Age of Conan Dev Talks Problems, Future Plans

Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom's product director, recently spoke about some of the problems with Age of Conan and how they are planning to make the game better. "I think it's okay to say that we simply didn't deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features." He goes on to talk about how they're working on improvements to the PvP system, tradeskills, and class balance. Tharaldsen also spoke with Strategy Informer about the development of the Xbox 360 version of the game, which he said was "not our key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game, and we rightly have the focus on them."

Comments

People are still playing this?

[RocketScientist]

The only thing they got right over WoW on launch was their server capacity. It was a very stable experience with no lag. This is because of their very nice instancing architecture. It works really really well. While WoW may set the standard for polish and finish on games, AoC definitely did a great job on server capacity. Hats off to your ops team.

However, Funcom managed to screw up almost every other aspect of the game, from UI layout to weapon speed, at launch. Itemization at low levels, lack of quests in middle levels, guild housing that just plain didn't work, and so on. Females had a lower weapon speed than males, because it took more time to animate the jugglies. I have a very hard time believing there was any QA done on the game despite the long beta period.

Re:People are still playing this?

[ibsteveog]

Read the GP again. His point was that the one thing AoC got right was the server stability, and said that they did it better than WoW, implying that WoW was poor.

The Alternatives

[PrimalChrome]

Just to list a few :

EQ - Will run on just about anything with a 3d card. Huge world with many expansions already live. Death penalties require real dedication...not the best for the casual player.

EQ2 - Very fun game since they did their revamp. Friendly to casual players, but is a more complex game than WoW.

Eve - Amazing scope for an MMO. Hard to establish yourself unless you have friends already in game.

FFOnline - Do not start unless you have a good group that will be levelling with you, or already know a guild starting new alts.

WoW - The defacto standard for casual gaming on less than bleeding edge systems. The expansion in November should boost populations.

Warhammer Online - New MMO, still has some bugs. Only of interest to the PvP or RvR crowd. Possibly the best PvP MMO implementation yet.

LotRO - Beautiful world, but you get sick of killing boars at level 1...level 5....level 10...level 15...ad infinum. Very limited in variation due to restrictions of canon.

Re:The Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have to respond AC, since I've been using Moderator Points on this subject, but my comments on your list:

EQ - spot on evaluation. There are too many time sinks and other things that restrict content. For the hardcore gamer more than a casual player. Still, the king for 5+ years of the MMO landscape.

EQ2 - again, a very accurate description. It is a much more complex game than WoW, but it offers a lot more for a lot of folks. A more mature player base is one of the added benefits. A much better expansion rate than WoW.

EVE - MMO for the hardcore crowd. Bring LOTS of friends.

FFOnline - the gold seller's paradise.

WoW - The BIG CHEESE of MMOs. Or, as my wife calls it, "MMO for dummies". Lack of expansion content is starting to hurt them some, as are the continual moves to force more folks into the Arena model of PvP. Probably the game that has blended PvE and PvP together the best, but the PvP aspect still causes too many problems to trickle down into PvE. The most immature crowd of the major MMOs.

Warhammer Online - Sure, it has some bugs and they threw out a lot of content late in the beta due to monetary concerns, but it hasn't been all about PvP/RvR so far. Many people are finding that the PvE aspects of the game are really very good. The whole "Public Quest" (PQs) model has been quite popular, and I expect you'll see that show up in more games soon. It's been a surprisingly good game that is drawing a lot of folks that aren't from the PvP crowd into game. In fact, I hate PvP, and the only reason I'm not playing it after the beta is that my wife wouldn't like it.

LotRO - Boredom killed this game for most folks. The beta crowd knew something was wrong when the healer class was also the best DPS class for way too long.

CoH/CoV (you forgot this one) - groundbreaking MMO for a lot of reasons, but the repetitiveness of the grind made it lose too many players. Probably the smoothest launch of a greatly anticipated MMO as far as I recall. Still the absolutely best character generation of any MMO. Most folks lost at least an hour creating their first character's costume. A better quest model and more diversification of mobs to fight would have enhanced this game. Most folks really wanted to love this game, but the redundancy killed it.

AoC was doomed by a combination of budget concerns, too much anticipation by rabid Conan fans, and a poor attention to the kind of details players want. Those first 20 levels were a lot of fun, but then the game became crap. No tradeskilling until level 40 meant you missed out on that extra something to draw players in.