Recently Allakhazam had a chance to sit down and talk with Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director for the much anticipated Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures MMOG. Just what did he have to say to the questions posed to him? Well read on and find out exactly what he said in this one on one interview.

Tomec: In reviewing the website and the official forums, there seems to be a lack of updated “Development News” Announcements. The last one was apparently October 12^th of this year, and in the FAQ, all of that information is dated in 2006.

Jørgen: What?

Tomec: Yes, all of the FAQ entries are dated September 2006. So are there any plans to update that information?

Jørgen: We update it all the time. Every Friday we have our Friday updates. Every month we have our Major News Center ones. We send out massive stories all the time, so every Friday there is new stuff coming out, and every month there is a news center. Last news center we made was a video, and before that we did mounted combat and before that the leveling progression system. But I’ll check into that, thank you.

Tomec: Some of the creatures and characters in AoC have no basis in the actual history of the series. Can you give us any insight into where they came from? Are they based on any particular person, place, or thing or just general lore developed from the existing lore of the story?

Jørgen: Yes, there is both, because you have the main story lines going through the game from destiny quest level one to eighty. We were able to take the lower Robert E Howard and make it in but that isn’t enough foundation to give us the world we needed. So a lot of them are also devised from our own imagination, but then based upon coming out of the lower background of the universe, some of them are taken from comic series, some are taken from the 17 novels that are coming out., so it’s a mix and blend, but all the countries are taken from Robert E Howard‘s Universe. Like the Cimmerian and the Aquilonian and Stygian and the arch villains in the game, and many of the encounters you do will be with Howard specific encounters. So it is a nice mix of it. What we tried to do is put you in the footsteps of Conan and send you on a journey in his footsteps. Like Conall’s Valley that you played earlier is the region where Conan was born, and we really tried to make sure you can be able to go through the same stuff. It is very important to us.

Tomec: When developing the combat aspect of this title, was there a specific goal in mind that you wished to attain (other than providing the best possible experience, of course), and is there a specific point of influence that you can attribute any of it to?

Jørgen: I think the vision was to give you a more hands on experience, something more active. We started this in 2003. We all felt that the combat in MMO was kind of stale. They were all pretty similar. They were quite static. They were very strategic. There was a lot of involvement. They were quite static in the sense that you can issue a combat and push a few buttons and very often you can sit back and its like a whack and go game by pushing a few buttons. And that’s cool and all but then all online games since 1997, since Ultima, but still now we have the Conan game which is all about being barbarians and being brutal and fighting and we need an innovation for this and this is what we are going to do, we’re going to make it better and this is how we’re going to do it. So the goal was not to just make something better, but also to see how we could evolve the genre. With Anarchy Online we came up with stuff like instancing and lots of innovations which are now standard in the genre and everyone uses them, and with Conan we singled out combat. That’s the key element of it and giving that ability. It has been a long, long, long journey to get where we are today, but I think it has paid off. You see it in the PvP and so it has paid off. The vision stayed from 2003. There haven’t been any changes in the vision. We haven’t had to have a change in the vision. It’s simply a matter of improving the experience and the innovations of it. So that’s the story - it remains the same. Then you get to level 40 and you can start fighting from Horseback and from the Mammoths and the Rhinos. Then you get to level 60 and you get to the sieging and there is an escalation in the combat, because now there is 6 versus 6, but then you get to 60 vs. 60 and there are Horses and Rhinos and siege weapons. You can build your own Battlekeeps and they are huge and you can rent mercenaries and the system you use for PvP can also be used for signing up as a mercenary. So if you are part of a guild you can just jump into the guild warfare. So it’s going to be a pretty escalation of it as well

Tomec: In many titles, crafting exists – but is not given priority in comparison to combat and player vs. player content. Do you plan on giving crafters more love in AoC? Will they see equal content updates alongside the combat/game updates?

Jørgen: It is an essential part of the game in the sense that if you want to make a Player Made village you need the crafter. A lot of the crafting gear is not necessarily going to be stronger, but it is going to be more specialized. You have the socketing system which means you can tweak the stuff that makes it become more adjusted to the special needs you have. Also there are going to be a lot of crafting quests, a lot of them. So most of the recipes are actually quest based. To get the recipes you need to do quests to get them. And we have always been very careful to say this game is not about crafting, the main focus of the game is combat. For those who love crafting, we know that its perhaps 10% of the population loves that the most and so we are aware of this and we’re making this game for all kinds of players, not just the hard core PvPers or the hard core PvE raiders. It’s important for us to make many games in one so there will be a lot of loving for the crafters. Everybody is asking, “What’s the crafting system like?” and we haven’t said anything about it. We are going to do it over the next year. That’s when you will get the full reveal on it

Tomec: With the expected “Mature” rating of the game that you state you embrace, do you see that as a hindrance to the overall success of the game – especially considering that the typical MMO market consists of boys aged 13 to 20. Do you think this rating will have a negative impact on your overall expected sales?

Jørgen: I would say otherwise because, before World of Warcraft, the typical MMO gamer was 27 average age so World of Warcraft has changed everything. They put it in and they just boomed. Thank you Blizzard. It’s amazing what they’ve done for us and for the genre, but we think this is better for us actuality. This is an advantage to us, because everybody is looking for the same space in the market, everybody going into like the teen market, the families, the kids, etc., but we embrace what we have. Not to dumb down the Conan game, don’t make it kiddy friendly, no decapitations, nothing. That would have been a lot worse for us. At least now we have a clear identity and we have a clear goal. And if you look at some of the most successful console games for instance, they’re all mature. If you look at Grand Theft Auto, God of War, that kind of game, because they are clear on their identity and they have followed their identity they are doing well. As I see it people are seeing it as wow finally a mature game, finally they can be real brutality, finally people can dress up if they like to. Like you know this quest which is not kiddy nice, this quest is about all kinds of stuff which is fitting for a mature license, so as I see it, it’s an advantage. Many have said to us it’s a danger, but I think we will succeed

Tomec: Well you don’t get anywhere without taking risks.

Jørgen: Exactly, and let,s face it we are like 300 people at Funcom. We are valued like at 300 million dollars, which is like we are a semi big development company, which also means if we are to get ahead we need to move in new direction. The moment a company like ours just tried to copy the stuff that is out there, that’s the day we are doomed, I think. So we need to be innovative and we need to push the boundaries and use our skills to bring something new to the table.

Tomec: AoC: Hyborian Adventures is highly anticipated, especially considering rumors of its development began in 2003 – two years before the official announcement of its early development. With recent titles such as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Gods ‘N Heroes experiencing much of the same anticipation, yet still failing, do you believe you have a greater chance of success?

Jørgen: Yeah I think we have more anticipation than Vanguard and Gods ’N Heroes combined and I don’t foresee that we will flop at all. We received more than 20 covers for the game so far. We cleaned the awards ceremonies in Europe and E3 for like 3 years in a row now. We see that the feed back from about 10,000 beta testers is really really, good. People are having a lot of fun. Our servers are rock solid, you know really stable and we have been doing this for so many years but Gods ’N Heroes hasn’t released a game before. The Vanguard guys, it’s a shame the way it happened, but I think that they too should have done like we did and perhaps given it a few more months because we have been good on making sure we have enough time to polish the game. So I would be very surprised if it flopped. We learned a rather painful lesson with Anarchy Online in 2001. If you remember the launch of that game a long, long time ago, and that game is still running successfully, so I think we know what it takes to be a success. We have a good license behind us. We have 179 developers working on the game and combined release of 10 MMOs and about 150 release of pc games, I believe we are in a pretty ok position. I hope so at least.

Tomec: One final question. You can’t tell us more about crafting, but can you tell us more about the PvP and Battlekeeps and everything.

Jørgen: Yeah sure. It’s a big question though because there are many aspects to it. It starts like this; your build on depending on if it is a PvP server or a free for all server. It happens in the Border Kingdoms, that’s according to lore and between several Borders where the Kingdoms are up for grabs. You have several guilds and you claim land and you start off by building a trade post. That’s the first thing you need to do and then you start building off the perimeters of the city. There will be different sized cities. As you build them up you will be open for attacks from other guilds and so called opportunity windows. Other guilds can actually lay siege to your city, because there will be a limited amount of instances. For the biggest battle keeps, there will be an estimated 9 for each server. We’re going to have about 15 of the forts and about 18 of the resource nodes that will be even smaller. So depending on the size of the guild you’ll have different sizes of these cities. Then you’re going to go and lay siege to enemy cities and there are several different objectives, depending on how many kills you have, in terms of holding points inside the city and obviously the defenders would stand up on the high ground with their archers and their Nukers. Attackers would come with their siege weapons and Ballistas and their war mammoths try to break down their wall and reach perimeters. Depending on the size of the city you’ll have first line of defense, second line of defense, third line of defense, to break through and there is a set time limit on these, so they won’t rage on for like 2 days. We cap it so like everything should be done in a certain time.

Tomec: That been a problem in other games endless PvP battles, it’s like there is no end.

Jørgen: Ours will stop after a set amount of time, exactly how many hours we will let you know when the game launches, because that is when it will be fully balanced for that. And then the game will be over. And as part of this you can also come in as mercenary, so if your guild is about to lose. And if you die you can respawn at the Battle Keep in the cities. You can also hire mercenaries so you can send out calls to the world for other players to be teleported in the battle as mercenaries. You even have a few mercenary levels in the game. And of course by PvPing you get advantages: you get status, you get ranking, you get PvP levels, and many other things that will help you grow your PvP aspect and of course PvP gear. That’s the very short summary of it.

Tomec: Well thank you for your time and it has been great meeting you. I’ve had a great time here.

Jørgen: No problem.