Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom sat down with Game Director and Executive Producer Craig Morrison to talk about Age of Conan going free-to-play and what it means for the community.

Last week, the team over at Age of Conan made the big announcement that this mature MMO would be taking some big strides by going free-to-play this summer. While Funcom has yet to announce any major plans for the future beyond their Conan the Barbarian movie tie-in, Age of Conan will go by a new title by the end of this shift to Age of Conan: Unrated.

With so many new changes on the way, I decided to catch up with Game Director and Executive Producer Craig Morrison to see if I could get some clarification on Age of Conan's movie tie-in plans, as well as the details on what's to come when Age of Conan goes free-to-play. Keep reading after the jump for his answers!

ZAM: Hello there! With so much going on for you these days, thanks for sparing the time to answer a few questions!

Craig Morrison: No problem at all, good to get to talk about the game!

ZAM: First, congratulations on Age of Conan hitting its third birthday! Looking back over those years, do you feel that there has been much change in the MMORPG industry? Has the overall vision for Age of Conan changed much since its original conception?

Morrison: I think an MMO always evolves, and little parts of each person that works on it show through over time. I don't think the overall vision has changed much really. I can't really speak for the original team, but we definitely follow the same direction of constantly trying to create great content that is keeping to the world that Robert E. Howard created. The industry as a whole probably hasn't changed that much in terms of content and approach, things have been pretty consistent with the current generation of titles. 

ZAM: Your first big announcement last week was that Age of Conan was going to feature a lot of new content from the upcoming Conan the Barbarian movie, in the form of an adventure pack called "The Savage Coast of Turan." In the press release, Paradox's CEO and the producer of the film, Fredrik Malmberg, noted that the film team has been working closely with Funcom's creative team since 2003. How did that collaboration process work?

Morrison: The team at Paradox is great. They are a very inclusive operation, and all the partners that work on the Conan license are kept updated, and co-operations is always encouraged and supported. That has included things like sharing assets and concepts and the folks behind the movie making sure that we were aware of the script and kept up to date with the current drafts as they went along. The movie is looking really good, and I think people who have played the game will recognize the fact that the art direction is taking from the same inspirations…it really does feel like the same world.

ZAM: You note that this movie tie-in content will come in the form of an adventure pack. While you're probably not aiming for the same scope as your most recent expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, adding a brand new area in the form of Ardashir certainly elevates this above a regular patch update. Any specific hints as to what sort of new goodies players can expect? What were your overall goals in creating this adventure pack?

Morrison: The movie presented one major challenge in that it is set some 20 years in the past, long before Conan is king as he is at the time of our game. So we really wanted to concentrate on the characters, and revisit them many years later. Given his responsibilities as king of Aquilonia it made sense that Conan can't always go heading off to help old friends, so he sends the players instead!

With the adventure pack we aimed to add a little of something for all the types of content, a large outdoor area to explore, alongside a solo instance, a dynamic instance, a team instance and a raid. It is also cool because given the location in Turan we also got to take inspiration from some of Howard's original tales, and I think Conan fans will get a real kick out of one of the instances in particular.

ZAM: Of course, the biggest change coming to Age of Conan is your most recent announcement that it's going free and "unrated." You've already stated that "going unrated" means you can stay even truer to the gritty setting created by Robert E. Howard (author of the original Conan series), but should players expect a significant change from the Age of Conan that they are used to? What spurred this full push for the game to go unrated?

Morrison: Players won't see any changes to the existing content, at least not at first. Age of Conan is already the most mature MMO on the market, but going Unrated gives us additional freedom to pursue Robert E. Howard's original vision for a savage Hyboria when creating new content for the game. And keep in mind that Unrated is also somewhat of a mission statement, it's not necessarily adding content that pushes it beyond the Mature rating. It's about embracing the real vision of Hyboria.

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