Age of Conan Interview, part two

We've been speaking to Funcom about its forthcoming PC and Xbox 360 MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian adventures, andlast week we brought you part one of the resulting interview. Today - guess what? - we're bringing you the second and concluding part of our chat with product manager Erling Ellingsen...

What occurs in the single-player section of the game, and when that's completed is it a traditional MMORPG that we move into?

Erling Ellingsen: The single-player feature has changed much since we started designing Age of Conan, mostly due to feedback from the testers in the closed beta. Originally it was designed to be an entire single-player game before you stepped into the massive world, but we've scaled this down somewhat because people generally wanted to be able to interact with other players much sooner.

Still, when you first start out in Age of Conan, you'll spend the first limited part of the game where you are the only player. You learn the basics of the game as you progress through what resembles the story of a single-player game, and we're able to give players an introduction to the game which is much more heavily based on storytelling. When the players reach the village of Tortage, they will start seeing a limited amount of other players.

But at this stage during the game they are able to switch between day and night by sleeping at the local inn, and at night the player will always be in their own universe and will at that point be able to play through more single-player aspects of the game. After some hours when the player leaves the island of Tortage and set sail for the mainland, they will step into the more traditional MMO world with thousands of other players.