Age of Conan game Director Craig Morrison posted a letter on the official forum about latest changes to the game, including the items and statistics update.

The details are as below:

It's that time again for a little peek into what's coming up for Age of Conan Gold. As mentioned last time the major part of this Producer's Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it's the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.

Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn't possibly cover everything, and it won't. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won't be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.

Revamping the RPG System

It's also worth repeating why we have been working away on these changes in the first place.

After we looked at the feedback after launch we concluded that we had misjudged the importance of items and statistics to character progression. While the intention had always been to be less item-centric than other titles, we probably went a little too far in the other direction. Therefore we have set out to expand and develop the RPG system so that it offers better and more interesting character progression and customization.

So, now that the preamble is out of the way, let's get rolling and take a peek inside the mechanics of the RPG system so you can start to understand where we are taking it. So, how best to provide an overview of the changes? At a basic level what we have done is add an additional range to the attribute budgets, this additional range comes from items and trickle down from your primary attributes. Mobs and encounters have been rebalanced to account for this increase. The end result is that items and trickle down now account for up to fifty percent (give or take a couple of percent variance here and there) of your overall budget for any given attribute. For comparison that contribution did not exceed twenty five percent before the changes, and 'trickle down' barely influenced it at all.