Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Preview

Ten Ton Hammer has posted a six-page preview of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, based on a GDC presentation given by Funcom's Jorgen Tharaldsen and Thor Bjorno.
Intent on making a living breathing world rather than a stagnant sandbox, Funcom has developed NPCs that act at least as complex as those that existed in Oblivion, if not more so. Wandering around on of the Stygian areas, Jorgen picked up a quest to go to a bandit camp and destroy the bandits inside. While that would be a pretty typical kill-and-return quest in most MMOs, in Age of Conan things get a little more interesting.

(You can't just charge into the camp,) Jorgen said as he walked his character around. (If you do, the guards at the front of the camp will alert those in the back, spawning more guards and bringing them all down upon you at once. You can achieve your goal this way, but there are other ways to achieve this goal: You can poison the food source, you can use the day night cycle to your advantage, you can even set their tents on fire. We made the camps unpredictable, so players won't be able to simply saunter in and do the same thing their friend just did.)