Slashdot Mirror
Age of Conan, One Year On
One year after its rocky launch, Age of Conan has stabilized and seen a growth in its player base, reports FunCom. What's more, they say, is that players seem to be playing for longer periods of time as well. Game Director Craig Morrison said in his May letter that work on the next major update, 1.05, is nearing completion, and provided some more details about the new features. This is the same patch which, due to the sweeping stat and equipment changes, will allow players who have a character at level 50 or higher to create a brand new character already at level 50. Reader Kheldon points out a two-part interview with Morrison in which he discusses the laundry list of changes they've made in the past year to improve the game, as well as some broader thoughts about storytelling in the MMO genre. FunCom also released some early details yesterday on two new, free-to-play MMOs they're working on, one of which is browser-based and one of which is Java-based.
i played hte first 2 or 3 months
this game is really really bad, it only has a player base because of tits and stupid kids who like to sit in huge groups at the entrances to low level zones and kill lowbies over and over and over
what killed it for me after defending its shittastic launch was that every subsequent patch introduced more problems than it fixed, like 10k ping spikes and CTDs where there were none.
class balance is a total joke etc.
the only thing i miss and think should have been put in to other games is the horse-sprint
i only know one person who still plays, and they're a huge EVE fan too.
If you read the negative comments here, you can easily spot the trend: "had high hopes, preordered the game, played for a month, it *sucked*, and even though I haven't touched it for a year I'm sure it still sucks (because I'll be damned if I give Funcom any money to try it again)".
At launch the game wasn't finished and complaints were grounded in reality. But the fact that Funcom has worked hard on the game for a year, fixing problems, adding content, rethinking bad design decisions and actually ended up with a polished, *genuinely good* MMORPG has gone completely unnoticed.
AOC's main problem isn't the game, but its public perception that was throughly ruined by the game's post-launch half-bakedness. If you ask newcomers who've just signed up to AOC about how they feel about it, they're usually having fun and are very much puzzled about the hate it's getting.
Funcom is facing a heck of a task battling people's existing prejudices in order to try and convince its 600,000 lost customers that they have indeed made the game playable and fun.
"The direction attacks make it incredibly easy for those with less lag to take advantage of those with lag"
Since when has lag not effected game play? If you have a laggy connection, you'll be at a disadvantage in any game.
"the list of bugs at the time I left was mind boggling, the poor balance, and add in the lack of any real communication from funcom"
The list of bugs at the 4 month point is drastically smaller. They had a smoother launch than most games. Most people who complained about the bugs were comparing 4+ year old games to the new AoC. Not fair.
Balance is group vs group, not player vs player.
Funcom communicates on the test live forums more than most game companies. If you think they were lacking in communication, it is probably because you were expecting the devs to post in the general forums, which they do not. Get on the testing forums, and you'll see multiple posts per day per dev.