Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer Preview and Q&A

The guys over at the UGDB have published a preview of Funcom's Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer expansion pack, as well as a Q&A with game director Craig Morrison. Here are a couple of snips from the full article:
You might ask yourselves the question (Why, the first expansion of Conan is called Rise of the Godslayer?) First of all, Khitai is not the peaceful and quiet place it used to be. Currently the civilization there is in decline, torn by factional warfare and threatened by a mysterious evil force. Those territories were protected by that evil for over a millennium by a local god, but that god was killed by Conan 25 years ago. These events are part of Howard's novel The Tower of the Elephant and are leading to the events of the expansion. As you can guess, the Empire of Khitai is in decay because of Conan's actions 25 years ago, so now the local people do not like him that much as well as the people that are coming to Khitai from Connan's kingdom.

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UGDB.com: In your personal opinion, what were the main problems of the original game Hyborian Adventures, and what part of them you've managed to fix through patches?

Craig Morrison: We've been working very, very hard on the game from over a year already. When the game has been launched, we sat down and went throughout all the issues, which the players pointed out after the game's release. It's not a hidden fact that we had a lot of players which tried the game, and did not like it. So we've gathered the player's feedback and then the team started to work tremendously hard to resolve all of these weak points of Hyborian Adventures. First of all, we've managed to resolve the technical issues very fast. Then we addressed things like adding a PvP system in the game and a structure based on PvP gameplay we've made this last autumn. Then we started to look at things like the gaps in the content the people complained about in the level 50 area, there were many, many hours of content, and we've made lots of improvements there. Then we addressed the level 70 range, we added new dungeons like the Amphitheater of Karutonia, we introduced a revamp of our RPG system, brand new items, abilities, new statistics, etc. So, we've spent more than a year improving the live product, and we will continue to do so.

The expansion on the other hand - Rise of the Godslayer is about adding completely new content, lots of new things for the players to do, lots of new stories to be experienced. As a whole we are taking the game in a slightly new playfield design, because we wanted to put a much more playable space in the same kind of areas in the future. We've created much more stunning visuals and sweeping new views. So, the expansion is the result of what people have liked in the original game and focusing on the little things, and details too.