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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: Letter from the Game Director - Dec. '09
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Craig Morrison addresses the community in 2009 one last time with the release of December's Letter from the Game Director. In the letter, Morrison discusses the 1.06 patch cycle, progress on the Rise of the Godslayer expansion, and takes some time to welcome the Korean players who are currently beta testing the Korean localization of the game.
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Read the full Letter from the Game Director here.
Comments
It is rumoured Craig Morrison's next job will be a traffic controller, 'it's just around the corner, but wait till you get the green light'.
This talk of server merges fills me with dread I must say. My current server 'Crom' has one of the best communities I've known for years, many, many people have got to know each other, and how to react to each other.
Merging that kind of community with another, particluarly one with people who are less than sociable risks breaking that status-quo.
[Disclaimer : I play AoC mainly because I am a fan of RE Howard's Conan stories, and the excellent community that exists on the server Crom]
Adding content on an unpolished game won't really help.
And if nothing else implement a real combo system as perfectly done in all AAA console games.
Then you could relaunch the game and be successful, really. That along the new Conan movie would be a hit.
I used to have a long list of MMO pages I was just checking for news on so many MMO's that never made it to market. So I'm happy AoC made it even though I could not really find my taste in it and the lag was horrible. Some weeks ago I jogged by to see what is new. And I must say ... the german (official!) forums were disgusting to me to say the least. I've never seen a public company forum where people treat each other with as much contempt, swearing, plain name using etc. Lowest possible standard, like full blown puberty 15 year old boys from lowest social status. I decided not to give the game another shot ...
Another thing I found deterrent was the "welcome back" event, they invited people back for a week I think for free to check out what has changed. So far so good. Buuuut ... if people used this and entered the game their account got reactivated completelly (even though the invite mails stated "your account is reactivated WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE WELCOME BACK EVENT" and not "completelly and you have to cancel your account to make us not charge yourself" - it even talked about the player needing to decide if they want to keep playing after the week). Quite some people complained as they got charged after the week even though they did not want to activate their account beyond this week. Funcom refused to refund them and told them it was stated that the account was reactivated. Actually ... in Germany there is a law that say: if you offer something for free you have to explicitelly announce that this comes with follow up fees if not cancelled. And that was definitelly NOT part of the invite mail or beyond.
I've no idea how the legal system works in Funcom's country but ... I know for sure this was a case where the companies management totally lost any appeal to me and I'm not trading with someone who acts like that, sorry for the programmer and other employees.
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ...
Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse
Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2
Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
I doubt that people "mysteriously" got "stealth charged" when they did the welcome back event. Considering that no CC info is entered when you do a trial and they delete such info when you originally cancelled. Of course this is in the U.S. so it could be different in the E.U.
In some instances where you have to enter a CC before beginning a trial, it typically states that in the TOS or somewhere on the setup screen. Champions Online was like this when I had my 30 day free month with purchase, it stated that I'd be charged after 30 days if I didn't cancel. If you're not sure, then don't enter your CC info. If you have to to activate, then do so then cancel after it's activated.
As for server merges, that's just on the table as a possibility. Some servers have a rather healthy population and some are lacking. I would be willing to bet that the pvp servers are the ones with low pop, so they may be considering consolidating them. This isn't unique to AoC, other MMO's consolidated pvp servers 1st (EQ1 and DAoC). Now unlike That Other Game, you don't need millions of subs to be profitable. Heck EQ1 is still up and running with only 50k subs, AoC has roughtly double that.
All in all I am satisfied with how Funcom has improved the game since its release.