Age of Conan Interview: Important questions finally answered from ZergWatch

AmazingAvery

Good old ZergWatch with some great questions.

Can be read here: http://www.zergwatch.com/News-954/Age-of-Conan-Interview-Important-questions-finally-answered.html

Preview:

Zergwatch: Maybe it's just the American perception of the outwardly sternest appearance and strong Germanic accents of Northern Europeans, but after watching several videos and interviews with the European guys, they come off as being, ironically enough, a bit like  Arnold Schwartzenegger's Terminator character. Was the team able to  pull off any of the subtle humor we saw in the movies and make it work  in the game? Jason: There are definitely a few areas in the game where its an obvious one-liner. Especially with the amount of voice work we have tried to put in the game there are some very funny parts. Most of the humor actually has to be subtle because Conan does not lend itself well to overt, slapstick, or pop culture humor like you can see in some other MMO's Zergwatch:  Every now and then, on YouTube, an "Age of Conan Beta Gameplay Video" pops up and is removed shortly after. Has this been a problem  for you with the closed beta? Who's job is it to sit on You Tube all day refreshing the "Age of Conan" search? Jason: Usually fan's themselves of the game tell us of the leaks far before we find out about it ourselves. The problem is usually about the fact that regardless of the content it is an NDA violation, and the people tend to stink at making the game look good. Using the video that came out over the shoulder from the PvP reveal at Leipzig. People went nuts whining about how the classes were not balanced etc etc. Then at Dragoncon I played the exact same build and schooled people 1vs2 1vs3 at times with the supposedly "sucky" character. It's all about perception, and in truth Funcom loves machinima, all through our design progress we wanted to see super sweet hard rocking PvP videos and aspired to make a combat system that would allow skilled players to do just that, but most these leaks don't show much or intentionally focus on negative aspects. Zergwatch: Being an adult themed game with a mature rating with PVP, it's safe to say there's going to be a shit ton of smack talking, trash talking and vulgar language between players. Most MMORPG's do their  best to crack down on this behavior. In AoC, will anything go  between players or do you intend to follow in the footsteps of past publishers and quell the vocal outcasts? Jason:  It depends, anything that goes into the realm of harassment, be it in the form of swearing, racial insults, spamming etc will still be deal with by Customer Service. But we are not going to ban someone for saying f*** you etc. Zergwatch: Usually when MMORPG trash talking occurs, most chalk it up to "The 12 year old kid using dad's credit card to play". Do you think your > game will settle this debate once and for all and prove that adults are just as responsible for the lower rung of social etiquette in  MMORPG's as the kids? Jason:  For a brief time before the department was down sized at SOE I was the Community Manager for Casual Games. This means I worked with everything from Wheel of Fortune to Infantry and Cosmic Rifts. This might sound like a segway but it really is interesting. I had so many problems with the 30+ year old cliques of women who were from Wheel of Fortune. It was a nightmare, I had one lady send an entire ream of paper from Australia with printed out bulletin board posts supposedly proving that I was having a love affair with another lady and so was acting unjustly against her. In contrast with the 15yr olds playing the free action shooter game Infantry I could simply show up and say "Hey knock it off" and 90% of the time they listened. What creates assholes on the internet is not someone's age, its someone's ability to hide being their anonymity. It gets worse the more people get online and realize they can get away with it. Playing Call of Duty 4 on Xbox live last week I joined a match and every word out of these two guys mouth was "N this" "N that" "my N". Maybe if there was a "fair" way to put in a digg or ebay type feedback system that eventually squelches peoples ability to type on public channels the MMO space would become more mature in appearance but until there is accountability that is enforceable bad behavior will continue to come from all types.

 

Plenty more at the link above

Good job Zerg.

Michiel

I really enjoyed reading that. Thanks for posting Avery!

Falfeir

juicy info ! thx

 

at this stage i believe this game cant fail. the amount of work put in assures me that even if everything goes wrong, lag, bug etc. this game will survive. i cant wait to get my place among the "first"

Hrothmund

Nice job Zerg, a great interview!

Joshyray

Thanks for that.  

Getting more and more excited. But I will still have my reservations. I couldnt wait for Pirates of the Burning Sea, and well yeah......