Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures FAQ

Funcom has put together an extensive FAQ for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, providing us with answers to pretty much any question we might have about the game. From the quests category:

8.2 How do quests work in the game?
We’ve tried to avoid having quests be all about tasks that just involve killing things or delivering items. While these exist in the game after all, killing things in awesome ways is a big reason to play there are numerous quests that take skill, strategy, and planning to complete. Many quests require interacting with both characters and the environment in order to be completed. Some also have puzzles built into them, and solving them can be quite tricky. In addition, many quests are presented in a manner more akin to a single player RPG, with spoken dialogue and movement rather than just as a text field with (Accept) or (Decline) buttons.

8.3 Do you have any examples?
Well, it could be simple. For example, there’s a quest that involves having to find food in the form of ice worms in order to distract a dragon that is blocking the player’s path. By collecting the food and laying it out for the dragon to see, they might distract it long enough to slip past it. Another one is where you need to burn your way to the bushes, and in order to do so you must first find a torch, which will do the job. And in simpler ways, there are quests where you need to smash through walls by actually smashing through walls, destroy buildings by actually destroying them, and set things on fire by actually lighting them on fire.

8.5 How will you interact with characters?
Whereas most MMOs feature boxes full of text which, pops up when you talk to a NPC, Age of Conan takes an entirely different angle. Funcom, the developers of the game, are also the makers of the award-winning adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, and we’re using this experience to create interactive conversations with computer-controlled characters that sometimes resemble what you would find in such games. The game can take control of the camera and give you a special angle when talking to computer-controlled characters, and there will be a branching dialog-tree where you can choose what to say and what to reply when talking to these. The storytelling element is always present.