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New Letter from the Game Director
Reklaw
Member UncommonPosts: 6,495
Enjoy and/or discus 
Posted: - 11.07.2008 http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2580&table=CONTENT
Age of Conan Game Director Gaute Godager is back to tell us about the plans for the near future.
Greetings fellow players.
While it has been some time since I last gave you an update, I wanted to touch base and let you know what we are working on at the moment and where we are going in the times to come. I want this update to focus on what is actually happening to the game now, what we have done, and also some of the reasoning behind our choices going forward.
As you all know we have been live for some seven weeks by now, and what a period it has been! While Conan has sold more and performed better than even we could have hoped for, we also know that there have been things we had to work on. I will not try to hide from this fact, but I hope you have seen our steady stream of improvements and additions, in fact, even more than I would have thought possible! I am definitively proud of the team and what they have done after launch, and I think everyone agrees that we are making Conan better, all the time. We are also keeping almost the entire development team ON the Age of Conan live team for the foreseeable future, meaning we can make exciting new content updates on an ongoing basis. Still, let me underline that our main – main – focus at the moment are bugs, stability and performance! I might not talk very much about the details here, but the frequency of the patches and their contents speak for itself.
While we have been busy evolving the game and services on all levels, we also promised new content to you. Not all of what we mentioned in the June update came as fast we would have liked, and while there are several reasons for this it is the word “quality” which won. As a result, the massive PvP updates took longer than anticipated. It was vital to take a second look at the design, and make it even better prior to moving it to live. I am however very glad to say that we have now deployed the PvP updates to our internal test live server (for an overview of these features, please go here. )
As soon as QA gives the go on the internal quality they will be fully deployed to test live, and then to live. While I would have wished these features to be out already, I am happy to say that the update will be an awesome one, and include all of the things we spoke about, including the fugitive system, PvP levels, PvP rankings, the first wave of PvP item drops as well as other PvP consequences. It also involves several general changes to the PvP part of the game (crowd control, damage against other players and dueling as examples). This is all done to make life as a PvP’er more meaningful, and more fun. These are massive changes to how our PvP will work in the future, and based upon your feedback from test live and live we will naturally continue to hone this important part of the game. When these changes will eventually hit live is up to the quality and balance, but we expect some great feedback from the test live server in the next few weeks, enabling us to get them out during early August. While we spent some extra time on this, I am sure you agree that getting these important features right was more essential than just getting them out. This is always the preferred course of action I think, and this is a focus we aim to keep.
As we mentioned in our June update, we are also working on making some great new dungeons and areas throughout the level ranges. This is not «just» quests (which we are making on a constant basis), but fully fledged areas with hours and hours of new content and entertainment. We have made a tentative live update content plan (when it comes to new locations) for the next year, and while I won’t even start discussing the overall plan, there are a few close enough on the horizon to be worth mentioning. This includes Ymir’s Pass, which is coming as a new big Adventuring Region in the level range 55-60. We are now working hard to ensure it comes out as soon as possible (this summer if the quality is right). Shortly after, we will add another level 80 dungeon in the Thunder River area. At the same time we will also add another dungeon to the same Outdoor Adventuring Region – being a level 80 group instance, with bosses and cool loot. This is a few examples of the many new areas to come, both for solo, groups and raids, and these will all come as part of the live updates.
I am also happy to tell you that after the first start of the massive siege PvP we put some significant resources on improving this part of the game further. There still are improvements we would like to make, including a focus on optimization and resource management (to increase performance and fun factor, respectively), as well as making siege engines, mammoths and other “wall breakers” more balanced. As more and more of you join the sieges we really want your continued feedback on this feature, and I hope you will let us know what you think on the forums.
When it comes to the overall performance of the game I also have some good news. While most players have a great time with the game, we also know that we have ways to go for those with the oldest machines. We have therefore continued to look at our memory handling and how to increase general performance, and updates on this are continously in the works. These will be brought to the live servers as we finish them, and while I won't go into specifics I know that those of you with older machines will notice improved performance in the weeks and months to come. On the other side of this spectrum you have the Direct X 10 part of the engine, which is now being worked on. What features it will have and how it will look will be unveiled at Leipzig in August, and I think those with machines who can run DX10 will be stunned by what we have achieved. We will put this into the live game as soon as the quality is good enough (during the fall).
While all the things we have done, and will do to the game, are essential, we have also gone through how we are organized. Our great success and many players has meant that we have worked around the clock to deliver the best service we can, but even this hasn’t been enough in some cases. Over the last few weeks we have therefore worked incredibly hard on hiring more GMs, customer service reps and people who serve our community, all to deliver a better service. We acknowledge we still have some ways to go before we can say we are truly happy, but we are moving towards a full coverage of our services. In the US we have added one more office building to facilitate more customer service and community people, while in Europe we are establishing a larger office in Zurich, Switzerland. This office will host customer service reps in Spanish, German and French, together with localization staff and our Euro community team. We have started the hiring process for the Zurich office, and in early fall we will have our European-only customer service center established, in addition to our already existing one in the US. We are certain this will further improve your gaming experience.
As a part of the process of adding lots of exciting new content we have also learned some important lessons when it comes to communicating dates, and we will be even more vigilant to keep to the timelines we communicate. While this is a constant nightmare when it comes to games as complex as MMO’s (as things often takes longer than anticipated to get right), it is a tradeoff in many ways. You always want to know what we are making, we want to tell it to you, but this also means that things won’t always end up on live as soon as we want it, because quality must win. As a part of this we have also worked hard on our routines for creating better update notes, so you get to learn about all the changes we implement from Funcom.
I know many of you have also asked about your buddy keys, and we have now come to a level where we are able to activate them. During the next week you will therefore be able to use your buddy keys, inviting friends to the game with you. You should also check out the massive new update we are putting to live, and not the least drop by our test live server to test the new PvP features.
That’s it for this time! I hope you all get a healthy dose of vacation this summer, and that you are enjoying Age of Conan.
Summer greetings
Gaute Godager
Game Director, Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures 
Comments
good to see the communication update about the short term plans
EQ2 fan sites
Sounds great. Sounded great last month too. Soon as I see it maybe I'll become a believer.
Still playing AOC, but am sure interested in the PVP changes particularly....its pretty pointless atm.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The guy still has no clue to reality.
The guy still has no clue to reality.
....but he did save money on his car insurance by switching to GEICO.
The guy still has no clue to reality.
It really does make youy wonder if they even listen to the players at all doesn't it. This guy is totally clueless like most others like him.
If he thinks AoC is getting better and better with every patch then why is his game loosing so many customers so quickly?
lol well they lost me 7 days into conan and the last patch nerfed or broke my class one of 3 trees useless lol
This letter smacks of another few letters from another GD ala vanguard. Its the same crap and almost but not entirely hyperbole and lies. if he "really" thinks his game and patches are doing well, then no wonder they are so bug ridden and break more things then they fix.
Face it people, this game is a POS and reminds me so much of vanguard it isnt funny. The latest patch with invisible walls and even a lvl 5 boss mob hitting people for over 2k just shows how inept the devs are in this game.
Fanbois of this game defend it just like they did vanguard.
I guarantee you this game will be under 100k subs in 6 months or less.
I could have told you that during closed beta a couple of months ago. I mostly got so fed up with this piece of crap I didn't even bother bashing it that much. MOstly to my friends and anyone hyping it up elsewhere.
Lost and depressed, where are the good MMOs at?
I thought love was
Only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else
But not for me
Love was out to get to me
That's the way it seems
Disappointment haunted
All my dreams
And then I saw the Game Director's letter
Now I'm a believer
Not a trace
Of doubt in my mind
I'm in love
I'm a believer
I couldn't leave Age of Conan
If I tried
The similarities between the AoC and the VG launch are scary.
"I guarantee you this game will be under 100k subs in 6 months or less."
no no no no no its supposed to be a FTP game in six months. Stick with the program.
Absolute opposite really.
Age of Conan has a great newbie experience, and thus receives a bunch of great reviews and a continuing presence on the top 10 NPD charts.
Vanguard on the other hand began with a fragmented newbie experience with too many starting areas. This might've been fine had there not been so many technical problems at launch, but with a dwindling population, an open, ridiculously large world became a problem rather than a feature. So Vanguard sank, even though a successful Vanguard probably wouldn't have saved Sigil anyway.
Stark and important differences...Age of Conan is making a lot of money, Vanguard was out of money before it even launched.
Gaute, while overly optimistic and seemingly blind to the concerns of his players, isn't spewing about a seven year plan like McQuaid, and his mentioning of AoC's success is backed by sales data that are only not relevant if one were to decide to instead believe falling stocks are an abnormality, and that Amazon's minute-to-minute changing bestseller search filter is the end all be all.
I've cancelled and uninstalled Age of Conan due to this press release, but there's no denying how successful the game is. Everyone who bought, played, enjoyed and then quit shouldn't be spiteful towards the people who're still enjoying the content that they themselves once enjoyed. Nor should they believe its impossible for a person's stint of enjoyment last pass what their own did; be it a week or a full month and a half like myself.
AoC deserves the success that it has, but its not enough for serial-burnouts like myself who were tired of waiting for patches 5 years ago.
Gaute is seriously out of touch with reality if he honestly think that they are improving and fixing the game. Every patch and every fix introduces more bugs.
I am not comparing AoC the game to vanguard the game. I am comparing the incompleteness of both games at launch. I am comparing the game directors releasing PR letters to its community that are nothing more than an attempt to stem the massive canceling of accounts. I am comparing the massive amount of hate threads and then the amount of fanboi responses to them. Remember silky venom?
This game SMACKS of vanguard like PR down to even its director letters and it will end up like that very same game. And the "only" reason AoC has sold so many boxes is because of the mass boredom of many WoW players. The game is bad and its success has nothing to do with it other than a smart release date.
Well he has learned one lesson very well. Don't give dates and to talk in generalities. Was it just me or do that wall of text really say nothing useful at all?
---
Ethion
It says loads actually. It tells how they are putting in content that was on the box and saying "look at our exciting new content". Its telling you that they have wonderfull features for the future. Futures that are wonderfull and exciting and new! Tells you they are going to show them at (whatever the hell the confrence was) though they leave out the part that all of this was sposed to be in at release yet wasnt. He tells you that they are keeping *most* of the same team on AoC which tells you that you will keep getting the same old BS you have been.
@sepher
I disagree.
VG and AoC were both released at least 6 months to early. Sigil admitted that they ran out of money.
Both feature graphic engines that overwhelmed the standard home-pc at their launch and people had to upgrade the hardware to run it decently. So both have/had problems to be mass-products.
Both started with high sales but lost subscriptions very fast. After like 3months people started to have problems to get groups in VG. The discussion about server merges started even earlier.
In both games the quality of support went down fast.
In both games the newsletter of the leadership was a joke.
In both games the developer threw out patches like mad and the quality of the patches were pretty bad (actually I think the VG ones were better).
Both games were hyped big time (Sigil hadnt the money to advertise though) Which lead in both games to very dissapointed customer. The forum wars on the AoC board remind me on the one of silky venom.
Sigil put out a big content update in a similar time frame as Funcom tries to release the pvp patch.
----------------------------
[quote]Vanguard on the other hand began with a fragmented newbie experience with too many starting areas. This might've been fine had there not been so many technical problems at launch, but with a dwindling population, an open, ridiculously large world became a problem rather than a feature.[/quote]
Its the first time that I hear that VG has bad starting areas. Actually its one of the best features (for a lot of races unique starting zones with lore, graphics and music). The problem of the dwindling population didnt had anything todo with the starting zones, but later after the population of VG dropped below certain levels they fragmented the few beginners. If thats what you meant, I agree.
[quote]Stark and important differences...Age of Conan is making a lot of money, Vanguard was out of money before it even launched.[/quote]
The question is, when is AoC starting to cost Funcom more than they gain through it. We will know in 1 year.
[quote]Gaute, while overly optimistic and seemingly blind to the concerns of his players, isn't spewing about a seven year plan like McQuaid, and his mentioning of AoC's success is backed by sales data that are only not relevant if one were to decide to instead believe falling stocks are an abnormality, and that Amazon's minute-to-minute changing bestseller search filter is the end all be all.[/quote]
Stocks falling, sales falling, xfire numbers falling. From my personal experience... they are loosing customers in big numbers atm.
[quote] I've cancelled and uninstalled Age of Conan due to this press release, but there's no denying how successful the game is.[/quote]
I have no clue why anybody would uninstall because of such a press release. Its simply politics like always. He cant say "Hey, we know the game is released to early and currently a buggy PoS." Hes the game director of it. Hes forced to be optimistic and tell you how bright the future of AoC will be.
And about successful... They made some big money at the start, but now the numbers are falling.
[quote]AoC deserves the success that it has, but its not enough for serial-burnouts like myself who were tired of waiting for patches 5 years ago. [/quote]
AoC is pure eyecandy. The revolutionary combat-system is in big parts a joke. Button mashing ftw. A lot of f2p asia grinder feature townwars, guildwars, realm vs realm combat. The crafting system is... well, there is crafting. There is nothing I didnt already saw in other games with better implementation. And even what they implemented is bugged.
Edit:
Sorry for the broken format, but the editor has dozens of buttons but not a single one which lets me put in quotes. And the normal [quote][/quote] doesnt seem to work. Strange.
That's a difference. Age of Conan didn't release due to a lack of money. 'least it doesn't seem so given the initial and continued marketing campaign they had the money for.
The six months too early deal is purely opinion.
People having to upgrade isn't a problem. People upgrading and still suffering performance problems is one.
There's no client-side issue in Age of Conan similar to Vanguard's hitching. Age of Conan has terrible issues of its own though, like the "Assertion Failed: Out of Memory" errors. No one client-side issue is systemic though. Server-side pausing on the other hand...
Anyway, the problem wasn't that people needed to upgrade for Vanguard. It certainly limits the playerbase of both games, but that's all its supposed to do, not kill 'em. Vanguard was killed due to hitching as far as performance problems go.
Vanguard didn't break the top 3 on the NPD I don't think. It definitely didn't top it.
Vanguard is said to have only sold over 200k copies ever, Age of Conan has already reported over 700k. That's a big difference considering Age of Conan is still selling.
Saying Age of Conan is losing subscriptions very fast is another opinion. It's also worth mentioning by this time Vanguard had blown a lot of its trial keys, while Age of Conan hasn't blown one.
Sigil had one QA person working on Vanguard 'til SOE purchased it. This current newsletter actually covers relevant matters like ramped up GM department. So that's a huge difference; ones thoughts on the effectiveness of QA and GMs is purely opinion.
Newsletter? Gaute's overly optimistic probably, but nothin' nuts like McQuad's seven years of planned design for Vanguard. Plans for chunking on the z-axis while people were still crashing to desktop at chunk lines, plans for an upgrade to the Unreal 3 engine before the current hacked up engine worked, etc.
'course some of the same could be said about Gaute, such as plans for Alliances and such before the current PvP system even functions correctly; but he hasn't been nuts enough to plan beyond this summer and later this year. In fact in this newsletter, Gaute showed reserve towards talking about even next year whereas McQuad openly professed to having designs for Vanguard 7 years into the future.
As far as the patches go...I'd agree that the quality of Age of Conan's aren't really all that good. Age of Conan's patches have to accomplish a lot less than what Vanguard's patches had to, and still have to however.
Sigil didn't have the money to advertise...that's sorta necessary for any kind of hype. That's why Age of Conan continues to sell and Vanguard drowned under all the negative word of mouth it couldn't combat.
As for the forums, Funcom's able to censor the hell out of their players due to owning their boards, whereas Sigil developers regularly wrestled with Silky Venom when it came to moderation...leading to things like banning people and limiting 'em to that one Volcano area they had.
That's a good thing that games release content updates. So that's a welcomed similarity.
That's what I meant.
It's a problem they're rectifying now with Isle of the Dawn; one that Age of Conan will avoid if their population drops given everyone starts at Tortage.
Probably never. Even if they didn't sell another copy, 700k copies sold with 100k or so being the more expensive Collector's Edition version, they probably earned back whatever they initially invested already.
The costs of running an MMO scales with subscribers...so whether its the janitor making sure the servers are plugged in or most of the original development team intact workin' on new content, the MMO will always pay for itself.
Stocks rise and fall.
Funcom's working on other MMOs right now, whereas Sigil was a sinking ship. That's pretty different as far as the health of the companies go.
As for sales falling...they're supposed to. It'd be exceptional if Age of Conan became a norm on the NPD top 10, but even if it doesn't, all it means is that its not an exception like Sims 2 and World of Warcraft.
As for activity levels normalizing after launch excitement...they're supposed to. Launch for any new game is the only time you'll find people willing to pay extra money for 3 extra days and leather maps, or see people taking vacation days from work in order to play more.
Your personal experiences lead only to opinions, just like mine do. I don't mean to be offensive, but its hard to not see Age of Conan's success right now; both in-game and out. There's NPD chart presence, there's things such as guild cities coming up (no easy feat at Tier III.)
Even if you were to say, that in your opinion of a ton of people leaving was 1 in every 5 persons, that's still an 80% retention rate from month to month which is phenomonal. So long as new box sales make up for the ones who've churned out...and that's one thing Age of Conan has right now, box sales; with buddy keys in the dugout.
Activation, cancellation and re-activation, it's all natural.
I cancelled because I don't get the point in waiting for a reason to be pissed off at a game. I'll just play it when I do more with my subscription than wait for new patches.
Yeah but its the start that matters. Getting back on point as to the differences between Sigil and Funcom; Sigil's financial start with Vanguard sank the company, Funcom posted record achievements. Big difference!
Lotsa opinion there. Whether you think Age of Conan's combat system is good or bad, that's different than Vanguard too. So is the crafting, so is the PvP design.
There's a lot similar about the two games considering they're both MMOs, but anything involving money and the health of the companies involved, critic reactions and fan reactions beyond the vocal minority...it's completely different.
The only useful bit was that he did put to rest any expectations of a PvP update in June. Unfortunately he's ignited expectations for August that Funcom's now responsible for keeping.
Unless "quality" gets in the way again, which was absent during two weeks of client- and server-destroying Alchemy botches, or numerous other bugs patched into the game.
QFT
PS: yeah gaunte fails to realise most of the patchs so far make things worse.
My blog:
I miss DAoC
Guys, keep paying sub. Maybe by 2009 AOC will be a decent game with all the features promised on release in it, working (to some degree).
I'll buy it then. Currently, I'll keep playing other games until they finish this one.
If its 6 months, 3 or 1 year, my opinion is 6 months, yeah. Im sorry, it is. Why would Gaude else write "...I know that those of you with older machines will notice improved performance in the weeks and months to come. " ?
Some lines later you write "It certainly limits the playerbase of both games,..." Thats contradicting. I dont know what hitching is (no native english speaker).
But I think we both agree that the performance of both games is/was sub-par. The game initially sold around 242,000 copies, while the number of active subscriptions (those who play longer than the free month included when buying the game) was estimated to be around 130,000[3], to drop in the next months to about 40,000[4].
And saying that AoC is bleeding subscriptions is simply true.
About buddy keys: Sigil ones was for 10days playing VG without costs, so those keys wont appear in subscriptions statistics. Actually you can twist it to: Despite having a lot more QA than Sigil, Funcom put a similar bugged game on the marked.
Anyway... the QA of both games is/was horrible. While McQuaids "vision" is truly unique and I never again saw someone so departed from reality (naval-combat anyone?), lets simply say both firms use the newsletter mainly as a platform to advertise their products. Ummm... not really. I think GU 1 from Sigil (not sure if it was 1, the one which tried to put the swamp armor quests into the game) was half unfinished, bugged to hell and just as bad as the rest of the high-level content. Well, lets see it from the bright side... They added some sort of content.
The big similarity is the timeframe. Isle of dawn is an optional startzone. Contrary to AoC you can, if you like, still access the original start-areas.
Honestly, I have no clue why a firm, trying to sell a product with high sale numbers and so few conent, will use a single starterzone. The moment you start the first twink you run into the problem that everything is already known.
AoC is so... small. Actually its safe to say that, after release of AoC, the rising part is missing completly. You mean
http://www.crygaia.com/forums/
? Looks to me like a pretty dead project, but maybe Im missing something. There are a lot of similarities between the launch of AoC and VG gamewise.
If there is a big difference between Funcom and Sigil financial wise, thats something we will know in one year. Currently its only your opinion that its completely different.
Btw, whats your opinion about Funcom releasing so early? Looks to me WAR will be released for christmas. No other big mmorpg I know will release this year. So why didnt they put more time into the game knowing that its bugged and incomplete?
this letter was from last week Friday
we yet to hear further news about Buddy Keys
EQ2 fan sites
We only serve steak and wine here. Cheap ppl please go to another forum.