AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc.
We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's.
All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion.
The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now.
you have got to be kiddin me!!! an expansion?? they cant even handle the traffic with low populations and petitions... all i wanted was a bank that worked correctly.. and to fix the memory leaks... and every patch gave me less FPS to quote pork pig "bdya bdya bdya bdya thats alllll folks!!!!
Expansion coming out early 2009. Will contain much of the content that is lacking in game atm. And probably second time ppl pay for the DX10. Lets hope its in this time. http://www.aocupdates.com/2008/07/16/age-of-conan-expansion-confirmed/ Hope you all have fun giving more Money to FC.
HAHAHA how some people seem to read is beyond me.
Now lets see what is really was said/written:Age of Conan
Earlier today we sat with Age of Conan product manager Erling Ellingsen. Due to the development cycle Conan is in right now, Ellingsen didn't really have anything in particular to show us - but he did have some things to tell us. Primarily we were there to find out about some lessons learned from the first months of Conan's launch-life. The man himself offered up:
Timeframes for the addition of new high end content like Imir's Pass.
The welcome news that the female avatar DPS bug will be squished much sooner that the 'few months' we'd previously heard.
Confirmation that the DX10 version of the game should be viewable at next month's Leipzig event.
The news that fan (especially male fan) favorite Keira will be an important quest NPC in the Imir's pass zone. The dealy assassin will offer important quests to all heroes of the appropriate level.
And a good deal more. Read on below the cut for our full interview with Mr. Ellingsen.
How do you feel about Age of Conan's launch, now that it's a few months down the line?
Erling Ellingsen: It was a fantastic launch. Technically it was perfect, servers stayed up whole time, billing, logging was great. There were of course a few bugs when we launched, but I think that's true with all MMOs. The game was perfectly playable, polished. It was just the launch that we wanted. Especially considering Anarchy Online, we were biting our fingernails.
Do you have any recollections from launch day, any memories that stand out?
We had a huge screen set up in the office that tracked the number of people logging in across the servers. We sat there, all dressed up and watching the numbers rise will drinking champagne. "Oh, the US just woke up." It was a magical experience.
How do you feel about the transition from the Beta to Live experience? It seemed as though those final patches changed a number of things and smoothed things out.
A lot of people were saying that we put in "miracle patches", and it really feels that way. Even for us at Funcom, the last couple of weeks was a real turnaround. We knew we were on track, but the last few weeks before launch everything just came together. That's the thing about MMOs, though, they can look unfinished for so long and suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Thank god!
You mentioned earlier some bugs, which we know the community has found frustrating. Were there any that you've fixed that you were particularly frustrated with?
Ooo, you're asking me to point out bugs? [he chuckles] There were a few bugs with sieging where the framerate wasn't as good as it should have been. After the first one we fixed that immediately, and performance has improved something like 300%. That's the thing with MMOs, right? You see what works and doesn't work and you fix things right away.
What we want to focus on now is the itemization experience, more graphical diversity with items, make statistics more meaningful - we know there is room for improvement there. And PvP, we want to make PvP more important. That's why we are going to be rolling out a new patch all about PvP soon. PvP levels, PvP experience, PvP items. That sort of stuff.
Some of the changes to classes deal with serious issues, but in some cases new issues have cropped up as a result of the initial changes. Do you have any sort of plan in place to deal with these ongoing problems?
We have a team just specifically working on class and class balance. There will always be the case where fixing one thing breaks something else. That's just the way MMOs are, they're very complicated. The way we fix that is just by crushing it right away, as fast as we can. We have a patch process though, right? It doesn't happen right away. Patches have to go through development, QA, the test server, and then back to QA, and then out to the live server. There's sometimes a lag there. It takes some time, but we're constantly working on issues like this.
The one bug that we know is still a concern for the community is the female DPS problem - people are definitely still talking about that. Is that patch process one of the reasons it's going to take a while to reach the players?
Rick Reynolds: That's very complicated, because it's not just one animation per attack. It depends on what weapon they're using, other circumstances as well. The animations were all given a lot of attention, to make sure they looked really good. Remember, it took a long time before women were playable in Beta, they just didn't like the way they looked. Then they found that the animations did affect your DPS. They can't just go in and trim off a few seconds from every animation. If we had just fixed the timing issue at the cost of how the animations look, that would have been its own problem.
They've been working to get them done at all levels, putting the animations in on the test server, working with QA, and getting them done at every level. The customers have asked to see what Funcom is working on before it goes live.
So that fix is on TestLive right now?
Ellingson: A part of it is. It might not be all of it. It at least addresses the problem.
That's interesting, because we had noted that you said the fix could take months. It's great the update is coming so much sooner.
Reynolds: It's tricky, because sometimes the Funcom people see something on their internal test server, and it's hard to recall whether the public can see a fix or not.
Ellingsen: It's a complex project, that's for sure. [laughs]
It seems like you are working to address some content that just wasn't in the game when it went live. The new dungeons, the new quests, the new zones, what's the timeframe on that. Is that moving to test soon?
Ellingsen: There's definitely a lot, there's a lot that we really wanted to get into the game, but because of time we just weren't able to put it in. We held off, saying "it's not good enough." There are almost 60 new quests with voiceovers, the continuation of the important lore quest. There are 30 quests that were cut before launch that are back in. They're scattered around the game but many of them are in the Eiglophian Mountains. We know that the content at 55 and higher is a bit thinner than the rest of the game.
We're also adding a new zone called Ymir's pass. That's also plus-level 55. A lot of new content for the endgame now, several dungeons coming in.
Which of these additions are going to be coming our way first?
I don't want to put a date on it, but I think we'll see Ymir's pass live in August. That new zone should be out next month. That's a huge new outdoor zone. It's in Cimmeria so there are lots of mountains and snow. Snow giants, lots of monsters, and Kiera - Conan's assassin. She's going to play a big role in the zone. She's going to be an important quest NPC in the area.
There are not that many MMO developers at E3 this year. You're here with Eidos, but we were wondering: why are you here this year?
Primarily to talk with sites like Massively - we know we don't have a lot to show right now, but we wanted to talk about things exactly like this, the new content, the bugs. We're planning a much bigger presence at Leipzig. We're going to have something good to show there. DX10. The DX10 version of the game.
Is there anything in particular about the DX10 version of the game that you enjoy? Any graphical element you really like?
The water looks really pretty? [he laughs] That's not really what it's about. It's just generally better in the details. More realistic smoke, sharper textures. It's not going to be a huge revolution, it's just going to look prettier.
We know you folks were thinking of expansion content before the game came out. When do you expect you'll be able to put the launch behind you and step up to the new content, enjoy the live game?
I don't think that's ever going to happen. We're gonna keep on going really strongly. Updating the game, patching it, making it better. The road map we have internally is long into the future.
We're definitely going to be patching and improving. We're of course working on an expansion, though we're not really ready to talk about that now. We do think it will launch early next year, though. We'll start leaking more information about that soon, though.
Thank you very much for your time, sir. Have a good show.
Hope you enjoyed what REALLY was said. Though it probebly wil lbe ripped apart anyhow, some wil find something....I bet...
I hope no one pays for an expansion until the company delivers on at least the majority of their initial promises and fixes the game.
If they have the gall to release an expansion to a game that is not yet version 1.0, but more like version 0.85, then people should vote with their wallets and let them know, and all game companies know, that is a load of crap.
Or maybe they just want to milk the game as quickly as possible before it fades to obscurity? If they can sell that expansion to even 100,000 players it would be profitable, I bet.
With three fairly large fantasy MMORPG releases/expansions within the next year (WotLK, WAR, Aion), plus huge online games like Starcraft II and Spore, AoC will be a footnote in MMORPG history if it cannot make its core audience stay loyal and then expand that audience further.
Usually I just read most of the posts on here and dont comment but this topic really struck a nerve. I admit I was into AoC alot cause of the features and new ideas that they stated were in the game. As you can prob tell, I gave up on that after finding out most of it wasnt in the game. Also, nothing pisses me off more then reading the shyt that guy spews in his interview. Saying it was a great launch and crap. The servers might of been stable but I do recall huge huge bugs, expecially the black screen and others they he failed to mention. As you guys said if they state they are putting in dx10 and seige stuff in this expansion( that we have to pay for again) ,im going lose my size 11 shoe up one of their arses. I agree with most of the posts. Fix what is promised, then worry about expansions period.
CPU-HP Omen 17.3" Laptop i7 12 GB AMD Radeon RX580 1 TB Hard Drive
HAHAHA how some people seem to read is beyond me. Now lets see what is really was said/written:Age of Conan
Hope you enjoyed what REALLY was said. Though it probebly wil lbe ripped apart anyhow, some wil find something....I bet...
Nothing has been ripped apart. They still planning to launch a PAID expansion pack early next year! While every reasonable and intelligent person here KNOWS they CANNOT even fix the CURRENT game before the end of the year and implement all the missing and broken content that was promissed at launch!
What you think what mess is going to bring when they add the DX10 update?
What you think what mess is going to bring when they update and launch for the XBOX360 in autumn?
So how you say and how this interview is saying, doesn't matter! They are out of their mind if they THINK they can convince people to PAY for a PAID expansion already early next year!
Expansion coming out early 2009. Will contain much of the content that is lacking in game atm. And probably second time ppl pay for the DX10. Lets hope its in this time. http://www.aocupdates.com/2008/07/16/age-of-conan-expansion-confirmed/ Hope you all have fun giving more Money to FC.
HAHAHA how some people seem to read is beyond me.
Now lets see what is really was said/written:Age of Conan
Earlier today we sat with Age of Conan product manager Erling Ellingsen. Due to the development cycle Conan is in right now, Ellingsen didn't really have anything in particular to show us - but he did have some things to tell us. Primarily we were there to find out about some lessons learned from the first months of Conan's launch-life. The man himself offered up:
Timeframes for the addition of new high end content like Imir's Pass.
The welcome news that the female avatar DPS bug will be squished much sooner that the 'few months' we'd previously heard.
Confirmation that the DX10 version of the game should be viewable at next month's Leipzig event.
The news that fan (especially male fan) favorite Keira will be an important quest NPC in the Imir's pass zone. The dealy assassin will offer important quests to all heroes of the appropriate level.
And a good deal more. Read on below the cut for our full interview with Mr. Ellingsen.
How do you feel about Age of Conan's launch, now that it's a few months down the line?
Erling Ellingsen: It was a fantastic launch. Technically it was perfect, servers stayed up whole time, billing, logging was great. There were of course a few bugs when we launched, but I think that's true with all MMOs. The game was perfectly playable, polished. It was just the launch that we wanted. Especially considering Anarchy Online, we were biting our fingernails.
Do you have any recollections from launch day, any memories that stand out?
We had a huge screen set up in the office that tracked the number of people logging in across the servers. We sat there, all dressed up and watching the numbers rise will drinking champagne. "Oh, the US just woke up." It was a magical experience.
How do you feel about the transition from the Beta to Live experience? It seemed as though those final patches changed a number of things and smoothed things out.
A lot of people were saying that we put in "miracle patches", and it really feels that way. Even for us at Funcom, the last couple of weeks was a real turnaround. We knew we were on track, but the last few weeks before launch everything just came together. That's the thing about MMOs, though, they can look unfinished for so long and suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Thank god!
You mentioned earlier some bugs, which we know the community has found frustrating. Were there any that you've fixed that you were particularly frustrated with?
Ooo, you're asking me to point out bugs? [he chuckles] There were a few bugs with sieging where the framerate wasn't as good as it should have been. After the first one we fixed that immediately, and performance has improved something like 300%. That's the thing with MMOs, right? You see what works and doesn't work and you fix things right away.
What we want to focus on now is the itemization experience, more graphical diversity with items, make statistics more meaningful - we know there is room for improvement there. And PvP, we want to make PvP more important. That's why we are going to be rolling out a new patch all about PvP soon. PvP levels, PvP experience, PvP items. That sort of stuff.
Some of the changes to classes deal with serious issues, but in some cases new issues have cropped up as a result of the initial changes. Do you have any sort of plan in place to deal with these ongoing problems?
We have a team just specifically working on class and class balance. There will always be the case where fixing one thing breaks something else. That's just the way MMOs are, they're very complicated. The way we fix that is just by crushing it right away, as fast as we can. We have a patch process though, right? It doesn't happen right away. Patches have to go through development, QA, the test server, and then back to QA, and then out to the live server. There's sometimes a lag there. It takes some time, but we're constantly working on issues like this.
The one bug that we know is still a concern for the community is the female DPS problem - people are definitely still talking about that. Is that patch process one of the reasons it's going to take a while to reach the players?
Rick Reynolds: That's very complicated, because it's not just one animation per attack. It depends on what weapon they're using, other circumstances as well. The animations were all given a lot of attention, to make sure they looked really good. Remember, it took a long time before women were playable in Beta, they just didn't like the way they looked. Then they found that the animations did affect your DPS. They can't just go in and trim off a few seconds from every animation. If we had just fixed the timing issue at the cost of how the animations look, that would have been its own problem.
They've been working to get them done at all levels, putting the animations in on the test server, working with QA, and getting them done at every level. The customers have asked to see what Funcom is working on before it goes live.
So that fix is on TestLive right now?
Ellingson: A part of it is. It might not be all of it. It at least addresses the problem.
That's interesting, because we had noted that you said the fix could take months. It's great the update is coming so much sooner.
Reynolds: It's tricky, because sometimes the Funcom people see something on their internal test server, and it's hard to recall whether the public can see a fix or not.
Ellingsen: It's a complex project, that's for sure. [laughs]
It seems like you are working to address some content that just wasn't in the game when it went live. The new dungeons, the new quests, the new zones, what's the timeframe on that. Is that moving to test soon?
Ellingsen: There's definitely a lot, there's a lot that we really wanted to get into the game, but because of time we just weren't able to put it in. We held off, saying "it's not good enough." There are almost 60 new quests with voiceovers, the continuation of the important lore quest. There are 30 quests that were cut before launch that are back in. They're scattered around the game but many of them are in the Eiglophian Mountains. We know that the content at 55 and higher is a bit thinner than the rest of the game.
We're also adding a new zone called Ymir's pass. That's also plus-level 55. A lot of new content for the endgame now, several dungeons coming in.
Which of these additions are going to be coming our way first?
I don't want to put a date on it, but I think we'll see Ymir's pass live in August. That new zone should be out next month. That's a huge new outdoor zone. It's in Cimmeria so there are lots of mountains and snow. Snow giants, lots of monsters, and Kiera - Conan's assassin. She's going to play a big role in the zone. She's going to be an important quest NPC in the area.
There are not that many MMO developers at E3 this year. You're here with Eidos, but we were wondering: why are you here this year?
Primarily to talk with sites like Massively - we know we don't have a lot to show right now, but we wanted to talk about things exactly like this, the new content, the bugs. We're planning a much bigger presence at Leipzig. We're going to have something good to show there. DX10. The DX10 version of the game.
Is there anything in particular about the DX10 version of the game that you enjoy? Any graphical element you really like?
The water looks really pretty? [he laughs] That's not really what it's about. It's just generally better in the details. More realistic smoke, sharper textures. It's not going to be a huge revolution, it's just going to look prettier.
We know you folks were thinking of expansion content before the game came out. When do you expect you'll be able to put the launch behind you and step up to the new content, enjoy the live game?
I don't think that's ever going to happen. We're gonna keep on going really strongly. Updating the game, patching it, making it better. The road map we have internally is long into the future.
We're definitely going to be patching and improving. We're of course working on an expansion, though we're not really ready to talk about that now. We do think it will launch early next year, though. We'll start leaking more information about that soon, though.
Thank you very much for your time, sir. Have a good show.
Hope you enjoyed what REALLY was said. Though it probebly wil lbe ripped apart anyhow, some wil find something....I bet...
Yes - the fact that the Dev talks about patching and fixing but does not mention free content patches. We are starting to read between the lines of this FC PR. OR should I rather say - read between the lies ?
You do realise this is the same person that talked about massive PVP sieges with 100s of players ? Dont you not ? Lets see that before payed expansion - Shall we ?
Watch this movie with the same PR person showing us Siege battles. Oh and btw this is done in August 2007... This is NOT for the next expansion.
Yes - you have probably figured out what they did - They spent their time coding a fight for the press PR instead of actually making a working. And btw... the engine crashed....lol
How do you feel about Age of Conan's launch, now that it's a few months down the line?
Erling Ellingsen: It was a fantastic launch. Technically it was perfect, servers stayed up whole time, billing, logging was great. There were of course a few bugs when we launched, but I think that's true with all MMOs. The game was perfectly playable, polished. It was just the launch that we wanted. Especially considering Anarchy Online, we were biting our fingernails.
Anyone who reads that and has half a brain will stop reading right there. The interview starts with a blatant lie, why continue with the rest?
This guy can't be serious. The game is STILL broken, plagued with memory leaks, crashes, and patches that break more stuff than they fix (bosses hitting for 2,000+ damage at a part in the game where at most you have a few hundred hit points anyone, and at a point in the game that is entirely solo anyone??). The launch was one of the poorest in MMO history by most accounts.
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc. We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's. All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion. The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now. bravo all the doom theories and mis-information.
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc. We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's. All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion. The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now. bravo all the doom theories and mis-information.
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
How can you defend their behavior still?
I have to Agree with you Draccan.
Avery, I've always respected your opinions and agreed with most of them but I can't agree with what you are saying.
The game feels unfinished to me, although I did had fun it just didn't held my atention, I unfortunately cancelled this week.
They shouldn't be talking about expansions when the game is still lacking some features that were printed on the box, that are not working in game or are completely buggy.
This thread is a very good proof of what we would get if we have a collection of people who are not capable of understanding what they read.
Seriously, if you understood that they will fix the current bugs and add the content in expansion, either your IQ level is very very low, or you just want to disturb its current players. I think it's both.
----------------------------- Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
This thread is a very good proof of what we would get if we have a collection of people who are not capable of understanding what they read. Seriously, if you understood that they will fix the current bugs and add the content in expansion, either your IQ level is very very low, or you just want to disturb its current players. I think it's both.
Its current players are already disturbed, why else are they still paying to beta test?
I really do think Funcom is focused on the 360 release, they just got lucky enough to dupe we PC users into paying to beta test it for the Xbox'rs. That would at least explain the lack of content and challenge, its perfect for a console MMO.
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc. We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's. All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion. The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now. bravo all the doom theories and mis-information.
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
How can you defend their behavior still?
Whilst I have disagreed with you on many other points, the one you make above about them looking bad for not diverting all available resources to fix existing issues is excellent.
Even if Funcom didn't want to divert resources internally, surely they must have realised that to make this sort of announcement now was a PR disaster.
Existing players that are unhappy with the level of content will just feel that they are deliberately holding back & that will probably make them more likely to quit, rather than eagerly await the expansion.
By rushing the announcement of an expansion, Funcom are giving the impression that they are losing confidence in the game & want to make as much money as possible in the short term because they are concerned that if the player base declines too much an expansion might not be profitable enough in the future.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc. We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's. All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion. The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now. bravo all the doom theories and mis-information.
Does this mean the XBox players will get the expansion with the purchase, but PC users will have to pay for it?
I enjoy the game quite a bit, the combat is fun, but I just hit lvl 70 and I'm bored shitless cos I've got 10 lvls of pure grind to go. They need all their people working on the game at present not a friggen expansion.
Announcing the x-pack so early is very smart move by Funcom. All the fanbois will continue to pay the monthly fee, waiting for the x-pack that will fix this half finished, bugridden game.
It will NOT come early 2009. More likely dec 09 or early 2010. And yes, the fanbois will pay the monthly fee from now until then (about 18 of them...), hoping, hoping.
Announcing the x-pack so early is very smart move by Funcom. All the fanbois will continue to pay the monthly fee, waiting for the x-pack that will fix this half finished, bugridden game.
It will NOT come early 2009. More likely dec 09 or early 2010. And yes, the fanbois will pay the monthly fee from now until then (about 18 of them...), hoping, hoping.
Why do you still say the x-pac will not be out early next year, sice we have already read from the horse mouth that it will?
I wouldnt be surpride that they are putting most of the, suppose to be inside the game during launch, gameplay into the x-pac and come out claiming its NEW!!!! ITS BEEN WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! BUY NOW!!! kinda crap thing......
So its really rather easy for them to release it by early next year you see.....
Comments
GG goodbye funcom.
Expansion was talked about quite a while ago. It has a seperate team, polls were put up what races you would like to see etc etc.
We know that there will be plenty of RP / morality quests, 2 new starting area's and a host of other idea's.
All this 6 months before the game got released. These are added idea's, most planned on their roadmap as a fully fledged expansion.
The main thing is they said the 360 version will release as one version, encompassing the expac. At the same time the PC version will have the expansion released. Look for it a year from now.
bravo all the doom theories and mis-information.
you have got to be kiddin me!!! an expansion?? they cant even handle the traffic with low populations and petitions... all i wanted was a bank that worked correctly.. and to fix the memory leaks... and every patch gave me less FPS to quote pork pig "bdya bdya bdya bdya thats alllll folks!!!!
HAHAHA how some people seem to read is beyond me.
Now lets see what is really was said/written:Age of Conan
by Michael Zenke Jul 15th 2008 at 4:45PM
And a good deal more. Read on below the cut for our full interview with Mr. Ellingsen.
How do you feel about Age of Conan's launch, now that it's a few months down the line?
Erling Ellingsen: It was a fantastic launch. Technically it was perfect, servers stayed up whole time, billing, logging was great. There were of course a few bugs when we launched, but I think that's true with all MMOs. The game was perfectly playable, polished. It was just the launch that we wanted. Especially considering Anarchy Online, we were biting our fingernails.
Do you have any recollections from launch day, any memories that stand out?
We had a huge screen set up in the office that tracked the number of people logging in across the servers. We sat there, all dressed up and watching the numbers rise will drinking champagne. "Oh, the US just woke up." It was a magical experience.
How do you feel about the transition from the Beta to Live experience? It seemed as though those final patches changed a number of things and smoothed things out.
A lot of people were saying that we put in "miracle patches", and it really feels that way. Even for us at Funcom, the last couple of weeks was a real turnaround. We knew we were on track, but the last few weeks before launch everything just came together. That's the thing about MMOs, though, they can look unfinished for so long and suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Thank god!
You mentioned earlier some bugs, which we know the community has found frustrating. Were there any that you've fixed that you were particularly frustrated with?
Ooo, you're asking me to point out bugs? [he chuckles] There were a few bugs with sieging where the framerate wasn't as good as it should have been. After the first one we fixed that immediately, and performance has improved something like 300%. That's the thing with MMOs, right? You see what works and doesn't work and you fix things right away.
What we want to focus on now is the itemization experience, more graphical diversity with items, make statistics more meaningful - we know there is room for improvement there. And PvP, we want to make PvP more important. That's why we are going to be rolling out a new patch all about PvP soon. PvP levels, PvP experience, PvP items. That sort of stuff.
Some of the changes to classes deal with serious issues, but in some cases new issues have cropped up as a result of the initial changes. Do you have any sort of plan in place to deal with these ongoing problems?
We have a team just specifically working on class and class balance. There will always be the case where fixing one thing breaks something else. That's just the way MMOs are, they're very complicated. The way we fix that is just by crushing it right away, as fast as we can. We have a patch process though, right? It doesn't happen right away. Patches have to go through development, QA, the test server, and then back to QA, and then out to the live server. There's sometimes a lag there. It takes some time, but we're constantly working on issues like this.
The one bug that we know is still a concern for the community is the female DPS problem - people are definitely still talking about that. Is that patch process one of the reasons it's going to take a while to reach the players?
Rick Reynolds: That's very complicated, because it's not just one animation per attack. It depends on what weapon they're using, other circumstances as well. The animations were all given a lot of attention, to make sure they looked really good. Remember, it took a long time before women were playable in Beta, they just didn't like the way they looked. Then they found that the animations did affect your DPS. They can't just go in and trim off a few seconds from every animation. If we had just fixed the timing issue at the cost of how the animations look, that would have been its own problem.
They've been working to get them done at all levels, putting the animations in on the test server, working with QA, and getting them done at every level. The customers have asked to see what Funcom is working on before it goes live.
So that fix is on TestLive right now?
Ellingson: A part of it is. It might not be all of it. It at least addresses the problem.
That's interesting, because we had noted that you said the fix could take months. It's great the update is coming so much sooner.
Reynolds: It's tricky, because sometimes the Funcom people see something on their internal test server, and it's hard to recall whether the public can see a fix or not.
Ellingsen: It's a complex project, that's for sure. [laughs]
It seems like you are working to address some content that just wasn't in the game when it went live. The new dungeons, the new quests, the new zones, what's the timeframe on that. Is that moving to test soon?
Ellingsen: There's definitely a lot, there's a lot that we really wanted to get into the game, but because of time we just weren't able to put it in. We held off, saying "it's not good enough." There are almost 60 new quests with voiceovers, the continuation of the important lore quest. There are 30 quests that were cut before launch that are back in. They're scattered around the game but many of them are in the Eiglophian Mountains. We know that the content at 55 and higher is a bit thinner than the rest of the game.
We're also adding a new zone called Ymir's pass. That's also plus-level 55. A lot of new content for the endgame now, several dungeons coming in.
Which of these additions are going to be coming our way first?
I don't want to put a date on it, but I think we'll see Ymir's pass live in August. That new zone should be out next month. That's a huge new outdoor zone. It's in Cimmeria so there are lots of mountains and snow. Snow giants, lots of monsters, and Kiera - Conan's assassin. She's going to play a big role in the zone. She's going to be an important quest NPC in the area.
There are not that many MMO developers at E3 this year. You're here with Eidos, but we were wondering: why are you here this year?
Primarily to talk with sites like Massively - we know we don't have a lot to show right now, but we wanted to talk about things exactly like this, the new content, the bugs. We're planning a much bigger presence at Leipzig. We're going to have something good to show there. DX10. The DX10 version of the game.
Is there anything in particular about the DX10 version of the game that you enjoy? Any graphical element you really like?
The water looks really pretty? [he laughs] That's not really what it's about. It's just generally better in the details. More realistic smoke, sharper textures. It's not going to be a huge revolution, it's just going to look prettier.
We know you folks were thinking of expansion content before the game came out. When do you expect you'll be able to put the launch behind you and step up to the new content, enjoy the live game?
I don't think that's ever going to happen. We're gonna keep on going really strongly. Updating the game, patching it, making it better. The road map we have internally is long into the future.
We're definitely going to be patching and improving. We're of course working on an expansion, though we're not really ready to talk about that now. We do think it will launch early next year, though. We'll start leaking more information about that soon, though.
Thank you very much for your time, sir. Have a good show.
Hope you enjoyed what REALLY was said. Though it probebly wil lbe ripped apart anyhow, some wil find something....I bet...
I hope no one pays for an expansion until the company delivers on at least the majority of their initial promises and fixes the game.
If they have the gall to release an expansion to a game that is not yet version 1.0, but more like version 0.85, then people should vote with their wallets and let them know, and all game companies know, that is a load of crap.
Or maybe they just want to milk the game as quickly as possible before it fades to obscurity? If they can sell that expansion to even 100,000 players it would be profitable, I bet.
With three fairly large fantasy MMORPG releases/expansions within the next year (WotLK, WAR, Aion), plus huge online games like Starcraft II and Spore, AoC will be a footnote in MMORPG history if it cannot make its core audience stay loyal and then expand that audience further.
I heard this before same scams different game. Pay out the ass for them bugfixes.
http://hgc.forumup.info/viewtopic.php?t=43&mforum=hgc
http://hgc.forumup.info/viewtopic.php?t=27&mforum=hgc
Usually I just read most of the posts on here and dont comment but this topic really struck a nerve. I admit I was into AoC alot cause of the features and new ideas that they stated were in the game. As you can prob tell, I gave up on that after finding out most of it wasnt in the game. Also, nothing pisses me off more then reading the shyt that guy spews in his interview. Saying it was a great launch and crap. The servers might of been stable but I do recall huge huge bugs, expecially the black screen and others they he failed to mention. As you guys said if they state they are putting in dx10 and seige stuff in this expansion( that we have to pay for again) ,im going lose my size 11 shoe up one of their arses. I agree with most of the posts. Fix what is promised, then worry about expansions period.
CPU-HP Omen 17.3" Laptop i7 12 GB AMD Radeon RX580 1 TB Hard Drive
Nothing has been ripped apart. They still planning to launch a PAID expansion pack early next year! While every reasonable and intelligent person here KNOWS they CANNOT even fix the CURRENT game before the end of the year and implement all the missing and broken content that was promissed at launch!
What you think what mess is going to bring when they add the DX10 update?
What you think what mess is going to bring when they update and launch for the XBOX360 in autumn?
So how you say and how this interview is saying, doesn't matter! They are out of their mind if they THINK they can convince people to PAY for a PAID expansion already early next year!
Enough said.
HAHAHA how some people seem to read is beyond me.
Now lets see what is really was said/written:Age of Conan
by Michael Zenke Jul 15th 2008 at 4:45PM
And a good deal more. Read on below the cut for our full interview with Mr. Ellingsen.
How do you feel about Age of Conan's launch, now that it's a few months down the line?
Erling Ellingsen: It was a fantastic launch. Technically it was perfect, servers stayed up whole time, billing, logging was great. There were of course a few bugs when we launched, but I think that's true with all MMOs. The game was perfectly playable, polished. It was just the launch that we wanted. Especially considering Anarchy Online, we were biting our fingernails.
Do you have any recollections from launch day, any memories that stand out?
We had a huge screen set up in the office that tracked the number of people logging in across the servers. We sat there, all dressed up and watching the numbers rise will drinking champagne. "Oh, the US just woke up." It was a magical experience.
How do you feel about the transition from the Beta to Live experience? It seemed as though those final patches changed a number of things and smoothed things out.
A lot of people were saying that we put in "miracle patches", and it really feels that way. Even for us at Funcom, the last couple of weeks was a real turnaround. We knew we were on track, but the last few weeks before launch everything just came together. That's the thing about MMOs, though, they can look unfinished for so long and suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Thank god!
You mentioned earlier some bugs, which we know the community has found frustrating. Were there any that you've fixed that you were particularly frustrated with?
Ooo, you're asking me to point out bugs? [he chuckles] There were a few bugs with sieging where the framerate wasn't as good as it should have been. After the first one we fixed that immediately, and performance has improved something like 300%. That's the thing with MMOs, right? You see what works and doesn't work and you fix things right away.
What we want to focus on now is the itemization experience, more graphical diversity with items, make statistics more meaningful - we know there is room for improvement there. And PvP, we want to make PvP more important. That's why we are going to be rolling out a new patch all about PvP soon. PvP levels, PvP experience, PvP items. That sort of stuff.
Some of the changes to classes deal with serious issues, but in some cases new issues have cropped up as a result of the initial changes. Do you have any sort of plan in place to deal with these ongoing problems?
We have a team just specifically working on class and class balance. There will always be the case where fixing one thing breaks something else. That's just the way MMOs are, they're very complicated. The way we fix that is just by crushing it right away, as fast as we can. We have a patch process though, right? It doesn't happen right away. Patches have to go through development, QA, the test server, and then back to QA, and then out to the live server. There's sometimes a lag there. It takes some time, but we're constantly working on issues like this.
The one bug that we know is still a concern for the community is the female DPS problem - people are definitely still talking about that. Is that patch process one of the reasons it's going to take a while to reach the players?
Rick Reynolds: That's very complicated, because it's not just one animation per attack. It depends on what weapon they're using, other circumstances as well. The animations were all given a lot of attention, to make sure they looked really good. Remember, it took a long time before women were playable in Beta, they just didn't like the way they looked. Then they found that the animations did affect your DPS. They can't just go in and trim off a few seconds from every animation. If we had just fixed the timing issue at the cost of how the animations look, that would have been its own problem.
They've been working to get them done at all levels, putting the animations in on the test server, working with QA, and getting them done at every level. The customers have asked to see what Funcom is working on before it goes live.
So that fix is on TestLive right now?
Ellingson: A part of it is. It might not be all of it. It at least addresses the problem.
That's interesting, because we had noted that you said the fix could take months. It's great the update is coming so much sooner.
Reynolds: It's tricky, because sometimes the Funcom people see something on their internal test server, and it's hard to recall whether the public can see a fix or not.
Ellingsen: It's a complex project, that's for sure. [laughs]
It seems like you are working to address some content that just wasn't in the game when it went live. The new dungeons, the new quests, the new zones, what's the timeframe on that. Is that moving to test soon?
Ellingsen: There's definitely a lot, there's a lot that we really wanted to get into the game, but because of time we just weren't able to put it in. We held off, saying "it's not good enough." There are almost 60 new quests with voiceovers, the continuation of the important lore quest. There are 30 quests that were cut before launch that are back in. They're scattered around the game but many of them are in the Eiglophian Mountains. We know that the content at 55 and higher is a bit thinner than the rest of the game.
We're also adding a new zone called Ymir's pass. That's also plus-level 55. A lot of new content for the endgame now, several dungeons coming in.
Which of these additions are going to be coming our way first?
I don't want to put a date on it, but I think we'll see Ymir's pass live in August. That new zone should be out next month. That's a huge new outdoor zone. It's in Cimmeria so there are lots of mountains and snow. Snow giants, lots of monsters, and Kiera - Conan's assassin. She's going to play a big role in the zone. She's going to be an important quest NPC in the area.
There are not that many MMO developers at E3 this year. You're here with Eidos, but we were wondering: why are you here this year?
Primarily to talk with sites like Massively - we know we don't have a lot to show right now, but we wanted to talk about things exactly like this, the new content, the bugs. We're planning a much bigger presence at Leipzig. We're going to have something good to show there. DX10. The DX10 version of the game.
Is there anything in particular about the DX10 version of the game that you enjoy? Any graphical element you really like?
The water looks really pretty? [he laughs] That's not really what it's about. It's just generally better in the details. More realistic smoke, sharper textures. It's not going to be a huge revolution, it's just going to look prettier.
We know you folks were thinking of expansion content before the game came out. When do you expect you'll be able to put the launch behind you and step up to the new content, enjoy the live game?
I don't think that's ever going to happen. We're gonna keep on going really strongly. Updating the game, patching it, making it better. The road map we have internally is long into the future.
We're definitely going to be patching and improving. We're of course working on an expansion, though we're not really ready to talk about that now. We do think it will launch early next year, though. We'll start leaking more information about that soon, though.
Thank you very much for your time, sir. Have a good show.
Hope you enjoyed what REALLY was said. Though it probebly wil lbe ripped apart anyhow, some wil find something....I bet...
Yes - the fact that the Dev talks about patching and fixing but does not mention free content patches. We are starting to read between the lines of this FC PR. OR should I rather say - read between the lies ?
You do realise this is the same person that talked about massive PVP sieges with 100s of players ? Dont you not ? Lets see that before payed expansion - Shall we ?
Watch this movie with the same PR person showing us Siege battles. Oh and btw this is done in August 2007... This is NOT for the next expansion.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gc-germany.cfm/section/videos/id/1098
Yes - you have probably figured out what they did - They spent their time coding a fight for the press PR instead of actually making a working. And btw... the engine crashed....lol
Haha - the US forums have found the name for the expansion
Age of Conan: The Other Half
RIght between the topics Funcom: It's the memory leak, stupid and Where did everyone go?
hahaha
Anyone who reads that and has half a brain will stop reading right there. The interview starts with a blatant lie, why continue with the rest?
This guy can't be serious. The game is STILL broken, plagued with memory leaks, crashes, and patches that break more stuff than they fix (bosses hitting for 2,000+ damage at a part in the game where at most you have a few hundred hit points anyone, and at a point in the game that is entirely solo anyone??). The launch was one of the poorest in MMO history by most accounts.
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
How can you defend their behavior still?
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
____________________________
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
How can you defend their behavior still?
I have to Agree with you Draccan.
Avery, I've always respected your opinions and agreed with most of them but I can't agree with what you are saying.
The game feels unfinished to me, although I did had fun it just didn't held my atention, I unfortunately cancelled this week.
They shouldn't be talking about expansions when the game is still lacking some features that were printed on the box, that are not working in game or are completely buggy.
Good luck with this game.
This thread is a very good proof of what we would get if we have a collection of people who are not capable of understanding what they read.
Seriously, if you understood that they will fix the current bugs and add the content in expansion, either your IQ level is very very low, or you just want to disturb its current players. I think it's both.
-----------------------------
Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
Its current players are already disturbed, why else are they still paying to beta test?
That is if fc still owns aoc by 2k9
I'm not a no life that sits in front of his computer all day long, I'm an intern that sits in front of his computer all day long.
I really do think Funcom is focused on the 360 release, they just got lucky enough to dupe we PC users into paying to beta test it for the Xbox'rs. That would at least explain the lack of content and challenge, its perfect for a console MMO.
It is funny how you can write this.
AoC is so filled with problems that even the thought of Funcom to have not pulled development from the expansion team and the 360 to fix those just put the company in an even worse light.
How can you defend their behavior still?
Whilst I have disagreed with you on many other points, the one you make above about them looking bad for not diverting all available resources to fix existing issues is excellent.
Even if Funcom didn't want to divert resources internally, surely they must have realised that to make this sort of announcement now was a PR disaster.
Existing players that are unhappy with the level of content will just feel that they are deliberately holding back & that will probably make them more likely to quit, rather than eagerly await the expansion.
By rushing the announcement of an expansion, Funcom are giving the impression that they are losing confidence in the game & want to make as much money as possible in the short term because they are concerned that if the player base declines too much an expansion might not be profitable enough in the future.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
Does this mean the XBox players will get the expansion with the purchase, but PC users will have to pay for it?
This is a kick in the nuts.
I enjoy the game quite a bit, the combat is fun, but I just hit lvl 70 and I'm bored shitless cos I've got 10 lvls of pure grind to go. They need all their people working on the game at present not a friggen expansion.
O_o o_O
Announcing the x-pack so early is very smart move by Funcom. All the fanbois will continue to pay the monthly fee, waiting for the x-pack that will fix this half finished, bugridden game.
It will NOT come early 2009. More likely dec 09 or early 2010. And yes, the fanbois will pay the monthly fee from now until then (about 18 of them...), hoping, hoping.
Why do you still say the x-pac will not be out early next year, sice we have already read from the horse mouth that it will?
I wouldnt be surpride that they are putting most of the, suppose to be inside the game during launch, gameplay into the x-pac and come out claiming its NEW!!!! ITS BEEN WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!!! BUY NOW!!! kinda crap thing......
So its really rather easy for them to release it by early next year you see.....
RIP Orc Choppa