Massively^™

Funcom was on-hand at this year's Dragon*Con, where they held a Q&A session regarding all things Age of Conan. What follows is as much of the event as could be transcribed from the audio we brought back with us. This writeup was completed based on audio with some garbled sections. Some details may be glossed over as a result. Without further ado:

Q: Any plans to merge the servers?
A: No. What we have looked at is ways of letting people play across servers, but we haven't made any plans to merge servers.

Working with the tradeskill guys a lot lately and the resource team and we're designing new quests and areas for resource gathering and building and things like that. Tower objectives and so forth, they're the next step with the battlekeep system, so I work with the action dynamic team, who are the guys who do the massive PvP and Siegeing. Our first priority at the moment is to get 48v48 sieges running perfectly for everybody. Second priority is to get the next step out, which is Towers, so the guys are working on it.

Q: When are staves going to be able to be made by players?
A: The tradeskill guys are making all new recipes all the time and they're improving the tradeskill system, so I imagine that staves are going to be part of that. When? I don't know that.

Boobies are still a large part of our philosophy. Mature content, you've got two sides to the Mature coin. You've got blood and boobies, which is Mature content, and then you've got deep meaningful choices Mature content, where you've got to think about what you're choosing in the game, think about the consequences of your actions. A game that asks you to be mature adults. And from a quest design point of view, we're attempting to put that in the game all the time. We want the quests to be meaning ful to you as a player, we want to put you in a position where the choices aren't always easy. And as for boobs and blood, I mean, that's a constant, we'll continue adding that sort of stuff.

Q: What's being done about unprofessional behavior by game masters?
A: I know how it's being handled, and that actually grates on me quite a bit, because you hire someone onto a job, and you expect professionalism. Even at a game company, there is always a level of professionalism that should be maintained. Issues like that area dealt with, but internally. It's unfortunate that we can't catch them in the act. But when it happens, depending on the severity of the issue, it can be a termination thing. We do have disciplinary actions in place. It's not from a lack of training, because the first thing we say is, professionalism. Be friendly, but be professional.

Q: Are you bringing in any sort of transportation for low-level characters in besides running?
A: That's something that many players have mentioned, that there's too much running. That's something we are aware of, and are doing something about, but I can't give you any specific dates.

Q: Any discussion about making this game native to Linux?
A: There have been many discussions because there's many at Funcom who are diehard Linux fans. Anything that comes down to running on Linux or a Mac requires a specific version. It's purely down to the economics of how many people use those systems. It would be great to have the resources to be able to convert it to Mac, to Linux, to Windows, but it just purely comes down to the math. If it would require four or five coders for even a month or two to make that work happen, those five guys could be much more productive working on issues and creating new content in the game. So, I think the question is, if Linux users ever got to fifty percent of the market, yes, we would.