Welcome to Part II of ZAM.com's revisit to Age of Conan's Hyborian Kingdoms. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Part I of our revisit, where we addressed the early stages of the game and gave an in-depth introduction for players who have only heard of Age of Conan by rumours alone. This week we checked out what looms beyond the compelling Tortage story arc and delved into the biggest problem holding back this stunning game.

In last week's revisits, one of the biggest observations we noticed during our play-through was  that these Hyborian Kingdoms are quite sparsely populated, and this serious lack of adventuring fellows made us feel quite lonely - especially once we moved beyond Tortage's awesome solo "destiny" quests. While low populations are a problem for any multiplayer game, MMOs are definitely hit the worst because there are a lot of stigmas involved with joining an established, persistent player base in decline (with little to no fresh blood joining up!).

As we reported, Gracia Epilogue, the latest expansion to Lineage II, is scheduled to launch on Nov. 17. To celebrate the release, NCsoft is offering a multi-month subscription promotion to give players extra game time. Players who subscribe for six months get one month free, while users who sign up for 12 months get two months free.

The offer ends on Dec. 15 at 11:59 p.m. PST, so you have about a month to decide if you want to take part in this promotion. Will you be signing up for a year of Lineage II to get two free months of game time?

Runes of Magic developers Runewalker Entertainment participated in an IRC chat yesterday to answer questions from players. It looks like the next expansion may come out in spring 2010, and the team is hoping to speed up the cycle of releasing one chapter every five months with one month of testing by expanding its staff. You can read the full transcript after the jump.

Frogster also revealed some interesting statistics today regarding the actions of players in Runes of Magic since the launch of "Chapter II: The Elven Prophecy" in August. According to the publisher, "adventurers have already solved well over 15 million quests and have overcome more than 250,000 boss opponents in the second chapter. ... Over 16 million items were created by players through cooking, blacksmithing, tailoring, and other in-game crafting methods."

In addition, Frogster announced that a new German server will open tomorrow, Nov. 13, and the game has entered beta testing in Korea in preparation for the live launch.

Today marks the launch of Ascension, the first expansion for Jade Dynasty. The update introduces the Athan race, new zones, an achievement system, a transformation system that lets you turn your characters into creatures, and the ability to fight in the air with Skyblades. Two new factions, the Arden archers and the Balo warriors, will also be added to the game.

In addition, your character will be able to ascend to become more powerful once you reach level 135. You'll start back at level 15, but will be more powerful. This is a cooperative effort among players; one of the requirements is that 300 players must be level 135 or higher to enable ascension on each server.

The servers will be offline today for maintenance from 2-5 p.m. PST to implement the expansion. The team warns players that the downtime may be extended if necessary.

If you've been watching the All Points Bulletin video podcasts, you know that the past four episodes have focused mainly on a gameplay walkthrough. Well, the 13th episode was just released and features lead creative designer "KitKat" discussing the lore and story behind the urban MMO.

KitKat introduces players the two criminal organizations in APB: the G-Kings and the Blood Roses. The G-Kings are a gang of skater punks, while the Blood Roses are a group of wealthy kids led by an ex-Mafia boss. KitKat will talk about the two Enforcer organizations in the next episode.

Realtime Worlds' Chris Collins also reminds viewers to sign up for the APB closed beta, which is currently under way. You can fill out an application on the official site.

As ZAM reported today, the 6th EverQuest II expansion Sentinel’s Fate™ is now available for pre-order.  This highly anticipated expansion features Odus, the continuation of Erudite and Kerran lore, and a level cap increase.  We are very pleased to bring you brand-new screenshots of the expansion that explore Erudin, The Sundered Frontier, Stonebrunt Highlands, and Vastly Deep. Click the picture at right to see this exciting gallery!

We also got our hands on the official trailer!  Click play after the jump.

According to Kotaku, Activision Blizzard Chief Financial Officer Thomas Tippl confirmed during a presentation in New York today that Diablo III is not scheduled to be released until at least 2011. Cataclysm, StarCraft II and the updated Battle.net should be set to launch in 2010.

Diablo III, the StarCraft II expansions and Blizzard's unannounced MMO were all filed under the "next few years" category on a slide outlining the company's lineup. It should come as no surprise that World of Warcraft is at the top of Blizzard's list for the foreseeable future.

With the launch of Diablo III not scheduled to happen anytime soon, it looks like you'll have plenty of time to check out Torchlight or play through Diablo II again. And again.