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AoC is being updated this month, all (or most of) its problems will be solved
Pucks
Member Posts: 10
This is from the official forums, a letter from the game director:
Fellow Hyborians!
As you may have noticed we have had frequent patches the last two weeks. We hope this will soon start to quiet down, but as long as there are major issues – and there have been – we will dedicate the Conan team to fixing them and giving you these fixes as soon as possible! We have a plan on how to move this game forward because as you know, what you have today is but the platform – the dawn of this world. I hope you enjoy the game as is, but I can ensure you, this is but the beginning!
Our focus from now on can be summarized by these points:
- We will add content, specifically in mid-late thirties and mid-late fifties and make the leveling speed smoother in those areas, reducing the need to grind.
- We will have an overhaul of the PvP system – adding consequence and a host of small things.
- We are fixing bugs you reported through all channels we can get information from.
- We will add a new large outdoor region in the 55-60 range this summer!
- This is only a small taster! More information about the exciting summer and fall Roadmap will come the end of the next week!
- We are staffing up Customer Service, Quality Assurance and Community departments!
1. Filling “thin areas” in our content
We have seen that there are certain level ranges of these Hyborian Adventures that do not have the amount of quality we wish them to have. Most specifically these are the end of the Thirties and the end of the Fifties level ranges. We are addressing this in several ways.
- Several mid-late thirties dungeons are getting a complete overhaul (Black Castle, Pyramid of the Ancients and Treasury of the Ancients)
- Several quests are being made fuller and more entertaining. If people wish to revisit these quests, we will add a system to let them try them out again.
- We are adding first a batch of quests in Eiglophian Mountains (lvls 55+)
- We are also adding in a bunch of quests that didn’t quite make it for launch in the 30+ areas.
- Around 60 quests through the game have been flagged as “Lore Quests”. They will now be patched out with full Voice-Over. (Roughly 1 quest per level after level 20)…
2. Overhauling the PvP System
People like our open PvP system. There are many plans on how to give this open free PvP even more meaning and Purpose. In the meantime we will be doing some smaller tweaks, and we plan to get these out sometimes in June. I will not go into 100% detail here, but that will come next week! What I can promise is:
- An update on how sneaking and perception works in PvP (nothing major, but an adjustment).
- A change in the amount of information you get when you hover over an other player.
- An added system of consequence to “ganking”. (Killing much-much lower level players).
- A system of adding consequence to losing a PvP match, and winning a PvP match + turning on PvP Leveling.
- A change in how Crowd Control (Root, Knockback etc) works in PvP.
- PvP gear.
3. New Massive Region
We will unveil this location later, but it will feature a host of quests, new monsters and places of dreams or horror. It will be styled towards the players in the late 50s and bridge the experience on the way to Atzels Approach. We have plans for releasing several of the areas that didn’t quite make it for the release.
4. Fixing bugs and increasing Customer Service
Funcom has always prided ourselves with having great customer satisfaction. The success so far for this title has left us with the need to increase the size of CS. This will go in parallel with the constant fixing of bugs and other issues that lead people to petition. Included in this is even better testing of the game by increasing the size of Quality Assurance and informing you better about changes by staffing up the Community Department. I know a blurb like this will haunt me always, but I will still venture one: We aren’t satisfied until all our customers are! You know we had a very, very difficult launch of Anarchy-Online! That was a very painful process for all of us working on it – 4 years. You might not understand how driven we are to make sure you enjoy this game, and all the support around it!
The future is very bright for Hyboria. There will be many bright mornings following this, the very first. Together we shall surge ahead and build the world even bigger, better and more detailed!
Please feel free to visit the official discussion thread here.
Yours truly,
Gaute Godager
Game Director
Age of Conan, Funcom
...
So, what will you guys have to complain about now?
Comments
AoC is fun for what it is. If they fix all the problems, I owe them a cookie of their choice.
Meh. Should have stayed in beta and went for a winter release.
Oh well c'est la vive.
Mne eto nado kak zuby v zadnitse.
They obviously didn't have a choice, or they would have. People just need to learn to be patient.
OOO another "miracle" path to fix everything that is wrong with AoC......history repeats itself.
Good luck with the next patch fixing even half the issues. If anything it will be a series of patches for the next few months, because thats the way FC operates. And even then it will be a patch with fixes followed by a patch for fixes of the fixes and another patch that will fix the fixes fix and so on.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
LOL! Did someone actually fall for the old "miracle patch" trick? LMAO!!
Yeah its repeating itself except Funcom has a good team and made a very succesful MMO that they will put everything into. Thats what you call funcoms "miracle path"
Haha when its a brand new MMO that is Very very successful, who knows, they might do it. They have already patched like crazy, and the player base isnt dwindling it broke 500k within something like the first 8-10 days? Not WoW but not bad^^ Besides that the more successful the MMO, the more important it becomes to those who created it to make suren they refine there investment to its best. VG is fixed so slow because people know it will never see a large scale popularity after having such a terribly bugged system/launch... Although with AOC, things are different, it is the 2nd fastest growing MMO next to WoW.
It's almost funny how badly some of you people want this game to fail... do you honestly have nothing better to do with your life than to come here and complain about a game that you have decided you will not like no matter what? Go away, trolls.
The patches this month will make this great game even better.
The AOC diehards, I will refrain from using fanboi for the moment, claimed there was a miracle patch right at the end of beta. However it wasn't a "miracle patch" as every bug (except the newly reintroduced one's in the latest patch) have been present for months now. Also, the letter from funcom gives a rather long term guidemap for how they are going to be updating. Nothing about "this month" as a matter of fact it specifically states "this summer and fall".
Pretty much everything in that letter should have been in the release sans the voice over work. I can care less if npc's talk when all they want you to do is to go and kill x of y or bring back x amount of y substance that can only be gotten by killing z amounts of various standing around bags of xp/loot/quest items. Let's look at his letter point by point:
We will add content, specifically in mid-late thirties and mid-late fifties and make the leveling speed smoother in those areas, reducing the need to grind. Should have been there from the get go. there has been a huge gap as far as quests go for months upon months. The only reason why they said it would take 250 hours to reach max level is because grinding is EXTRAORDINARILY slow in this game and actual /played of level 80 characters at present are showing about 120 hours to reach max level.
We will have an overhaul of the PvP system – adding consequence and a host of small things. Again something that should of been addressed during beta. Fine tuned after release is one thing but, when a game has pvp as such an integral part of the gameplay then wouldn't that be something you wanted to make sure was polished as well as could be expected prior to release?
We are fixing bugs you reported through all channels we can get information from. As I have stated before in this thread and in others EVERY bug has been present since beta (except the newly introduced ones with the latest patch) yet for months funcom has been slow to act on these, why should anyone expect or trust in the words of a person that hasn't exactly been forthright and honest up to this point?
We are staffing up Customer Service, Quality Assurance and Community departments! Any sort of project manager should of had the CS and QA departments up trained and running long before release. The atrocious customer service isn't entirely due to an understaffed CS department but rather the buggy and broken state that the game was released in.
I fthey miraculously fix everything then fantastic. However, it is only because of people like the op, the diehards, and the fanbois that games like this are released in the absolute mess that they are. Act like a bunch of crack addicts that will turn around and start picking through the fibers of their carpet because of that magic rock that they just remembered that they had dropped.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
I'm glad that all the problems will be addressed. I can't wait to be able to PVP from level 1 and gain xp from it toward my 80 levels. I think it will be great that bag space will no longer be a problem. I can't wait to see people approaching instead of appearing suddenly. I'm glad that guards will act like guards and come to my aid while i'm in town and ganked by someone 60 levels higher than I am. I'm glad that the other 508 problems that I've had will be fixed in one patch.
I'm unhappy that i'll have to wake up from this dream and find out that none of it is fixed. How sad. In my dreams you made perfect sense and weren't naive at all...
- LC
We're not trolls. We're the disappointed. We're the people who paid out 50+ frigg'n bucks and we're standing around with our donkey ropes in our hands wondering where the promised land is. That's who we are.
If you think a single patch, or even a series of patches, will make up for the ball that was dropped, then you have obviously wanked off to this game so much you've gone blind. Don't worry, Funcom will address your blindness in the next patch. And cure cancer. It'll be that bloody great.
I say, let's complain until blood spews from our ragged throats and game developers can't help but slip in our reeking bile. Maybe then they'll do it right the next time.
Bugger all,
- LC
SOE has also made promises in the past for their own MMORPGs, and failed to deliver them. Funcom shouldn't promise what they can't deliver, so i'll take the "I'll believe it, when i see it" approach to MMO promises.
I would heed what Severius has posted here. FunCom's track record of fixing post-release issues is well known.
90% of that content should have been included prior to the game being launched. All this shows is that the developers new the game was launched to early and are trying to fix it. Also, if you are actually playing this game each patch seems to cause more problems than it fixes.
I was very disappointed with this game and already canceled my subscription. I may go back to it in 6 months when they are finished beta testing it on you paying subscribers.
Haha when its a brand new MMO that is Very very successful, who knows, they might do it. They have already patched like crazy, and the player base isnt dwindling it broke 500k within something like the first 8-10 days? Not WoW but not bad^^ Besides that the more successful the MMO, the more important it becomes to those who created it to make suren they refine there investment to its best. VG is fixed so slow because people know it will never see a large scale popularity after having such a terribly bugged system/launch... Although with AOC, things are different, it is the 2nd fastest growing MMO next to WoW.
If I remember correctly, WoW only had around 400k beta signups and did not reach 500k within 8days of being released.. But maybe I'm wrong. I thought for sure it took WoW a couple weeks too hit 500k and around 2-3 months too hit 1mil.
Also, it was only like 4-5 days for AoC too hit 500k++. The problem is not how many subs they managed too get on release. It's whether they can maintain these numbers. A quite a few people are thinking of quitting for numerous issues. Some issues that Funcom will never be able too fix. A lot of people are leaving cuz of the instancing, which funcom can't fix. But for those that are leaving because of the bugs, well it looks like Funcom might be able too fix those before people leave.
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
If I remember correctly, WoW only had around 400k beta signups and did not reach 500k within 8days of being released.. But maybe I'm wrong..
FunCom's problem is going to be subscriber retention.
I'm seeing my guild dwindle very quickly, and the 40+ zones too. Keep in mind the guild i'm in had the most members on our server with around 150+, now it's only 30 or less after the initial hype factor wore off since launch.
The lied about almost every single one of their launch features, what makes you think they're telling the truth now?
Darkfall Travelogues!
If I remember correctly, WoW only had around 400k beta signups and did not reach 500k within 8days of being released.. But maybe I'm wrong..
FunCom's problem is going to be subscriber retention.
You obviously didn't read my whole post. I clearly stated that Funcoms problem is not getting customers, it's keeping them.
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
I'm seeing my guild dwindle very quickly, and the 40+ zones too. Keep in mind the guild i'm in had the most members on our server with around 150+, now it's only 30 or less after the initial hype factor wore off since launch.
The point he was making is that Funcom has a lot of subscribers and even more potential subscribers. Lot's of people want too play the game. But those who tried it are sick funcoms lies, hate the bug issues and will wait until they're fixed too play again. Or, they are waiting for a trial key because they've been hearing mixed reviews.
Age of Conan has lot's of potential and truly is a WoW killer if done correctly. They already broke release date records (WAR will beat it, but meh :P). It's not getting customers that's the problem, it's keeping them. Funcom needs too get their shit straight and get too work on polishing this game like asap.
Hopefully they will even one day remove instances....
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
Yeah, I'm very curious to see how many subs they have after the first 1 to 3 months. Success selling boxes at launch is because so many people are tired of playing their respective games and are looking for something new.
I cancelled, but if they fix the game so I can atleast run on low to medium settings with good fps then I will resub atleast a month. It's possible I could resub after i get my new graphics card too. I'll have to think about it.
Its really naive to think a miracle patch will solve most of the issues in this game, why wasnt the content in at the beginning? They had 5 years to come up with things to do.
It also makes no sense too do a miracle patch because of that fact of there being too much too fix. In order for even half the issues too be fixed in one patch would mean you would have too wait 2months for it too be ready.
The ideal way of fixing bugs is by doing it in a series of patches. That way customers no you're not lying and are actually fixing the game. But also so that people don't have too wait 2months for issues too be fixed.
So you may see a series of categorized patching. Like they will release patches that patch certain key parts of the game. So there may be a content patch that adds tons more land/quests etc. This patch will be separate from the bugs patches. That way they can always release a patch at least once week too fix as much as possible as soon as possible. The fact that so many customers are thinking of quitting after their free month means Funcom has too release as many, patches in a month as they can. Or, the "miracle patch" must be completed by the end of this month. Theres so much that needs fixing, they need too work day and night too get such a patch done by the end of the month.
I guess if they don't do it, they will lose lots of customers, which means loss in money. So it's their jobs on the line if they don't do something about it quicktime,
Playing: WoW,
Played: Aion, AoC, Eve, EQ, EQ2, LOTRO, Runescape, Guild Wars, DAoC, Planetside, SWG, WAR, Darkfall
Wanting to try: DCU Online
Waiting For: Star Wars The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2.
Yup Servase I managed to miss a paragraph, my bad