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:
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.
*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?
Yeah, I see now MMOCRUNCH is useless to get MMO info anymore. Heres why:
1) Nice work with the pics next to EEs comments, real classy
2) Again, real classy quoting stock prices. Like thats never been done by trolls before.
3) You admit that you havent played since June. Your comments about the game have no relevance anymore since you haven’t played for 2-3 months.
Reading this felt like listen to an 8 year old cry about not getting the candy bar from the store.
Hi JC,
How about posting some real substance instead of name calling?
As a AOC Fanboi, as you’re a rare and dying breed, I’d like some honest and informative questions.
God forbid we be constructive.
— Daedren, 8 year old author
A spades a spade, author of the article does sound like the 8 year old crying about not getting a candy bar at the store.
And I’m hardy an AoC fanboy as you say, but since you called that, I’m going to call you an impatiant cry baby.
Sure AoC has some bugs in it and the Devs are trying their best to get patches out, but the funny part is, You have people doing this:
cry babies: We want patch!
*Funcom gives patch*
CB: Waa! Patch is buggy
*Funcom setsup test server to QC their updates*
CB:Waa! patch takes to long!
It’s a lose-lose
You talk about PvP content not being in at launch. It was. You could PvP from day one, from either Open World or Battlekeep sieges. They were in the game from Day 1. They may not have been perfect, but they were their and they have made it a whole lot better. But I’m not a PvPers so the PvP content doesnt matter.
FC talked about an expansion. You do realize that MMOs start working on expansion material from launch day right? What are the art teams going to do when the game is running? You going to fire them or get them to start hammering out some concept art?
Bugs with patches, yeah they pop up every now and then, its alot better then when they were putting 2 patches a week out, but then again they havent added anything major because they want to test it first, who can blame them.
As for the gem system, yeah they dropped the ball on that one, It is comepletely screwed up. The Devs were neive enough to think people would even out there gear, not stack damage gems to one shot.
As for preformance issues, I have been playing for 4 months, and in 4 months have had 4 crashes. 2 related to Shader 3.0 which was fixed in a week, once I crashed on zoning, and another I fell through the floor, and those all happened 2.5 months ago. So you can blame funcom all you want, but theirs also a chance its you end. Like I told people before, I have a Dell system at home with Ubuntu installed on it, to bad theres a bug that Dell wont fix that causes a USB/SATA driver race and if the USB driver loads before the SATA driver the system hangs. Alot of people started playing AoC with there WoW machines on High and were expecting it to run fine, to bad it needs a beast to run on high.
As for quoting stock prices as all whiners are to. I’ll retort with this. Why don’t you take your Armchair programmer protogy half and write a perfect MMO, then with your Armchair PR protogy side sell the product so you Armchair stock-market prodogy can make 10000 billion dollars from it.
Erling is without a doubt the worse PR person I’ve ever heard lies from! He can’t be trusted and for me, never will be. He has constantly averted the serious issues that AoC has and has never been able to explain the horrible rationale that he and others make in choosing make goes into a patch.
For over 2 months, he and his idiot devs have put in stupid fixes like the *beep* when you level up instead of making the game not crash or freeze every 30 minutes. The utter lack of content, the lack of PvP rules at and certainly after launch is laughable and incredible sad.
This game, like Erling, is a joke and I hope the sink into oblivion soon!
I’m assuming JC stands for Jesus Christ as it appears you need to have god-like powers to get the game to run properly. It never ran well for me at all, on a brand-new, top of the line Vista box. The game is a turkey. People who defend it make me sick, quite frankly.
JC,
Thanks for the entertaining read.
Your inability to think objectively or write coherently puts your troll score at 2/10.
Try harder next time. Do you work for Funcom or what? You sound like the game just gave you a blowjob.
Thank you, come again.
Daedren
Rob,
Yeah, guess my $700 dollar system that runs AoC on high with a few custom settings with 20-40 FPS is a god computer.
Daedren,
Want some cheese to go with your whine?
JC,
I think your cheese and whine is enough for both of us.
Age of Conan is so great, the Game Director just got fired.
Clearly a sign all is well.
— D$
Wow, may I interject?
I was also a refugee of AoC. I left in June, and vowed to not return unless I saw some action.
Then WAR OB began. I tried it, and could not believe how horrible it was. I hated it, my wife hated it. It was very old school, and we just felt that we were not wishing to play a game that lives in the past, no matter how good “grouping” is.
On a whim, I went back to AoC. I at least felt one month to mess around with other classes would be worth my 15 until another game launched.
I rather enjoyed myself. The game was stable for me, and I got right back into the action (I use a 360 controller for combat and it was great fun pulling off my combos and fatalities, and Vista 64 with 4 gigs is super snazzy with my ATI 4870)
But, I knew the game was dying, based on the servers being so empty…
Well, the one I was on.
I went to Cimmeria and Set (was on Wiccana) and saw a marked difference in player counts.
Now, believe me, I am very outspoken and when I do not like something or feel the game is giving me the shaft, I say it.
But, some people are still playing and staying dedicated.
The fact Funcom stepped up to the plate, and Gaute is gone, and decided to push out a large patch like today, there may be life yet.
All I know is the game is built for the future, and WAR is living in the past.
WAR does not suck, but will not be for everyone.
I wish for some changes to take place in the MMO genre, and playing WAR feels like a step backwards.
I think I will stick out AoC and see where they go.
@Openedge1: Constructive comment alert! *brain explodes*
I think getting rid of Gaute was a great move for Age of Conan. The game will probably never properly *die* — worst case scenario is that Funcom will explode and SOE will pick up the pieces. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing – even Vanguard is improving under them.
Anyway, maybe now with an actual PVP system in, the game might look up. Unfortunately for Funcom they now have Warhammer and soon to be WoTLK to deal with. Tough cookies.
I played this game from day one (ymir) ,i leveled a necro and a guardian to 80 and with all my honesty this was a boring game from day one, but i was persistent and was trying to find some attraction from any part of the game , joined a serious guild with a t2 city and half way to t3 ,almost completed my tier 1 set with necro ,got my fast horse did few `not so fun` sieges .
Now , i dont give ratsass about the glitches or technical problems even class inbalances , because all of them are programming errors which can be fixed ,but the real problem is this game inability to give you that `oh man i cant wait to go home and play some aoc` feeling , i simply didint want to log on to this game ,some night i just clicked aoc shortcut on my desktop to find myself staring at my characters then simply closing the game again and finally uninstalling and closing my account after 4 months.And i was the last one leaving of the 12 people i migrated into this game.
This game was all hype now the hype is gone so the %90 of players ,but if this game is fun for you then keep having fun and dont mind what people saying ,to each his own.
oh btw if you think its not appropriate to say funcom shares dropped from $55 to $8 , today its a cool $6.66 :) ,and people blaming the `launch bubble` month ago are all silent..
You need to see the game now lol…. It is on the UP & UP and its a lot of fun. Just cam back after not having much fun with warhammer. (played a Magus wow what a bad class) If you liked the idea of AOC (great lore/play) give it a 2nd go they have fixed so much.
PS
Ellignsen is doing some great stuff!!
To Daedren
Its easy to see that your were hurt from your play time in AOC, you may be a bit over the top….. give it a 2nd go!
I just started playing this game 30 days ago and am impressed. The content appears to be good to me as there are multiple quests to speed levelling, interesting epic quests, and plenty of PvP action. I have not had stability issues with the game, one advantage of coming in one year after launch.
So you know where I am coming from, I began online gaming with UO which in my opinion should be heralded as the best PvP and in game economy game of all time. After the population crashed there I tried EQ but became bored, went to DaoC and muddled through that, Did WOW beta, SWG, and a few other online games that shall not be mentioned.
Having bored you with that information, the one thing I loved about UO and no other game matched was the skill level and ruleset required to have a vibrant PvP environment. AoC appears to be on the right track. They are not there, but every journey has to begin somewhere.
I just bought AoC a week or two ago on the recommendation of a friend who left WoW for it and will “never go back to wow”. As far as stability I’ve had two crashes in the two weeks, but WoW crashes on my computer too, and since its homemade I attribute the crashes to my computer and not the game. I am finding the game a little slow and boring, but I picked Dark Templar, and found out later most AoC players consider it the worst class. I think the combat system is innovative, with the different direction of attacks and the ability to hit more than one enemy at a time. I also like the realism and grittiness of the world and the IP. Open world PvP was quite vicious in the newbie area, and it took awhile to adjust to the fact that anyone can kill you at anytime, unlike WoW where you only have to keep your eyes peeled for the opposing team. I want to level at least one character to endgame before I throw in the towel on this one, and checkout other PvP venues. I don’t think it warrants the venom of playeres who left it after launch, its not half bad, and even in low level areas theres more people available for groups than in WoW. Most of the bad taste in my mouth seems to come from the fact that the dark templar is a pain to level and play properly, and not the game itself, so I’m trying out a Barbarian.