Craig Morrison, Age of Conan producer, was asked in an interview if a banana was actually a pear. Surprisingly, it is not!
MMORPG.com:
There are comparisons between this most recent update and the Star Wars Galaxies NGE where the game was radically changed after launch. For them, it was disastrous, how is the case different with AoC?
Craig Morrison:
I almost have to laugh that one off as I think it’s quite off base. Having played through that myself (as an SWG subscriber at that time) our current game update is (if you will pardon the unintentional pun) ‘light years’ away from what was done with the NGE in Star Wars Galaxies. That update completely and fundamentally tried to redesign the entire game-system for that title, and that is nothing like what is being attempted with the current update. The NGE was indeed a radical departure, this on the other hand does not really contain any radical changes to how the game is structured. The same classes are all still present and correct, their feat trees are just updated rather than being removed or replaced, so this update doesn’t have any real similarities with the NGE at all. For real SWG followers and fans it maybe, just maybe, has some similarities to the CU, in that what are doing is adjusting and improving the existing system rather than adding a totally different one, but even then I would say that they are fairly loose similarities.
I tried out AoC with the new game changes and they seem fairly spiffy. My necromancer is uber now, who knew! (It also helps that unlike a year ago, I actually have a PC that can run the game.) However, bringing a game back from undeath is always an iffy proposition.
#1 by Jeremy T on July 6th, 2009
Best of luck to them, too – AoC had some really fun elements, and I found it quite enjoyable for several weeks. If they can build off some of those solid gameplay foundations without damaging them in the process, they might just get another month’s subscription out of me. AoC’s combat system and its initial single player destiny quest were both well implemented and different enough to be interesting, and I hope that people realize that its failures had nothing to do with these core design elements.
Obviously, at this point, they’ve missed the near-launch window for a miracle patch that would rapidly expand the playerbase, but they should still be able to stabilize their numbers and hopefully send them creeping back up. The early levels of AoC are among the best gameplay I’ve had in an MMO, and that kind of potential deserves to survive.
#2 by geldonyetich on July 6th, 2009
If anyone knows how to completely revamp a MMORPG after release while keeping the core similarities in tact, it’s Funcom.
One of these days I might give AoC another spin.
#3 by openedge1 on July 6th, 2009
I have been blogging my exploits in this game since way before patch, and now I am tackling the patch itself.
There is no doubt I have some complaints, but the actual changes are nowhere near an NGE. They actually work quite well, and I am having a blast leveling several characters and working on my endgame.
What has happened though is while other MMO’s are getting easier to play (the casual field is getting abundant with Free Realms, WoW now becoming a cakewalk and Aion has my 10 year old son as a fan), AoC went the other direction with more challenges and difficulties to deal with…making it a more robust title to play.
I have been really begging Funcom to do the return for original customers who left after the first month…they MUST do this. People will be pleased.
But, patch 1.05 is a breath of fresh air for a game that at least strays from the norms of MMO conventions…moreso than most.
Cheers
#4 by D-0ne on July 6th, 2009
AoC is a bad game. Still.
#5 by Iggep on July 6th, 2009
SWG’s CU in March 2005 is what lead me to quit SWG, which I had played since a month after its release and caused me to switch to WoW which I still play today. SWG was really a horribly designed MMO, yet I loved it when those opportunities to conduct mass PVP (slideshows and all) presented themselves.
Regardless of how you spin it, re-designs of the nature of CU and what AoC is now going through is in truth an admission of failure. That isn’t always a bad thing considering the change can indeed be better than the orginal. But if the developers can’t just be honest about what they are doing and why, then they haven’t really learned the lesson the change is really meant to to answer, now have they?
#6 by Chris F on July 6th, 2009
Hrmpf. I was thinking this would be a switch to F2P or something.
#7 by Bonedead on July 6th, 2009
I still haven’t played this game. But, that’s kind of a good thing to me, because I’ve still got one to try out. I’m not just sitting around waiting for the next “cool/big thing” to come out. I just might go out and buy it!
#8 by openedge1 on July 6th, 2009
Quite intelligent reasoning. Thanks for sharing. Makes one wonder how so much info could fit into such a small space to write.
#9 by openedge1 on July 6th, 2009
Tons of places have it for 9.99. How can you NOT buy that?
#10 by Mercury on July 6th, 2009
NGE was a failure to analyze the reverse risk of a change. Also known as “what is our risk if we don’t implement this change?”. That’s why it’s so obvious as a fuckup, because the game was not in dying need of the change.
In the Conan case, I think they’re justified in taking more chances. When you’re behind, that’s what you do. Pull the goalie, move midfielders up, etc.
Good change.
#11 by Gx1080 on July 6th, 2009
Well im in the trial period and so far i like it. The mobs arent the easy farming mobs in WoW, here you need pay attention to kill them. Unfortunatley its merciless with lag. If you lag in the middle of a battle, any battle exept with things 10 levels less, you will die.
Oh and I play a melee class. You can enjoy the good old button smashing. Its fun. And it make me eat my words (failcom).
About the update, i read the patch notes and they arent massive changes to the game core. 1)It killed PvP burst, now you need the most CC and anti-cc to kill somebody. 2)It rebalanced and now all carrers are playable(none suck, and thats more than what WAR did). 3)You cant kill even casters with burst, so theres massive QQ. 3)It added an End-game zone that its badass. 4)It culminated the long process to make all the Non-Tortage areas not suck.
Basically, your typical .1 .2 WoW patch. Huge, but not altering the game core. Which its a good thing.
#12 by D-0ne on July 6th, 2009
@openedge1
You understood the comment perfectly. It’s a bad game. The “patch” didn’t add enough to the game to make it worth playing, let alone paying for. The games deepest flaws remain.
#13 by Mandella on July 6th, 2009
It won’t be an NGE (or even a CU) if the changes are actually better than what was before, and good enough to pull in more new players than the set-in-their-ways old players they are going to lose because of it.
I’m curious, to be honest. AoC was one of those games I was hoping wouldn’t suck, and I’d be happy to try it again if they’d send me one of those month free welcome back packages (which SWG is currently doing — to no avail as far as I am concerned).
Did they ever fix the city sieges to be playable? And is there now PvE content to speak of post level 20?
#14 by geldonyetich on July 6th, 2009
@Gx1080
Personally, I find it really encouraging when my involvement in any MMORPG matters enough that a patch of lag can kill me. It’s a pretty strong point in AoC’S favor…
That said, unless they offer me a free “give it a try again” plan some time soon, I’m probably never going to give it a shot again just because I’m real tired of the typical fantasy grind.
As for an interesting game, give the Fallen Earth beta a shot. Its first impression sucks, but as you get a bit deeper into it, it emerges as one of the few MMORPGs to really use the MMORPG platform right. I’d say more on this, but I think the game is still under NDA.
@D-One
The ambiguity as to why this dictates a bad game remains even in your retelling of it. “It’s a bad game with deep flaws” tells us nothing – you’d need to break it down to specific things the game does that makes it thus. Not really for the benefit of Funcom developers (as it’s unlikely they’d show up here) but in order for other AoC players to have any idea what you’re complaining about.
#15 by We Fly Spitfires on July 6th, 2009
The new patch looks good. I’m glad they finally sorted out the armour stats – I never, ever understood why they went with % numbers instead of fixed numbers. It’s MMORPG development 101. I remember using level 10 armour at level 50 because it had better % defense stats and, of course, % scales so I had no reason to replace it. Duh.
#16 by Freakazoid on July 6th, 2009
I want to like AoC. I did like everything in tortage back in the closed beta, and I especially enjoyed running around as a black topless voodoo necromancer, until bikini tops gave good stats.
#17 by Gx1080 on July 6th, 2009
@geldonyetict
Yeah. Already tried that beta. Didnt like it much. Maybe another try makes me change my opinion.
#18 by Sweetmeat on July 6th, 2009
I had been hearing good things, so I re-started my account. I went to bed while the patcher had been running for two hours. It was patching one file out of four. In the morning, eight hours later, it was still patching that same file and was less than 5% done. The weird thing was it had both my processors working at 100% and wasn’t actually downloading anything. I decided I couldn’t be without the use of the computer for 160 hours or more it would take to patch. Losing the machine for hours or days at a time every time they patched was a major reason I stopped playing to begin with.
Anyway I tried to give it another shot and I am just not hard core enough to even get to playing the game. I won’t be giving them a third shot.
#19 by dartwick on July 6th, 2009
NGE was a unique case.
They built a game that missed the target audience(average Star Wars fans) by a wide margin but that serious appealed to a smaller audience(grind happy ex-UO playres).
Conan on the other hand pretty much just sucked for everyone once you had a month or 2 under your belt.
#20 by Vetarnias on July 6th, 2009
I played Conan at release, and would you believe it, I stuck with it for six weeks even though my computer was below the minimum system requirements. Choppy as hell, as you can imagine, but I endured it — up until the Tarantia noble district, that is, which was utterly unplayable. Unplayable as in “the NPC enemy hasn’t finished loading, but you’re dead already”. With all settings already at minimum, there was no way around that, so I left (not to mention other factors quickly dampening my interest for the game).
So that’s the main reason why I won’t return to Age of Conan: I still have the same computer as last year. But on top of that, the other problem I saw with Conan was that it was the most single-player MMO I had ever come across, as I had not yet played World of Warcraft.
As none of my friends were playing Conan, and as I was on a PvE server (I avoided the PvP servers because of the usual horror stories, which reached their apex in the usual-suspect guilds mutually accusing one another of cheating), I joined one of those large casual, disjointed guilds that really offered nothing except maybe an occasional diversion on guild chat. They had a spot for a guild settlement, but it did not look particularly advanced, which did not surprise me if we consider that it probably was a casual guild where everyone was doing their own things instead of working towards a common goal. All in all, one of those guilds which start losing players after the first month and where those who remain feel no need to work together; when I quit the game, I did not even feel like it was worth sending a farewell letter, as a large chunk of the membership already was inactive by that stage.
During my PvE experience there, I did quests and I gathered resources, but it got increasingly boring, and the market was dead, with an unintuitive interface and mechanics of Warcraftian dullness: same problems of quest items outperforming world drops, and same problem of raw materials being worth more than finished items. And Warhammer Online wasn’t better: I could only make it to the WAR auction house once before the game inevitably crashed, but I saw how limited the market was there. But now I’m playing EVE, and I see entirely different economic problems there (and what a boring game that is, by the way).
But I think it might well be too little, too late for Conan. I rather liked the combo fighting system, but the only reason why I stayed with it that long (despite all my performance woes) was probably because it was my first WoW-type game, instead of another title I picked up after tiring of getting Blizzard richer.
#21 by Saylah on July 6th, 2009
I would have stayed longer if there wasn’t the forced break in the Destiny Quest. I tried leveling past it but it was well – boring and crafting was also cock-blocked by a level requirement.
I was actually enjoying my DS and using the rest of the game as my testing ground. I’d go gain a couple of levels, farm better gear, farm money for potions and food, so I could progress in my DS. It certainly wasn’t a typical approach but it was fun enough for me that I would have continued playing and paying for it. But cock-blocking me a level requirement to continue with the DS or take a break and do crafting, didnt please me so I unsubscribed and went to WAR.
#22 by Vetarnias on July 6th, 2009
@Saylah
Strange how a year can affect your memories. Now I remember that I used to complain about the same thing; not the destiny quest (I’m not too sure what that is exactly), but being forced to reach a certain level just to go on crafting further. I barely made it to 40, and by that stage I had just tired of the game so I never really bothered with it (it was supposed to be broken anyway), but I now remember the same thing applied for gathering, first tier at level 20, second at 50, and so on.
Same damn thing as World of Warcraft; I loved fishing, and could have spent a few hours doing it (not to mention there was money in it). But then they had this brilliant idea of making you unable to level your fishing skill past a certain point without the appropriate book, while the book could only be used if your character had reached a certain general level.
Simply put, imposing general requirements on top of skill-specific requirements does not make any sense, and I don’t care if it’s just a mechanism to force people to get subscribed for longer before they reach the crafting endgame, or (I suspect) a method to stop the gold sellers from making their money through high-end production as quickly as possible.
But I reserve the distinction of having the most deficient levelling system to EVE Online, which makes sure that the time you actually spend playing the game has no impact on how quickly you level up, which continues to happen while you’re offline. It’s the first game I played that actually forced me to sit it out for a week before I could have all the skills to achieve what I wanted to do next. No need to even log in, and, in the long term, no way to catch up with those who started playing years ago. With those in mind, what is my incentive to play EVE?
#23 by Raad on July 7th, 2009
@Vetarnias
To pwn.
#24 by Raad on July 7th, 2009
@Vetarnias
I know you think its impossible to catch up to people who have played more than you but the jump from Skill A IV to Skill A V will take a *LONG* time for any skill, and give you like a 5% bonus or let you train/equip/do something new. So if you work your head enough, you too can get a bunch of skills to IV and get a decent ship/fit and start owning. Your long term motivation in EVE, if your patient enough is to become a part of a 0.0 alliance and have fleet battles/mining ops/anything else to make sure your space stays yours. That or you can carebear your way in empire to vast riches, then use the money to play around with other people.
#25 by Bonedead on July 7th, 2009
@Raad
If you’re patient enough (aka, pay enough months) then maybe you’ll get into a guild that wont trust you for crap until you’ve been patient with them long enough (aka, pay more months). EVE: Making you pay for multiple months before you can even consider aspiring to greatness. That tag line fits with a lot of games nowadays, huh?
#26 by Baktru on July 7th, 2009
Strangely enough, ever since I’ve been unable to get into Lotro, AoC has become my fav Fantasy MMO. AoC, from the outset, had good mechanics, it just wasn’t finished…
And it’s getting more and more polish with every patch. It’s definitely better than WAR. I’ve grown bored with WoW so no comparison there… And my #1 is EvE which is in a whole other section of the MMO universe anyway.
#27 by Vetarnias on July 7th, 2009
@Bonedead
It’s precisely what I fear. EVE Online might well be the first game I will leave before my subscription runs out (that’s excluding Warhammer Online, which I left after seven days due to performance issues rather than gameplay concerns), notwithstanding the fact that, sucker that I am, I bought the boxed edition to save myself a lengthy download and still have 6 weeks to go before I have to renew.
And as I mentioned in my earlier post, EVE made the mistake of allowing me — forcing me is closer to it — to step back from the game for seven days, out of having nothing else to do. I decided to specialize in mining barges, and I have already bought my next ship as well as the strip miners to go in it, and I have enough cash to pay for insurance on the thing once I start flying it. But I have to wait a week for Astrogeology III and IV and Industry V alone, not to mention levels I-III in Mining Barges. What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Continue mining? I don’t need the money or the materials, and I don’t want to run the risk of tiring of mining before I get my new equipment. Missions? No, since their rewards are mostly money, which I don’t need right now — and I’m tired of missions in and of themselves. PvP? I haven’t left Empire space, and besides, what’s that word they use to describe EVE zergs? Blobs? Camping gates as usual?
Everywhere I turn, all I hear about is either that or scams, which players are so brazen as to openly brag about on the forums. That latest scandal about the guy who defrauded the bank he was running to pay for real-life expenses, for example. But what does it say about the game if (1) no such bank is trustworthy because of the utter lack of financial guarantees and legal enforcement (2) as a newbie, I wouldn’t even know where to find such player-run banks in the first place?
Two of my online friends joined the game at the same time as I did (except that they went for the Steam download), and we are fully aware of being stuck in the EVE doldrums of high-sec, with nowhere else we can go. It’s just the three of us, after all, so we’re stuck doing high-sec stuff, like running missions or mining — and one of us has already tired of mining, while I already have tired of missions. Venturing into low-sec, let alone 0.0, seems pretty pointless at this time.
Yeah, right, EVE’s a sandbox, except that the toughest and most established kids have already monopolized all the toys, so we’re left with the bent shovel and the bucket with a broken handle — and only if the bullies don’t yank them from us if they suddenly decide they want them. And that’s what I particularly dislike about so-called “sandboxes”: it means infinite possibilities for very few, and very little for the rest.
Then there’s the paranoia you mention, new players not being trusted in months (or perhaps ever), what with those scandals involving long-term infiltrations. Not to mention that based on what I have seen of EVE so far, the corporation management interface is less intuitive than what we could do in Puzzle Pirates, of all places. And with the scam-or-be-scammed mindset in place, I see large segments of the game remaining unused. How about a vibrant stock market, where you could invest in other corporations? Not here, because the equivalent of the SEC, to make sure you don’t get ripped off the minute you start investing, is missing. So I’m guessing that all the stock trading that gets done is achieved between cronies with inside connections. It’s a portion of the game that isn’t available to newcomers like our small corp.
What about contracts? I took a look at the courier-type contracts, and there is nothing in there that doesn’t look like an attempt to defraud whoever signs on; and indeed that scam type is apparently widespread. Just set some bulky and worthless cargo with a crappy reward, ask for the moon as collateral, and automatically attack whoever has the misfortune of accepting your terms. If I buy insurance on my car, then promptly set it on fire, shouldn’t my gesture, in any right-thinking society, invalidate my policy? Not in EVE, apparently, and I find that rather unsettling.
So with all this together, it’s very likely I will end up quitting EVE, though I want to give it a lengthier try, especially since I’ve paid for it. Whereas some people will undoubtedly say I “couldn’t handle it”, something like that, I will just say that there was nothing in there which was available to me as a newcomer to the game, and that I found large segments of player activity morally reprehensible (with a few mentions of “in this day and age” to clinch it).
#28 by Baktru on July 7th, 2009
Strange… After one month in EvE I’m in a medium-size player corps, I have access to our nullsec if I want to, I’ve been doing plenty of courier contracts and I still like it.
Then again, I’m also a patient person… Got an 18 day training schedule for my next ship now. So what? I just build up some ISK lah.
#29 by Vetarnias on July 7th, 2009
@Baktru
AoC was very good in terms of immersion, in this regard one of the best MMO’s and maybe RPG’s I played. Sure, things started going downhill after Tortage, but that beginning just provided a pretty good idea of how in-depth the game could have been. Unfortunately, other mechanics let it down.
AoC featured the best music I’ve heard in an MMO, by the way (with Pirates of the Burning Sea a distant second)
#30 by ZachPruckowski on July 7th, 2009
I think that Conan’s in a pretty good spot to be able to pull off a reboot. Failed MMOs in general have nothing to really lose from this:
1) You already have the engine and a lot of content. Against this, the “reboot” patch is very inexpensive.
2) A year later, more people have the hardware to run your game, just through the natural computer upgrade cycle.
3) At worst you go from “limping along” to “failed”, and at best you go from “limping along” to “under-performing but stable”.
4) With your box now on discount shelves ($20-30 for the game + a month instead of $60), the cost to buy into your game is much lower.
5) You can offer “Scrolls of Resurrection” and “recruit a friend” and trial deals easily, knowing that if the people only stay a month it’s no big loss, and if they stick around, they’re steady money.
6) After your original “failure”, you’ve likely got most of the bugs worked out.
7) You now have an experience team whose vision has been made much clearer by the feedback when users left the first time.
If anything can re-invent itself these days, MMOs can. As others have mentioned, the error with SWG NGE was that it tried to re-invent a stable game into a blockbuster. Re-invention is only for games on their last leg anyhow.
#31 by Gx1080 on July 7th, 2009
@Vetarnias
The issue with EVE its that it isnt very enjoyable unless you enjoy being a “misery-inducing barbarian who destroy the things of others for the epic lawls”. Or you like market simulators.
I found the former to be incredibly good against stress. And its fun and easy, go PvP fitted to a low sec system right next to a high sec one, ask people to invite you, warp to them and pwn them.
Basically, CCP appeals to the part of the market that can enjoy being a vandal or a megalomaniac for a long time. That works for them.
#32 by Toejob on July 7th, 2009
I must be the odd one, I REALLY enjoyed SWG from launch. Even before mounts and vehicles I had a great time with PvP but PvE was admittedly a little hollow for quite some time.
What killed the game for me was getting a system message that “You feel a disturbance in the force” while hunting on Yavin. The race for jedi was on and it ate a lot of good PA from the inside out.
The CU was needed in one form or another, you have to admit. Putting on a set of full kinetic armor with insane stats, getting obscenely overpowered buffs, and grinding your way to master TK in a day was a bit much.
I tried NGE at the request of a few hard core PA members who refused to quit. I was sickened by the way the entire game had been simplified.
AoC was fun for the first 20 levels. I enjoyed the twist on the mechanics but the “mature” theme that was so heralded just went from smack talking kids to topless smack talking kids. I may go back and give it a try if a free trial is offered but I don’t see myself staying.
#33 by Mandella on July 8th, 2009
Aaaand here is the 14 day “welcome back” offer in my inbox this morning. Included within is the option to insta level a character to 50. Not quite the month I asked for, but I think I’ll still drop back in and see how things look now…
#34 by geldonyetich on July 8th, 2009
Same here.
#35 by geldonyetich on July 8th, 2009
Although, I feel I should add (and would to the previous message if I could edit it) my attention has actually been focused on Dungeons and Dragons Online as of yesterday.
The thing is, FilePlanet has inducted me into the beta for DDO: Unlimited, which is basically Free To Play w/ Micropayments. Dungeons and Dragons Online. It’s actually really, really good move for DDO, which was always more Guild Wars than EverQuest. The game was never that intolerable, it just felt as though it wasn’t worth $15/mo because it didn’t have that compelling MMORPG-like pull to it.
#36 by Keybounce on July 8th, 2009
Free to play with micropayments? Now here is the real question:
Do you have to spend RL money, or can you trade game money with someone else?
Puzzle Pirates made the decision to make those micropayments have an in-game representation that was tradable, with an easy to use trading interface in game. That makes all the difference.
The downside? People can easily trade RL cash for game cash. So if the game uses game cash as a progress restriction (for example, the rate at which you progress depends on your ability to pay for traning, with the design goal of “There’s more to train than you can afford, so you have to pick and choose”), then the design is broken.
But then, no sane game uses “What training you can pay for” as a restriction, right? Right?
#37 by geldonyetich on July 8th, 2009
Blech, gave the 15-day AoC free trial a try. Sure, it’s good, but it’s still pretty much a standard EverQuest/WoW-derivative MMORPG. I’m so sick of that formula. Part of the reason why I’m finding Dungeons and Dragons Online’s different execution a bit more interesting, especially with the free-to-play incentive.
Speaking of which, looks like the DDO:Unlimited NDA is lifted so I guess I can spam about the details and you should be able to read the forums too.
It’s a fairly standard “spend RL money for points which you can spend on in-game stuff” system as you can see in most Eastern games. There’s not an actual in-game representation, but you can buy point for other people.
Consequently, you can be sure that there will be players trading in-game services or goods to RL money sugardaddies.
The whole purpose of the DDO: Unlimited title is to indicate that there’s no progress restriction tied to micropayment.
However, at this point in the beta, I am noticing that you do have the option to purchase access to additional campaigns of maps. That might be considered a paid progress restriction if you have friends who are playing cool campaigns and you want to join them.
Perhaps the most overt pay-to-play things they’re selling is unlocking access to Monks, Favored Souls, Drow, or Warforged. You also only have 2 character slots by default, though you can buy up to 30. At least, to their credit, all the purchases appear to be one time unlocks – what you buy stays bought for your account.
If a monthly subscription to have almost everything unlocked (and a 500 pts/month allowance for the rest) works for you, apparently you can still do that, but as I said I think DDO is really a lot more conductive to a free-to-play formula. It just doesn’t have that MMO pull to it, but it’s a fun game to play with no subscription attached.
#38 by Raad on July 9th, 2009
@Vatarnias: I would love to write a nice long response to that but at the end of the day, if you don’t like it then I’m not going to change your mind. So yeah, I like it.