MMORPG.com set on exploring the world of Stygia, digging up the good, and the bad, and giving Age of Conan a second look:

I'm standing high atop the windswept peaks of the Eiglophian Mountains, looking out across the switchbacks and narrow ravines leading to the tiny settlement of Dinog nestled near the roots of the hills. Its an altogether magnificent scene, or, at least it was until I looked down to see the tip of a sword sticking out of my gut, the blood-red drops of gore trickling off its tip and soiling the pristine white of the snow-capped ledge beneath my sandaled feet.
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Phuxurmom, a conqueror according to my combat spam, swings his sword deftly and, in two swift strokes, my assassin lies sprawled in a pool of his own guts as they spread beneath him on the frozen tundra, his head a few feet removed from the rest of his body and his arms embarrassingly akimbo. All I can do is hurriedly click the respawn button to save my poor avatar from the tea-bagging fate that is surely worse than his latest pseudo-death. The joke of it all is that there was no rare spawn nearby, no resource node within a country mile, and really, no reason at all for the bloke's sword to be sticking out of my gullet other than the sheer spitefulness and possible adolescent maladjustment of its owner.

Welcome to Hyboria, as imagined by Norwegian MMORPG developer Funcom, a virtual land ostensibly based on the sword and sorcery pulp-lit of the late Robert E. Howard, but having more in common with a testosterone-fueled game of Counterstrike than anything dreamed up by the man who gave us camp classics like Kull the Conqueror and Red Sonja, in addition to the legendary King Conan..

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