Age of Conan Technical Beta Begins

Funcom's official Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures community website has been updated with an announcement that the game's technical beta phase has begun.
Now is an incredibly exciting time for everyone working at Funcom. The technical beta is kicking off and we've already started inviting several hundred players to join us and become some of the first people to tread the blood-soaked earth of Hyboria under their sandaled (or chain mailed, for that matter) feet. After years of working on the game behind closed doors it is finally ready for the world. Bringing more external testers into the game is a very interesting experience for us, especially with so many people participating. We're just as excited as you are, if not even more!

We know most of you won't have the opportunity to join us this time around (though your chance may come soon!), but we still want to let you in on what we'll be doing in these first tests by explaining to you what it will involve.

This first time around we're focusing on testing how well the server works under heavy load, particularly how the different areas of the gameworld holds up when many people try to get into one specific place. In the days following the test, developers will be going through the data collected and probably utter quite a few (oohs) and (aahs).

Four new screenshots are available at the bottom of the announcement, as well.