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Age of Conan: Community Letters Discuss Delays
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Last Friday we reported on the announced delay of Age of Conan until March 25th of next year. Funcom has now updated the Age of Conan official site with a letter to the community, and a letter from the game director.
Hello everybody,
As you saw from the press release, we've decided to delay the game until March 25, 2008. As you all understand, this is obviously one of the hardest decisions we could've made as a company, but this is done to ensure that you all the get the best possible experience when the game is done next March.
While we have seen that the overall reactions to our game has in general been extremely favorable, we as a company can only go for the best possible experience for our users. We are a MMO company, and we know that the only thing which matters when building a long-term community is the quality of the game. When our beta testers have come back to us with concerns in a couple of different areas, we have therefore been listening. The feedback has especially been on the entry barriers to the game, and how people are learning and coping with the combat system in the first few hours of gameplay. While most are having a fantastic time with it once they learn it, we also see that it is new and different to a lot of people, and that it takes longer to get into than what we have anticipated. This means that we need to ease the barrier, and make the first few hours of gameplay more accessible.
After careful consideration we have therefore decided that this must be improved for the overall good of the game. We are now putting considerable extra efforts into improving the game, despite the fact that a whole world is raving about the qualities of what we have shown them. It was not an easy decision to make, but we felt it was necessary, both for you and ourselves.
;)
Read the letter to the communoty here.
Read the letter form the Game Director here.
Comments
Spin, Spin, Spin
p.s. It also kills me that one of their major reasons for the delay is because we players are purportedly too stupid to understand their combat system
Oh well, I hope things work out for the best...
I guess they were hoping a 5 yr old can pick up on it within 2 minutes of game time. Its a shame... it really is
Actually the main reason for this delay is that they can't keep their servers running longer than few minutes.
That's a very good reason IMO.
Glad to see that they learned something from the AO launch and that they have the resources to push the release out.
inside info right?
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
I am happy they ar doing it buts a pretty clear admition that current the game's combat is broke. (read both links)
Still Id ratehr see this than deniel until it too late.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
They said that the combat system was amazing up until 3 months before release and then they said it was broken. I'd say that is denying something until it's too late.
Oh well. I think the combat system is the heart of any game, especially if it's supposed to be the revolutionary part. To not realize that it's broken, or as Jayde put it "Needs lots of minor tweaks" is pretty lax in my opinion.
Especially since the combat system would be one of the first things you get working correctly. In 2 years' time they decided 3 months before their release date that it's cause for concern. Something's not right there.
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I live to fight, and fight to live.
I read both of those links and don't know how you came to that conclusion. I never read that their combat was broken, I don't think they ever said that. They were concerned about the learning curve in the beginning but otherwise the combat was amazing. Definitely doesn't sound "broken" to me, but rather an important note.
Obviously those who made the game are going to be familiar with it most and it [something being too difficult to learn] could be an easy thing to look over. As per the article, "Luckily we do not change what I love! We change the way you learn it."
Oh well, I've never followed the game and know nothing about it.. I just read the articles linked. Maybe you have some sort of inside information to reveal that it's actually broken, not functional.
-SGC Special Ops
http://stargate.mgm.com/specialops/link.php?urlid=48&id=7871
http://stargate.mgm.com/specialops/link.php?urlid=49&id=7871
Well, after AO, I guess they learned something.
Hey Funcom - remember please - TWEAK NOW (NOT after release)
"Life is too short to play nerfed characters."
I love reading the doom and gloomers about the delay, when those same people would attack the devs for releasing it too early full of bugs.. I'm curious.. wouldn't you rather have a less bugged game? Does SWG ring a bell to those of you that beta tested it.. we all warned them not to release it, but they did anyway for the ol' mighty dollar. Anyway, I laugh when I read these.
While I agree with what many others are posting in consideration of the fact that a game is much better and more fun if the release goes over smoothly and has less bugs at the beginning. I cannot however say that I am at all surprised as the competence, or lack there of, which the Funcom team possesses is gleaming once again.
While they are going back now to fix something, that is a good thing. However, what they are fixing are some of the most critical elements of the game. In other words, they're scraping the game and starting over but they want to keep some of the systems that are small, basic, and that actually worked. What this shows is a pure essence of lack of consideration in design and very poor testing from the internal side. A problem with an overly complex and hard to understand combat system should've been something that they could've found out during closed ALPHA game testing. Instead, a couple months for release and months into the beta and after a major show about how mature the game was at E3 and they decided "you know... our combat system sucks"... So they start from the ground up and reinvent it. Somebody in QA should've lost their job.
As the topic about MMO's being a "Waiting Game" states... if they continue to push back dates over mistakes that are about critical elements of the game and fields and fields of bugs, they're going to turn off the community they have...
Also, a note about the fact that the servers can't stay running for extend periods of time... well looks like they need a new lead server programmer then...
Stop jumping to conclusions about the combat system. It's getting fucking old. Wait till you've actually tried rather than just make wild conclusions based on beta videos and a letter from the devs which actually doesn't insinuate anything like that.
Hey Sport, the devs are the ones jumping to conclusions about the combat system. They're the ones stating it's "too complex" for the main stream player.
I truly hope the game succeeds. But for the devs to pull the plug on the release date to revamp the combat system really shows some poor in house planing/testing on their part.
I will have to agree that we MMORPGer's are a fickle bunch and we want both perfection and a speedy release. If you look back at past releases though you can see many games that bumped their dates back numerous times to achieve a better game and still released in a less than polished state.
Picture going to pick up a date who told you to be ready at 7:00. You get there and find out that she's not ready. You wait patiently for her to "make herself pretty" for you. At 10:00 she comes down stairs and looks like she just woke up after a hard night. That's about how most of these games go, so it does produce a tough fanbase of cynical conspiracy theorists overall.
The only thing worse than buying a game and subscribing and finding out that it stinks is waiting four or five extra months on a game thinking that it should be awesome and finding out it still stinks. Hopefully Conan is one of those games that can actually do something with that time. I've played several who did not.
delayed hmm...
why don't they just shut up and start hyping just before release.
vanguard paranoia haha: they all have it nowadays
Vanguard fear? Vanguard would've been a good game had it not been for SOE's ownership/control during the final days and of course the fact that Sigil's CEO was a hard faced idiot who I'm not exactly sure if he cared about making a quality game or making money...
Funcom is far away from that thankfully... however, I must say I've not seen Funcom do anything yet thats "astounding" by any means, and of course... they do have the gloom of the horrible launch of AO floating overhead. Lord knows that would prolly be enough to scare anyone. However... the fact that AO did have a horrible launch and that they are pushing this back and acting just like every other developer does in these situations... "We're pushing it back to make it better for you" when they push it back for unneeded reasons or for reasons that should've been caught and fixed earlier on in development really makes me hesitant to believe that they can pull this off.
it means i have to play the new wow expansion, and maybe ill love it. and maybe ill never try this.
btw this is the most stupid reason for delay ive ever heared. maybe that whole combat system i was waiting for soo long ends up being crap, or they've just chose noob testers...