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Letter from Gaute Godager
Originally Posted by Gaute Godager - 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:
1. 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.
2. We will have an overhaul of the PvP system – adding consequence and a host of small things.
3. We are fixing bugs you reported through all channels we can get information from.
4. We will add a new large outdoor region in the 55-60 range this summer!
5. This is only a small teaser! More information about the exciting summer and fall Roadmap will come the end of the next week!
6. We are staffing up Customer Service, Quality Assurance and Community departments!
I will spend some words on a bit more details now.
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).
All this will come in June! In July the first level 80 additional Dungeon will be patched out. More on that later…
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!
Yours truly,
Gaute Godager
Game Director
Age of Conan, Funcom
I love the bit when he says what we have today is but the platform. Okay then, so that's a clear enough statement that we are paying beta testers if ever I heard one. Wouldn't be so bad if we were not being asked to pay a full subscription cost for the platform would it?
Comments
I know alot of people enjoy the game, but it seems to me they did release it way too early. I know alot of games release unfinished but i read this and think they were pressured big time to release ASAP. I don t care for it for more reasons then content but i m sure they ll add alot more. That said it should have been or more anyways been in before it was released. All these people in CB that said theres huge gaps of content etc in certain levels were right and i had a feeling they were.
Worst thing is that this sounds again like a hype bait, but hopefuly they can adress everything properly, i'm not going to hold my breath though.
And yet, they continue to ignore the RP community on the US servers...
great news
EQ2 fan sites
This is all you have to say? There's no pleasing some people!
After the damge control of the letter here is what FC are really working on :
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=29457
Greetings,
Funcom can confirm that some of the female models in the game have had the size of their breasts changed . This is due to an unintended change in data that was introduced in an earlier patch, data which controls the so-called morph values associated with character models and the size of their respective body parts. We are working on a fix for this and your breasts should be back to normal soon. The plastic surgeons of Hyboria apologize for the inconvenience.
Funcom Development Team
Not much to say about this for now , they allready said so many things that were not right or being playing on words , the thing is Its good news of course just how long is it going to take , they said they would correct all the bugs for now it could take 2 month only to do just that .
The brunt of it was understandable and sure there are a lot of carrots on sticks in that letter but when I read the small blurb that got snuck in "PVP gear." I just had to laugh. There goes the neighborhood! haha
I read this and bit by bit I was thinking, 'damn that sounds great should be in just in time for me when I hit that lvl' etc, etc. Then I thought about all the bashing AoC gets here and some other boards and how most of it is from those pretty near or at cap. A huge portion of what I just considered things to keep my sub will make absolutely no difference to those currently with the bad opinion of the game.
I'm not a casual player, I play for around 30-40+ hours a week but I'm not hc because I just could not play this or any other rpg solid for hours/days/weeks on end on a single char just to reach cap (not because I want to just soak up the rp aspect far from it, tbh I prefer fps). Since its been out I've played AoC fairly exclusively and my main is 34 with a few mid 20 alts, my main is still six lvl's before the my rino gets dusted and pulled out the bag.
Anyway to the point of the post, I re-read it and felt for FC a bit because it will do nothing to dampen the bad rep for lack of content as most have already past a lot of whats getting added. Then I thought, do I actually care?... not really sure, but it would be nice if they had something in there to clear up the end game guild pvp/keep situation, if for nothing more than to stop the endless threads on the subject.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Not an owner of AoC but it sounds like good progress -- they're keeping players up to date and have pretty short term milestones for releasing these items. If people burned through all of the content already (at a faster clip than Funcom intended) well, then either re-roll or else consider yourself done with the game for now if not forever.
We see these threads about peple having capped out and they must have been dedicating 30+ hours/week or so. What working person has the time for this....in the spring/summer no less? My gut instinct is that Funcom is doing the smart thing by focusing on the journey rather than the endgame.
What a HUGE difference between the reactions here and on the official forums.
And people still check and write on these forums for feedback! don't make me laugh.
Hahaha no sieges.
They hyped those so much. Where are they?
I have never seen a game company behave like this since the New Game Experience in a certain mmo..
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CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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Ya see this is what i don t understand. They hyped this aspect beyond belief and yet it s not in game yet. I know people will be oh well no one is ready for it yet. Is that a good reason to not have it in, no way. Besides there are alot of people ready for it. I just get a feeling they ll send out letter after letter saying we re doing this, patching this, fixing this but it won t happen for a long time some yes but alot no. It s just to please people for the time being. Sieges not in is ridiculous.
Here you don't get a warning or eventually a ban for stating your opinion, that's why.
You are of course right, the game needed more content at launch, but it is very hard to blame Funcom for not being rich enough. They probably pushed it as far as they could to avoid a VG-launch and at least all ppl I know have not had any major issues yet. That is better than all the mmorpgs I have tried (wow, lotro, ddo, vg).
Here you don't get a warning or eventually a ban for stating your opinion, that's why.
BS.It's because everyone and there grandma can post on these forums having not played the game and create new accounts to troll etc.
There are no trolls on the official forums because everyone has the game and knows what he/she is talking about. There are many who have complaints, but they are valid contrary to most BS spouted over here.
Just a word of advice: Do NOT use these forums to choose whether to play the game or not.
You are of course right, the game needed more content at launch, but it is very hard to blame Funcom for not being rich enough. They probably pushed it as far as they could to avoid a VG-launch and at least all ppl I know have not had any major issues yet. That is better than all the mmorpgs I have tried (wow, lotro, ddo, vg).
For me the game directors letter really just screams: Sorry we didnt finish the game, but we still want your money. Please make us rich!
Getting these things in the summer or the fall as he says... should we pay for that?
MMOs make and break at launch.
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CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
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Here you don't get a warning or eventually a ban for stating your opinion, that's why.
BS.It's because everyone and there grandma can post on these forums having not played the game and create new accounts to troll etc.
There are no trolls on the official forums because everyone has the game and knows what he/she is talking about. There are many who have complaints, but they are valid contrary to most BS spouted over here.
Just a word of advice: Do NOT use these forums to choose whether to play the game or not.
I think you re right on using these forums as a base to buy or not, but the official forums arent a great place for advertising the game either. It s a mess over there. That said the game will sell itself or not IMO.
Here you don't get a warning or eventually a ban for stating your opinion, that's why.
BS.It's because everyone and there grandma can post on these forums having not played the game and create new accounts to troll etc.
There are no trolls on the official forums because everyone has the game and knows what he/she is talking about. There are many who have complaints, but they are valid contrary to most BS spouted over here.
Just a word of advice: Do NOT use these forums to choose whether to play the game or not.
I think you re right on using these forums as a base to buy or not, but the official forums arent a great place for advertising the game either. It s a mess over there. That said the game will sell itself or not IMO.
I didn't advise anyone to check the official forums to choose either, I'm just comparing these to the official ones.Like you said, Game sells itself.
Here you don't get a warning or eventually a ban for stating your opinion, that's why.
BS.It's because everyone and there grandma can post on these forums having not played the game and create new accounts to troll etc.
There are no trolls on the official forums because everyone has the game and knows what he/she is talking about. There are many who have complaints, but they are valid contrary to most BS spouted over here.
Just a word of advice: Do NOT use these forums to choose whether to play the game or not.
I think you re right on using these forums as a base to buy or not, but the official forums arent a great place for advertising the game either. It s a mess over there. That said the game will sell itself or not IMO.
I didn't advise anyone to check the official forums to choose either, I'm just comparing these to the official ones.Like you said, Game sells itself.
My bad read it wrong
Wow... that letter feels like they are saying...
"Please don't leave.....". I wonder what numbers they are looking at.
'Overhauling'' the PvP system this soon after launch?
Dont get this letter at all.
Dang just saw a stickie from a developer on the official site.... titled:
"Don't let the reading the forums get you down."
Geeezzz not good.
That's awesome, I'm starting to love Funcom. They're appearing really observant and quick to respond. What more can you ask for?
'course some complainers here are now complaining about the issues they themselves complained about actually being addressed. What a surprise!
argh.... so should I buy this game or not? That's the question?!
wait a couple of months
Ya see this is what i don t understand. They hyped this aspect beyond belief and yet it s not in game yet. I know people will be oh well no one is ready for it yet. Is that a good reason to not have it in, no way. Besides there are alot of people ready for it. I just get a feeling they ll send out letter after letter saying we re doing this, patching this, fixing this but it won t happen for a long time some yes but alot no. It s just to please people for the time being. Sieges not in is ridiculous.
btw you need Tier 3 city to be able to own/siege, and atm no guild made Tier 3 city yet.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]