During our first day at GamesCom in Germany - we had the chance to talk with Age of Conan Executive Producer, Craig Morrison and Lead Expansion Designer, Joel Bylos about the first AoC expansion.

During our first day at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany -- we had the opportunity to talk with Age of Conan Executive Producer, Craig Morrison and Lead Expansion Designer, Joel Bylos. During the interview we went into detail about the first expansion for Age of Conan, Rise of the Godslayer. In addition to new mounts, an alternate advancement system and a handful of different NPC factions to sway, players can also look forward to zones with as much as 30 percent more playable space. Check out our full interview and stay tuned for our first look at Rise of the Godslayer.

ZAM: What were the biggest goals with the first Age of Conan expansion?

Craig Morrison: I think the key goals are two-fold. One is to add a lot more content and story-driven, dynamic content that the players can really invest in and have a lot of fun playing through. It's a content-driven expansion. The second is the system-side; adding the additional character depth that we discussed in the presentation of the 'alternate advancement system,' and giving players the ability to further specialize and train their characters and make them more powerful [via] the alternate advancement system.

ZAM: Let's talk about the alternate advancement system. Is it more of an advancement system or a specialization system, in which players would choose different paths?

Morrison: No—over time, if a player plays for long enough, they'd be able to get everything.

ZAM: I hate to use this for a basis of reference, but is it more similar to an EverQuest 'alternate advancement' system or a World of Warcraft 'specialization' system?

Morrison: It's both; and all, with a little bit of EVE [Online] thrown in for good measure, with the time-based mechanic. It's kind of like taking the 'best bits' from different game systems, and figuring out how it's going to work best for your game. So it will allow people to specialize, for sure. One of the lines could be for PvE [if you decide you would rather] gain a much better benefit from PvE [specialization]. But [players] might also choose to first pick one for their class—their archetype—before they go for the general wands, [for example].

Players will have a choice in which way they go. The general ones might be closer to the EQ alternate advancement abilities, while their class-specific ones might be closer to the WoW specialization-type tree. And this is all on top of the three the player already has—so the player already has made a specialization choice in our game by choosing which of their two class-specific trees they're already investing in. It's a further layer of depth on top of that, which either allows them to strengthen their choice, or it could allow them to diversify the options that they have. The choice will be very much [dependant] to the player. So which of those systems is more like [EQ or WoW]? It's kind of down to how the player uses them; it could be either of them, depending on which way they approach it.

ZAM: Is it safe then to assume that there are no maximum amounts of points that you can put into the alternate advancement system, or are there certain accounts where a player will have to sacrifice one ability for another?

Morrison: The way we're designing it—over time, years down the line—maybe someone could get them all. But early on, they're certainly going to have to choose. [As far as] the really dedicated players that finally and eventually get everything; in theory it might be possible. I'm guessing over time we'll continue to add to it, [so it might] never really be possible in the practical sense. It might be theoretically...

ZAM: (Laughs) Players will find a way...

Morrison: (Laughs) Indeed they do. But by and large, the average player—to the way it's [meant to be approached]—there will be choices that they will make in the direction. How much they decide to dedicate to it is up to them, in terms of whether they want to try and max out certain areas.

ZAM: The level cap is staying the same and there are no new characters being added to the game—what was the primary motive behind that decision?

Morrison: It was because we wanted that depth—that we talked about earlier—for the existing characters. With the Eastern theme, we can use motion-capture technology to get 'oriental-style' effects; we can bring in oriental weapons and let [existing] players use them. We didn't want to restrict it to one class that got all the cool stuff. You know, when you add a new class, it tends to be, 'Oh, look—that's brand-new, we gotta play that!'

We wanted to be able to spread it out across all the classes. We already have classes in the game that use one-handed edged weapons and daggers [and so on.] We wanted to be able to give [existing players] the Eastern influence and add new skills and abilities to each of them, so that every player has a reason to go and play through the expansion—and doesn't necessarily think, 'Oh man, I've got to start again...I really want to get that cool, kick-ass martial arts skill, or use that new weapon...but man, I gotta start the new class.'

We really wanted to try and avoid that so that [players] could specialize their own character in the new skills and abilities that will come out of the Eastern influence of Khitai.

ZAM: You mentioned that you were trying to make the world a larger playing field by adding landmarks and less automatic inter-sea traveling. In those two ways, how have you made this expansion a larger playing field?

Morrison: The playing fields have a lot more playable space. A lot of the design in the original game—like Northern Europe, which was very mountainous—a lot of the feedback felt it was very linear, in the progression. We wanted to open up the playfields a little bit more and give the player a [greater] sense of exploration. But still, at the same time, they need to know where they are—and that's where the landmarks come in. They can always see a tent over there, [for example,] to know that's north—so they don't get lost in a more open playfield. So we've greatly expanded the amount of playable space. Some of the playfields—you know, on a hex map—might be the same size as the largest playfields we've already got in the game. But there's much more of this space that's actually explorable—probably 30 percent more—than even the largest playfields currently in the game.

ZAM: In comparison to other zones in the original game, these zones are massive. How have you been able to use the technology that you've used in the past to keep the system resource requirements as low as previous content?

Morrison: It's mainly about adapting it. On paper, if you were to draw them out on graph paper, the playfields would actually be about the same size—in geographical space—as say, Ymir's Pass. But in Ymir's Pass, for example, there are lots of [very large,] mountainous regions, [but there are mostly just] narrow paths which are actually traversable; what we would call 'playable game space.' What we've done with Khitai...it's much more about open and vast plains, valleys and rolling hills. There are still mountains bordering the regions and the players will still go up those kinds of barriers, but we've been able to make much more of the space playable, without making it geographically bigger. It allows us to place more mobs and put more content within the same game space, but with much more explorable space. There is 30 percent more playable space in these playfields, simply by being a little clever about how we approach the wall design itself.

ZAM: You mentioned that there will be no fake buildings. As you're running through town, you'll be able to go inside and explore—how have you been able to do that, and will there be any interaction with those buildings?

Morrison: Some, but not all—you know, I'm sure if you knocked on every door in every single town you went to, you wouldn't find much interesting...Or you'd get kicked out. (Laughs) It's mainly just a little touch that we decided on when it came time to make the buildings. We decided to make them open-plan design so players can walk in and through. I think it gives a nice feeling to the cities themselves; but also because of the oriental design. We actually spent some time visiting Korea and China and going to their ancient fortresses and towns that still exist to this day, and they do very much have this open-planned design ethos. We really wanted to capture that for the players when it came to actually making the buildings.

ZAM: So the landmarks—are players going to be able to explore all of those? Will they be points of reference, or will they be places that players will be able to interact with?

Joel Bylos: One of the things we're doing, for example...In the lore of Khitai, it's the land of 999,999 gods—so one of the things we've done is design this place where there are these little shrines all over, in every playfield. You'll find them in ruins, you'll find them in half-buried mosques—you'll find these little shrines everywhere. It's actually an optional quest; as you go through, you can go through to each and every one of these shrines, and if you play the right emote, something will happen. There are actually quests to find them, and we're adding things like 'digging spots' for finding buried treasure.

ZAM: One of things you mentioned are 'real consequences' and factions—how does that differ from the notoriety and faction systems that are already so much a part of Age of Conan?

Morrison: Well, they're very different—the notoriety system is very PvP-focused. This [upcoming] one is very much a PvE faction system. It's about how the world interacts with you. For example, in the original AoC, you can kill a guard and 10 minutes later his friend won't remember you killed him. If you're not a criminal, they'll just forget about you. In the expansion, they remember. When you kill someone from a faction, the rest of the people in the faction remember. And if you do it enough, they're eventually going to attack you outside. And likewise; hidden ones while you're doing quests and becoming an ally of one side of the fight, they're not going to forget about it. So as you're making an ally on one side, you're making more and more of an enemy of the people on the other side. It will close off access for someone, and it will open up new quest lines with your allies. It's making a conscious choice in each playfield and understanding that [things] do have a consequence.

Bylos: We have things like 'reciprocal quests,' as I call them. Say you're In a faction and you get a quest to go burn down a barn—so you go there and burn down the barn—the players in the other faction are getting a quest to prevent that barn from being burned down. So even though the game is PvE-focused, it still creates this PvP dynamic between the factions—on PvP servers, especially. You'll have people, like, 'No! You're not burning the damn thing down!' And we do that quite a bit—and all of these quests are repeatable, for the most part, so it's back-and-forth.

ZAM: How many factions can players expect to sway in Rise of the Godslayer?

Morrison: Ten main factions and two hidden ones. There are five gameplay regions, and each gameplay region has two factions in it. In each region, the player has a choice to make. They'll effectively make five choices as they go along, as to which factions they want to ally with. It's not like they make a decision in the first playfield that will bind them to something in the final playfield. They'll actually get to make the decision again as they move into each new region. It's not really a black-and-white, good-and-bad, 'this is side A and this is side B'—it's all about regional disputes, struggles for power, ancient clan conflicts...the whole world of Khitai is in conflict, as well as they over-arcing story that the players finds themselves in the middle of.

Bylos: Two of the opposing factions are both Priest factions, for example. One of them worships the god that Conan killed, but they're actually practitioners of very white, nice healing magic—they're very nice guys—but they hate Conan to death. [...] On the other side, you've got these guys who worship the Lord of the Underworld—human sacrifices, they're all for it—but they actually also have the true heir to the empire raised upon them. So joining them is kind of the right thing to do, but...the player doesn't have any easy choice at any point; they have to think about what they're doing.

ZAM: In terms of PvP, what do you have in store for us?

Morrison: Most of the PvP additions will be part of the live game. There's nothing specifically PvP in the expansion. Like Joel said, some of the quests will encourage players of opposite factions to be in the same place at the same time—which I'm pretty sure might involve some PvP, especially on the PvP servers—but there aren't any new specific PvP systems in the expansion, because we want those to come as part of the live game. We have a big live game update coming in the next couple of months already; it has a whole new PvP system for smaller guilds in the tower system in the border kingdoms. We really want the PvP system additions too for everybody, so they'll come as part of the live game updates.

ZAM: You mentioned two new mounts; the wolf and the tiger, and that they will have more uses than just speed. Can you tell us about them?

Bylos: The tiger is the fastest sprinting mount; so you get a quick burst of power, but only for a short amount of time. The wolf...I'm not going to talk about yet, actually. We're still working on exactly what we want it to do, and we have some ideas that we think players will like—but we're not quite ready to talk about it yet.

ZAM: Are these mounts going to be tiered at all?

Morrison: No, it's like Joel said—it's about doing the quest line. It's going to have to be a fairly epic quest that the players have to go through to complete to get the mount.

ZAM: How long are these epic quests going to take players?

Morrison: I think that will be tweaked a little bit. It's currently going to be up to nine or 10 quests, once you have the faction to be able to start. You'll have to build up loyalty with a specific faction that you have to find in the expansion to be able to start the quest.

Bylos: And it's 15. Fifteen or 17 quests. You have to rear it from a cub. You have to go through quests to teach it to hunt.

ZAM: Well thank you so much for talking with us about Rise of the Godking.

Bylos & Morrison: Thank you for being here.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
ZAM.com