Age of Conan Interview, part one

Funcom fuels our barbarian fantasies as it takes us inside its PC and Xbox 360 MMORPG

Words: Stuart Bishop, CVG UK

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Blizzard's all-dominating World of Warcraft is set to face its most serious challenge yet in 2007, a number of new 'big name' MMORPGs preparing to enter the market before the year is out.

Product manger Erling Ellingsen reveals that on top of creating a compelling MMORPG experience Funcom is aiming to incorporate cross-platform adventuring into Age of Conan. So, while the PC version will release first this October, PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers could eventually be able to buddy-up and compare oiled muscly pectorals.

Over to Erling...

When development began, what kind of experience were you aiming for?:

Erling Ellingsen: We knew we didn't want to make a massively multiplayer online game that stuck to the established standards of the genre. We had to do something different with elements that have always been done in a certain way with MMOs - elements such as combat - so we immediately set out to come up with new ways of handling these gameplay features.

There's no point in re-inventing the wheel for the sake of it. We want to depict Conan's world as it was described in Robert E. Howard's novels, so we set out to create a violent world filled with war and conflict, a world that was a far cry from the typical fantasy this genre is known for. It's truly a brutal and very mature universe and I would definitively say we're realizing these goals.