Funcom recently activated the buddy program for their MMO, Age of Conan, allowing active subscribers to give a friend a game key which permits 7 days of play time. However, Funcom’s solution to giving your buddy the client software isn’t as smooth.

We recommend that you lend your install DVDs to your buddy to get him or her ready to play as fast as possible. Alternatively your buddy will be offered a $2,99/€2,99 client download with 3 additional days of playtime to cover the download time.

The install media Age of Conan (of which ComputerSims developed a fansite for, AOChub) is two 6GB DVDs. Sure, you can send your buddy your DVDs… or burn ISOs of them and let him download all 12+GB of them… Or you can do this:

1. Send your buddy a copy of ConanPatcher.exe and LocalConfig.xml.
2. Have your buddy create a folder on his hard drive, c:\Program Files\Funcom\Age of Conan, and put the two files you sent him in there.
3. Tell him to run ConanPatcher.exe.

This will initiate the client download and, presumably, avoid the need to pass around DVDs.