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.

Comments

WoW is still better

[GinRummy33]

I tried it the first month, then cancelled. I know they've done a lot of upgrades since then, but I don't think they will ever replace World of Warcraft for most people, including me.

Re:WoW is still better

[bloodhawk]

I played a Guardian for the first 4 months of AoC (as well as a few other classes, but guardian was my main), The combat is utter crap, they billed it as an innovative complex combat system, in reality it is just a reimplementation of 80's arcade game combo systems, The direction attacks make it incredibly easy for those with less lag to take advantage of those with lag, overpowered combos and ridiculously broken stat mechanics. I will give you that the graphics were amazing as was some of the detail put into story lines, but those were not enough to save it, 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 on fixes was just to much. No matter how much they improve the game now it is destined for an bargain bin, The game left a bad taste in a lot of peoples mouths, I have 12 friends that played the game with me for most of those 4 months and some long after I left, NONE of them play it anymore.

Re:WoW is still better

[murdocj]

If EQ1 is the baseline, WoW is EQ1 with training wheels, and AoC is somewhere in between. And I'm thinking of the relative level of skill required.

I played EQ1 for years, and in terms of actual skill, WoW requires way more skill than EQ1. The more serious boss encounters in WoW require that everyone in the raid know what to do, when to do it, how to move, and if just ONE person screws up, it's a wipe. What WoW cuts out is not skill, but a lot of sitting and waiting that EQ1 requires. For example, the stuff where a boss in the open world spawns only once every week or so and then guilds have to rush to get to see who can kill it isn't in WoW. Some people may miss that sort of competition, but I sure don't.

Re:WoW is still better

[slackbheep]

For anyone unconvinced the class balance really WAS bad enough to warrant quitting. While assassins were absolutely useless twits who could barely take care of equally leveled monsters without cooldowns, any healing class was capable of tearing the very stars from the heavens. They could only be torn down by Guardians, or by exceptionally skilled players in a lesser class(And I do mean lesser). Grouping was also a complete joke. The game plan every single time boiled down to "Let tank pile up mobs, spam aoe, repeat."

Re:WoW is still better

[jwhitener]

"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.

AOC on good MMO storytelling

[Moraelin]

Coming up next: the Pope's guide to good sex and the Dalai Lama's tips on cooking meat.

Re:AOC on good MMO storytelling

[malice]

The the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian... so he very well may know how to cook up a mean meat dish.

ends up talking about WoW

[FadedTimes]

Pretty sad that by the end of the interview they are talking about 4 year old WoW content.

Having played since launch

[jwhitener]

I can say that it is by far the best mmorpg I've ever played.

Well, let me step back:) It is by far the mmorpg with the most potential I've every played.

Currently gear gives you at max, a 25% increase in power overall. The latest patch will push that to closer to 50%. This will give most "wow'ish", or older "EQ1'ish" players a more familiar feeling concerning item power.

This has been one of the harder selling points of AoC since its launch: namely, there seems to be very little you can do to improve you character. Once you reach max level, and even if you raid and dungeon crawl for all the best gear, you are, quite literally, not much more powerful than a naked max level character.

Funcom decided to make the game skill based, focused on pvp, and gear was to be secondary. However, what they found was most players preferred an even mix. Hence, Funcom chose to do 2 things:

1. PVP levels. You can reach up to pvp level 5, which unlocks new gear upgrades along the way. PVP level 5 is VERY hard to get (assuming you don't cheat grr). And I come from EQ1, so saying "hard to get" means a lot here.

2. Patch 1.05 will increase the benefits of gear, as well as give and overhaul to the under used crafting system.

Now, back to the original point: AoC being the mmorpg with the most potential.

It has all the traditional things that an mmorpg has, plus a very real feeling in terms of maturity. That aside, what sets it apart is a feeling of control when in pvp combat.

The thing most overlooked by new players, is the shielding and directional attacks of combos. You see, not only do you have cc (crowd control) and other standard mmorpg moves, you can also choose to direct attacks to certain areas of a person (top left right down, etc..).

The defender can move his shields to block those attacks, and in addition to active blocking, sacrificing endurance/stamina to block more damage.

Thats pvp. In the pve world, the game is fantastic, and getting better each patch. While I do think that raids are a bit too simplistic right now, the general pve is equal to any mmorpg or better, and the graphics are light years ahead of wow or other like mmorpgs.

Re:Having played since launch

[Bunzinator]

That kind of PVP is all and good, but for those of us in Oz and other far flung reaches, with normal ping times of 250-300 ms, we just can't compete with the LPBs in the US. So PVP, even if I liked it, would be a total waste of time. As for the game in general, the noob area was fantastic. Exquisite graphics, interesting quests with voice acted interactions, mature content. All this fell apart once you left the noob area. And the notorious 10k ping problem. It became totally unplayable. I left. Did they ever get that 10k ping issue fixed?

Re:Having played since launch

[skeezixcodejedi]

I had a long laundry list of issues, but many ewere game _Design_ and not the usual rants about bugs. PVP? There were no real 'enemies' estabnlished; you can be an an open pvp server, which means free for all .. no goal or reason, just people ganking randomly (usually when you were talking to NPCs due to the really bad design of zoom while chatting, and the fact they couldnt' code enough to put an if-statement to disable gank-while-zoomed). Anyway, there needs to be 'war' of some sort designed in, or its just boring. More to point though.. instancing. ITs not an open world.. its a bubble world, with bubbles here or there. Hell, at launch people under ataack could just switch instances and vanish, which killed the whole 'designed for PVP' idea. But its somethign unfixable .. the world is not wide and open and explorable, its a bunch of bubbles with hyperlinks. *MEH* I just assume they've implemented stats and gear and tried to normalize it all, but I could never go back for the lack of PVP design, and lack of real open world feal. We dont' go to MMORPGs for a small world. We go to them for a big immersive world we can walk end to end in. jeff

Obvious

[Chrisq]

Age of Conan, One Year On

will be one year more than his age now.

Re:meh

[hyfe]

Please don't mod parent up.

Conan is an enjoyable game. I'm not playing it currently, as the wast majority of people here, as it isn't really my type of game.. but still, it's an enjoyable game. If you're wondering about playing it, try the 7-day trial. It's free.

That said, I'm sick and tired of whiners making uninformed, poorly written posts. The Conan forums were full of them a month after launch. Why?! It's not going to help, it's not going to solve anything and it's ruining the forums for the people who actually play and enjoy the game.

Furthermore, why on earth are native speakers the ones with the most spelling mistakes? When they're ranting, can't they include some details on whats wrong, instead of just " tihs game suxx".. so atleast the people reading would get some information and some basis for discussion? Seriously, why are so many people acting like utter retards?

Anarchy Online 2 would be better

[Vandil X]

As much as I applaud Funcom for their work with Age of Conan, I still think they should make a next generation Anarchy Online game instead. The original AO has such a unique, rich world, that is only limited by its EverQuest 1-era graphics and engine.

They make AO2, and I am there.

The game is fine; public opinion needs fixing

[piggydoggy]

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.

Re:The game is fine; public opinion needs fixing

[rugger]

This isn't a post to bash Vista or AoC, just pointing out the similarities between the two.

Both had horrendously terrible releases, and while the products may have ended up reasonably solid after much fixing and tweeking, nothing is going to fix the bad release publicity.

Maybe this is a message to publishers that releasing a half-finished product, then fixing it later, is really a terrible terrible idea that should be avoided at all costs. Microsoft certainly is trying VERY HARD to avoid the mistakes of vista with windows 7, even though they are quite similar OSes.

Re:The game is fine; public opinion needs fixing

[murdocj]

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.

The problem is that the initial impression from launch is the impression that people are left with. It's a constant problem for all MMOs, not just AoC. Releasing a buggy, incomplete MMO pretty much guarantees failure, because the people who are excited about it are going to jump into it and come away very disappointed. It's not hard to predict this, anyone who is familiar with the industry understands this. That's one reason that WoW succeeded where other games have failed... it worked well, right from launch. I got into it about a month after launch and one of the things that made it work for me was that it just... worked. After playing EQ1 for years and just accepting the fact that the world was buggy, having a game that you could just play and enjoy was quite a revelation.

Re:The game is fine; public opinion needs fixing

[montyzooooma]

"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."
A two or three month free trial for those original accounts that played from the beginning would be a start.

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

i played hte first 2 or 3 months

this game was really really bad 9 or 10 months ago when I last played, 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 9 or 10 months ago when I last played.

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 which were present 9 or 10 months ago when I last played, but could be patched now. I don't know, though, because I haven't played in 9 or 10 months.

class balance was a total joke etc 9 or 10 months ago, when I last played.

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.

Fixed that for you. Tenses corrected in italics, additions in bold.

Anon as I've modded you "Overrated"

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

You ask why people whine? Could it be the fact that some of the promised features wasn't delivered? (Bar brawls, directional combat that mattered, DX 10 support).
Or was it that the most convenient way to travel was by way of death?
Could it be that PVP was all about preloading your combos while running around and then hitting with the last strike, because the others didn't really matter?
Could it have been lack of content at some levels meaning that everyone (except those who's classes happened to be broken at launch so that they could stack their almost free damage spells in absurdum) had to gind the same mobs over and over to advance.
Not to mention that a few areas would cause your computer to crash.

There are a few of my issues with AoC, and then I haven't even mentioned that male characters where better than female characters because of a bug, or that armour didn't have any noticeable effect... The Game was horrible at launch and horrible two months in. I know, I was there.

It might be better now, but don't call those who bash the release misinformed.

Re:meh

[Ogive17]

Just because someone doesn't like the game doesn't make them whiney or uninformed. My guild that I played SWG and WoW with moved to AoC at launch... and within 3 months people started moving back to WoW. I made the mistake of paying for 6 months worth of AoC when I first created my account, about 3-4 months in I was completely bored of the game. The class I chose was horrible playing solo (barbarian). I can't remember what level I reached but I didn't come close to hitting the max.

I think the combat system had a lot of promise. It's too bad they released an alpha version of the game which was so bad that it ruined the game's credibility for ever. AoC is known as a flop and they will have a hard time ever getting rid of that stigma.

Re:meh

[Thaelon]

Which perhaps goes to show that you should make sure your launch isn't an abomination, or otherwise you'll lose a bunch of players who won't give you a second chance.

You can not use WoW for comparison.

[Bocaj]

People, please do not try to compare World of Warcraft to any other MMO. Why? MMO's have an interesting social variable that acts as a feedback loop. Warcraft's popularity is partly due to is popularity. Yes the game has to be good, but once you gain a certain momentum people stay with the game because their friends stay with the game. You need a sufficiently large portion of friends to leave for another game before you will, even if you like another game better. This is why you sometimes see a mass exodus from games that don't gain momentum. Guilds tend to ban together and move to another MMO as a whole. Most MMO's have monthly fees which limits most peoples budgets to one game. Humans are instinctively loyal pack animals. We ban together in teams to increase our power. If you think about it hard enough, you can probably find at least one other MMO that you would have played if everyone in your guild switched with you. And don't forget World of Warcraft at release time. Remember the guilds that powered through Molten Core and then had nothing to do but stand around Ironforge looking cool? Many of them would have gladly jumped ship to another MMO, but options were more limited back then. Some even canceled accounts to save money and just waited for an expansion. Age of Conan might still survive, but getting WoW-type popularity means getting people to quit playing WoW, which means leaving friends and abandoning charters you've spent years on. It's a tall order.