Interviews// Andreas Öjerfors - Age of Conan, Quest Co-ordinator

(A fan turns up with comics, given out at the door and to be packed in with the game, for signing. I decline, Andreas obliges.)


Is that comic planned to be part of a series or a one-off?

Andreas Öjerfors: (Looking a little sheepish) We'll see.


I know (US publisher) Dark Horse, which has published that issue, already puts out an ongoing series and mini series...

Andreas Öjerfors: I don't think there's anything in the pipeline right now, but Funcom really liked doing this and I think it's worked very well for Funcom.


Did Funcom write it, then? I saw the name of Joshua Dysart, who's written Conan comics before, on it.

Andreas Öjerfors: We co-wrote it. So, it's based on our story, and he co-wrote it and we adapted each other's stories. I wrote a bit about Totage and the storyline there and they adapted what we had.


Will there be sex in the game?

Andreas Öjerfors: No. No... Hot Coffee or what have you (grins). There might be quests – we will see – where you might get an interesting reward...


And what about boozing?

Andreas Öjerfors: Booze? Oh, yeah, you can drink. We have that. You get drunk


Are there any Easter Eggs in the game?

Andreas Öjerfors: Of course, but we try to be subtle with pop culture references. If you look at WoW, it has a lot of it. But it really works because part of the fun is the crazy world in World of Warcraft. So, what we do is we try to be real subtle. You have to look for it.


What does the writing on the sword (in the promotional image) mean?

Andreas Öjerfors: (Grins). I think it’s Atlantean, so you’d have to ask the artist who made that language. We have letters for Atlantean, we have them for Aquilonian. You’re going to see a lot of Aquilonian in the game. I think that actually is a somewhat realistic language.


A lot has been made of the combat and it’s been compared to Street Fighter and console gaming. Was there a conscious decision to try to pull in console gamers who might not normally play MMOs?

Andreas Öjerfors: I don’t think it was just a marketing approach to go with the product that we have. They looked at ‘we’re going to do a game about Hyborea and Conan’. Battle is a huge component of that. Then we looked at ‘OK, so let’s really make that important.’ Let’s take that further and see how we can give a sense of really being in a battle.

So, if we can get console gamers, well, that would be great. But I don’t think that was the intent from the start, no.


How far along is the Xbox 360 version?

Andreas Öjerfors: I don’t know, really. I’ve seen a… I don’t think we talk about Xbox right now.


With siege warfare, how do you set up a siege? Who has to be in one side’s (city) for another to attack?

Andreas Öjerfors: If your guild owns one (of the battle keeps) you have a calendar and you can set a time frame for ‘this is when we’re going to be (there)'… You have to have a time frame. Your whole guild doesn’t have to be on 24-7, but there’s going to be a big time slot where another guild can attack you.


So, you have to be prepared to defend then?

Andreas Öjerfors: If you wanna keep the battle keep, yeah. There’s only eight battle keeps per server, so they’re going to be very, very attractive to guilds.


If you lose, does your structure become theirs?

Andreas Öjerfors: Yes. They can destroy them, and that’s a big part of the battle. But, you might want to be cautious not to destroy too much, because everything that you burn down or destroy so you can’t repair it – that you have to gather resources (for) and build up yourself.