Age of Conan server merge information released

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

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Server downtime

We've been following the efforts of Age of Conan director Craig Morrison to keep the player community more 'in the loop' since he took on the role a few months ago. Now the community team is laying out the details of one of the projects he headlined when he first stepped up: server merges. Community Manager Famine has put up a post in the official forums laying out details on the procedure. Which is good, because it's a little complicated.

Here are the highlights:

All servers will not be merged at once. Instead, they'll be staged with "Hyberborea" and "Bloodspire" seeing a merger during this week's patching.
During downtimes when servers are merged, all servers from that region will be unavailable. So this week, all US servers will be down while the two above are fused. Funcom is going to provide compensatory playtime to users affected by these outages.
After the servers are merged, all players on the resulting server will be given a free one-time-use character transfer if they want to move their primary character to another server. They're doing this to ensure players like where they end up.

This is obviously a difficult time for the playerbase, and not something any MMO developer likes to do. Just the same, hats off to Funcom for obviously trying to do right by the playerbase, and for adequately compensating players for the inconvenience. For another 'just the FAQs' look at this issue, the AoC site has up an F-A-Q already.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, breaking, funcom, server-merge

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

david said on 12:05PM 12-02-2008

Took what... 6 months or more for them to do this...? That is fail just like funcom is failcom...

If they merge all of the servers together into one large one, about 50 people total will be playing the game...

50 people is how many play the game currently anyway... lol... this game is a total flop and failure... Failcom has failed us all...

Angel said on 5:38PM 12-02-2008

The number of players is nt neighborhood of 375K. Some stats suggest closer to 400k. These are not Funcom provided figures. They are extrapolations from outside observers with no vested interest in promoting succes of AoC.

Mr Angry said on 12:25PM 12-02-2008

'hat's off' are you guys joking and is Massively losing all of it impartiality, I thought you were with us on the AoC hate train?

There is only one thing that I'd like to merge the AoC servers with, and that's a sledgehammer.

Why on earth should people who play MMO's as a recreational activity have to put up with 'difficult times', something is seriously out of wack here. Every time I hear this type of sob story, the developer asks the customer to shoulder some of emotional burden too.

Games need to be fun, run more professionally and developers need to take a good hard look to whether they can supply the goods, rather than just jumping on the bandwagon pumping out a "triple A' title and watching the money roll in.

I'm especially pissed off with these recent tales of woe from MMO companies, lest we forget that they shook us down pretty damn hard for collectors editions and pre orders as well as subscription rates that never fall below around $15 regardless of running costs.

No sympathy from me I'm afraid. I totally support effectively run games (LOTRO, WoW and EVE Online), with clear channels of communication (you don't get lies, you might not get any information, but no lies) and people need to see that these type of games are a great way of spending fun time, rather than worrying about the bottom line of a company run by a bunch of shysters. We keep hearing about business decisions dictating direction, you know what, I play games to relax, not to hear about other peoples problems.

All this is going to achieve is to reduce hardware running costs for FunCom, nothing more. Players will see more instances open up when higher player volume dictates and there will be little increased benefit to players. The inconvenience of having to rename characters or the downtime largely outweighs the benefits of server consolidation in the short term, and players will simple decide to move on.

FunCom had their chance and blew it, there are no do overs in the MMO world after the NGE, sorry.

Angel said on 5:38PM 12-02-2008

Do you even play it anymore? If you do i would advise quitting. if you don't how long has it been since you logged in the game?

david said on 12:31PM 12-02-2008

@Mr. Angry

Amen... can't wait to see the little kiddy fanboys defend this defenseless game... I say... "BRING IT ON!"

PS - AOC is a complete failure, funcom please hurry up and shut it down, stop trying to squeeze every penny you can out of your customers before it closes... Funcom, you are a complete failure... I honestly hope your game ends up dying due to the pathetic customer support you have...

AOC = FAIL
FUNCOM = FAILCOM

MightyIdle said on 12:51PM 12-02-2008

Hehe, the predictable David and Angry posts. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I've been thinking about resubscribing for a while now to check out all that has changed. This would probably be a good time to do it. I'm really curious to see what's going on.

The game was a lot of fun but the bugs kept jumping up and getting in the way. We'll see if it's any better now.

Mr Angry said on 1:02PM 12-02-2008

Why thank you, I aim not to disappoint :)

It's probably best just to keep away and remember what you enjoyed about it when you first played it. Right now, it's utterly desolate and it will probably just make you feel a bit sad to be honest...

Mr Rodgers said on 12:55PM 12-02-2008

Talk about a harsh reaction from david and Mr Angry. I haven't played the game so I can't say whether the reaction is too harsh or not, but I can say that I think this kind of straight-forwardness is refreshing considering what NC Soft pulled with Tabula Rasa. Considering the situation, I think they did a pretty good job.

Mr Angry said on 1:18PM 12-02-2008

I put down a lot of cash on the Collectors Edition of this game, only to find out that there was absolutely no content after level 45 other than very few missions. The itemization was totally broken, dungeons empty and bugged so badly, it was more like using a model viewer than an MMO.

That type of scenario isn't going to make Mr Angry any happier. Then consider living with all that crap, continuing to level to participate in the first open PvP battle, just to see it crash the server and the fixes very slow in coming at all. Lastly let's not forget the promised features which just didn't happen, and were the reason for this game to stand apart from the competition.

It's left a sour taste in my mouth I'm afraid, and I'm not alone in my treatment of AoC. The open immersive world turned into parallel instances of the same zone. It just didn't deliver. They spent too long on producing titillating screenshots and press releases for IGN than they did on actually writing missions.

Right now, if you try it, you'll be pretty sorry. While they got a new guy running the show, it's going to take major investment to put this mess right, and I think it would just pay them to scrap it, reuse some of the assets and learn from their mistakes.

Take a tip from me, pop into a store on the way home, pick up LOTRO Mines of Moria. Read the first four chapters of the Lord of the Rings, log in, create a character and put your feet up as you learn about Tolkien's world, take your time, and really get to grips with the literature again as you enjoy a true 'triple A' title.

It's a shame because Robert E Howard's universe deserves to be as appreciated as Tolkien's. While it lacks some of the refinement, it does offer a whole vista of possibilities to MMO developers, and that opportunity has been wasted by FunCom.

/End rant

...feel better now, Mr Angry will probably be a bit happier for the rest of the week.

Mr Rodgers said on 1:25PM 12-02-2008

I have the original LOTRO and loved it. I quit because I was short on cash and haven't gone back yet, but I probably will. The main problem I had with the game actually had nothing to do with the game; I just didn't know anyone who played the game and usually like to know one person IRL when I'm playing an MMO.

Anyway, yeah, LOTRO is probably my favorite pay-per-month MMO out right now. I'll definitely be diving back in to experience Moria after awhile.

djpostman1 said on 1:02PM 12-02-2008

The reaction was harsh, but the two have a reputation for AoC hate. Im currently playing AoC, and testing a few others. Right now AoC is 150% better then it was the first few months after launch. there are still some things to work out, but the pvp is definatly there, the classes are getting closer to balanced then they ever have been. Right now the only real issue is sparse populations on some of the servers, and a bit more content at end game, but its all coming. the projections for 2009 from the FC financials paints a good picture for the game in the coming year, and the new Game Director is worlds better than his predicesor (sp?)

Nmaster said on 3:04PM 12-02-2008

Massively, for god's sake do some banning. Some people do NOT deserve the right to free speech.

Nadril said on 3:15PM 12-02-2008

Stop bitching because you're still a fanboy and just rate them down. You act as if these comments are actually hurting you or the, *ahem* potential customers XD.

I'm not going to bother posting a big ass post about the game. AoC sucks, it's an abortion and friends should not let other friends play AoC.

Rollins said on 3:33PM 12-02-2008

I agree with Nmaster. Nadril, I'm not saying that AoC deserves any favors, but david's been a mindless anti-AoC troll for quite a while now. At least Mr. Angry sounds like he has a brain.

Nmaster said on 3:39PM 12-02-2008

Let me assure you that anybody who spends that much time reading every post about a product they supposedly hate and taking the time to make multiple exceedingly long comments about it is lacking something upstairs. Because the logic behind that thought process is non-existant, and an intelligent person would put those hours into something productive.

Tony said on 3:47PM 12-02-2008

I'm not really understanding how people are equating hating with being impartial. That's not being impartial whatsoever.

Some people are invested in disliking this game. That's fine and I'm sure they have their own reasons, but that's still not impartial.

Funcom is trying to improve things, I think most people find that commendable. I don't think that necessarily makes up for the botched launch and subsequent months, but no one was claiming that it did.

By now everyone interested in this game knows what's up with it and they either play it or they don't. I didn't like it either, but at some point I don't know that constantly posting about "Failcom" like David does is doing anyone a service either.

KingJames said on 5:06PM 12-02-2008

I think it's all the lies Funcom told is what makes most normally trolls turn into crimes against nature type posts. I hate Erling Ellingsen for getting my hopes up but instead of wanting him to become homeless and stop looking like Francis from Pee Wee's big adventure I cancelled my account. That is the best thing any critic can do to a game company. Spend your money on a game you enjoy and let the fanboi's sucker someone else. I know nothing they can do will ever make that game what it should have been with another year of development.

Durinthal said on 10:14PM 12-02-2008

I stopped playing AoC a long time ago, but one of the server names caught my eye. Hyperborea was the server I used to play on, which uses the RP-PVP ruleset. I noticed that it's being merged with a plain PVP server, which either means they're going to be enforcing the RP rules upon Bloodspire members (not very likely) or dropping the RP part from Hyperborea (probable). Either way, that's a terrible situation to force upon customers and it makes me glad I jumped ship long ago.