So a lot of people these days are talking about the death of Age of Conan. And certainly, right now is not a great time for the game. Let’s look at some of the most recent history. In September, the lead designer and one of the founders of Funcom, Gaute Godager resigned. In November, tentonhammer posted on some layoffs that were occuring, though Funcom was quick to say that these laysoffs were just SOP. Still, cutbacks certainly occured. And most recently, they’ve announced server merges. And if history serves as any indicator, server merges are usually the deathknell of an MMO. But while we’re all busy shoveling dirt on AoC’s grave, lets pause for just a moment and consider whether or not AoC might still have some life left in it.
Most people, including yours truly, seem to agree that AoC’s woes at launch centered around the following areas: Massive client bugs by way of crashes, memory leaks, and graphics anomolies; Incredibly steep performance requirements; PvP imbalance and gameplay; and post level 20 content. AoC had a huge amount of momentum going into launch. Over a million beta signups, according to reports. And as that wave of people crashed on the shores of Tortage, they all encountered their own versions of one of the four issues above, after a month or so of play, moved elsewhere. The interesting thing is, when people did get past the issues, by far and large they were enjoying the game play. As for my own personal experience, I upgraded my machine.. played on a PvE server so I could largely ignore the PvP imbalances, and had had a great time until I got to around level 40, at which point the game sort of enters a long grey area of grinding and lack of compelling PvE content. Which, by the way, is the reason I left the game.
So Funcom has definitely screwed the pooch on their launch. The ball was totally theirs to drop and they’ve dropped it. But since then, you can’t argue they’ve been working pretty damn hard to try to address the numerous problems they’ve had at launch. Even before I quit playing, they’d released several fixes to the client, that addressed most of the aggregious client crashes and memory leaks. They’ve released a massive PvP overhaul, to try to place some parameters on their very wild wild west (and subsequently very susceptible to griefing) PvP game. They’ve added a ton of voice-over content to many of the post-20 quests, and apparently are planning to do more. And most recently, as I mentioned earlier, they’ve collapsed empty servers into populated ones, which is something they pretty much have to do if they want to survive. So I don’t see so much a game here that is flailing, but one that is doing what appear to be the right things to do to try to recover from the massive misstep it took at launch. And I think in that endeavor, it could very well succeed.
No, Age of Conan will never be a WoW killer, and it will most likely never attain more than a million subscribers, or hell, even half that quantity. But it doesn’t have to. Three things have to occur for Age of Conan to turn from a failure into a success. First, they have to reign in their maintenance and production costs to a level where they can sustain a core player subscription base that brings in more money on a month to month basis than what it costs them to maintain the servers, bandwidth, and content production. They’re certainly taking some of those steps with reducing head count and reducing servers. Second, they have to listen to that core player base, and take the steps necessary, if they can, to keep those players that do like the game in the game, playing. And from their patch notes, it appears to my they’re trying to do exactly that. Finally, they have to keep the game running long enough for the moderate profit they make on a month to month basis to eventually cover the enormous development costs they incurred before they ever launched. Only time will tell if they follow up on that endeavor.
But lets remember, this is Funcom. This isn’t NCSoft, or EA. If publishers like EA or NCSoft had the reins on games like Eve, Matrix, Everquest 1, or Vanguard, those games would have been shut down long ago, instead of running along month to month, quietly growing and expanding, allowed to exist long enough to turn around their “failures” at launch into modest success. This is Funcom. They’re still running Anarchy Online, for crying out loud!
) about the lack of tanks in his guild. Actually, we were talking about the lack of support roles in general in all MMO’s, but we settled specifically on tanks. See, there’s a huge amount of pressure on being a tank. Tanks, like the healers, are either the hero or the goat of the group. You can play DPS all day long and yes you’re needed but there’s no PRESSURE on you to succeed other than that put on by your peers to out perform them. But groups live or die as the tank lives or dies. And WoW doesn’t teach you how to tank. In fact, it really doesn’t teach you how to play any of the support roles. And this conversation led into the much broader , and much MUCH more discussed topic: Transitioning over to WoW’s end game.