The Rise and Fall of Age of Conan

The ZAM Network has published a pretty interesting interview with Funcom’s Craig Morrison, in which the Age of Conan producer tackles some tough questions about the game’s rocky start.

ZAM: Almost all major reviews of Age of Conan posit that the game had an incredibly shaky startup, with many reviewers noting that the game was entirely too glitchy on release, had little content past 20, did not have a ‘fully’ implemented PVP system, etc, etc – I’m sure you’ve heard it all. There are also rumors circulating that say that beta testers were not satisfied with Age of Conan before it launched, and they explicitly advised Funcom to develop for a few more months before releasing, but Funcom did not listen.

Does this particular rumor (about the beta testers) have any merit?

Craig: That depends entirely on your perspective I think, we work on an online product, and there are always ‘rumors’ on the internet! There are always people in any beta community saying ‘the game isn’t ready’. So did some people say that they weren’t satisfied with the beta experience? Of course they did. There were also those who said they thought it was ready. Again, with hindsight it’s very easy to be ‘right’ in such cases. I also think that many reviewers actually rated the game very highly, and the early experience was good. Major press and game sites gave the game good scores. It was issues slightly later into the game experience that started to show up the issues where people felt the game wasn’t compelling enough. I think the one thing we’d have most liked to have not missed for launch was indeed the PVP system, and that was why it focused on immediately after launch.

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ZAM: What do these economic problems mean for the future of Age of Conan?

Craig: The company is actually in a pretty good situation, and relatively speaking in these harsh economic times we are in a very favorable position compared to many other developers as we have a good amount of ‘cash in the bank’ as it were. Again, I am no accountant, but we do already have the capital to work on our future projects as well as continuing to develop Age of Conan. As a European developer the international exchange rates are always a concern, but we have dealt with that for quite a few years already!

So in terms of Age of Conan I think we will continue to work on the product, support and build it. Remember we already have one MMO fast approaching its eighth birthday, in the form of Anarchy Online, which is still profitable, so we see MMO development as a long term strategy and see many years ahead for Age of Conan.