Take THAT, NDA.

The WarCry crew got special permission to dish about their Age of Conan beta experience, and you can see the first of their beta journals up at their site.

I think I've probably seen the cutscene that plays before you begin character creation time and time-over (in gameplay videos and so forth), so I really wasn't fussed with that, but it did look very cool "in the flesh", so to speak. In the very beginning, You see the Styigan slave galley that you're on being pursued by what looks like an Aquilonian warship. The slave galley is under-fire from the warship (probably by command of King Conan himself) by means of fire arrows and boulders, and this is how you end up shipwrecked on the island of Tortage, east of the Barachan Isles and off the southern coast of Zingara. The "camera" flies through the galley to reveal the slaves, of course, painfully rowing their oars, where the camera pauses and waits for you to make your first selection: Male or Female. Not to be suckered into creating a female character just for the heck of it, I decided to create a male, and right off the bat I was able to select my race, of course, and then my class. It was an Aquilonian Ranger I had set my mind on, the one I will journey with through Hyboria!

Read more at WarCry.