you will find quests that are truly epic and dramatic, thanks to the part single-player aspect. Puzzles or riddles? Sure, I just had a chat with one of the quest designers on the team, Joel Bylos, and he told me about the "Patterns of Insanity" quest. You basically have to mark murder sites on your mini-map and this forms a pattern that reveals the killer! There are also quests where you have to interrogate NPCs, discover the truth and so on. Exciting!

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: How intelligent is the AI in AoC? Will NPC-priests for example cleanse their NPC-colleagues from debuffs and other negative effects?

Erling Ellingsen: The combat intelligence, as you're more or less talking about here, is quite advanced indeed. Yes, NPCs will behave differently and they will support each other. They will cry for help, they will spot you sneaking around, and they will team up and so on. Some will go for the casters because they hate them the most, others will go for whatever hit the hardest. Also there is a lot of social intelligence in the NPCs, and you will see this in the city life.

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: You did some changes on the formation-system. Can you explain to us, what exactly has changed and what is still possible with formations?

Erling Ellingsen: Formations were one of the gameplay features that simply did not work very well in the game as an MMO feature, and so we removed it. It simply detracted from the fun factor, and we decided to focus on other things. We might go back to look at it later after launch, of course.

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: This year two MMOGs are courting the PvP-players: AoC and WAR. Warhammer Online has also a strong licence and its RvR-System. So why should players that love PvP choose Age of Conan?

Erling Ellingsen: I think both games are quite different from each other, and I'm sure we will both have our strengths and possibly weaknesses. I can not comment too much on the system employed in Warhammer Online as I have not tried it yet, but the one we're designing for Age of Conan is solid and should provide a lot of fun! Imagine huge sieges where guilds attack each other and bring down each other's battlekeeps and share the loot. That's Hyboria for you! There will be this edge to it, I think, this bloody lawlessness that we all love about Conan's world. It's also not so much tied up to rules and the developer's conception of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. This is guild vs. guild, not culture vs. culture. YOU make the politics!

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: On which features are you now working till release? Which things do you have to improve the most till May 23rd?

Erling Ellingsen: Right now it's mostly all polish, polish and polish. We're making sure the game runs as good as it can, and we're adding all the small things that make the game come together. It's a very exciting time for us and our beta testers, and we all can't wait for the servers to be invaded!

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers about Age of Conan?

Erling Ellingsen: I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been watching us so far, it's been great having you with us and we hope to have you play Age of Conan for a long time to come! The adventure is only beginning now, and we're looking forward to years of bringing you all the best entertainment we can provide you with. The gates to Hyboria is about to open!