two-way thing, you also should help out the guild. While the Ravens of Memory don't require players to actually help out, they're so nice, accommodating, and dedicated to the group that you'll soon find yourself happily contributing to the organization in your own way.

So if any of you guys encounter Dingar, Riggster, Krystalz, Drenai, Mikochi, Sholk, Holyscion or anyone else in the Ravens of Memory online, don't hesitate to say "hi". Tell them SangkoJager sent you.

Speaking of guilds, we've been talking with some players and it looks like we might have an official QJ.NET guild on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Now the details on this are still being ironed out (we should have an official announcement regarding this very soon), but let's just say that if things push through, those who are interested are going to have a Battlekeep to protect, sieges to plan, and more importantly, friends you can call on when you need some help.