Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Interviews

Two new Age of Conan interviews have reached the Internet, both of which focus on the MMORPG’s newly launched v1.05 patch, among other things.

The first is at Ten Ton Hammer with both
Craig Morrison and Erling Ellingsen:

Ten Ton Hammer: In the latest (Letter from the Game Director), Craig mentioned that players will have the option to purchase two additional character slots for their account when the new update goes live. Any word on what this will cost players who want to take advantage of the offer?

Erling: Unfortunately this new service has been delayed a bit, but we’ll be introducing this very soon. Players will be able to purchase a maximum of two character slots and one slot will cost 15 US dollars or 15 euro (incl. VAT where applicable). We’re also very pleased to be introducing one free character slot for those who have accumulated six months of subscription time. This will also affect people who reach six months accumulated subscription time in the future.

While the other is at IncGamers with just Craig Morrison:

Item stats in update 5 have been changed massively to make them easier to understand, have more of an impact on characters and to resemble how they work in other MMOs. Why have you decided to make this change now, and why wasn’t it like this originally?

As before, strictly speaking, that’s not really for me to say as I wasn’t involved. I do think that hindsight is an amazing thing though and it is easy to say now that this was the better course!

I am sure that the original team had very valid reasons for the choices they made prior to launch, it just didn’t work out as expected, and wasn’t popular enough to grab players attentions. Sometimes it is only when the masses get a hold of your game that these things become apparent. I think that is mainly why we have now made the changes we have, the feedback clearly told us that people didn’t think the RPG system provided enough incentives!

Prior to launch I am sure there were people who genuinely believed people would like it and react well to the way that it was, and sometimes in that scenario it takes the feedback of actual real gamers before you know whether you succeeded or not. In this case unfortunately we didn’t get it quite right the first time around.