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Age of Conan
That Whisper You Hear In The Wind Is The Snickering Of Darkfall Fans
May 12th
Eurogamer reviews Age of Conan’s latest expansion, pulls it 2 hours later. As noted in the title, there is a touch of schadenfreude involved for mavens of a certain “STRICTLY FOR THE HARD CORE, ONLY FOR THE ARMY STRONG” PvP MMO.
Funcom would have whined about getting a low score but they were busy with a twenty-two hour unexpected downtime when launching the expansion.
Funcom Lays Off 60, Flees Europe For Rich Canadian Bounties
Sep 29th
It's cool, he's ready for the fierce Canadian winters
Probably inevitable given the disappointment of Age of Conan’s launch. What’s interesting is Funcom’s attempt to become Canadian:
Funcom, which currently employs around 300 staff worldwide, is attempting to shift the bulk of its workforce to Canada to take advantage of a 37.5 per cent salary reimbursement from the state of Quebec, and with salaries generally lower there the company could stand to cut around half of its wage bill.
That would explain all those studios in Montreal…
You Can, Actually, Go Home Again
Aug 19th
Kind of busy so no thumb-sucking analysis like I kind of have an urge to do, but a trend seems to be emerging I think is worth looking at: going back and fixing your old stuff instead of/in addition to adding new stuff.
Cases in point: the big one of course being World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm which presumably will be announced this weekend and has been leaked *every*where. The highlight of this, and what anecdotally has everyone I know that plays WoW all aflutter: revamping old world zones with the design sensibility and polish that Blizzard has picked up on since they launched the original game. Or, if you’re more cynical, that since all the top tier people are working on Mysterious Unannounced Project, the B Team is in charge. (Which I find somewhat amusing, if only because for good or for ill, more WoW players know who Ghostcrawler is than who Tigole was.)
Blizzard isn’t the only one to do this: Funcom also just announced their new Age of Conan expansion yesterday, and one of its stated goals is to address the drop in quality seen between the early 1-20 levels of Tortage and the rest of the game instead of just moving the level cap up 10 levels. This caps a year-long effort by the live team to, uh, fix the game. Which, surprisingly (or not), is more popular with players (and former players) than just adding more shiny on a broken base.
Damion Schubert took a contrarian view (to be fair, before the new blizzard (har) of news was released). I know personally I never want to set foot in Molten Core ever, ever again. But really, that’s only because Molten Core was… really bad. I didn’t mind redoing Naxxramas when, after the latest expansion was released, became the new Karazhan (aka the default raiding dungeon for people just starting to raid) because I never really saw Naxxramas the first time. Some content recycling can be good, especially if the majority of your player base never saw it in the first place. It’ll piss off your hard core (for making their achievements less achievey), but so will many other things. Such as, say, your continuing to breath oxygen.
Anyway, it’ll be ironic if after this weekend we find out from Blizzard that the new expansion is really “World of Warcraft: PAINFUL RAID EDITION” which has nothing but 80 man raids, pants that you have to level up to unlock resilience, and a new level cap of 256. But given the general reaction from what’s already been leaked, I don’t think so.
Crom Was Not Happy
Feb 23rd
Shortly after Age of Conan launched, Funcom saw subscriber levels of 400,000, which rocketed up to 700,000 within a few months.
While Funcom’s cash position remains robust at USD 39.4 million, the company reported a full-year net loss of USD 33.8 million. According to estimates by DnB NOR Markets, subscriber levels for Age of Conan are below 100,000, reports E24.
However, revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008 rose to USD 8.7 million, up from USD 1.2 million year-on-year, due to subscription revenues from the MMO.
Age of Conan Talks About Future, Insists They Have One
Oct 9th
Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director at Funcom, talks to MTV about long term prospects for the game not World of Warcraft or Warhammer:
I think it’s okay to say that we simply didn’t deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features. That said, I do think we went out the gate with some extremely strong ones too (i.e. combat, graphics, presentation, audio, maturity, story and quests, Tortage etc.), which made us a giga-hit in retail and gave us some great reviews. But on other features we just didn’t polish it well enough, including our items, tradeskills, system performance and PvP.
Oh, and nerfing anyone with breasts. But that’s better now!
I also think the question is symptomatic of some of the word of mouth issues we have. There is no denying that we launched “Age of Conan” with initial issues, but the memory and word of mouth of what we once were compared to what we have done to the game since launch, and where we are going, doesn’t necessarily match up.
This just in: launching a polished product MAY be important. But it’s OK, because, well, the fantasy MMO market just isn’t that crowded!
I think we can also see, pretty clearly, the competitive landscape for fantasy MMO’s well into 2011 or so. For the fantasy genre there are some five plus western majors which are live (”WoW,” “WAR,” “Lord of the Rings Online,” “Guild Wars,” “Conan” and “EverQuest,” with dark horses here and there), and only a few major ones (that I know of) which are coming up in the next couple of years. That means we have a solid chance of remaining a key contender in the fantasy space for many years to come, with strengths the others won’t match.
We won’t ever be #1 like “WoW,” but we will for sure fight for the space below them.
Hopefully without slower combat animations.
Mythic Entertainment: Our Last Best Hope For Peace
Sep 2nd
Mark Jacobs, in the latest of a series of interviews with the hard-hitting journalists at, um, MTV, explains that no, he really wanted Age of Conan to succeed, because, er, now it’s all on them, you see.
“At some level I wanted ‘Conan’ to succeed because for the last few years people have been saying it’s all Blizzard and nobody else can do it,” he said. “‘Only Blizzard can get those kind of numbers,’ and so far they’ve been right. But now it’s our turn.”
He added, “If we don’t succeed with EA behind us, the ‘Warhammer’ IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that’s not going to be good for the industry. We need to show the world that it’s not just Blizzard who can make a great game, and that the audience is absolutely willing to try new things and to play a game other than ‘WoW.’”
Of course, if Warhammer Online does succeed, the chatterring class will point out that people are still not playing a game other than ‘WoW’, really.
Spurned Lovers Are The Angriest
Aug 28th
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 thinking to yourself “Why the hell would Funcom devs read this…?” The answer to that is I’m going to personally e-mail it to every one of them.
Complete with personal attacks on every Funcom employee who ever gave a public interview! Points for the self-labelled “intentional Godwin”…
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.
…but come on. At least work the words Vidkun Quisling in there somewhere. Doesn’t anyone read history any more?
Extra bonus points for surrounding the article with ads from Age of Conan gold farmers.
OK, You Can Has Boobs
Feb 5th
Whoops, apparently Funcom had a wardrobe malfunction when they shipped the game off to be certified: it turns out that the US will be getting the EU Socialist Paradise uncensored version (rated M for lots of immaturity). The Age of Conan forums exploded with joy (we hope it was joy, anyway) at the thought of censorship being defeated and totalitarianism being driven back.
Funcom apologizes for this small error (or maybe two small errors.)
Good to know the CM is taking this precisely as seriously as such a grave matter deserves!
No Boobs For You
Feb 5th
What is the best thing about Conan? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of your lawyers.
Please note this isn’t a design decision or something we can reverse. It’s a legal (or as good as legal) requirement to sell the game in that particular territory.
With that said:
The US version is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. If you buy the US version, you will not see nipples.
The German version is rated 18+ by USK. The German version has full gore, but will not have decapitation, dismemberment, and over-the-top type fatalities.
The “elsewhere in Europe” version is rated 18+ by PEGI and is unchanged.
This is complicated. Thus, I will help you with a simple chart.
| Neo-Berlin and surrounding territories | The Holy Christian States of America | The Free European Socialist Paradise of Brussels |
| VIOLENCE NEIN! Sex is cool. | SEX CAUSES COOTIES Blood is great, though | We’re a bunch of degenerates. We can take anything. |
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