Age of Conan: A Post Mortem Analysis
Hi, I’m Daedren. You might remember me from other articles such as “The effectiveness of raiding in only a tubesock” and “Erling Ellingson: Age of Conan Dev by day, Transvestite Cyborg by night?”. It’s me, alright, and I’m here, playing the role of the unbearer of bad news. I’m not bearing it, because it’s not even news. This little tidbit of info-mation is that Age of Conan sucks. It’s not the Gigli of the MMO industry, thank God, but that’s only because Ben Affleck turned down his role for voiceovers for King Conan. No, I’m likening Age of Conan to be more of the Alexander of the MMO Industry: Huge expectations, huge budget; huge letdown, gracious cleavage.
This article isn’t for people thinking about maybe playing Age of Conan. It’s not for those still playing Age of Conan - which, admittedly, there still are. It’s not even for the large majority of people who played the game, let it take you home, and then never called you back. This is solely targeted at a select group of people: the people at Funcom who helped make this piece of shit, and other people at other game companies who are also making a MMO. Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “Why the hell would Funcom devs read this wordy, highly opinionated article that’s basically beating a dead horse, albeit more thoroughly and hopefully more eloquently than the past beaters?” The answer to that is I’m going to personally e-mail it to every one of them.
Funcom, now lovingly deemed “Failcom” by a good portion of the planet now, dropped an estimated $60M US pesos to produce what ended up being, for the most part, a huge disapointment to nearly everyone that played it. But hey, don’t take it from me, let’s take it from the burly, helmet clad raiders of Funcom themselves:
Erling Ellingson confirms that “subscriber base” is now 415,000 out of the original 800,000
My carefree use of the quotes here are for a reason. The term “subscriber base” seems to need an explanation.
Subscriber base is a fairly loose term which roughly means “People that might still be playing”. You see, they fail to mention that in this 415,000 they’re including anyone that still had their subscription active at the time of the report (15 August 2008). That means if you were unfortunate enough to subscribe for 3 or 6 months at the time you bought the game, you’re included in this number. No one actually knows how many active players they have as they’ve not released any server metrics, with damn good reason.
That means that half of the people that bought Age of Conan jumped ship within the first month of the release. And, if player estimates are correct, the actual player base is more realistically somewhere around 150K or 200K players. 3 months after release. Hell, Dark Age of Camelot and Everquest 1 are pulling those numbers today. Perhaps if Erling was actually honest and forward about the game and its flaws, instead of talking it up like it’s the bees knees, his statements would gain a bit more credibility.
Next, we need to present the financial woes of Funcom and more importantly the CEO of the company:
Funcom CEO sells a pissload of his stocks, punches a baby
One really cool thing about Funcom is that all the execs have really cool viking sounding names like Olav and Gaute (pronounced like Gout). While this might be useful picking up American girls at a bar or scaring the shit out of someone by screaming their name at them, it seemingly means piss all when it comes to making a successful MMO.
Funcom stock dropped to all-time lows recently and the CEO is starting to liquidate. Next thing we know the lead Community Managers will be busted for kiddie porn and their corporate headquarters will mysteriously “catch on fire” - darn, and things were going so swell.
The Analysis
So, what the hell went wrong? Age of Conan does have a few redeeming qualities, that usually come with a price. Let’s list these redeeming qualities, along with it’s price:
Redeeming Quality Price
Nice graphics Shitty client
You see boobies Shitty client
Heads do fly off Shitty client
Good starting area Delusion that the rest of the game will be like that
That takes us to cause of death #1: Poor client performance. Stability was actually better at release than it is now. Very few aren’t victim of the memory leak bug - causing blue screens and CTD’s quite frequently. Nothing like a few CTD’s in a night to keep that immersion level going. The client itself is clearly lacking polish, something World of Warcraft did so splendidly. All the high res graphics and tits in the world don’t mean anything if you can’t keep your customer in the game and seeing these things.
Moving on: promised features. You’ve heard it all before: stuff was on the box that either wasn’t there on release, or, functioning like Jenna Jamesons naughty parts: present but highly suspect.
Feature on the Box Status
DirectX 10 Support Rumored to exist somewhere
Drunken Brawling Needs more polish, like Gaute's Ferrari
Massive 150/150 PVP battles Shitty client feature kicks in well before 300
Siege Battles, Keep Takes Buggy and boring. If only there was an...
An actual PVP System Missing, presumed dead
I’ll stop right there. In all honestly, no one gives a shit what is on the box of a game: who reads that anyway? However, a certain professional level is at least expected from a game company when they promote their product. Where do we draw the line? If the next MMO that hits the market says the box will give you a blowjob once you hit level 30 on your in game character, it had better well live up to its name, no matter how uncomfortable and disturbing that sounds.
Cause of death #2: Missing basic game features
Blah, blah, blah. This is all repeat shit from everywhere else. I’m effectively beating the proverbial horse here. It’s time to move on to a more lucid analysis:
THE GAME IS NOT FUN
I suppose this makes all of theser “Causes of Death” a bit redundant. Objectively speaking, though, why is the game not fun? It’s hard to put a finger on the exact reason, much like it’s hard to explain why eating a plate of dog poo is not fun, other than it’s a plate of shit. Let’s start with this small, chaotic list:
- Instanced zones
- Lack of content past level 20
- Uninnovative questing system (kill 50 what?)
- Poor class balance in PVP
- No PVP System whatsoever
- A simple Rock / Paper / Scissors PVP design
- Horrifically boring dungeon encounters
- Lack of meaningful or interesting end game content
- Itemization that seems like it was designed by a learning impaired doorknob
- Extremely hard to customize your character or look different than anyone else
- Travel system consists of trying to find new ways to kill yourself as quickly as possible
- An economy that is completely broken
- Crafting that is nothing more than a pointless time-sink
- Identical guild cities everywhere that are, you guess it, nothing more than a pointless time-sink
- Lack of creative vision when designing combat system
- Complete lack of ingenuity regarding the spellcaster magic system
- Failure to fix bugs in a timely fashion
- Fixing bugs usually introduces more bugs into the game, which are then ignored for long periods of time
- Focusing on stupid shit like spell names and sound effects when basic features of the game are not yet implemented
- Legendary in-game customer support inspired by Verant and SOE
- Constantly surprising players by showing how little they know about their own game
- Inclusion of game breaking bugs (like gem duping or epic item farming) and then fixing them, oh, a couple weeks later
I know I missed a few. What it boils down to is that Age of Conan just doesn’t provide a unique or meaningful game experience. Characters can level to max level somewhat quickly, yay!, only to be presented with the option of doing absolutely nothing interesting other than leveling yet another character to max level. A certain kudos is in place to Funcom for even failing at the basic treadmill system; for most people, that carrot on the end of the stick (being making another character to keep waiting for the real carrot) didn’t go over to well.
That leads us into cause of death #3: Poor core game design makes the game not fun, nor addicting
Making a MMO that doesn’t encourage players to play more, come back, or feel drawn to the game is like selling crack that doesn’t get people high. I suppose some crackheads might say “but hey, I’m still smoking crack!” - but really, it’s just a sugar cube that you paid 20$ for. In that sense, Age of Conan is a MMORPG without the first “M” or the “RPG”. It’s not Massively, because you’re forced to be separated from the rest of your people either by the horribad instancing or poor zone design. It’s not RPG because you don’t feel like you are, indeed, roleplaying, due to the games limitations. At the end of the day, all we’re really looking at is a “Multiplayer Online *something*” - or, in other words, a glorified chat room with mediocre Showtime-esque nudity that is prone to memory leaks.
I’ve by far passed the normal sane limit word count and thrown any credibility away as not saying whatever the hell is on my mind, so I need to hit one last point. There is one area, I must say, that Funcom has truly outdone itself:
Funcom Devs and Public Relations guys, we salute you!
For being complete tools.
Not all of them, of course. In fact, I bet its safe to say the majority of the Age of Conan team was just doing what they were told. Kind of like the Nazis were doing what they were told when they started cooking people. Intentional Godwin aside, most people of the dev team didn’t have a big picture look at the game, so they can’t be much to blame. However, Funcom has blessed us with a few memorable souls, and by memorable I mean complete assclowns and/or utter douchebags. First, we focus on the man himself. The one, the only, the…
Gaute Godager
This guy had some potential. Though his first name sounds like unsightly gout, his last name had the chance of being epic. It could have been “Go, Danger!” or, more sinisterly, “Go, dagger!”. Now we’re just left with not giving a shit what his name is because he’s not only the “Game Director”, meaning he’s the one ultimately responsible for the state of this game, but also because his PR skills hover somewhere between “ghastly” and “humorously deranged”.
Perhaps his most famous quote is this:
“I enjoy playing WOW, I enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online. But you know… I’m going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you’ve been to McDonalds for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it’s great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine,” he said.You’re exactly right, Gout. You were a bit cheeky. However, your analogy is a bit flawed. I’ll fix it for you:
“I enjoy playing WOW, I enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online. But you know… I’m going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you’ve been to McDonalds for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it’s great to go into a restaurant, give them 50 bucks, stick around for 3 hours hoping you get food, before finally passing out with a bottle of MadDog 20/20 in your hand and still fucking hungry,” he said.You, sir, are no steak and wine. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. You could be a rancid Salisbury Steak TV dinner, along with a glass of wine that came out of a box, but even that’s pushing it.
Last up, but certainly not least, is the great Erling Ellingson. This guy was pretty much unheard of before a few weeks ago, when he decided to show up at a couple conferences and do some interviews. Instead of handling these interviews like a normal, sane person, he decided to go another route. The route of lies, delusion and outright idiocy.
Don’t believe me? Watch this video with Jon Wood of mmorpg.com - at your own risk. This guy squirms so much when talking you can tell he’s bullshitting even with the sound muted. Here are some highlights:
“The game turned around 100% just before launch. Miracle patch…” “The 1-20 part of the game was intended to be very detailed… When WoW launched, high end content was sparse. We have lots of stuff for players end game…” “The PVP fugitive system, it’s all new stuff that we’re adding in. It’s not stuff that was supposed to be in before launch…” “We’re incredibly happy with the launch of Age of Conan, it was an incredibly successful launch… “(proceeds to self fellatiate) “It’s really few things [that didn't make it into launch]. It’s not really big features. “The asinine comment about PVP not being a major feature earns a collective cockpunch to Erling on behalf of every player that played AoC hoping for a PVP oriented game. It was its main selling point, and it’s the reason that most people wanted to play the game. Hell, even Erling himself states “This might surprise you, but most people that play AoC play on PVP servers” - no, that doesn’t surprise us. What does surprise us that this “PVP Oriented MMO” doesn’t even have a PVP system. Oh, and when you roll out this magical “PVP Fugitive Patch”, you’ll be taking away yet one more slightly redeeming quality that AoC once had: PVP Freedom.
Now, it’s time for desert. The icing of the cake is brought to you by the collective tools at Funcom who thought that announcing an expansion for Age of Conan was a good idea. Apparently they’re busy listening to Erling rant on about how the game is pure awesome-sauce rather than actually playing their game. Scarily enough, there is now a team of developers working on an expansion to Age of Conan, rather than fixing the fundamental problems the game has. Make it X rated and you might get a substantial player base back.
Conclusion
In summary, the main causes of the death Age of Conan were this:
1. Poor client design and performance
2. Lack of basic features included in the game
3. Unaddictive gameplay, lack of thought put into game design: the game simply isn’t fun.
Worst of all, we have a company and the makers of this game telling us that it is good. These same people will be put on the next MMO. Hell, Gaute might even get the nod to direct Funcom’s next MMO - assuming the company still exists. “Gee, Gaute, you did so well on Age of Conan, here is another 50 Million, go make us another blockbuster like it!” Get your head out of your asses, Funcom: the people that made the decisions on where this game was going need to never be allowed on another MMO project again. But hey, it’s your money, it’s your funeral.
Many people might be thinking “Man, why so fucking hostile?” - and I sympathize with that. I’m not pissed at these guys I’m making fun of, I’m more disappointed. The MMO industry is just peppered with mediocrity now and it’s almost becoming industry standard. Objective journalism is nigh-unheard of at mainstream MMO websites because they don’t want to piss anyone off. Lastly, while what I’ve written here is my opinion, it’s really the collective thoughts from nearly every veteran MMO player that had the misfortune of playing Age of Conan.
Future MMO developers: use this as a lesson learned; things not to do. Above all, do not patronize your players like they don’t know what the hell is going on. Funcom: the game is beyond saving, but try to save some face by actually admitting the games problems, and not tap dancing around the issues like a drunk circus bear. Honesty, though missing from your corporate vocabulary, goes a long way in player retention.
That’s all. Daedren out.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:47 am
You need to get with the Zero Tolerance guy. =)
August 28th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Very nicely done review.. of Failcom ;P
sincerly.
AoC ain’t totally unfun.. but I have to say you point out at the right stuff when talking about inexistant PvP system.
Can’t wait for Mythic’s release.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Er, pardon the last comment. I meant Zero Punctuation. Not Zero Tolerance. =)
August 28th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Win! Just plain, pure win! LMAO! I remember everyone saying this would be a WoW killer…yeah right! LOL! Awesome job on the article!
August 28th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Funny read.
I was actually considering re-subscribing to AoC after upgrading my video card last week, so that I could see if it had made any progress from the incredibly boring game I played at launch.
And then I saw that they were developing an expansion for it.
I have no problem with expansions to MMO’s, I’m kind of an addict when it comes to them. But given the widely accepted state of AoC, an expansion (in my mind) should be the furthest thing from Funcom’s mind. You don’t try and install newer, larger sails on your ship when it’s sinking, you plug the effing holes first.
I understand that the people who make decisions on what to do next in games are pretty far removed from their playerbase. But, do they not understand that every step they make is going to be analyzed by every member of their playerbase and more (potential players)? If the people that are playing the game are screaming ‘This game isn’t fun/is broken/needs moar X!’, at what point would it seem like a good idea to tell them essentially ‘We’ve started working on the new content you will need to pay for, not the issues you have been clamoring over.’
Meh. I don’t get it.
Sorry for the long comment, it was just fresh on my mind when I read your post
August 28th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Aye, exactly my thoughts.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:43 am
The actual real world number of people still actively playing the game is now less than 30,000 people. The majority of people are playing on PvP servers. The PvE servers are seeing wholesale abandonment of the playerbase.
Most guilds have folded and even the larger guilds that were formed from groups of leftover players from other guilds are folding. The biggest guild on my server (just over 100 people made up of other defunct guilds) is now down to just 7 people actively playing. We still have two raiding guilds left on our server but they are having a severe manpower issues and are now unable to raid the larger instances.
It’s obvious we are seeing a snowball effect here. Those people that are left have less desire to log in since there are less people each week to group up for instances.
The game client itself was utter crap. It had a beautiful graphics engine but would crash every 1-2 hours or so. In my guild when we ran a raid we would have to time it between boss kills and make sure we restarted our game client before a major event otherwise people would crash out in the middle of boss fights and cause a wipe. We lost many hardcore raiders because of this.
I presume AoC will survive but it will be in a much diminished form. I can not foresee any major updates to content being released for AoC. It simply won’t be financially viable as the playerbase will be far too small to support expansions/updates.
It is very sad as the game had such promise before it was released.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Nice. You cover the bases very well. I could nit-pick, but overall you are spot on.
I love what you said about the travel system. If you have a horse and were traveling long distances, you can ride zone to zone but then have to talk to a guy, loading screen. Mount again, ride, talk to a guy. Its like the opposite of what a Massive game should be.
My first beta experience outside of tortage, I jumped into the water and tried to swim to a awesome looking landscape, only to run into the invisible wall, go back and find a boat guy.
I’d like the combat if it was twice as fast. alas…. it still needs much work.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:41 am
[...] That word pretty much sums up this article we found over at MMOCrunch regarding their opinion on the current state of Age of Conan. As [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
/s totally.
/e goes to Sunwell with his guild.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
[...] of bad news. I’m not bearing it, because it’s not even news. Age of Conan sucks. read more | digg [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
@Hecta
Ok, I hate to do this, but can you please provide your source of data?
I hate when people throw out numbers as fact, and your statement makes it seem like this is the “REAL” numbers.
How about you meant to state “I believe AoC has 300k” or “My opinion is…”
Also, how do YOU know more play PvP (even though I “believe” you are correct)
Anyways, there is no FACT of 300k, and is 400+k according to REAL data.
Now, don’t take me for a fanboy…far from it. But, statements like that is just hogwash without proof.
Thanks
August 28th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
[...] of Conan having free reign to be the only bright new kid on the block for the entire summer? Yeah, guess that didn’t turn out so great for [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Jesus dude. Brilliant. I love it, and probably representative of what 50% of AOC players felt, if not more.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Fantastic, fantastic review. The bittersweet-sarcastic salsa makes the dish incomparably tasteful.
Thank you!
August 28th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I wrote a State of AOC Assessment back on July 4th (http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=1399230&postcount=1), and told them that their product would bomb if the game wasn’t “right” within 90 days of retail release.
PVP players are a fickle bunch, and if you cater to them for a customer base you better launch your game with the features as advertised. If you don’t, you have to deliver within 90 days or they bail on the game en mass.
No one’s going to worry about AOC anymore, it had its chance and they blew it.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I just want to say that i did enjoy AoC, and that the game has some cool features that appealed to me.
This review was absolutely… amazing. I played AoC for over 3 months and in the end, the OP is right, there is nothing to do. It bores people a lot sooner than it bored me, but i guess i have a thicker skin than some others.
Everything outlined in the article is pretty much spot on. The company definitely did damage their reputation by allowing some fools make even bigger fools of themselves. The next game FailCom releases i will not be participating in.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
@ Opendge: Firstly, he’s saying it’s 30k, second, the “REAL” data of 400k+ is already exposed in the article you are posting on. It’s more like 150k at the very most, I wouldn’t be surprised to find AoC dead after WAR and WotLK are released.
@ Daedren: Your article was fucking amazing. If you got Yahtzee to say it all out loud it would be sheer win.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
[...] Lovers Are The Angriest Today’s angry candy: It’s always sad when the bloom is off the rose. Funcom, now lovingly deemed “Failcom” by a good portion of the planet Now, you’re probably [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
[...] Go read this article on the state of Age of Conan (AOC), and I think you’ll also end up with wet diapers. It’s a hilarious read on what went wrong with AOC, and an absolutely eviscerating critique of the game’s designers, vision, and execution. [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I just so happen to have read this and be a now former designer for Age of Conan. That being said, I appreciate your approach for someone who is wanting to sound like a Howard Stern of video game blogging, and I am not saying the game doesn’t have its problems.
I think of course had you actually written this as a true Post Mortem for designers/devs to read it would have been written much more objectively and structured with a lot more real information and less seething “I hate Funcom because I feel like they bent me over” attitude.
Being an American and having lived over in Norway for three years though I can tell you that the people of Funcom have very good intentions and work very hard. None of the dev’s are rich with nice fancy cars or houses they are all normal working folk even at the upper end of the food chain like Gaute.
In regards to expansion talks you need to remember that most teams for MMO’s are split post launch and those working on the expansion are not those working on putting in things like the PVP system.
I actually worked heavily on combat and PvP but once I moved back to the US a year ago to get married, I could not drive development on it remotely. So to some extent I am to blame for putting my personal life before the game, sorry.
If you look at Anarchy Online and it’s launch and you look at how far that game has come disregarding subscriber numbers and you can see Funcom’s dedication to their products and improving them. The road might be bumpy but at least you can count on them standing behind their games and working to improve your experience, even if its a little bit at a time and at times in an order of perceived priority you might not agree with.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
[...] couple of days ago, I wrote up an article about the anger in the AoC community. Now, I come across this: What it boils down to is that Age of Conan just doesn’t provide a unique or meaningful game [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Absolutely loved the analysis , everything was spot on. The game disappointed in so many ways it’s not even funny.
Those 2 guys lying to everyone in their face sounds about right and the current amount of players still playing is certainly not what they claim it to be, why else would people on every server complain about having about 200 people online at prime time.
My guild went from 280 people to 7 within 3 weeks time and this happened to a lot of guilds.
I don’t think you mailing it to them will change anything though , they’ll continue to live in their happy safe bubble of dreams in which the game is a huge success.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Daedren, i just can /clap to u
Very nicely review
August 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I wish I knew these things before I spent my money on the game. Oh well live and learn. I was one of the many that jumped ship the first month. It was more like the first week for me.
One of the biggest things for me was that the UI was horrible. Everything was a damn box and looked the same. I bet it’s still the same way now. Also the auction house was just really really bad. It’s comparable to many of the Chinese made mmo’s that have auction houses.
Even though most will deny it, everyone bought the game for the boobies. Don’t lie to yourself. I did, you did, everyone did. But that wore off pretty fast : /.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Very good assessment of the game and Funcom in general, if only they’d listen.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
@Hecta-
30,000 players? Where exactly did you pull that number from? If it was that low the game would be cancelled. Hell even Eq1 has more players than that.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the article whole-heartedly, and I’m not going to defend FC or AoC in the least.. but let’s not make up numbers, or repeat them just because we read someone else say them on some forum. If there is some way to back up that claim please provide it because I’d love to quote it as well.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
The only think that was wrong about AoC was that it was too fast to level to 80. The should have built in more time to add content and features.
NO GAME SHIPS COMPLETE OR BUG FREE. It’s ridiculous to have such high expectations.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
That video is, like, textbook (as far as videos go) for teaching a class on interrogation. The funcom dude wipes his hand every time he tells another lie.
At least his tells are metaphorical.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
You read my mind.
Excellent artical, Funcom deserved every word.
PS: I’m only sad that Conan’s name was used for all this
August 28th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I played it for a monthish. Realized I hadn’t even thought about logging in in two weeks, canceled.
And that was before half that shit happened. People were just bitching about how 50-80 had no content.
August 28th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
This is a hilariously written and very true post. WELL done.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
-The vitriol over the unimpressiveness of AoC seems misplaced. I don’t understand how you were sucked in to believing that “fast combat” was a good thing. If it only takes a few swings to fell and enemy, it’s not a significant challenge. How could you not recognize the over-hyped rhetoric of “you’ll be a bad-ass” (the same thing WAR is doing) and not recognize that if every player is a bad-ass NO ONE is a bad-ass. A quick read of the features and a skeptical eye should have filtered this game as “meant for those who don’t normally play online games”.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Nice post Daniel; you’ve fleshed out the themes that Mike and I have posted in several of our AoC posts these past few weeks.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
[...] so most of my fanatical anticipation was focused on it instead. With Age of Conan finally out and not looking so hot and more and more details of WAR being released my interest in it had finally started building. So, [...]
August 28th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Think this game will be a good deal better a month or two down the road. Despite all the problems, there is something rather addictive about AOC, at least if like myself you’re a fan of combat that doesn’t involve a ton of pointing and clicking.
Likewise, I find PVP in this game to actually be fun - lack of content or not. WOW fails miserably in this aspect, between forced factions and the farce known as battlegrounds, never mind items > skill. WAR….just another WOW ripoff with RVR, completely not worth bothering with if you don’t want more of the same.
And really the fact that most of the WOW/WAR players have left is a blessing, these are the players that wanted to turn AOC into yet another pointless mass market clone. If Funcom keeps to a core vision and ignores those fools, fixes the bugs the game has a good future.
August 28th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Couldnt agree more. AoC is probably the worst piece of shit ever released on the MMO market and its a fucking shame the people at failcom were allowed to work on this game.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
This post, is full of win. You hit the nail on the head with this steaming pile of goat poo of a game. In all my years of playing MMO’s, I have never seen such a horrible game.
I salute you.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
This game is done. Another colossal failure. 800k+ down to 400k+ in under 3 months, ’nuff said. Current sub number is alot smaller than 400k now too, and dwindling.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I think 30k is probably about right.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
“Lastly, while what I’ve written here is my opinion, it’s really the collective thoughts from nearly every veteran MMO player that had the misfortune of playing Age of Conan.”
Hit the NAIL ON THE HEAD. There’s nothing here I don’t agree with, fully.
MMO developers, you’d best take note. All the generalist graphs and other junk showing you how treadmill-games make boatloads of cash is alienating you from your true calling: Making games for people like yourself.
We’re not stupid, and if your game sucks, or if it’s obviously designed to milk money instead of providing a SERVICE to those who PAY for your games, you WILL fail. The era of mediocrity is coming to an end, and you will change, or your companies will fold beneath your feet.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
NAILED IT.
Top to bottom, and even like the good lord said, “there is a time to laugh, a time to cry, and a time to nerd-rage” but tbh I think the “whiteknuckle” tone perfectly captured the average AoC vet’s mood on “cancellation day” after saying goodbye to the friends he/she made and all the insane purple loot they farmed off of beguiled demons while Failcom admitted to knowing, but not fixing it for almost 2 weeks.
Thanks for expressing my feelings completely.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
game with great potential but the combination of bugs ,cheats and lack of meaningful resolution of problems in addition to a useless GM system has changed funcom to a niche player.
i suspect the game was not ready for release but was released to beat warhammer to the market. if the whole game was like the 0-20 experience it could have been a winner.
this article rants a little but it covers the ground well.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
@Openedge1:
I believe Hecta’s comments regarding the PvP preference stem from Erling’s remarks to the effect that most of AoC’s player base was on the PvP servers. As for the 30,000 player count… no idea there.
I am lifelong Conan fan, and as much as I wanted to love AoC, I have to agree with Daedren’s article. I’m still playing and hoping, but not really expecting much these days. Unless Eidos steps in and does something heavy-handed, Funcom seems determined to follow its downright strange road of design and business decisions for AoC.
I wouldn’t doubt that many are hanging around just for the perverse spectacle of watching a hugely hyped game go down in flames. As one player put it: “There is an endgame in AoC. It’s called the forums.”
August 28th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Age of Conan is a social experiment to see how long people persist with a bad product/service…
Its being purposely run into the ground with bad patches/bugs dupes as people aren’t leaving fast enough…
August 28th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
As someone who’s been playing MMO’s since Ultima Online, I have to agree with most of what you said.
Funcom made some really bad decisions with their basic game design– particularly in instancing everything and having no real structure for PvP. But beyond these fundamental problems, the game just doesn’t work.
An MMORPG causing regular crashes to the desktop after it’s been out for months is just unacceptable. I’m amazed that they released this game in the state it’s in– and doubly amazed that they talk it up as if it’s perfection in a box.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I agree with this article 100%, but comparing the atrocities commited by the nazis to a videogame dev team is fuking stupid.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
*ANYONE* who played Anarchy Online during its first year could have easily told you what to expect from Funcom … AO was so bad that Funcom couldn’t even increase its player base when they started giving the game away for free. The flamewars on the forums involved more balanced PvP than the game. Forum comments got so bad that Funcom had to pull a total forum wipe before AO’s European launch in a misguided effort at presenting an untarnished reputation).
August 28th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
It started reminding me so much of the Shadowbane launch I was wondering if they hired any of the the chimp coders from defunct Wolfpack.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I unsubscribed as well the other day.
There are things I still love about AoC. The immersiveness of the world is fantastic. The graphics are gorgeous. The amount of work the art department put into the game is stunning. They have neat little details like small cats on walls with animations of them licking themselve, stretching, etc. The initial level design did a nice job with placing ladders to climb in out of the way places, and allowing people to turn around and see this crazy huge view underneath them. These are spiffy Explorer rewards.
Even the work of the original quest text writers did a good job on dialogue, given the dumbass design requirement from higher up that said all races, all classes must be given the same opportunity to work on the quests and not lock yourself out of any. (Maybe cos they just couldn’t create enough unique quests in time.)
But that’s all AoC is. A brilliant art gallery. Nice to look at, nothing to do once you’ve toured it once.
The GAME part of the MMOG is missing. And all the shitty pre-game design and post-patch flaws are covered well in the above article.
Most people are not going to pay a high price for nice art, hence the flocks leaving in droves, taking their friends with them.
And even the admirers won’t pay a recurrent fee when they’re done with what they came to do, and have nothing to keep them and lots of reasons (see article) to push them away.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
I can only say this article is way too polite ,i think all funcom employees must be castrated and then make them to listen Barbara Streisand concert…no wait thats too harsh just castration is enough..
August 28th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
AoC was not fun. It was the same grind fest that every MMO offered. Sure most people will admit that the first 20 levels were well done. After that……BORING………Same old same old, do this, kill this, get skills every few levels. There “unique” system was the active combat…..that got old 2 sec after i discovered it. Overall I shouldn’t have wasted my money, the game sucked. Warhammer looks a LOT better, due to the fact that it was based around having fun each and every single moment you play the game…..
August 29th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Wow. I don’t even know where to start. First, though…
@Athelan: Ah, my old stomping buddy! I was wondering why you disappeared from the collective gathering at the MMORPG.com blogspot. Sorry to hear things didn’t work out for you at Funcom, though I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
Addressing your comments:
“That being said, I appreciate your approach for someone who is wanting to sound like a Howard Stern of video game blogging, and I am not saying the game doesn’t have its problems.
I think of course had you actually written this as a true Post Mortem for designers/devs to read it would have been written much more objectively and structured with a lot more real information and less seething “I hate Funcom because I feel like they bent me over” attitude.”
You know, you’re exactly damn right. The problem with this is that if you DON’T take a Howard Stern approach, it gets about 2-3K views and quickly disappears into the collective ether of the internet.
This article was featured on Massively, here on MMOCrunch, and has been linked on over 15 different sites. Hell, even though guys over at Escapist said “nice work, sounds like some Yahtzee shit”.
My point is that the style of writing makes it enjoyable. It’s not objective, but it’s true. It’s what real gamers think but just hadn’t said yet.
In the perfect world, I wish that I could have got the word out about Age of Conan completely calmly and objectionably. I also wish that Funcom’s PR guys didn’t try to blow smoke everyones ass and go as low as downright, blatant lying.
“Being an American and having lived over in Norway for three years though I can tell you that the people of Funcom have very good intentions and work very hard. None of the dev’s are rich with nice fancy cars or houses they are all normal working folk even at the upper end of the food chain like Gaute.”
(I’m also an American thats been working in Europe for 10 years)
That’s good to here. It makes them easier to hate if we think of them as rich, Ferrari driving assholes though.
However, I could tell Erling wasn’t nearing Howard Hughes levels by the gear he was kicking at Comic Con.
“In regards to expansion talks you need to remember that most teams for MMO’s are split post launch and those working on the expansion are not those working on putting in things like the PVP system.”
That’s fine, but if Funcom people *really* knew what was going on with the game, they would have pulled those expansion people to work on the original AoC client / content.
“I actually worked heavily on combat and PvP but once I moved back to the US a year ago to get married, I could not drive development on it remotely. So to some extent I am to blame for putting my personal life before the game, sorry.”
I’m not blaming you. I’d need to have more details.
“If you look at Anarchy Online and it’s launch and you look at how far that game has come disregarding subscriber numbers and you can see Funcom’s dedication to their products and improving them. The road might be bumpy but at least you can count on them standing behind their games and working to improve your experience, even if its a little bit at a time and at times in an order of perceived priority you might not agree with”
True. I played AO beta and at launch. It was horrific, and I never went back. However, Funcom, at the time, was at least open about their game having problems. They gave people months of free subscription if I remember correctly?
We have a similar situation here with Funcom and AoC: yet they’re talking it up like it’s the cats meow.
Unacceptable.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:08 am
@ Openedge1:
If you would have watched the interview, Erling says “The majority of players play on PVP servers”
I’m not surprised you didn’t watch the video. I wouldn’t want to if I still played the game. ;P
August 29th, 2008 at 5:56 am
@age_of_crizap: It’s called trying to Godwin an argument. I put it in because, like you said, it’s a ridiculous comparison.
It’s all done in good humor, my man. After all, it’s just a game.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:39 am
The author of the “analysis” is cleary biased and has obviously not played AoC with an active guild. Needless to say the author doesn’t have a clue if he finds lack of content after 20+ level. They’re polishing the game as we speak and it’s simply idiotic to compare a brand new MMO with the resources of a 4 year-old WoW, that’s just stupid.
AoC is not for solo playing, especially in the endgame, and if you think AoC is about soloing endlessly for epix that will become obsolete in 2 months, then you missed the point of AoC.
This article is no analysis, but a raving of an MTV youth that has the attention span of an American toddler. Seriously, you need to delve a lot deeper into AoC in order to see its true potential, it is a guild-based game which requires adult players, and definitely not some 15 year-old pink gnomes all wanting to get epix on their own.
Thank God WoW maniacs have almost disappeared from the AoC community.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:40 am
The biggest issue with Age of Conan isn’t even that the gameplay was poor. It’s the fact that FunCom, imo, deliberately lied about the content, knowing full well that these “features” had no bloody chance of making it to the release client.
Granted, with MMO players, there’s a basic distrust of most publishers when it comes to games, however, in Funcom’s case, they went well beyond “fudging” it.
They lied to everyone.
Shame on me for believing their BS, and shame on them for hoodwinking their players.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Poor grammar and inane jokes makes for a shit review, although most of it is true.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:17 am
I played Age of Conan for the first 45 levels or so and then just never really logged in again. It wasn’t that I had consciously quit, just that I wanted to do other things and forgot about my account, until I realized my account had been frozen (hadn’t paid for a 2nd month).
I can’t say I had quite your horrible experience, because I did stop playing rather early. Although I do agree with most of the points you raised. I’ve only experienced a single crash and rather liked the first twenty levels. Had some fun PvP occassionally as well, but it just didn’t really have an addictive factor. Still got a time card coming in, someday when they finally release them, but I think I’ll save that one for about a year from now to see if it’s any better then.
What’s worst is that Warhammer Online is looking to be even less enjoyable. So unless Aion/Chronicles of Spellborn magically appear this year, my mmorpg fix will have to wait until next year… hopefully those games won’t suck.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I prefer Donecom or Dungcom, personally.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Excellent grammar and appro jokes make for an excellent review.
For months I have not been able to put my finger on why I just don’t enjoy this game. Your review articulates it all very clearly.
I thought even recently, maybe I’m just too old and don’t enjoy games anymore. After going back to some old pasttime favorites and reading this article, Thanks Failcom for almost turning me away from all MMOs.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
@Daedren, I am sure we could talk for hours about a real deep analysis of the game and what went wrong, and what is going wrong. A lot of the people who are simply agreeing are just typical of a large portion of the consumer market for these games that truthfully will very rarely be happy. Something is always going to be messed up. I don’t say that as an excuse for making bad games I just state that as a reality of development at least with things as stupidly overcomplex as what we call a standard MMO. The biggest issue I see with games in general is that a vertical slice of intended game-play is not prioritized early enough and its allowed to change to dramatically over development. Work that has to be thrown away is time wasted to be making the game better. Often times we set the bar too high as far as trying to add features and I feel it detracts from the end result almost like conflicting emotions in a movie. My personal primary goal was “Make combat fun and interesting with a new approach” in general I feel I succeeded and am proud of that. My secondary goal was to make PvP kick ass as an extension of combat but with my moving back to the US and other factors I was not able to influence or effect the changes my opinions would dictate. Feel free to get a hold of me more directly if you want to discuss something in more detail. P.S. the fact you can’t space out and structure your text in these comments royally sucks.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
@Athelan: Indeed, my friend, we could.
In your defense, I think that the combat of AoC was at least innovative, or a bit different, then what has been done before - at least for melee classes. I think Spellcasters got shafted in not being able to take advantage of the combo system but hey, it’s not a perfect world.
I think the biggest problem with the latest string of MMO’s is that instead of being new, creative, and imaginative, they’re too busy following business models and going with “tried, true methods” - when really the focus should be on giving players stuff that is newer and just more fun for the players. That works in certain industries, but the gaming industry is entertainment: people don’t want the same thing, slightly improved - they want bold and dangerous. At the end of the day you have managers and corporate execs pushing the feel of the game instead of the real, creative guys. I run into the same problems in my line of work.
Anyway, shoot me an email sometime. And yeah, comment formatting sucks here.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
“In your defense, I think that the combat of AoC was at least innovative, or a bit different, then what has been done before - at least for melee classes. I think Spellcasters got shafted in not being able to take advantage of the combo system but hey, it’s not a perfect world.”
- Speaking as someone who was in the beta, the combo system is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest cause of all the problems Failcom has with AoC. When they decided to wimp out on their original, dynamic, combo system to replace it with the UI horror that the current one is they just plainly lost too much development time and delivered something sub par in all possible ways. I’m not joking when I’m saying that for the 8 or so months I was in the beta, we mostly just tested the newbie area over and over again.
August 31st, 2008 at 12:02 am
I would have to agree with this artical.
I have played MMO’s now for 16 years, AoC had all the right things going for it, it even pulled in a DEAD player base of old MMO players, and to me that was a WIN in itself.
However…..
To see guilds that have been established for years suffer MASS exit ’s of their players base within the first month to 2nd month proved 1 thing.
The game failed!!!!
August 31st, 2008 at 5:26 am
The old argument that we shouldn’t compare the 3 month old Conan to the 4+ year old WoW is a load of crap! Same with the “WoW had major problems at release too” argument. Conan is not competing with WoW on release. Conan is competing with Wow in it’s current form…burning crusade and all. That’s like someone trying to build and sell cars comparable to the model T ford, and when someone in a 2008 Grand AM laughs at them, they say….Well….GM’s launch wasn’t much better than a model T ford! You know what…it may be true…but you’re new model T ford is now competing with 2008 Grand AM’s, and Mustangs.
The argument of “No new game launches perfect” is simply no longer acceptable. And I think FunCom are the first to really “feel it”. Hopefully…the lesson is not lost on the other MMO companies.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:19 am
Where alot of this is fairly correct, why do people keep going on about the expansions. Every game company that has been a success will at release generally have an entire seperate team working solely on an expansion. My god after 3 monthsof the game being out, if it was perfect and everything was in the game like promised, most people would be bitching like hell saying “OMG you don’t have anyone working on an expansion, are you on drugs?”
So please for the love of god, stop bringing it up, wow did it (omg not the game that has 10million people/5million real people 5 million chinese farmers) eq2 did the same,
Oh and some of you should really go back and read WOW’s reviews that people posted up after wow’s 3 monhs of release (and i mean release, not european one) to see how many slated that. Look forward to the same sort of stuff from WAR 3 months after release also.
Omg a pattern, May be if people stop beliving all the hype from games companies at the start there expectations would’nt be so high.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
This is pretty dead on, unfortunately. I have an active subscription to AoC, yet I never log on to the game unless it is raid time. There is ZERO reason to log on other than raids, there are no items to acquire, there are no skills to improve, there is no pvp system to enjoy. There is literally NOTHING I can do to improve my character other than get raid loot or harvest basalt to finish our tier 3 city (which is the farthest along of any guild).
Our guild launched with over 150 active members (you know, because funcom told us there would be 300 man siege battles…). Today if I log on there is a 99% chance that I will find 0 players online. Within the past two weeks we can’t even get more than 12 players together for raids, so we can’t even do that anymore. these players did not leave our guild, they left the game. I check the offline list and it shows over 100 guild members who have not logged in for days weeks and months.
And our guild is the top guild on the server… we had server first kills, the highest city, the first battle keep. All other Tier 2 guilds on our server disbanded. A large number of lower tier guilds disbanded or merged.
Funcom failed at EVERY level.
-the user interface was among the worst of any mmo.
-EVERY raid encounter has been or currently is broken, some have been unbroken and rebroken again multiple times.
-healing in AoC is the worst of any mmo, my character is supposed to be a priest archtype. Yet there are ZERO items and ZERO feats that will enable me to increase the amount I heal for. as a ToS I’m relegated to casting ONE heal over time spell, because the cone doesn’t stack with shamans.
-itemization is absolutely a joke. The only items worth getting are raid drops or crafted gemmed items (the gemed items are being nerfed so they will become worthless too)
-there is no pvp system
I can go on and on but I might as well summarize by restating that funcom failed on EVERY level of gameplay and content design. The ONLY area that they successfully delivered on was graphics (even though the DX10 on the box was a lie).
August 31st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
sounds like an article full of opinions and of coarse people grouping up who have similar opinions… which is what the internet and search engines do… allow people who have similar interests find each other. Well, looks like you guysa found each other… Now go back to WoW because that’s all you have to play, we are tired of you talking about AoC.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
NERD RAGE!!!!
I blame the internet, without it this guy would be safely tucked away from society playing magic the gathering in his parent’s basement and dribbling funyun crumbs into his neckbeard.
note: i am not endorsing AoC, I am just saying that in the time the article writer wrote a 1500 word hate essay about a computer game he could have been off doing something productive, like drowning himself for getting so worked up about a computer game.
August 31st, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I think the key here was “High expectations. Failed to deliver”. Let this be a lesson to the marketeers that unless the product comes close to matching the hype, IT’S GOING TO FAIL!!! Had we all not bought into the hype and the fantastic screenshots, perhaps we’d be a lot more forgiving of where it was and may have been willing to stuck around longer while it got fixed up.
And fixed up it will be. I have no doubt that, barring Funcom going under, AoC will be a great game …. in about a year or so.
I’ll say it again …. let this be a lesson to the marketeers that unless the product comes close to matching the hype, IT’S GOING TO FAIL!!!
August 31st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Article seemed to be spot on. And, I got a few chuckles on the way. I was really looking forward to AoC and was disappointed at end. Maybe the game will still be alive a year from now and they will have all the “fun” things (end game content, seiges, etc). If so I may give it another try.
The bar has been raised in expectations for MMO’s. Earlier games were real buggy on release. WoW was probably very bad (never played it). But people are not putting up with that any more, and rightfully so. If anyone wants to try to get close to the customer base WoW has they have to deliver a fresh game and make sure everything that was promosed is in the game and WORKING. Too many options out there now, with more coming every year. I think most games will only get 1 chance to get it right now.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Im going to roll this one out…It took Failcom 7 years to get AO running smoothly and dished out several months of freebees for lame ass rollbacks,rediculous downtimes and most of all a complete failure at keeping the game running for more than 4 hours at a time. I see AoC riding the same train(but instead of the servers failing the actual client like to take a 2 hour dump.
I’m sure that I can be correct in saying that there is no way that the majority of the subscribers are going to pay for a broke ass peice of shit game for more than 3 months. It just does not happen. So saying 30k of US subscribers actually playing I would take a stab at it asnd say this number probably holds more water than you think.
The way Failcom blatantly spewed bullshit from there so called mouths was unacceptable and unwarranted. They are their own undoing. There will be no need for an expansion if the main game continues to fail, which makes for more wasted funds and time.
All you diehards can continue to ride out that sinking ship at no fault. Server mergers, free months, broken mechanics for years to come is almost worth the wait if you have nothing better to do. The future holds far better games with actual working entities.
@Daedren
/quote: I think the biggest problem with the latest string of MMO’s is that instead of being new, creative, and imaginative, they’re too busy following business models and going with “tried, true methods” - when really the focus should be on giving players stuff that is newer and just more fun for the players. /quote
You are absolutly right. The MMO devs need to hear you on this and be bold enough to actually follow through.
The lack of games having huge entertainment concepts will only induce boredom and technicolor yawns from o-d’ing on redbull and doritos.
@Athelan
Thanks for a great read.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Every single gaming website and magazine is partially to blame for this sad state of affairs.
The idea that you can review an MMO based on 1-day of gameplay is ridiculous.
It’s clear that Funcom put all it’s resources into Tortage, and then minimal resources everywhere else. They knew that in the rush to review, very few people would get beyond that point, and those that did wouldn’t have a chance to notice everything else that was wrong. The great majority of what’s wrong comes from playing for a few days, or a week, when you have the chance to interact with the environment more and with other players. And if every reviewer in the world weren’t creaming their jeans at the thought of being the “first to review”, we might have seen some more honest evaluations.
Instead, all we get is nothing more than the people of Oz not looking behind the curtain for the Wizard.
Personally, I’d like to see a re-review of *all* the current MMOs on the market, in their established versions. It might be interesting to see what the differences are between the current state of the game and the original review.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:21 am
Hehe, so many people were saying this would be a WoW killer, that it would claim the top of the hill of MMOs. My ass.
Glad I didn’t buy AoC, good review. the fact that so many players quit right after trying it alone is proof of just how awful it is.
–Jotto–
September 1st, 2008 at 1:38 am
I agree with Lichbane. They should have invested less in marketing and more in developing the game. Their tactics worked for a small, niche MMORPG like Anarchy Online, but when they took up a huge project like AoC, all the flaws in their management started showing. I merely think Funcom has bitten off more than they could chew by trying to make ‘the next big MMO’. They should have worked on making just ‘the next MMO’ and then slowly build on that, instead of building up the hype, and then failing to deliver.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:59 am
I stopped reading when you started to quibble about the subscriber figures. I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.
The biggest problem with the internet is it lets retards like you have a voice.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:10 am
My God I read some more and it gets worse. Lack of content beyond 20? You were just too fucking lazy to look.
And putting your own assumptions in bold as if they were fact is a cheap tactic. You clearly lack social skills but I still can’t excuse the complete lack of any worth in this blog.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:21 am
I shake my head when I hear the misguided fools go one about how AoC will be all “that” a year from now after it’s been polished. Here’s a reality check for you … AoC won’t be around a year from now and all the wishful thinking in the world isn’t going to change it. The server pops are already severely diminshed and those numbers are still in free fall. WAR releases shortly and WotLK is approaching quickly. Those two events will deplete the numbers even further. Failcom is hemorrhaging money and it’s own execs are dumping stock. This sucker is going into the ground whether you like it or not. Cue the funeral dirge.
The fact remains that Failcom pissed in the faces of their subscribers and are now paying the price for it. But what’s truly unforgivable are the imbeciles who willingly open their mouths to catch every golden drop instead of getting off their knees, taking a shower, and moving on. There are plenty of complaints about mediocrity dominating the MMORPG world these days and it’s the drones who gleefully accept the pablum that game companies shovel down their throats who are ultimately responsible. Hopefully Failcom’s demise will be so spectacular that it will serve as a warning to other companies out there on what not to do to create a successful game. But that only works if the fans can show at least some discernment when it comes to where they spend their money. Unfortunately, I have little faith in the game community so we are probably doomed to many more years of golden showers before things turn around.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:59 am
Good review, I agree wth all of it. I was a early adopter and had the pleasure of downloading the 15.4Gb “patch”. That should have warned me off. MY issue is I love the caracter Conan. I have a first ed No1 comic on the wall, first ed books and the complete works collection and Im collecting the current comics. I even like Arnies movies. Im cranky the game didnt go on to greatness and evolve into a movie and a cult like LOTR.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:47 am
Joined friends who had set up Guild which had 100+ members when I joined. Now I play solo they all left. The game is amusing as a solo game. As a veteran of many MMORPGS i am beginning to despair of finding a decent game. I think the whole industry is in a rut. Games are turned out to fast and are all basically the same old stuff with differnt graphics.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:03 am
Great read.
I came to the game with a multi mmo guild planning to destroy everything in our path and conquer all. Just that thought gave us chills for we planned to have lots of laughter on vent the months to come. This however didn’t happen. We have all left the game and moved to other corners of the gaming scene.
We are greatly disappointed at the outcome of AoC. It’s just sad.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:47 am
Overall not a very insightful review. You don’t know the number of actual players either so don’t post it in bold like its a fact. No content after level 20 well I am level 58 and still have a full quest log. No M or RPG then why do I log on and still see OOC full of chat, people LFG and asking for help with quests? How can you complain that there is no RPG when you clearly didn’t even take the time? You complain that levelling is too quick but its not if you take your time to read the quests, know what the story is, know who the NPCs are.
You came from WoW, expected more of the same and got something that requires more intelligence.
Btw I run AOC without any technical problems.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am
I would never have made 3 (now 4) reviews if your blog was better moderated. I came back to this site and saw my reviews weren’t posted so I assumed they weren’t published. Only when I posted my 3rd review did I see that my other two are sitting there. Christ you can’t even run a blog properly I wouldn’t trust any of your reviews.
September 1st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
The guy in the video should be the new White House Press Secretary he can feed some lies of bullshit.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I find it semi-amusing when people like Windywoo, who are clearly in the minority on this issue, spend more time trying to argue that the game isn’t crap than actually playing it. I mean, if it’s so good, why not get back to playing it? The 400,000 who have left, and the hundreds of thousands yet to leave, disagree with you, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go and enjoy the game, youself. Oh, and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:50 pm
yes what you say has a point but lest face it most of it is shit and your 100% full of it.
Yes this game is facing problems but it also show the most potential out of any game out there.
along with it anything done on this scale has teething problems dont want them wait a while after tjhe game has been relised.
as far as patch updates is this is shit fuck what games u been playing most games i play i seem to what 6 months for a patch then if im lucky just lucky i might get another one.
so try this stop moaning like a child and be constructive if something is broken or wrong you dont just keep yelling its broke, give some constructive feed back or at least try being mature.
A computer can hide your identity but not the fact your an arse.
oh and ps you an count me in the subscriber base for a long time
September 2nd, 2008 at 5:28 am
I gotta laugh at the “Funcom will probably give Gaute their next MMO” (which is called Second World or Life or something) cause it will more than likely happen!
Anarchy Online was a nice little game, earning decent cash for Funcom and then Gaute came in as Game Director. His “vision” for the game is still ridiculed in the forums to this day and he and his changes are almost universally ridiculed by the player base.
One of his more famous gaffes, which is still regularly quoted on forums and used as signatures, was when he said “There will be no camping in the Shadowlands” (Shadowlands was his expansion and vision for what the game should be) then introduced unique mobs on long timers dropping uber loot with low % which meant everything was camped to high heaven.
To top it off he introduced one type of mob (heckler) with insane XP and had same mob drop item (ingots) worth an extreme amount of credits (which was eventually take out of drop tables about 2.5 years later after veteran players had hoarded billions of credits by kiting the hecklers for undreamt of wealth, maxing the bank on numerous toons) totally destroying the levelling curve along with game economy at one fell swoop. Now THAT’S how to screw a game up, forget the small faux-pas he’s done on AoC this guy has form!
Luckily, or unluckily cause now it is too late, the latest Game Director has done / is doing a nice job on AO and is repairing a lot of the damage but AO’s sub base has dwindled too far to be recovered.
Two MMO’s for Gaute, two strikes. Will Funcom let him “batter up” for the third?
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 am
Lovely.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Well said. Man and I got suckered into buying the Collectors addition.
@Windywoo A large group of mens trash(In this case), is another man’s treasure. Also remember this before you post again,” It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
So fanboy go back to your game and play rather then sit here and try defend it. Do you think we all just went and wasted our money for the fuck of it? No, I’m sure everybody here gave that game a chance and it just failed to deliver. Who knows in time it may get better. But in it’s current form it’s crap .
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
@Daedren:
“You know, you’re exactly damn right. The problem with this is that if you DON’T take a Howard Stern approach, it gets about 2-3K views and quickly disappears into the collective ether of the internet. ”
And yet, you describe your audience as being MMO developers, and planned to email them directly, not “the Internet.” Rather hypocritical of you, don’t you think, when you claim “Objective journalism is nigh-unheard of at mainstream MMO websites because they don’t want to piss anyone off. ” It seems to me your brand of subjective journalism is what pisses people off more.
I don’t disagree that there are serious issues with AoC, and by and large your observations about the game are accurate, but the vitriol here is a little over the top.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
The game is unfinished. The first 20 levels are great, but as you move deeper into the game it turns into mediocrity. Too many bugs, lack of real PvP action, repetitive and dull missions…..
I almost agree with every point of the review, but free PvP is bullshit - fighting is fun, ganking not, so at least Fungone are doing something about it.
This game has potential, but it’ll take time. In the meanwhile, I’m not giving them my $$$ or time.
Cya in Warhammer online
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:57 pm
One thing that this world clearly needs is more “vitriol”.
Drop the “Internet - Serious Business” act. We’re talking about games. None of us need this shit.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
Seriously I think most of what was said needed to be said. This game is awful, poor;y balanced, poorly itemised, missing promised content, and most importantly not fun.
The people who stood up in the pre-release videos from funcom and told us how good and polished this game is need as much vitroil as we can throw at them. Hell pelted with eggs and rotten tomates in the street wouldnt be out of line. If they show their faces at a convention or doing publicity for another game in the future i would like to see them abused with crys of “lying scum” and spit wads from the crowd .
Now I know most of these people are decent hard working folk. But they were party to fraudulently mis representing theis product and taking our money. As things stand they have more to fear from their employer than the masses they pedal lies to.
Lets put them in a position where they have to think about their own future, reputation and safety before standing up and selling us this rubbish.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 pm
LoL its funny reading the idiot/failcom employee posts. Game is trash, game has always been trash even in beta, and always will be with the idiots they have running shit. They chose not to listen to people in beta telling them there game was shit and now they are suffering for it. Game is dead, dont know a single person still playing and unfortunaly most had 3 month subs instead of being smart and cutting loose after the free month like the rest. There’s a reason they dont release actual server data, because it shows the game is a complete failure and is a joke, even sub numbers will be down a ton now that the 3 month sub plans are gone. Feel sorry for anyone stupid enough to get a 6 month plans lol, 3 is bad enough.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:55 pm
I think this article hits almost everything on the head. But from a hardcore perspective one thing it doesn’t mention is the rampant exploiting that went 99% unpunished.
I personally know people who went from 1-80 in the course of a week using class exploits, that still continued to play their characters well after I had quit.
People duped gems, farmed thousands upon thousands of gold using a raid grouping bug. They cascaded instances to farm epic gear over and over and over again.
Every raid boss in this game is or was exploitable. Every door that isn’t connected to another instance is passable. Every pillar sitting next to that boss is accessible
I don’t know how many times i had reported a known cheating guild for exploiting when I knew i’d catch them in the act. I sent in petition after petition. I’d get on and see 5-10 people in the BRC lobby for hours on end, i’d send a petition. Nothing ever happened. “We’ll look into it” was the only response I ever got.
Just like every other hardcore gamer we wanted to be the best but it wasn’t possible without cheating and most of the group was 100% against it. We continued to fight broken content, fought the broken siege attempts against us, continued to pvp for sake of boredom. In the end about 125 of us quit. A few stuck around and I can tell you I’ve personally 3 manned every Tier 2 boss there is. We did it because we could but after the novelty wore off even that got boring.. So eventually even us cheaters left.
In my eyes there were three problems that led to the demise of my tier 2 raiding guild. Exploiting, PVP Balance, and the lack of a PVP rewards system. The exploiting forced legit gamers into cheating just to keep up. The pvp issues frustrated people to the point of giving up and the removal of the rewards system took away the carrot that gave us a reason to fight through those frustrations.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Good read and well written — fix ‘desert’ to ‘dessert’ though.
September 5th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
[...] AoC in a Wall of Text nutshell. If Yahtzee ever actually played a game for longer than 10 minutes, took a breath, stopped being a spoken word forum troll, and had to type, it might look something like this. [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
ROFL
Hillarious! I am an ex-player of aoc and you just got it all right
September 8th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I agree with your review and think they should just hire new execs at Funcom. As for the people talking about WoW. That game is dead as well, the same ol cookie cutter shit, same gear (different color) and stupid ass arena system that ruined any class differences in the game have made WoW as big a failure as AoC. These devs need to quit lying or dumping shit on the playerbase and let us play the game.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:07 am
You sir summed it up completely for us all. TYVM!
September 10th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
For everyone complaining about cookie-cutter-WoW games, I hope you’ve tried Dungeons and Dragons Online in the past year. Not much for soloists, but for groups it’s great, and it has the best combat system in MMOs. I can dodge a fireball, baby!
September 11th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Interesting the most of the AoC fans posting here are indulging in foam-flecked ad-hom attacks rather than addressing the fact that their special magic kitten of a game is horrible, broken and boring. The playerbase shifted a lot- at launch, it was full of new and optimistic people, and as I got to the end of the “free” (hah) month, I noticed a far greater percentage of the “la la la I can’t hear you” brigade represented- and they tended to be insulting, self-deluding and bitter. Well, I guess you’d be too, if you had (for some odd reason) invested so much emotional capital in not only a darn videogame, but such a dull hamfisted and clearly broken one. If the horrible over-instanced world, kleptomaniac mail system, broken raid enouncers, terrible itemisation, retarded DDR-alike melee combat, ridiculous lag, client leaking memory like it was holed below the waterline or AWOL PvP system wasn’t enough to drive me away, the increasingly abusive, embittered and self-deluding diehards would have done. Interesting to see them springing to life wherever anyone dares to point out the Emperor’s new clothes, heaping their bile and scorn on the notion that he might be slightly under dressed