MTV Multiplayer » Funcom Defends ‘Age of Conan,’ Unfurls Plans To Improve Game

Funcom Defends ‘Age of Conan,’ Unfurls Plans To Improve Game

Posted by Tracey John on 10/7/08 at 5:00 pm.

When “Age of Conan” came out in May, the hype machine was in full force for the M-rated MMO based on Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian.

Though the game released to strong retail sales and started with over 400,000 players, several major issues with the game popped up — including system performance, game balance, Player vs. Player, to name a few.

Matters weren’t helped with the unexpected departure of the game’s director, as well as the recent announcement that the company would merge its servers (which we’ve heard isn’t necessarily a good sign).

With all these problems swirling, Funcom product director Jørgen Tharaldsen got in touch with Multiplayer today to defend the game. He was responding to questions I sent last month regarding the state of “Age of Conan,” what the company is doing with the game moving forward and an update on the Xbox 360 version. Here are his responses:

[Image Credit: Espen Sjølingstad Hoen]

MTV Multiplayer: How does Funcom feel about the current state of “Age of Conan”?

Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom product director: On some parameters, we are happy about how the game is going. For instance, on how we have been able to greatly evolve “Age of Conan” since launch, turning it more into the unique and visionary MMO we want it to be. But on other parameters, we still have ways to go.

“I think we also rushed the deployment of too many servers too fast.”

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.

So this is what we are working on now, merging the various strong and weak points into one cohesive “great” whole, where every addition we make is about getting great quality, across the board.

We did add new servers shortly after launch, but in our eagerness to please I think we also rushed the deployment of too many servers too fast. So what we are looking at now is actually merging servers, since this will make the game better for our players.

MTV Multiplayer: How is the Xbox 360 version of “Age of Conan” coming along?

Tharaldsen: While there is a dedicated specialist team working on the Xbox version, it’s the live PC game we want to speak about and focus most of our resources on right now. We feel confident that there is a time for consoles as well, but right now we put most of our devs on the PC version.

MTV Multiplayer: Is Funcom aware of fans’ disappointment with some of the promised things not appearing in the game? If so, how are you addressing those issues?

Tharaldsen: Oh yeah, very aware, I would say. And we are naturally working hard to ensure that this disappointment gets changed into something positive. Firstly, it’s important to note that these kinds of “things” break down clearly into two very different situations. You have some ideas that were just that: ideas, when we came to actually implement them in the game they simply didn’t work well, or at all.

Sometimes when you take an idea from concept and plans on paper to balance in the game it just doesn’t fit, or causes too many other issues. In those cases, it’s actually better that we cut them; those were informed decisions in the best interests of the overall player experience — formation combat was probably the major thing here. In practice it just didn’t work anywhere near as well as it sounded like it should on paper. We are glad we didn’t try and force something through there for the sake of it!

“As a result the game many played in their heads before launch didn’t necessarily match the game delivered.”

Then of course there are the areas that, at some point during the final stretch, we were caught between a rock (time and resources) and a hard place (our promises), and that the end results did not deliver on all the promises made. Personally, as I see it, I think this let down some people more than what the game actually delivered (because “Conan” is an awesome game in many ways!).

As a result the game many played in their heads before launch didn’t necessarily match the game delivered. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight, but now that we are past the launch crunch we have time and resources to focus more on the quality of each deliverable, as well as time to put focus on what is important to the players, right here and now. And this is the way forward: more real results, and then results which lead to fun and meaningful experiences inside the game.

MTV Multiplayer: What is Funcom specifically doing to fix the balance issues in the game? The PvP system and siege systems?

Tharaldsen: First of all, for the non-siege PvP we are now adding many of the features we envisioned during pre-launch development, like PvP levels, PvP items and a PvP consequence system, and all of that is happening this autumn. I know that this makes the PvP experience much more fun, and as a part of this balance comes into play, of course. At the same time we have gone through every single class, and the first stage has been about weeding out issues the players reported (and we saw).

The second stage we are now entering will be about rebalancing and adding more content as needed for the various classes. This will take time, and honestly, this work will never end. It will go on ceaselessly, “for all eternity” (read: as long as the game is in live operations so most likely many, many years). Like for any MMO, some classes have bigger issues than others, and we are hence doing them in a prioritized order.

When it comes to the sieging, what we first prioritized was ensuring that the experience was fun and smooth for the players, and this meant fixing the performance issues, and improving the framerate so it could handle the larger battles across more machine set-ups.

Then it was a matter of solving issues related to the system itself. This has been more or less completed now, and the players are able to siege other guilds’ battle-keeps and compete for the territories without technical issues getting in the way. The players seem to be feeling — and they let us know — that it’s a lot of fun to play now, and I feel certain it will be even more fun going into the future.

We have then been carefully working on the balance at the same time and will continue to do that so the experience gets better. There will always be ongoing things to adjust for massive systems like this, but the team is on top of it and making corrections as we move forward.

MTV Multiplayer: Was the female character animation fix completed? [This question referred to the female characters' attack speeds being slower than male characters due to an animation issue.]

Tharaldsen: This one was actually fixed well over a month ago. It was identified relatively quickly and was caused by an inconsistency in the back-end of our animation system, so it took a little while to actually do the work to go through all those animations and correct the errors. Those fixes those were released as soon as it was completed several updates back.

“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.”

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. As work continues on making Conan better and better, I do however think that this will change!

MTV Multiplayer: On a Blizzard financial call, it was said that 40% of “WoW” subscribers who left for “Age of Conan” have since returned. What is Funcom’s response to this?

Tharaldsen: That people migrate between games comes as no surprise, and, out of those, most naturally leave shortly after the start of the live cycle (like we are in now). I both hope and think that many will come back to try “Conan” again when they hear from friends how greatly it evolves, and that players who have never tried it will pop by as well.

“For us, the primary way forward is not by trying to take ‘WoW’ players back.”

Still, for us, the primary way forward is not by trying to take “WoW” players back, but delivering great content to our many existing players. This will be, and is, our core priority, and then eventually, when the time is right, we will naturally invite those who left us for a new swing, for free, and I guess that the “proof will be in the pudding” when that time comes. That second return is about trust and adding enough new content, and this is naturally one of our key challenges going into 2009.

MTV Multiplayer: What do you say to critics who think the game could’ve benefited from a few extra months of production?

Tharaldsen: I should naturally stick to our guns and say, “It came as planned,” which it did. But I think hardcore MMO gamers have heard and perhaps seen that “Conan” could have been a better game with some extra production time. On the flipside of this, I know we aren’t the first, or the last, when it comes to such a conclusion on a MMO game, but that is no excuse. We should have had more polish on some of our features straight out the gate.

MTV Multiplayer: Do you think it will be difficult to gain or maintain subscribers with “Warhammer Online” out now and “Wrath of the Lich King” coming out soon?

Tharaldsen: I don’t think anything is easy in the world of MMO’s, and fighting to get new subscribers is a constant challenge. Now it’s “WAR” and “Lich King” — going forward there will be many others. This challenge never ends, and only be delivering a different and better game experience will we be able to compete among the world’s top MMO companies.

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. This we know, and this is what we are working towards when adding more content; how to avoid the clone wars, go our own way, and make “Conan” into a progressively better game all the time.

***

“Age of Conan” players, are you satisfied with what Funcom is doing to improve the game?

Filed Under: Age of Conan, Funcom, MMO, PC, PS2