Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Visit Report

WarCry presents us with their report of Funcom's recent press event for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.
The game was then loaded up for as and we were shown some features of the game that had not previously been showcased to the public: crafting and keep/city building (PvP). Associate Producer, Morten Byom, took us through one of three crafting and city-building zones, the Lacheish Plains. In 'Age of Conan', players and guilds will be able to choose where they would like to do their crafting and build their keep and are given three options: the afore-mentioned Lacheish Plains in Cimmeria; the Purple Lotus Swamp in Stygia; and Poitain located in Aquilonia. Players will begin developing their crafting and tradeskills when they enter a friendly NPC village within the zone and begin collecting crafting quests or tasks. Funcom has made the decision to avoid crafting models found in other MMORPGs, namely "make 'x' amount to reach the next crafting tier", and gone with a quest-based and story-driven approach even with their crafting system. As a player progresses through the crafting quests they will be given new recipes and the ability to harvest resources of a better quality and ultimately create better and stronger items. You will not be able to attain crafting quests anywhere apart from these three crafting playfields (Lacheish Plains, the Purple Lotus Swamp, and Poitain), but you will be able to craft anywhere as long as you have the recipe(s) and ingredients/resources you need. So no having to run miles and miles to the nearest forge or working station, you are your own working station. Of course, as a role-playing element, players can always find themselves an area with a forge or a working bench if they feel that hammering on an invisible anvil does little for the sake of immersion and a decent role-playing experience.
Spotted on Blue's News.