Mythic's Mark Jacobs really wanted to see Age of Conan succeed

by Michael Zenke Sep 2nd 2008 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, Opinion, Hellgate: London

MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John, speaking with head of Mythic Entertainment Mark Jacobs, has been exploring a line of questioning about the MMO industry in general. They noted the high failure rate for the genre, and the equally high expectations that are now placed on new games by fans and industry commentators. Jacobs offered up, as part of this discussion, some analysis on why Hellgate: London didn't make it, and why Funcom's Age of Conan has been having so many problems over their long first summer of launch. Of Hellgate, Jacobs noted that it's not sufficient simply to have really talented people on the team. That's a straightforward process. In addition to that, "sometimes just having talent is not enough. You need leadership and you need patience. And what's most important - something that so many developers forget - is you also need to deflate the ego a little bit."

About Conan, which the site categorizes as 'failing to deliver on promises to players, Jacobs states that he actually really wanted the game to succeed. Now, with a summer of frustrations and player unrest behind them, he thinks they're in a tight spot. Ultimately, he just wants someone to show the world that MMOs don't have to be World of Warcraft to succeed. As for Mythic, "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."

Having fun in Conan's homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age!

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, hellgate-london, interview, mark-jacobs, mythic-entertainment, opinion, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JP said on 6:37PM 9-02-2008

Getting the audience to "try" a game other then WoW isn't the problem. It's getting them to lower their expectations that every new game should be as polished and expanded as WoW.

Wjowski said on 2:34AM 9-03-2008

It's not that audiences need to 'lower their expectations', it's that other developers need to step up their game.

ebel3003 said on 12:40PM 9-02-2008

Here's to hoping that WAR will take some of the market and we won't be stuck with just one definitive MMO anymore.

Greeen said on 1:14PM 9-02-2008

Mark J. is so in his analysis, even for coming from "the WAR guy" himself.

We don't need another swoop of expansions lineing up as in lotro, eq2, wow parallel to tons of high expectation single player rpgs (e.g. fallout 3).....

Joining into ebel3003 - here's to WAR succeding.

-Pagan- said on 1:19PM 9-02-2008

AoC may have it's issues, but for me none of them are close to game breaking. Of course, I don't play AoC for the end game. I play AoC for the in your face, personal PvP, unmatched visuals and combat system. PvE quests are some of the most dynamic I've ever seen in the genre.

If the game fails, Funcom should just close their doors. There is no excuse for launching a game with the potential AoC 6 months too early. It's the customer communication and stupid management decisions that are the problem.

Merkur said on 3:19PM 9-02-2008

>AoC may have it's issues, but for me none of them are >close to game breaking. Of course, I don't play AoC for >the end game.
Dont worry: there is no end game only a never ending grind of pvm and pvp mini-games.

Hades said on 1:41PM 9-02-2008

Funcom shot itself in the foot. They launched a game with the entire second part of the game content virtually missing, massive memory leaks, meaningless PVP, broken sieges, they shut out smaller guilds with the massive city building requirements, etc.

You can't launch a game like that anymore and not expect people to bail on the game. As of the Preview Weekend, Warhammer FEELS like a complete game and shouldn't run into the issues that happened to Failcom.

Beau said on 3:00PM 9-02-2008

The game will only succeed because it is good, and people like it.

If it doesn't succeed, that has nothing to do with WoW being a good game that people like.

We are not talking about something like an electric company that has a monopoly. We are talking about a video game that has a monopoly. If people didn't like it, they wouldn't play.

So, here's to whatever game is the best.

danarchy said on 2:39PM 9-02-2008

WaR is already far more playable than aoc is months after release so that shouldn't be an issue. Unless they really hose things up in beta development. AoC being one of the few games that were more fun in beta than release.

Merkur said on 3:39PM 9-02-2008

btw..here is a interestign statistic about the player activity on german servers: http://www.ripehub.com/aocstats/ibis/

If cummulate the activity numbers you'll see that there where less than 26k active "character" in the last 30 days on the oldest server (mitra)

Lynx said on 6:02PM 9-02-2008

"And what's most important - something that so many developers forget - is you also need to deflate the ego a little bit."

He hit the nail on the head.

Solitare-sp said on 3:18AM 9-03-2008

'Getting the audience to "try" a game other then WoW isn't the problem. It's getting them to lower their expectations that every new game should be as polished and expanded as WoW. '

Well thats the interesting thing isn't it. If you're just a casual player, then surely you're only really interested in the experience you have 'now', If you have choice of an already max-lvl WoW char with all the opportunities and choices you have (raiding, BG's dungeons etc etc) given that its 3-4 years down the road, polished, working and everything, compared with a new 'unpolished and incomplete' MMORPG. Well, then for the individual, thats a tough choice, even if in a years time it might be better.

I know car comparisions suck, but its like being offered a car without the stereo, stat nav, air con and trim to replace your old trusty car with all those things and which works. Sure they'll put those in during a year, but would you?

Thats the system we have with MMORPGs at the moment. WoW works, WoW is fun with tons of stuff to do all the time. Any new MMO has to offer that from release and more.

Merkur said on 5:13AM 9-03-2008

3 Months ago a MMORPG launched that promised to be the next evolution of PvP gameplay. This announcement should make it crystal clear that it was nothing but a marketing hype (or if you like to say so: a lie).

Captain Charles Obvious said on 11:57AM 9-08-2008

JP,

Getting people to try something that isn't WoW isn't the whole problem. Plenty of people (me included) tried AoC, and bailed at the end of the bundled month, as it was painfully broken and frankly a lot less fun than WoW was at launch, or even just playing a little GTA4. There's a lot of competition out there, games exist to entertain, and if yours is like pulling teeth, it will fail.

AoC is buggy, broken, unfinished, hamfisted and imcomplete- and couple with the too-serious RAWR FANTASY vibe, just feels like basementware. Failed to capture a lot of people. Personally, I would have liked the interface, mailsystems, item stats and loads of other things to actually work, and it not to leak memory like a mofo. Maybe I'm picky. Everything being instanced to hell (just try meeting another player in the "world", it's a world of hurt) and the like were minor factors. The gamebreakers were it being broken, rubbish and simply no fun.

grishnak boss said on 11:15PM 9-09-2008

AoC is a promising game, but right now there's a lot of problems, and little patience to wait for solutions - maybe in a year or so it will be what we all expected it to be...in the meantime, I'm headed to Warhammer.

possum said on 7:43PM 10-24-2008

Hoping? The reason AOC is where its at right now is not listening to customers and testers Mark, to bad you jumped on at the wrong time, you can talk to the customer support folks and those in charge of the game itself (not you). If your wondering why it failed to achieve higher than NICHE game status talk to the guy taking all the glamour shots of himself.