This is a message to all past and current Age of Conan players.  Funcom is asking for your help, and it’s your job to assist them! A series of online surveys relating to Age of Conan has just been released.  These surveys are directed at the players and are meant to bring Funcom some feedback on what the next major update for the game should include.  Funcom has stated that this is the planning phase of the year for them and is looking forward to hearing from a mass amount of players.  These surveys will hopefully reach a wider audience due to the change in approach Funcom is using.  Instead of e-mailing these surveys to subscribers online, they will all be accessible through the Age of Conan forums.  Each survey will take approximately 10 minutes each to complete.  There are a total of 5 surveys and no you don’t have to complete all of them, but that’s not to say that you shouldn’t.

Continued…

It’s been a long time since we heard the latest numbers for Funcom’s Age of Conan, however with the release of update 6 and their guild ranking system, we can now guesstimate how many subscribers AoC really has.   As I did last week with CrimeCraft when I guesstimated there numbers were below 10,000, I went to Age of Conan’s guild ranking system, imported all the guild member numbers from each server and added up the totals.  Surprisingly it seems that Age of Conan is well above the 100,000 subscriber count which many people though it was below.

Adding up the guild member numbers came out to 97,167 players.  As I did with Crimecraft’s estimate I’ll double this number as many people do not join guilds and like to solo.  So then the number of active AoC players comes to 194,334 players. I would bet that is an over estimate, I would seriously doubt that 50% of AoC players are soloing without a guild.  So maybe it’s closer to 150,000.

This estimate should obviously be taken with a grain of salt as I am unsure what guild member numbers really means. Do guild members equal active subscribers?  Or is Funcom adding inactive accounts into the guild count?

Regardless, I think it is safe to say that Age of Conan is above the 100,000 subscribers mark.  It might very well be that Age of Conan is seeing its member base grow now that they have had some time to iron out the kinks.   No official word from Funcom.

Funcom has released update 6 for Age of Conan entitled Return of Thoth-Amon. Although not a new feature to MMOs, this update primarily focuses on guild rankings. Funcom described the update as:

Update 6: ‘Return of Thoth Amon’ introduces the much anticipated guild renown feature, where any guild on any server can acquire renown points that unlock exclusive rewards. Anything that the members of that guild do – fighting monsters, fighting other players, crafting items – will generate renown for the guild. Renown points will unlock guild levels, and will for instance allow the guild to decorate their guild city with new buildings, statues and banners, or allow the guild’s members to gain access to exclusive item rewards. Players can view a list of the top ranking guilds on all servers from inside the game as well as through the new guild rankings website available on the community portal.

The update also features a new dungeon entitled Thoth-Amon’s Stronghold.

Yesterday Funcom made an announcement that Age of Conan would offer an unlimited free to play trial offer for any players that signed up before Jan 1st, 2010.  The offer included levels 1 – 20 and was limited to the intro island of Tortage, but players could play the game in this zone for as long as they wanted.

It is no longer a secret that free to play MMORPGs not only work, but can make serious cash by having in-game stores or offering tiered memberships with benefits to players that pay extra.  Age of Conan was rocked by a horrible launch losing a huge chunk of their player base within a few months, however over the last year they’ve made serious improvements.  As we recently saw with Dungeons & Dragons Online, moving to the F2P model can seriously revive an almost dead MMO.  Although I wouldn’t put D&D and AoC in the came category, it is safe to say AoC is not as health as they would want to be.  Switching to a F2P model might be the cure and revive a game that seem to have long reached its peak.

Funcom might be testing the waters with this unlimited free trial.  Who knows, we might be seeing a completely free to play Age of Conan sooner than you think.  Checkout the free offer here.

AoC Server Merges – When Worlds Collide

When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.

There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.

So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.

One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO.  I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.

Paragus

Co-leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Rant: Guards!

What is it about MMO developers and their inability to implement guards in their games in a rational manner. Going all the way back to the very first MMOs, we have seen paranoid developers either use guards to try and stop their players from running amok in their games, or for merely decorative purposes.

I was playing Warhammer Online recently in one of the scenarios when I became witness to a guard from the other team going berserk killing most of my team. I think what bothers me is not so much that the guards attacked us, but the fact that the guards are level 55 champions! I mean seriously, what the fuck are there level 55 guards for?! These bad boys are handing out 30,000 damage a hit to a level 40.

The scenario “Serpent’s Passage” revolves around the idea of 2 boats crashed on the same island fighting over some salvage part to repair their ships and get off the island. That is all well and good, but if the task is that important and critical, why would you send out the level 40s to kill each other and not send the level 55 super hero guard?! Hell, I’ll take it a step further! Why don’t they send out this guy to single handedly win the entire war?! He hits for 30,000 damage a pop, which sure to be enough to bring most keep lords to their knees in a few hits, and probably decimate the enemy king.

What were they thinking? Developers are so paranoid that players might actually have some freedom or inconvenience the other team that they have to use this as a method to keep us contains from going out of bounds. It reminds me of people who play Dungeons and Dragons with a Dungeon Master who uses one of the box adventures instead of giving their players the freedom to make their own decision. Unfortunately this problem is not just limited to recent games.

As far back as Everquest 1 we have seen guards gone wild, but even worse were vendors! I remember when Everquest first came out that I would sometimes accidentally attack the baker selling rations by pressing the wrong button on the keyboard. The result was me getting obliterated for obscene amount of damage. This also made me wonder why this lady is selling bread and not out hunting dragons, and what she is doing with that loaf to cause so much damage.

Final Fantasy 11 took a different approach to guards as a PvE game. Their guards looked bad ass usually sporting some amazing looking armor. You would think if there was ever guard that should be doing massive damage it would be them. Unfortunately we will never know because they are merely decorative. I will never forget my first night in FFXI where a bunny rabbit crit me and chewed my face off while the nearby guard stood motionless as I clung to him for dear life. It’s a good thing the police in real life didn’t train at the Vana’diel police academy!

World of Warcraft took yet a different approach. Their guards did not do massive damage and were very much killable. The bad news is that there seemed to be more guards in the town then people whenever one is attacked. My guild used to attack Red Ridge when the game first came out, and more guards ran out of that place then there were people living there. They just magically seemed to appear out what must have been a mysterious portal that connected to the biggest barracks of all time.

Age of Conan gave us Funcom’s take on the idea. The guards were not super high level and they did not hit terribly hard. The bad news is that you could not hit them back! We used to murder people in the Noble District on the FFA server, at which time the guards would usually chase us. I found it ironic that my character had the will to murder innocent players in the street, but did not have the will to defend himself from the town guard. Players were often left to finding ways hide from the guards, but sometimes this would result in Funcom handing out a suspension. Clearly the Funcom CSRs thought it as more important to prosecute people hiding from guards instead of those exploiting the raid content in the game, nice work there!

Can we please stop having developers try to box us in with guards? Let us have our freedom, these are RPGs after all. God forbid the players should do something the developers never thought imagined we would. God forbid another player might be inconvenienced by another on a free for all server. Look, there is nothing wrong with having guards in your game. I wouldn’t expect to be able to kill someone in real life without them coming, but be sensible about it. If you are a pure PvE game, then at least have the guards lend a hand if I am coughing up blood on them. If you are making a PvP game, the guards should be killable and in limited supply.  The use of guards in most MMO’s so far has hurt immersion and has served as a virtual bitch slap by the devs to keep their players inside the box.

Paragus

Co-Leader of Inquisition

www.inqguild.com

Just when I thought I had escaped writing about Age of Conan, something as superb as THIS knocks on my electronic front door. The infamous Gaute Godager, Game Director for Age of Conan and of Steak and Wine fame, has ‘resigned’ from Funcom. For those that don’t know what ‘resigned’ means, it means that they told him to resign or they’d fire him.

I can’t help but feel a little responsible for all this. Sure, my scathing review of sorts of Conan probably didn’t help his cause – but I think I’ve been too hard on the guy. I’ve called him out multiple times, not only for his Steak and Wine quote (man I love that) – but also possibly one of the weirdest ‘welcome to the game’ messages ever created. He managed to include slave whipping, confuse it’s players on whether they are riding a ship or driving it, use the phrase “nature launches” and even use the word “bumpiness”. I’m almost tearing up re-reading that announcement. It seemed so long ago we were so naive of the ways of Funcom and had such high hopes for the game.

While I wish Gaute the best of luck in his new career – and speculation on where that will be will only cause fear in the collective MMO community – I think it’s safe to say that MMO’s probably aren’t your forte. That might be a bit harsh, but for those keeping count, that’s 0/2 for Mr. Godager – Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. At least Richard Garriott has Ultima Online to reminisce about as he shoots off to the Moon or whatever.

Adieu, Mr. Go Danger, your savvy wit and cheeky quips will forever be remembered.

Hi, I’m Daedren. You might remember me from other interviews like “Mark Jacobs: He Didn’t Call Me Back” and “Richard Garriott: Corp Por or In Vas Mani?” I write this not with a gun to my head, or a sharp weapon to my balls, but because I’m an advocate of objective journalism in the MMO industry. That means when I strike up a dialogue with someone as unlikely as even Erling Ellingsen, of Age of Conan interview fame, I must adhere to my own code. I think I’m saying that because I’ve been watching Dexter too much.

A short synopsis of the background leading to this interview: I recently wrote an article titled “Age of Conan: A Post Mortem Analysis” that was, by MMO industry standards, famous enough to have Massively’s chief editor send me a couple hookers and a bucket of KFC for my troubles. Some of my readers summed it up as “The harshest review ever done on a game – but mostly true” or “inane babble by a crazed man, obviously driven insane by his socialist European overlords” – in any case, it got the attention of Funcom, probably because I emailed it to all of them.

I eventually came to discussing the article with one Erling Ellignsen. After he realized I was not all fire and brimstone, he lightened up to the fact that reaching out to MMO player base might be a good idea. No one is perfect, of course, and it’s only fair to give someone the chance to explain. With that said, I’ve given Erling 5 questions to answer, and here are his responses:

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Daedren: In an interview with Jon Wood of MMORPG.com, you state that “No big features didn’t make it in to launch”. However, Age of Conan was marketed as a PVP-Oriented MMO. As the game was launched without a PVP system, how is this possible? We understand the need for testing and ironing bugs out, but it really does seem like the PVP system should have been there at launch and wasn’t. What gives?

Erling Ellingsen: I disagree with you that the game launched without a PvP system. You could PvP players from day one, both in mini-games, in the open world and in sieges. One of the things we received the most positive feedback on was actually PvP, and Age of Conan is unique in regards to the fact that the majority of our players actually play on PvP servers. We even launched with a PvP cultural server ruleset. However, we know that we need to develop PvP further and that’s what we’re doing when we’re now rolling out PvP experience, levels, armor and the consequence system. Saying that Age of Conan launched without a PvP system would, however, be incorrect in my opinion.

Daedren: In the same interview, you mentioned that “We know better than anyone what issues we are facing with the game”. That said, how can you then justify the recent gem changes, the horrible gem balance from before, the past and current in-game itemization, and lastly, failure to fix game breaking problems like gems and epic item farming (effectively ruining the economy) in a reasonable amount of time? What sort of assurance do players have that mistakes like this won’t be done again in the future?

EE: I certainly understand your concern, but rest assured that we are doing the best we can at the moment. We would like to fix everything right away, but that’s simply not the way it works. These changes take time to develop and implement, and we need to work from a list of priorities. We have done a tremendous amount of improvements since launch, just look at the various patch notes. That being said we know there are still many issues that needs to be corrected, and we are working relentlessly on that. The gem system is being worked on as we speak, and the recent change we did was a temporary one to offer an intermediate improvement until we get it right. We will address all the issues we can, we just need to work from a list of priorities, and that means some issues will be ironed out before others. I know it’s hard to be patient about these things.

Daedren: There has been a lot of criticism about Funcom already announcing a pay-for expansion for Age of Conan. A hefty portion of people have been allocated for this project. How can you justify spending time on paid content when basic features (like PVP) are missing from the game, and how can you try and compete with other games like Lord of the Rings Online who provide these content updates at no cost?

EE: I have absolutely no idea where you have “a hefty portion of people” from. Right now the expansion team is very, very small. Our main focus now is, of course, the live game. It would make no sense whatsoever for us to not prioritize the live game — we need players to be happy with the game or else there isn’t much point even making an expansion, so improving on the game that’s there is priority number one. We wanted to drop some news on the expansion now because we wanted to show our playerbase that we are making long-term commitments to the game. Again, addressing the concerns the players have about the live game is alpha omega to us. The expansion is far, far away from release and we merely wanted to announce that we are indeed committing ourselves to delivering that sometime in the future. Until then, the live game is top priority.

Daedren: With the release of Warhammer Online and the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, how do you plan to retain players? What is the focus in the next 6 months of Age of Conan to either keep players playing or get them back from other games?

EE: That’s a good question, and I’m sure it will be a challenge! Right now what we want to do is work with our players on addressing the concerns they have and making the necessary changes and improvements that both we feel is needed and that the players feel is needed. We’re definitely getting there, and I think you will see us picking up speed in the time ahead as more and more good stuff is coming out. The first part of the PvP update is leaving the test servers now, and I can’t wait to hear the player’s feedback on it. Then we need to get the consequence system out, and I think we have definitely made a heavy improvement to PvP. We’re also rolling out a whole new outdoor area for level 55+ players, a whole new dungeon for level 60+ players, Tarantia Commons for mid-level players, as we have at least two level 80 dungeons in production. Then there is epic raid gear coming for all the classes, and we will continue to revamp content similar to what we did with the Black Castle. We are also looking into loot distribution, making the items more meaningful and making raiding more rewarding. We are committed to improving on Age of Conan and a large number of the changes you’re seeing is a direct reaction on player feedback.We will also work towards improving communication with our playerbase, and we want to keep everyone more in the loop on what we are doing with the game.

Daedren: How are the current subscription and server numbers? We’ve hear rumors of server merges and severe population declines on some servers. Any plans for these?

EE: I’m not at the liberty to discuss subscription numbers due to the fact that we are a publicly traded company. The latest number we announced was the 415.000 customers per August 14th. We will certainly do what is necessary to entertain a healthy community of players on the servers, and if we decide on doing anything such as server merges we will make sure to notify the playerbase when we can. Right now I can not give you any definite plans on this, though. We do, of course, register the feedback we’re getting on the forums and we’re taking it into consideration.

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*And there we have it, folks. I’m a bit disappointed with the answers, of course, but that’s not surprising. If you call “able to attack another player” a “PVP System” then I guess that’s your call. Perhaps I should have said “No meaningful PVP System” or perhaps “A PVP System different than Bruce Lee on the Commodore 64.” Not releasing subscriber numbers might not be Erling’s decision, but I think it’s safe to say with Warhammer launching this week and WotLK out in November, Age of Conan is going to have a bit of a difficult time not only retaining players but getting new ones as well. From how Erling talks, Age of Conan is being patched constantly and fixing problems, not introducing new ones. How accurate is that?I’ll be honest: I haven’t played Conan since June. That said, I’m not the most informed on the current game status: though word on the street is that the PVP patch still hasn’t launched and there are still some glaring performance problems. I’ve heard from a couple MMO hobos that still play AoC that a real patch hasn’t been introduced since July or early August, and that the PVP patch (the one promised in June) is hyped up every week, only to be let down come patch day.That said, I ask my readers to come up with some questions to bring to Funcom. Of course, I’d like to know peoples response to these answers. I’ll be compiling what I consider the “best” questions from readers around and giving them back to Erling in a week or two – that is, if he doesn’t put a restraining order out for my vivid pictorial references above.

Consider this an open dialog with “the Funcom”. I’d like to hear from both ex-customers like myself and also some current subscribers that still enjoy the game.

Oh, on a last note, here is the three month trend for Funcom Stock. If you’re too lazy to click, it’s gone from $55 per share to $8 per share in just over 90 days. I’m no market analyst, so I ask for help on this as well. Is that healthy?

Trembling Hand has a post up relating to games reviews and, more specifically, MMORPG reviews. It uses the Age of Conan debacle as a case study, of sorts, and while that will no doubt swing the ensuing discussion into a rather lengthy exchange of, “Age of Conan is the worst MMO ever made…” and “No, Age of Conan is brilliant and has hidden depths that you just can’t see yet…” which will only end when one of the parties involved decides to get a life, the premise of the article overall is something I’ve thought a lot about, myself.

MMORPGs are inherently dodgy beasts for reviewers. Faced with tight deadlines, especially in the online realm, reviewers are generally unable to play the game for any meaningful length of time before those deadlines require the reviewer to pass judgement upon it and, as Trembling Hand says, suggest whether people should buy it or not. This becomes a real problem when, for example, a game has tarted up enough of its noob levels to give the reviewer a very skewed view of the game’s true face.

It’s my firm belief, for example, that most of the early Age of Conan reviews were written by people who didn’t get past the first 20 levels and the “noob zone” of Tortage. In this zone they saw polished quests, great voice acting and an interesting game world, full of promise. “This game is looking great! It’s loads of fun!” the reviews gushed. And, yeah, based on Levels 1-20, that’s quite fair to say.

Of course, if they’d had the time to push past that area and get beyond, say, Level 30 or 40, the reviews would have undoubtedly started to take on a different tone. The voice acting dries up… the quests break… the game mechanics prove to be increasingly flawed… a wealth of promises from the box are either broken or non-existent… the endgame is crap… and, most alarmingly of all, THE GAME JUST ISN’T FUN. This is something AoC reviewers should have been ALL OVER, but failed. And therein lies the danger of MMORPG reviews.

I’m sure some of these reviewers played on and, over the months that followed, would have realised that their reviews were WAY too cheery and optimistic. Hell, I would be quite embarassed to have written such glowing reviews when, in the space of three months, the game was revealed to be such a collosally stinking piece of shit. But that’s me. I’m not really into the concept of suggesting people buy something when it’s actually terrible. I guess I have a conscience.

So… who’d be an MMORPG reviewer, eh? On one side, the reviews need to be written fast for a ravenous audience and, on the other, games are sprinkling way too much fairy dust on the lower levels, so the chances of being made to look like a fool within mere months of release are high. You know, free games or not, I don’t envy those guys, not one little bit. I think the best hope for “real” reviews comes from, as always, playing these games ourselves, or having a friend in a beta test who is happy to break an NDA and tell you all about it. Relying on the highly sanitised reality that reviewers are given to deal with will result in rather inaccurate reviews, more often than not.

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 Stock

Funcom Stock Sinking

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.