Hyborian Adventures is the first installment in the planned Age of Conan series. Age of Conan itself takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events depicted in Robert E. Howard's Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon. Hyborian Adventures' release celebrated the 76th anniversary of the Conan franchise.

To play Hyborian Adventures, users are charged a monthly subscription fee.

Characters

Characters in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures are created on a user account on a particular online server. Characters created on one server cannot be played on another. Players create characters which function as their virtual avatars in the online world of Hyboria. When creating a character in Age of Conan, the player may choose from three playable races. The character is one of four archetypes (in bold) and one of three class selections for each archetype.

Combat

Combat is based on six directions of attacking an opponent with a sword: hacking down against the head, slashing diagonally down from the left and right, thrusting against the torso, and slashing diagonally up from the left or right. These directions are designed to be naturally strung together in combinations. Difficult combos cause additional damage and faster combat.

Funcom has said that their "Real Combat" system, a combat system designed to offer more real-time options than traditional Dungeons & Dragons-inspired "turn-based" combat systems commonly used in RPGs, will be a prime attraction of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. This Real Combat system is a first-person melee approach in which every enemy has five different areas that players can swing at. Combos can be performed by stringing together consecutive successful attacks in particular directions. Feedback from players have pointed out that the use of five directional "Combo-keys" along with the burgeoning amount of skills each character gets as they are developed, makes it difficult to pull off these maneuvers with ease to the player. This criticism has been brought up by not only reviewers, but fans of the game itself, citing "The game's combat system is more for evolved humans, who in the future will grow an additional two fingers to be able to reach the huge amount of key-bindings they'll have to make". Gaute's State of the Game -- February Player stats and item bonuses will also play a role in this system, however in most cases, attributes from item bonuses (Strength, Dexterity) make such a minimal visual improvement (1 Dexterity = 0.002 DPS) over the character's progress, that item bonuses are almost completely nugatory. The idea of "Real Combat" is to eliminate the dullness of typical MMO fighting, which often consists of an auto-attack feature.