One year ago, Funcom was releasing Age of Conan, a highly anticipated MMORPG that was dubbed to kill World of Warcraft – but one that utterly failed and soon started to run out of subscribers due to lots of bugs, lack of tweaks and generally a game world that didn’t offer too much in the first place.

However, Funcom didn’t lose hope and continued to fix and improve the game and now, one year later, they’re starting to see the benefits: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is starting to see an increase in player subscriptions per month, and the players are here to stay. So, even though the game is now far from becoming the WoW killer, it still remains a real quality one for the fans.

“We are very pleased to see that more players are experiencing Age of Conan,” says Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom, Morten Larssen. “The team has been working diligently on improving the game since launch, with several major updates that in addition to improving technology and client stability, also have added hours of more content, new gameplay features, and more. The fact that we are now also seeing longer average subscription periods is a testament to the fact that ‘Age of Conan’ is just getting better and better, and with the launch of the recent trial campaign there has never been a better time to check out the game than now!”

And if you do, you’ll do it during celebration time, since Funcom couldn’t have missed the opportunity to celebrate the one year anniversary. Therefore, all characters in Age of Conan will be treated to free fireworks this week, and each character can use them to color the sky, grab a screenshot in the process and enter a contest to win exciting but unnamed prices. Also, players will soon be able to purchase extra character slots, plus for the veteran players (with more than six months of accumulated subscription time) Funcom is awarding a free character slot!