Fixing Conan

Some of you may have heard that Age of Conan has a new captain at the helm. Gaute Godager was given the pink slip (at least as far as AoC is concerned) and Craig Morrison is now the man who has to put the house in order. As I understand it he did the same thing for Anarchy Online. A new ear means a new chance to hear the players and I’ve got a lot to say!

It is no secret that I am an AoC super fan. I fell in love with the game immediately upon playing it. It looks great and has some very interesting innovations. Unfortunately, however, Conan didn’t love me back and constantly rejected my affection with memory leaks, poor service and missing features that I considered requisite and basic. That said, let’s hope we can kiss and make up. Mr. Morrison here is what your game needs.

The largest failing of AoC is in the basic features. Nobody at Funcom read Blizzard’s book, “So You Want to Make an MMO.” Before you can innovate more you need to get your basics down. We want to be able to change our chat colors and add channels. We want the option to rename our guild ranks and the ability to set permissions for them. Where is officer chat? Where is the solid foundation? If you can do it in World of Warcraft then you should be able to do it in any competitive game. If you could do it in EverQuest you MUST be able to do it in any modern game. This is not up for negotiation.

Next, and this cannot be stressed enough, drop the party line that you won’t merge servers. You’re not going to get a huge new influx of players. You’re just not. Warhammer released today and they’re going to get the “one month bump.” Once it is over and the cards are down you might get some players back. Not long after that, however, you have the World of Warcraft and EverQuest II expansions to contend with. No large lump some of players are heading your way. Accept it, embrace it, and merge servers. If you give your game a feel that it is busy you might get players like me back. Sodality left because we couldn’t fill our ranks enough to raid consistently. Our server literally felt empty and lifeless. Turning this around will do a lot of good.

Stop making promises. Funcom seems notorious for making promises that they can’t keep. If you’re not going to be able to patch once a week and, honestly, you should be able to, (if you’ve diverted developers to the expansion you’ve made a critical error. You’re not sure your game will have enough customers to make it that far) don’t promise that you will! Give good solid information and lots of it. Tell us that “We will have project x done roughly around October 3rd”. Don’t tell us that you’re “looking into it” and drop communication on the subject. While you’re “looking into” my primary concerns I’m canceling my account because your competitor already offers the feature. I’d be more inclined to stay if I had a better time table of when you’ll have it. Famine does his best but I can tell he doesn’t get enough information passed to him. I hear you’re more involved in the forum personally. That’s good, you’re going to need to be.

Consider dropping a group from some or all of your raids. Let’s face it, getting a 24 man raid force on some of the AoC servers is pretty rough. One or two guilds can do it but not everyone wants to join them. Multiple guilds should be able to raid since difficulty wise these aren’t exactly the toughest experience out there. If you offered 18 man raids you might enjoy some of the success that Blizzard did with Karazhan.

Drop the ridiculous numbers requirement. I am sure when Funcom originally envisioned AoC you saw huge siege forces fighting each other. That didn’t occur and likely won’t now; your opportunity for it has passed. Guilds should not need 100 members. Guilds cannot get 100 members. Building the game around that many in a single guild is foolish. We gave up on our tier 3 city because we refused to grab anyone with a pulse. As a highly motivated and skilled group of 30 we just couldn’t farm the hundreds of thousands of materials. This is wrong. There shouldn’t be a massive penalty in all aspects of the game for being lean and professional.

Make things matter. On the last point, why would we even bother? What does a tier 3 city do for us? Not a thing. Step up and make those buildings and the effort we put in matter. Give them a real effect. Show us that they are worthwhile and it makes sense to join a guild with a developed city instead of some fly by night organization that claims to be the best around. All a city really does is penalize crafters. It essentially says, “Oh, you’re not in a 1,000 man guild? No tier 3 city? I’m sorry, no crafting for you.” That system needs to be reevaluated.

I realize that most of this comes across as strong and almost cutting but it is how I and a lot of players I know feel. I love the game but too many missteps and things that don’t flow logically turned me off. I also loathe the attitude of “us versus them” that seems to ooze from Funcom. It is the reason I never liked Brad McQuaid. Contrary to what territorial developers might believe, it really isn’t “there content.” We have the ultimate final say as players. We decide whether or not the game makes enough money just to get by, makes millions, or goes under. Customer service must be first!

Good luck to you sir. I truly hope you can turn it around because I’d love to lead my guild back through Conan. We’ll keep our ears up and eyes open.