Craig Morrison discusses Age of Conan's improvements and future

by Kyle Horner Jul 9th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Interviews, News items

Craig Morrison spoke with Eurogamer recently about the state that Age of Conan; what's been going on over the last year and where the game is headed in the future. This is of course one of many interviews you can expect to see regarding Age of Conan as Funcom is in the middle of their summer blitz to get people to come back and check out all the changes.

As it turns out, a whole lot has changed. We've mentioned it on our podcasts and in our posts, but Morrison is keen to continue to emphasis the improvements and updates here as well. The latest update has quite possibly been the biggest and equally subtlest improvement yet, as it completely reworked the item system to be less obtuse and make items more desirable.

But you really don't need to take Morrison's word for it, since the two free weeks campaign is in full effect. You can be sure Massively is jumping head first into Hyboria to get a taste of AoC's new flavor.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, aoc-update-5, craig-morrison, eurogamer, funcom, hyboria, interview

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

rhys said on 4:38PM 7-09-2009

How about a re-review of AOC?

John said on 9:21PM 7-09-2009

I've been playing since early yesterday and I must say...I'm enjoying it more this time then I did at launch. I'm playing the Assassin and already hit level 14. It's fun again.

Nadril said on 6:19PM 7-09-2009

I'm giving the retrial a shot, so far it's just as terrible as it left off. Not to mention this community is the worst I've ever seen, so fucking terrible.

Rhaegar said on 6:23PM 7-09-2009

Unless they let me enter the 75% of the world that's blocked off by inviso-walls, they're not getting me back.

Nadril said on 6:39PM 7-09-2009

Ok yeah, I uninstalled it. If you didn't like the game then you won't now. I think Age of Conan is the only game which could make me rage, just spending 5 minutes listening to the chat... oh god.

Yeah fuck age of conan haha.

Starbolt said on 6:46PM 7-09-2009

Returned and so far so good. Good performance, lots of people, and some good dungeons so far..

windwalker said on 8:02PM 7-09-2009

Well if you left after a month from release, you may as well try the game alot of the stability issues have gone infact it generally runs well (though you do need a good PC to run it) DX10 although still offically in test runs ok, i play in dx10 all the time now, raiding, PVP the works. The sound is simply stunning even the music is beautiful. Leveling content is fantastic, most if not all quests work as intended.

The community is dependent upon which server you go on really, Crom (PVE with controlled PVP) is a nice play to be, not much smack talk and generaly a nice place to be, FURY (PVP) is a nightmare end of story.

Now for the bad points, since 1.5 patch sieges are broken, getting 94 players onto the battlefield is no mean task, then getting that 94 players organsised into a defending/ attacking force is no mean task, 5 mins into the siege bang, DC all round and the siege lock timer resets END OF SIEGE, defending team wins by default. You may think that is the game breaker, but i will save the best to last.

Once level 80 is reached the end game content has alot to be desired, quite simply there is not enough, but then i am told after 1 year even WOW struggles for places to raid. The new commons district is a welcome area however its short and i found the place lacking in depth.

The new itemisation of the entire database as you can imagine was no small task and while everything has been made a little more item dependent, its too early to tell yet whether its for the good or bad, but first impresions are it seems to have simplifed a certain aspects that was lacking first time around.

Now the game breaker if you are a huge PVP nut then the class balance is out of control, just roll a caster type and as it stands at the moment you would have to blind, have 1 arm in a cast to lose. It really is that bad. Funcom say the class balancing is a on going issue, and for me this is where the root of the problem lies, prior to this patch people gave there own time and money to play on the test servers. Plenty of feedback was given and 95% of it was ignored by the Developers and we have the mess what is now AOC 1.5 at end game.

Would i recomend some to play AOC, yes let them check it out with 2 weeks free time you could get a character to level 75 even 80 with a few solid days at it.

But be warned its not balanced and Funcom seem to operate on seperate dimension to the entire playerbase. Does it have a future ? Well for me the damage has been done like so many players i feel let down by FUNCOM over this patch. So as soon as something else comes along i am off. What scary is i like the idea of the secret world another up and comer from FUNCOM lets hope the dev team in charge of that one can provide something AOC has not got

DEPTH

Mr Angry said on 3:10AM 7-10-2009

I actually picked up the game again, and worked at leveling last night.

I'd just like to tell the community here, that the game is no more fun than it was, the content at high levels is very poor and severely lacking (according to nearly everyone in chat) and FunCom have only served to piss off paying customers with the multitude of old players coming back and again trying to sabotage their game.

I'm really struggling to see all this 'new great stuff' all I see is some dungeons that have had content added, where it was totally missing before, instanced parallel zones and buggy mass scale PvP, that right now is a waste of time.

While it does look nice, it's really a hollow promise from FunCom, there just isn't the depth that other AAA titles have. For them to say it's vastly improved, is inaccurate, but we've all come to expect that from FunCom. Itemization might be better, but it was sooooo bad at release, worse than I've ever seen. Vanguard stands up as a superior game to this, trouble is, no one plays that anymore, there servers are curiously more empty than AoC.

If you are tempted to resub, can I suggest that you save yourself a little time, and maybe just rejoin LOTRO for a little light hearted entertainment. Computer games are supposed to be fun, this is just going to serve to be a time sink, while you slowly realize that you've wasted your summer playing a poor quality release, which is now on life support.

Lateris said on 3:33AM 7-10-2009

I really hate to say it but I had tons of issues with lag. But is it my machine? teh DX 10 looked beautiful.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate
Version 6.1.7100 Build 7100
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name ASTRAL-D1
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model 965P-DS3
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz, 2133 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F13O, 1/24/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7100.0"
User Name Private
Time Zone Arizona
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 3.50 GB
Available Physical Memory 2.56 GB
Total Virtual Memory 7.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 5.78 GB
Page File Space 3.50 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
ATI 4850

Alarie said on 8:41AM 7-10-2009

If you played it in DX10 then yeah probably a lot of graphical lag. DX10 is still in test form. DX10 runs like crap in some zones and other zones it is stable. I use an ATI card.

Did you try it in DX9?

Lateris said on 11:53AM 7-10-2009

I did try it in DX9- same issues. I am hitting their support pages. I wish Massively had a message board that would tie into these posts. :)

Vulturion said on 5:02AM 7-10-2009

Giving it a second try also, and while I can see some of the tweaking that's gone in it hasn't really changed the gameplay for me.

Still far too many skills with massive redundancy and miniscule effects - already up to 3 combos with no secondary effects and only separated by 1-2 damage points each on my Dark Templar, and spent my first Mastery point on an ability that is essentially invisible to me and procs for about 1/16th of a base attack's damage.

The character models are more impresssive than ever, aside from the still beaten-with-an-oar faces (I only play males), but there's just no sense of character investment for me - there's no true dialogue paths so my characters essentially passive & silent, and there aren't even any visual or body-language cues to distinguish him or convey any kind of attitude.

It certainly cast further shame on WAR's performance issues, but to me AoC is still exactly what it's always been - a low fantasy grinder with little oomph and a fun (at least in moderation) minigame in place of autoattacks.

Nuutador said on 5:32AM 7-10-2009

There's no more walls than any other MMO has. There just isn't an MMO that would let you go anywhere. The game has gone much further during this year, i haven't had a broken quest in AGES. Everything is working, what i've faced.

I haven't run out of stuff to do and yet there is so much i haven't even looked at yet! The game is one year old, you can't simply compare end-game to a game that's been running for some years. Soon they are giving information about the next update, they have been giving more content all the way.

What comes to "you need a powerful machine to run it", i'm playing AoC on a:
AMD s939 3200+
2Gb 400Mhz DDR RAM
Radeon HD4850 512Mb
I used to play it with a Radeon 850XT.
So you can play it without all maxed out. I haven't OC'd my PC. You don't say that a game sucks if you can't play it with full detail on. You usually want to buy a better PC.

If a game doesn't fit you, then it's not the games fault. It's nobody's fault. WoW never got to me, neither did WAR. Lotro gave me a lot of fun, but AoC is the one that got me going on. Community in AoC is good, it's not full of that "noob, pwn" stuff. Well some might like it.

So don't say it hasn't improved, if you've already made your decision before even trying it again. And don't say it hasn't improved, if you just don't like the game.
Cheers! =)

Mr Angry said on 12:03PM 7-10-2009

I think this underlines that some nice folks do play AoC, but from what you've said, I'm still trying to scratch my head and figure out what has improved, other than items broken at launch in the hurry to meet a release schedule, and the itemization has been added close to the require standard for a MMO, hardly ground breaking stuff.

I'm not sure I can subscribe to your argument about 'it's only been out a year', because as more people enter the market, they have to understand the bar has been raised. It's no good them releasing something that would have completed against WoW at launch content wise, because that was many many years ago. Why should people pay the same for less?

You can give things a chance all you want, however if you are paying for a title, hyped to the heavens and find that you run out of things to do, you can either blame the company you purchased the game from, or just blame yourself for not doing your homework. Unfortunately the latter was not available when the first came out (they gated content to prevent people finding out what the game was really like), thus the wide spread dismissal at this title.

Like the game or not, I gave it another shot, and found it was like being back to where I was 1 year ago, without significant improvement. FunCom have been deliberately vague on the improvements, it's a case of "try it and see for yourself!!" Both LOTRO and WAR outlined in no uncertain terms what's been happening in these games, for people rejoining, so I'm not surprised that the general consensus has been, "Nothing has changed", sorry!

Nuutador said on 5:53AM 7-11-2009

Mr Angry,

Thanks for your reply, no flaming there!
I must admit, that i got a bit defensive for the flame i was reading.
But as i mentioned earlier, if you like a game, you like it, if not then not.
It's like growing a plant, if you're interested, you'll see it develop. If not, you won't see any change, it's another failed reason to stay home during a saturday night =p

I see your point in the marketing stuff, it is in a "see for yourself" way. Well, i can only say for the re-evaluation stuff, i haven't looked at how they try to attract Trial players.

All in all, i'm still sticking to an argument "Some like some, some don't". The game won't change from what it is, it will just develope wurther. But i'm pretty sure you know what i mean :)

I'm sorry that i can't address stuff improved in a list, as i can't remember how it was year ago.

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