Age of Conan

Gamespot has an interview up where Jorgen Tharaldsen, product director, sits down at the Austin Game Developers Conference and talks about the future, past, WoW and Warhammer Online.

Obviously I can forsee some comments/flames flying in with regards to what he says, especially from the fans of the games mentioned above. And especially with one sentance there...

Here is a snippet:

And here is the link to the interview: www.gamespot.com/news/6197976.html

It's an interesting read!

I'd love to blame some of it on translation to English, but really I think the FunCom Heads just don't get it.

The 'what we did right' list is longer than accurate  and the 'where we went wrong' list is way, way, way too short

Maybe they should all keep their mouths shut and let Craig do all the talking from now on.

polishing? Polishing is when something works but you want it to work a bit better. It did not work at all!

GameSpot: What do you guys think you killed?
Jørgen Tharaldsen: You can look at it in two ways. There's the game itself, and everything that surrounded it. When it came to the game itself, there are a few things we did really, really well. There's the storytelling, the presentation of quests, and the immersion in the world, and that included the graphics and the audio--I think we blew everyone away with that. How you feel inside the universe, I think, is unique compared to anything that's come before us, just putting all the actors in there.

Sadly the immersion for me was killed alot by the over use of instancing. Later this became less of a problem because less actually played so the instances became fewer. Honestly many people now have an utter distaste for instance's. It became a Multiplayer game instead of an MMO.

The story line I did like but it was Conan so it's hard not to.

The quest system had a bit to much redundency to me. Accept a quest , go out complete the quest, come back to quest giver and recieve your reward. Rinse and repeat many times. This made most quests feel like repeatable quest that merely recycled NPC's.

I'm also very happy with going the active route with the combat system. It feels a lot more responsive, a lot more fun actually. It's a bit stale going back to the old mechanics. I think taking that step forward and having the guts to do that is something that paid off in the end. It was a very hard choice because it took us a lot of time to get it right and polish it, but I think it's given us something really good out the door, and a great foundation to build further on. And that's on the mechanic side.

The combat was a baby step in the direction players have been wanting for a good while now but it could have been done better. It is the same combat system used by other real time combat MMORPG's but with a new flavor. It's still push button 1 then 2 then 3 and watch cooldowns. This is a step in the right direction though sadly it still isn't real time combat because there is still lock on.  They do get credit for softening up the MMO community for an actual real time combat system to come out.

There's also many small things. How we took the Conan license, how we stayed true to it, and how we expanded on Howard's work instead of just taking it and trying to cash in on the license, but really respecting it and evolving it. And that's something we did great as well. There were many areas that we achieved what we set out to do.

Well in all honesty they have no choice in this matter. By obtaining a license they have to go by the guide lines of the IP's owner this is true with any game based on someone else's IP. if you look at many interviews done within the industry you will see that licensed IP's are a huge head ache for this very reason. Many things will be added by people that have no experience in the gaming industry and this usualy leads to issues devs have to deal with.

On the flip side..... Well the player base has done an adequate job pointing out the numerous flaws so there is no need to restate them all when a simple search can achieve the same end.

I do give Age of Conan props on Sound and Graphics and I realy like that it is a Conan IP but..... the over all game would have been a great single player and even looks as if it was originaly made as such.  As a MMO is just doesn't cut it by todays standards. Instance's kill immersion and the ammount of instances in AoC is ridiculus. The quest system is only innovative in the since that it all seems to revolve around the principles used for repeatable quests and constantly recycles NPC's numerous times. If the NPC's had intellegent AI and were had a bit more life to them this wouldn't be that bad but as it stands now the NPC's are pretty generic after the first meetings. Other games in Development have taken this to heart.

In whole AoC turned a very nice concept into a novelty game. Not even a niche game just a novelty game where the novelty factor wears off fast leaving you with a feeling of meh after awhile. The initial feeling is far better than most but fades fast.

They can keep polishing this turd all they want, the result will still be the same. It will be interesting to see what new lies Funcom can come up with, however, with this new guy in charge. I'd love to hear more on how the upcoming "Expansion" is coming along, LOL! That was a funny one, though, announcing an expansion with a retail game released in alpha stage, one of their funniest lies IMO.

I actually had a much funner time playing AOC for 3 mths than i have in warhammer even though i have only played WAR a couple days. War just doesnt seem to have anything that makes me want to stay up late playing it and regretting the lack of sleep the next day which i truly miss. Im always looking to get that next online game fix like I had back in EQ1. May never get it back, might be a one time high but at least AOC graphics and fighting system was a GREAT improvement to the online games that have come out so far. Huxley where are you?.................And yes, I will still try to learn to like Warhammer just in case im missing something, and then go back to WOW or AOC or hopefully call of duty 5 will come out to fill the morpph gap till my next fix. If lineage 3 is even being made thats a game i would jump on, L2 had some good game play, to many farmers but at least you could kill them : )

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

GameSpot: What do you guys think you killed?
Jørgen Tharaldsen: You can look at it in two ways. There's the game itself, and everything that surrounded it. When it came to the game itself, there are a few things we did really, really well. There's the storytelling, the presentation of quests, and the immersion in the world, and that included the graphics and the audio--I think we blew everyone away with that. How you feel inside the universe, I think, is unique compared to anything that's come before us, just putting all the actors in there.

 

Sadly the immersion for me was killed alot by the over use of instancing. Later this became less of a problem because less actually played so the instances became fewer. Honestly many people now have an utter distaste for instance's. It became a Multiplayer game instead of an MMO.

The story line I did like but it was Conan so it's hard not to.

The quest system had a bit to much redundency to me. Accept a quest , go out complete the quest, come back to quest giver and recieve your reward. Rinse and repeat many times. This made most quests feel like repeatable quest that merely recycled NPC's.

 

I'm also very happy with going the active route with the combat system. It feels a lot more responsive, a lot more fun actually. It's a bit stale going back to the old mechanics. I think taking that step forward and having the guts to do that is something that paid off in the end. It was a very hard choice because it took us a lot of time to get it right and polish it, but I think it's given us something really good out the door, and a great foundation to build further on. And that's on the mechanic side.

 

The combat was a baby step in the direction players have been wanting for a good while now but it could have been done better. It is the same combat system used by other real time combat MMORPG's but with a new flavor. It's still push button 1 then 2 then 3 and watch cooldowns. This is a step in the right direction though sadly it still isn't real time combat because there is still lock on.  They do get credit for softening up the MMO community for an actual real time combat system to come out.

 

There's also many small things. How we took the Conan license, how we stayed true to it, and how we expanded on Howard's work instead of just taking it and trying to cash in on the license, but really respecting it and evolving it. And that's something we did great as well. There were many areas that we achieved what we set out to do.

 

Well in all honesty they have no choice in this matter. By obtaining a license they have to go by the guide lines of the IP's owner this is true with any game based on someone else's IP. if you look at many interviews done within the industry you will see that licensed IP's are a huge head ache for this very reason. Many things will be added by people that have no experience in the gaming industry and this usualy leads to issues devs have to deal with.

 

On the flip side..... Well the player base has done an adequate job pointing out the numerous flaws so there is no need to restate them all when a simple search can achieve the same end.

I do give Age of Conan props on Sound and Graphics and I realy like that it is a Conan IP but..... the over all game would have been a great single player and even looks as if it was originaly made as such.  As a MMO is just doesn't cut it by todays standards. Instance's kill immersion and the ammount of instances in AoC is ridiculus. The quest system is only innovative in the since that it all seems to revolve around the principles used for repeatable quests and constantly recycles NPC's numerous times. If the NPC's had intellegent AI and were had a bit more life to them this wouldn't be that bad but as it stands now the NPC's are pretty generic after the first meetings. Other games in Development have taken this to heart.

In whole AoC turned a very nice concept into a novelty game. Not even a niche game just a novelty game where the novelty factor wears off fast leaving you with a feeling of meh after awhile. The initial feeling is far better than most but fades fast.

I agree with you that AoC would have perhaps been an average-mediocre single-player RPG, perhaps carving a small group of fringe qausi-nerd, sex starved, self-hating RPG followers similar to, and perhaps competing with, what The Witcher has.

However, graphically the game is not that great. And, graphically speaking, way overrated. Animations in AoC are some of the crudest I've seen in a game in a long time. Animals look ridiculous. The UI is ugly. Zones are boring and feel completely linear. Not to mention the engine performs like a 1972 Ford Pinto. Add to that that the game has no immersive feel into REH's Conan whatsoever. In fact, I doubt seriously anyone who worked on AoC even actually read an original REH Conan book. 

Some games have it, some games don't. AoC don't.