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[Interview] Age of Conan: Unchained: The 6th Anniversary Interview & Thoughts for the Future
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Age of Conan recently celebrated its sixth anniversary. We caught up with Funcom's Matthew Bennett to reflect on those six years and to take a peek ahead into the future. See what he had to say before heading to the comments to chat.
Read our exclusive interview, Age of Conan: The 6th Anniversary Interview & Thoughts for the Future.
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Comments
After buying the game and the expansion (before it went f2p) i cant just go back to it and face the f2p limitations. They are good for fully free players but make no sense after you pay for the game. If they change it to the TSW model (at lest for people who own the game) that would be a good incentive not only to play again but to buy some of the cool stuff they have on the cash shop. I cant buy anything knowing im still limited on important parts of the game.
Thats the same problem i have with Swtor.
The F2P option is a really good trial but way too restrictive. It's a good game that caters to subscribers mostly. Look at Aion, Tera and Rift F2P models. Funcom could learn something from that. I spent more money on those then if I subscribed and it keeps me playing. Go figure.
FUNCOM...your F2P option suck sh*t. If you're listening as you said you are...DO SOMETHING!
They did, at the TSW switch to b2p AoC's model was revamped too
But yep, the RotG restriction is pretty dumb. Besides that the model is much better than it was, now you can play the basic game (HA) for free.
The interview was a bit strange, the game is 6 years old, but nothing about its past history, nor thoughts for the future as the title says, it's almost 2 pages strictly about the latest pvp update which is affecting maybe 10% of the playerbase...
and a bit detour on the world bosses which is not even a content just an occasional whack-a-mole event 
(but if he was parttaking in the design of the Grindbringer, then it's not unexpected)
Same reason I quit too.
Most FTP games keep the people who bought stuff and grant them the same rights. But with AOC you had to buy everything again, except the fluff useless items that came with the upgrades...
New players can get a welcome package and old/returning players can also get a welcome back package and 7 days free subscription time! Just click here to use my referral invitation
A quick reply from my perspective (interviewee).
The World bosses aren't everyone’s cup to tea of course, but they do serve an important purpose in regards to the games needs. Its one week a month where we can get a large influx of casual players and focus them on an activity which hopefully engages them in the game and can give them some interesting loot they otherwise may not have access to (due to raiding time constraints etc...) and put them in contact with large portions of the community (social aspect) both of which we hope act as incentives to keep playing and keep up the population outside of the focused week.
The intentions are the same with the open world pvp festival, creating a week where like-minded members of the community can get together and do something fun and focused and again hopefully get more players re-engaged in the game long term.
Obviously we are a much more condensed team these days so its very important that these systems/content are as sustainable long term as possible and really maximize their retention capacity; focusing the community (to some extent) on varying activities is one way we see of achieving that.
I know the article focuses a lot on the recent addition of the open world pvp event system, but way back at launch there was a pretty keen interest in this aspect of the game and it really has been a long time since we've been able to put something like this out so we really want to create awareness for this new (and fairly unique) addition.
That said I can try my best to answer any other questions in regards to any other elements of the game, from my own personal perspective of course.
I can't really comment on F2P or business models as I don't have much weight in this regard.
AoC's core game was memorable. What put me off was the Asian expansion theme and F2P conversion. It's a personal issue, but I simply cannot connect to Asian themes, they break my immersion, as I was expecting a large pink bunny to appear after every quest (as this is typical Asian stuff).
The core game was a decent story teller with interesting zones, but it launched at a time when it was too much of a WoW clone when too many people got tired of WoW (and arguably many people still are). I'm not sure if going after the raiding content was the best development decision for this game either.
I love this MMO absolutely brilliant. Always installed, always patched up to date.
It is, in fact a great RPG
Is there any sort of push to help mid level casual characters experience group content? I'm currently level 40 and passing up group dungeons because it would take forever to find a group. I'm casual enough that a guild isn't really much of an option. Or is it either friend up or level up?
I love AoC all way up to where went F2P that mess everything up i still don't get why did sure the lost player but i think the would have more of real core community that was there help them through those dark days when most servers was dead i reminder that we was many player that was defend AoC and Funcom when basically the whole internet say that AoC would dead out.
This F2P thing AoC have is joke the should let people play ALL content in all expansion that way the would easy get more player and old player like me back but limited the end game content and dungeons and raid but not the PvE content that is just BS.
Welcome, and I apologise if I sounded too harsh on my post
Like Doc above, the game is always on and updated to me, I'm a big Howard fan. Same goes to TSW (and TLJ + Dreamfall without the updating part), I'm a huge Ragnar fan as well. And I'm a Crom resident since years, never had to move, the other servers were merged into us... best Eu PvE server out there.
Simply this update is not for me. I pvp'd in AoC maybe 1 hour total during these years, strictly out of curiousity
As I wrote it too under the Update's thread, I don't mind if you throw a bone to the handful of pvp'ers left (until it doesn't affect the crafting revamp's progress), and it's even better now that you changed it on Crom for Border Kingdoms only. And world bosses are fun in short amounts - maybe just the monthly occurances are a bit too frequent. But it's only one opinion, I too know folks who like to mow them down and can't wait for the next one.
F2p model I think is fine since the last revamp (except the RotG restriction), but I admit I'm not really affected by it, since I used to sub back if I'm in a mood for some serious fun in Hyboria.
fyi, Khitai is REH too... And it's a nicely implemented zone, I believe without the faction grind it could be the greatest expansion
(again, only one opinion, I too have friends who loved to grind out the factions... just never agreed with them on this matter)
Raid content is tough to develop and its tough not to alienate parts of the player base while creating it, I certainly don't disagree with that. But I do believe our raid content is some of the best out there on the MMO market and our next initiative is to 'unchain' (hard mode for those who don't know) existing entry level raid content which is a step towards making it hit a broader target audience and that really ties into what I mentioned about trying to make our systems/content as sustainable as possible.
Well I'd always recommend trying to make friends in an any MMO as it will only ever improve your playing experience, but at the same time I don't think you should ever feel like you absolutely have to.
The majority of our content is end game (level 80), with a fixed level cap it does make sense as most of our community is at that stage of the game. However I agree its important to try to engage players in dungeon/group content as early as possible, especially as I believe in the quality of most of our group content. So again, without wanting to sound like a stuck record, an important part of maximizing the sustainability of all our content might be to add a daily system for dungeons (which is something we have talked about internally) and it would probably be wise to extend that to cover lower level dungeon content too. Focusing parts of the community on particular content in that way, I hope, would make it much easier for you to group up and experience it.
And thanks for the continued support for the game!
Yep not all content/systems will hit everyone but the goal is that the results of them will be to everyone's benefit, the more players (of different play styles) we can engage in the game then the more populated the game is outside of the those focused time frames. The aim also is that the next type of content/system we put it out is attractive for another part of the community (namely raiders in our next major patch(es)).
And yeah crafting is still in development and is still progressing unaffected by other developments, but its the other thing I can't really comment too much on as I'm not too involved in this particular system myself.
prob one of the better themepark games on the market.. sure it did not come out as intended but its still great fun..
might pop back and check it out.
How many years for a crafting revamp? Such a shame.
and
Yep
Kyll and Vis are my favourites.
And dungeons too, there was a thread here not long ago, about our favourite instances/dungeons, AoC was mentioned a lot. Many great ones, right from the start BC and Sanctum, all the way to the end with Halls and Atzel, not to forget AoK in the middle, love it. Frost Father ftw.
If the game went to B2P I would go back and play again. But I dont think its worth the sub fee considering the low population, and the f2p limitations are too restrict - especially from someone who purchased the collectors edition and the RotG expansion.
Cmon Funcom make it happen!
I agree with its f2p business model being an issue and is one of the reasons i no longer play as well. Only business models i support are sub only or the One time Buy only f2p model otherwise most f2p business models are thrash and do more bad for players then good while in fact most MMos that do go F2p is to amake more money and while true going f2p will make the game more money but the business itself are the ones who benefit not the gamers. In fact the first focus turns more to the cash shops with the MMo itseff becoming the second focus when it should be the other way around. At least in sub only or the one time buy only models you know the MMo itself is always the primary focus.
A good example about what I'm talking about is SWTOR great MMO that if it had a steady flow of expansions and was still Sub only could have actually been alot better since the MMo itself is actually good and Bioware did it well but since it went f2p it seems like EA is more focused with microtransactions from its Cartel Market first then it is the MMO itself. So given those reasons i only play MMOs that rae either sub only or have that one time buy only f2p model since both focus on the MMos themselves first. AOC needs to either go sub only or at least go with the one time buy only f2p model if it wants its old customners back and new customers period.