Long story short: I shouldn't have had them, say the devs, who suggested a lack of pre-compiled shaders may be the culprit. The final game will ship with a shader library that they - and we - hope will alleviate this problem. I also experienced an array of minor glitches, like absent animations, invisible enemies, and a broken quest or two, but these sorts of problems often get fixed by bleary-eyed developers in the final weeks before an MMO launch. Crom, if you're up there, please help guide Funcom in ironing out these technical issues.

But, back to the actual gameplay: public quests in Age of Conan don't deviate much from the age-old quest formulas seen in past MMOs. You'll be asked to deliver notes and trinkets, kill "x" of "y" beasties and undesirables, dungeon-crawl to find lost items, gather foodstuffs and gems, and destroy specified objects. In one mission, the mistress of Tortage's brothel, The Bearded Clam (no, really), will even task you with searching for one of her lost prostitutes and then escorting her to safety.