Age of Conan - Interviews @ Europe

Two European, non-English websites have released interviews written in the original languages but also in English with Erling Ellingsen, Product Manager.
First we have the German website OnlineWelten, which asks:

Julius "Amrac" Kuschke: Age of Conan is a very action-oriented MMOG. So the question comes to my mind, if you also have quests, where the players have to solve puzzles or riddles? If yes, can you give us an example?

Erling Ellingsen: Yes, I think one of the truly beautiful things about Age of Conan is how diverse and interesting the quests can be. Sure, we have a lot of traditional MMO type quests in there, but we're really trying to spice things up as well. Especially during the 1-20 part of the game you will find quests that are truly epic and dramatic, thanks to the part single-player aspect. Puzzles or riddles? Sure, I just had a chat with one of the quest designers on the team, Joel Bylos, and he told me about the "Patterns of Insanity" quest. You basically have to mark murder sites on your mini-map and this forms a pattern that reveals the killer! There are also quests where you have to interrogate NPCs, discover the truth and so on. Exciting!

Next is the French website Mondes Persistants, which asks:

Beautiful graphics, big battlefield with hundreds of players, collision, line of sight... Are you sure it is not a little bit too much to handle ?

I certainly understand your concern, and I guess time will show, but we are putting a lot of effort into making our technology work under those conditions. Tests have been positive and a lot of that is owed to our proprietary graphics engine called Dreamworld. Having shaped this engine over several years it has allowed us to create an engine that is truly scalable and can adapt to a lot of different systems.