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Age of Conan: Guild Interview Part One, North America
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Age of Conan Correspondent Ben Avery recently spoke with members of two Age of Conan Guilds, on in North America and one in Europe, to get their opinions on a number of issues relevant to the game as it is now and since launch.
In Part One, Ben talks to Mental Block, from the North American guild Primal Instinct.
Age of Conan is fast approaching the 5 months old mark. It released amidst a huge wave of hype. Is the game currently living up to the hype from the minds of its current player base? Did that wave of hype crash down and drown everyone? Is the game the same as it was at release? Has it gotten worse or better?
These are some of the questions that I hope to bring answers to in today’s Age of Conan state of the game Guild Q&A. One of the main reasons for doing this is to get some perspective from the current player base that has been in since launch. I thought ‘what better way to do this than to ask directly’! It’s also important to ask the right questions to get a clearer perspective for those interested. I have chosen two guilds to start – one from the European servers and one from the North American continent servers. These guilds are active in game, are known on their servers and have some good insight. I hope this comes across as adequate and unbiased enough for the critics and a decent enough read for the casual browser. As the questions asked are to the leaders and guild members alike, it should portray a good representation of where we are up to today with Age of Conan. We have one large guild and one average sized, both from a PvP and PvE perspective. As time goes on I might be doing more of these to getter a better feel of the truer state of the game.
Check out Ben's interview.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
12-15 actives? I wouldn't really consider that worthy of an article. If I had been the correspondent, I would have tried to get an interview with more of a representive guild (granted that due to the sub decline that number might have dwindled somewhat). No disrespect intended to the members of Primal but this article seems unworthy of the space it takes up.
I was going for a PvP and PvE guild perspective contrast - there is a part 2 coming soon, and seen as a whole might give a clearer picture. For Example the EU Guild coming - has 200+ members. P.I.'s numbers I believe have risen slightly as the article was penned a few weeks ago and patches since. A lot of P.I's members run on the test server too, giving further insight.
I too was dissapointed that the guild interviewed was a very tiny guild with very little experience with raiding and Sieging. I was also dissapointed that the guild was an old AO guild. So they may be somewhat biased towards Funcom (I'm not saying they are, but that is my perception considering they seem to be very fond of AO and Craig the game director).
Why couldn't you find a larger guild that has more experience in raiding and sieging?
On another note, I can see that the leader is not fond of the community, he considers them clueless, and he is happy with the "FOTM" OP Bear Shaman Class.
Overall the interview was very well written, but lacks substance due to the lack of experience exhibited by a very small guild, and the guild seems to have been "cherry picked" to get answers that the interviewer wanted to hear.
Next time find a guild that isn't heavily into AO, and that may be a bit more unbiased.
heh. the smaller the population the easier to be "king of the hill" Im sure some people are happy to be the big fish in the little pond. As for paid transfers . FC would have to be out of their mind clueless to not at least offer a limited time free transfer. Afterall the mess AoC is in now is all their fault. They should suck it up and do what it takes to make those players they still have happy and wanting to stay.
As I said this is part 1. Part 2 is a PvE guild which is large and into Raiding. The whole thing was 2 big to put up as one article. Therefore as a whole it should give the reader constrasting views coupled with my take on what was said too
Hmm I find it really hard to believe that the person they talked with has been playing from day one just because of this quote.
"Patches in AO used to come every 6-8 weeks (sometimes longer before Silirrion), I think that during launch (and the month following it) FC was fixing problems fast and effectively, downtimes weren't annoying as they were usually short. They were doing very good, I do think they should speed it up a little or just hot-fix things like the gems(remove them completely and rebalanced them on test), testing is required as well and the test server player base is ok, the Raid guild idea(to test raids on Test live) is also a good move.
I have no problem if the patches take longer, as long as they do not introduce game breaking bugs."
Patches in AOC were an ongoing joke server wide. The nerfed every 2 weeks and fixed bugs like NPC such and such will no longer dance on his chair. Not sure how things have been the last couple patches but that first 3 months or so it was all about the nerf bat. I recently read up some on the boards cause I was thinking about going back to see what had changed but the fact they still have not fixed much of the raiding makes me think not.
wow... a bear shaman saying that people gotta learn how to play their toon to be able to have fun in AoC... Just try a conqueror for fun, dont go for a 2hand weapon, try some dual wielding. And then come see me and explain me how a damn healer can outDPS the main DPS class of the soldier archetype ? How can a guardian (the main tanking class, the name says it no ? ) can outDPS a Conq ?
AoC should hav been the best MMO out there 4 month ago, they fucked it all up real good ! i've wait 2 years and a half for this game, i'm a fan of Conan lore, with bloody battles, where melee is the main kind of fight everywhere. But Funcom just made a Age of Caster...
Ninja patch happening any time of the days is kinda boring too, and having to wait almost a month to get some bas news (all they can do is change name of the damn abilities) in a fabulous patch where they're still having fun with caster class they'Ve been working on since launch !
Sorry but Funcom wont have my money anymore, i'Ve already paid enough, i'Ve been patient and they still cant fix their nightmare, enough is enough.
This is going to be fun, so lets start:
Big guilds have 30-40 active people on Tyranny, which is the most populated US PvP server.
PI at the time of writing(a month ago) had 12-15, as it stands now, we have 20ish.
People are slowly coming back.
[quote]Originally posted by Soupgoblin
I too was dissapointed that the guild interviewed was a very tiny guild with very little experience with raiding and Sieging. I was also dissapointed that the guild was an old AO guild. So they may be somewhat biased towards Funcom (I'm not saying they are, but that is my perception considering they seem to be very fond of AO and Craig the game director).
Why couldn't you find a larger guild that has more experience in raiding and sieging?[/quote]
Craig did good things for a game that was pretty much not getting any updates for years and crap.
He actually communicated with the community and implemented a lot of good and thought out suggestions made BY players.
Somethings that lacking in AoC.
The thing I dislike about him is that he made AO a lot more gear dependent, which I fear he will do with AoC as well...
Also, as far as raiding goes, we don't raid, its boring.
As far as sieges go, we did 4 in this/last week.
So...
Right, find more guilds that siege(be it offence or defence) more regularly than that.
[quote]
On another note, I can see that the leader is not fond of the community, he considers them clueless, and he is happy with the "FOTM" OP Bear Shaman Class.[/qupte]
This FoTM OP bear shaman has been playing since the beta and has 2 guides behind him, as well as about 10-15 pvp videos, so try again.
So when I say people need to learn to play, it means they need to learn to play, rangers are complaining they can't tank people, while having 3 types of ranged CC to keep them at bay and 2 melee ones...
They have all the tools to stay at range, yet most people are idiots and don't realize it, they do the same, KB at start(or pin down), trap and try killing people, they blow all their CCs right at the start, instead of using them strategically.
The community is crap in AoC, if you compare it to AO's one, if you haven't played AO, you don't know, its that simple.
The community is crap, there are some good individuals, in every class forum, people who see the bigger picture and keep telling people they are idiots when they whine about stupid stuff, but overall, the community is immature, childish, filled with idiots, crybabies and people who refuse to learn basic game mechanics, lets not forget the people who pay for the game just so they can troll...
[quote]
Overall the interview was very well written, but lacks substance due to the lack of experience exhibited by a very small guild, and the guild seems to have been "cherry picked" to get answers that the interviewer wanted to hear.
Next time find a guild that isn't heavily into AO, and that may be a bit more unbiased.[/quote]
How did you figure we are biased...
Jesus...
AO had a few good things, it was a good game, mostly because the community was specific, it was full of good people, some good mechanics and a wealth of knowledge.
You can't imagine how much knowledge the forums contain, sadly its not the case with AoC, whine threads outnumber "knowledge" threads by 12:1.
[quote]
Originally posted by Bodeus
heh. the smaller the population the easier to be "king of the hill" Im sure some people are happy to be the big fish in the little pond.[/quote]
Funny, consider Tyranny is the most populated US PvP server.
Again, if you want to make comments, at least get your facts straight.
[quote]
Originally posted by Dillig
Hmm I find it really hard to believe that the person they talked with has been playing from day one just because of this quote.
"Patches in AO used to come every 6-8 weeks (sometimes longer before Silirrion), I think that during launch (and the month following it) FC was fixing problems fast and effectively, downtimes weren't annoying as they were usually short. They were doing very good, I do think they should speed it up a little or just hot-fix things like the gems(remove them completely and rebalanced them on test), testing is required as well and the test server player base is ok, the Raid guild idea(to test raids on Test live) is also a good move.
I have no problem if the patches take longer, as long as they do not introduce game breaking bugs."
Patches in AOC were an ongoing joke server wide. The nerfed every 2 weeks and fixed bugs like NPC such and such will no longer dance on his chair. Not sure how things have been the last couple patches but that first 3 months or so it was all about the nerf bat. I recently read up some on the boards cause I was thinking about going back to see what had changed but the fact they still have not fixed much of the raiding makes me think not.[/quote]
Lets go:
Traders were taken out soon as the duping was discovered(fast), took a while to fix, lots of stuff was fixed and hot fixed immediately after launch, so no, you're wrong.
The gems did took a fucking age to do, which is a big minus.
But overall, the month after the launch, it was good, 2 patches a week on average...
They toned down a lot of classes that needed toning down(ToS for example, so no more infinite cyclones/idols), they took out a lot of exploits fast as well.
[quote]
Originally posted by Damarl
wow... a bear shaman saying that people gotta learn how to play their toon to be able to have fun in AoC... Just try a conqueror for fun, dont go for a 2hand weapon, try some dual wielding. And then come see me and explain me how a damn healer can outDPS the main DPS class of the soldier archetype ? How can a guardian (the main tanking class, the name says it no ? ) can outDPS a Conq ?[/quote]
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/22025 as far as DPS goes, answers are in there.
I also play a pretty good necro.
Think I covered it all.
It comes to this:
You guys have an opinion, just not an informed one...
Nice that you tried to flame, but failed, since you don't know jack about the current situation... :>
I am sure all they could find was one guild still playing AoC on both sides of the pond.
Ben could have poked at the wounds more! Jon give him some pointers!
Nice interview.
As a note, I urge FunCom to do server merge. I won't be back till they at least merge them.
Dang, i didn't realize I was supposed to be flaming the post. Actually, i was meaning more to express a mild disappointment that the article had focused on a smaller guild (which may be the norm these days -- my sub ended last week so I admit to being out of touch).
I'm glad to hear you've had some success with recruiting and hope the article helps y'all get more! Believe it or not, I'd love to see AoC have a great resurgence and really start to shine. I think that's going to be tough as hell but I'd still like to see it happen. Maybe I'll check out the game in 6 months or so -- whenever Funcom decides to give a free month to former subscribers. As you may be able to guess by the fact I still read the articles at all, I'm essentially an optimist at heart.
Note to the author: yeah, I've seen a couple of correspondents comment about the length of time between submitting and actually getting posted. With the patches that have occurred since time of writing, you'd figure that a lot of things about AoC would be more timely. Oh well. But I will take a jab at you (in the best of spirit) -- you realize your avatar makes you look like a fanboi, right? :P
You kidding me, poking at the wounds is the last thing Avery would do.
O_o o_O
Nukacola:
Please write more coherently. And please organize your post a bit better, it is difficult to tell what you are whinning about.
You are correct about your views of the AoC community, the reason for that is AoC is a bad game, bad games mean upset, whinney players. Why would you bother to write two guides for people you can't stand?
There are larger guilds, but they are on Cimmeria, the most populated server I know. Tranny doesn't hold a candle to Cimmeria's population.
And chiding people to "learn to play" when you play the absolutely easiest class in AoC is just silly (sort of like a Guardian telling a conquerer to "learn to tank better"). And any 14 year old with fraps can make PVP videos.
Congradulations on your new MMORPG account. You will have good company with the rest of the new members from AoC.
Avery:
Please stop throwing month old interviews that are full of outdated information up here on MMORPG, that is just sad. How old is the 2nd interview with the guild from Norway..I mean EU that you are going to put up later?
But the interview was very well written, so good job on that...
Charging for server transfers would really piss off the already pissed off imo. People have already paid for something that was only half delivered. Drunken brawling anyone?
"Traders were taken out soon as the duping was discovered(fast), took a while to fix, lots of stuff was fixed and hot fixed immediately after launch, so no, you're wrong."
Ah name one thing that got fixed in the first 2 months! saying lots of stuff got fixed dont make it so. Uniformed? I played beta from OCT. 07 and stopped playing the game about 2 or 3 months after. They didn't fix a damned thing in that time I was playing. oh wait your right they did finally fix the traders it took what a month and a half and that only got fixed cause of the duping bug!
Just name me 1 thing that the players wanted fixed that got fixed.
oh wait here is one of your so called patches, this was the last patch I remember before I decided to cancel.
"Resolved several issues with the Arena access quest, hopefully it should work correctly this time, and this time we really mean it! (or poor Aquilus might meet with a very unfortunate end if he insists on being so troublesome in the future!)
Travel NPCs will no longer erroneously show the same destination multiple times
Altered the loot table of the Beguiler Demons in Potain so they are now dropping more appropriate loot."
I will agree that FC did fix issues with the game, its just what they seen as easy fixes and what they wanted to fix not what really needed to be fixed. I mean how can you even sit here and defend them after 5 months of release and they still have not addressed raiding? good god man folks have been level 80 forever, yet they are still trying to find ways to stop progression and discourage raiding. like the latest tidbit about raid mobs ignoring the line of site so people can not hide from the dmg. No mention of fixing any of the raid mobs tho is there.
Hey mate the article was done about 2 weeks ago. Its not my fault when it gets put up - considering as you can tell from the first few lines "coming up on the 5 month old mark" it was pretty much very in line with the current state of affairs. The second part was wrote all at the same time - since then patch 3 has gone up. And a few other articles about that so it was a wait for this one. Infact this info is from alot of people right up until the day your sub ran out if I remember right. I know your fishing for some harder response from me, in your poor attempt at bad jibes. The second guild is actually Awakening.
There is no need to bait Nukacola, we both know your doing it.
As for the above poster questioning raiding. Have you read all the raid feedback on test server? They fixed Yakhmar pretty good and plenty of other encounters. When part 2 comes, you can get Awakening perspective from the same questions here is their website: http://www.awakening.minionsofarchaon.co.uk/
Hold on to your hats.
I am no fan of Avery or how FC has handled AOC but he did ask some questions that were out of the fanboy realm. I didnt pay attention to who was asking the questions until the end and thought there was a mixture of softballs and some questions that could have led down a negative path given the incompetance at FC. I did question someof the answers but I think the person responding was being honest from their perspective.
No 10/10 Avery but I will give you a 7/10 based on your position and the fact you could have thrown up 100% softballs.
This response was DEAD on, and IS the crux of many of the games issues/reception. Decimals and percents, confusing Wow fans for over 5 years.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Thank you for the feedback, appreciated. Part two will have the same questions as was wrote at the same time. Moving on though, I'll look a bit more at it. I think the questions themselves are pretty balanced and P.I. does show integrity in stepping up and showing criticism where due from their perspective. As we all know one mans server is different from the next and thus all I'm trying to do is bring that difference of opinion from those playing the game.
Or..perhaps they are not as desperate as you think..
i see nothing wrong with avery's questions and i think its wrong to flame him for decisions that funcom made and he had no control over, like waiting 2 weeks to post that interview.
That being said, i do think the guild member interviewed was a bad choice(not because of guild size) he was clearly biased with regards to funcom, character classes, his dislike of crafting and raiding in general and his opinion of the AoC community members. He was far from a neutral party therefore his answers, opinions and ideas are totally meaningless unless you happen to have the same biases and views he does.
And as far as Funcom and AoC go, i think the game would be much better, have way more subscribers and happier players if they simply listened to their customers and did what they asked(within reason)instead of ignoring them and providing no tech support or feedback of any kind while making constant bad decisions, horrible patches that stealth nerfed things and didn't mention it in the notes and usually broke more and more important things than they fixed(which always confused me to how often it happened since they have an in house test server and test team which if running they same client as the live servers and are even semi competent should never have missed most of those huge bugs) also they took down all servers at the same time and applied the patches to them all at once without ever once testing them on a live server after the patch passed the in house team, therefore afflicting every single server with whatever new bug was created, instead of staggering the servers dowtime and doing them in batches so that people could always be playing and they would catch the new bugs before they crippled every server and made the game unplayable for everyone at once, i remember one particular patch during the early access time that bugged every server and extended the dowtime, and then they couldn't fix it and they extended the downtime again and again and again and eventually after the initial estimated downtime had been extended 4 times and almost tripled in length they finally got them up and if i'm not mistaken that downtime of close to a full day fixed 1 single bug with a trader when all was said and done.
And who could forget all the crashes to desktop from memory leaks and downloading of 12 gig patch files for no reason, and my personal favorite which finally drove the nail in my AoC experience and caused me to bail was the neat gem socketing crafting bug that caused my level 42 character that had taken me 11 days of my 30 day subscription (and all 3 days of the 5 day early access that got nearly cut in half due to patches and bugs) to become completely unplayable and crashed my client everytime i opened my inventory, just because i wanted to try out the sorry excuse for crafting they had, at least it only took them 9 days from the time the bug started to fix it, and they were nice enough not to make a hotfix or disable gem socketing or even listen to my multiple posts asking them to please make a sticky thread about this bug so others don't have to experience it, so hundreds of people got to have their main character bugged and could get no support for the problem or any feedback acknowledging that it was a known bug and was being worked on. They blatantly ignored the problem and refused to warn people knowingly letting them bug their games, it was like they refused to admit that the bug existed and it kinda makes since because i found out later that this bug was a known bug that had existed since beta and had been reported but ignored and not fixed and then they put gem socketing back into the live client shortly after the retail launch with a known and reported bug that could bug your character making him unplayable and left it there without warning people until they could fix it with a patch 9 days after it was introduced, and it didn't even seem like it was a priority for them to fix because they patched the client 3 times after the bug happened before they fixed it, at least they were important patches, i believe one of them let you dance and do dancing combos thats surely a fair trade to losing 30% of my 30 day trial to a known bug they put back into the game.
i really had high hopes for this game and supported it and played through beta and early access into retail launch but after all this i feel betrayed i personally feel like Funcom bent me over and reemed me in return for my money and support. They advertised the game and hyped it on such features as directx 10, seiging, guild cities, over 2000 pieces of armor, none of which were available at retail launch, except for guild cities which didn't work right and gave you none of the buffs and features. I know a few people who were all gungho about playing in directx10, since it was promised and it was written on the retail box as being included, but it was nowhere to be seen, then it was promised as being definetly ready by the beginning of september, its now just about the second week of november and i do believe its still not ready. It was also nice to see all those amazing seige videos in magazines and on gaming sites and game conventions being one of the main selling points of the game but when retail rolled around its like oh seiges no their not ready yet. They more or less blatantly lied to the public and their customers and released a very buggy, very unfinished, completely missing promised advertised content beta version as the retail client and are basically making people pay to beta test a game that was released a good half year to early and provided no tech support or help of any kind to the thousands of people who could not even get the game to run even though they had paid for it and their subscription time was active. they also seem to not really care about their customers and their opinions and problems and are in no real hurry to fix the important problems with the game.
People figured that they would have learned from the horrible launch and problems with Anarchy Online and not make the same mistakes again, but about a month after the game went retail i read an old article reviewing anarchy online and its launch and i swear to god you could have replaced the old date with the current date and replaced any instance of anarchy online or AO with age of conan or AoC and it would have been 100% accurate, age of conan suffered the same horrible launch problems, like buggy unplayable client for many, numerous different account issues just like the AoC ones, severe lack of tech support.
Someone over at Funcom is either really stupid and continues to make bad decision after bad decision, or is making decisions for shady reasons and knowingly released the game as it was purely for financial gain and is trying to milk as much money as possible out of people while doing the very minimum they have to do to keep people paying and keeping their operating costs as low as possible, it would explain their complete lack of tech support and reliance on volunteers for forum mods and gm's, not to mention the fact that the inhouse QA testers seem to be understaffed or underqualified, and the fact that most patches seem to concentrate on not adding missing content or fixing game mechanics but on things that are time sinks and will keep people around to try them.
Thats pure speculation though, but whatever the reason it doesn't change the fact that they obviously didn't learn from their mistakes, they don't listen to their customers or make an effort to help them, they more or less used false advertising and released a product way too early that wasn't working properly and wasn't ready and was missing a lot of important things that it was advertised as having upon launch, if it was any other sort of product that you saw advertised and went out and bought and found out it didn't work properly and was missing pieces that it was labelled as having, at the very least you would get your money back in full and the company would be legally forced to change their advertising and box labelling to accurately reflect what it contained.
I will never buy another Funcom product and i will feel no remorse whatsoever(and possibly a little joy) if they went bankrupt and ceased to exist, i didn't totally mean it how it sounded, i would feel bad for the employees who need the money and job and are the cogs in the wheels of Funcom, i would not feel remorse however for Funcom as a company or for the executives and whoever is responsible for making all the bad decisions that continue to shaft the customers.
Sorry for the longwinded rant, but my AoC experience still leaves a bad taste in my mouth and i really hate when people pay good money expecting something and get shafted because of someone elses greed or need to make money.
[quote]
Avery:
Please stop throwing month old interviews that are full of outdated information up here on MMORPG, that is just sad. How old is the 2nd interview with the guild from Norway..I mean EU that you are going to put up later?
But the interview was very well written, so good job on that...[/b][/quote]
I'm not exactly Avery's biggest fan here, but I gotta back him up on this one. I've written an article or two for this site over the years (nothing recently) and it takes a significant amount of time from submission to posting for the articles to show up.