Is it already too late for Funcom’s flagship title Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures? Tons of players have already left Hyboria as Funcom pushes out patch after patch to fix the woes. Yesterday, we noted the latest developments which contains some fantastic additions but a shakeup at the top among the ranks may bring about the real change that Age of Conan needs.

Read full article by Matt Warner

Nice first post dude. Welcome

I don't think there's much Craig can do to bring back the player base, unless he has some serious tricks up his sleeve to bring this game back from its near death, like bringing out two account types, Free and Pay, like AO has.

Definitely needs to do what Anarchy did, Introduce Fr00bs and then people might find more incentives to playing this game.

It will be sad to see this game die. I think itis just a case of too many fantasy MMO's and with the level of expectation raised very high by the success of WOW.

Trying to do something radically different in an MMORPG is all well and good, but you can't then have a stack of bugs and broken things or it'll never fly.

I think they should give it another couple of months and maybe introduce some kind of free trial thing around New Year's. Some people will be just coming off WoTLK by then and will be looking around for another MMO again and a free trial makes it that much easier to give AoC another chance.
But I think without a free trial it's doomed. I was considering buying it previously but the horror stories are very offputting. And if I can't try it for myself? Meh.

Was surprised to see the lead dude resigning though. And reading that quote saying he's getting out of the gaming industry altogether? Now I'm not so surprised. He's obviously had enough of the silliness in the industry and is getting out while he can still find a job elsewhere...

Sure Funcom did a handful of things differently to WoW type mmos but the differences are very shallow and the sacrifices they made were enormous imo. I am personally of the belief that AoC never had a future and had they launched it with everything they promised it would have just had a slower death, the fact is that most people I have talked to (and I've talked to many) say that the game was just simply boring, they didn't leave because of bugs that or incomplete this, most just left because it was shallow and boring.

Adding a semi fps combat system, good graphics and boobies hardly cuts it as a revolutionary mmo in my book especially when those minor changes comes at the cost of an open world, content and any sort of depth.

If people are serious about wanting something different then WoW there is only 1 game coming out that will do that and that is really trying to create a revolution (or perhaps a semi devolution since so many compare it to old UO) and that is Darkfall.

So yes AoC have failed and was always going to fail, Funcom just knew how many people out there would buy a game purely based on graphics and boobies, and there was over a million of such players.

Lastly Warhammer will surely be the end of AoC and I am pretty sure that once it drops below 100k subs Funcom will quickly lose any interest in the game. Note that these people that left funcom resigned they weren't fired, its just a case of the rats abandoning ship.

Oh I'd not be worried about someone like him, cockroach con artists always find someone/something else to exploit as I am sure these white collar criminals at Funcom will.

I like AoC as an idea, the game itself never stood up to the idea which was on paper.

If this new director can make the game that all of us were expecting, it would be great.

I'll keep my eyes on it, because I'm a fan of ancient-based games.

let me give you a short summary of what's wrong with AoC,

a. where's the DX10? coming SOON apparently... despite the fact that it's supposed to have it from the get go, but didn't quite work out and needed more time to work things out. Those pretty screenshots from the promo last year? nope the game is not that pretty without the DX10.

b. what the heck is with skills and features NOT working? it's one thing to have engine problem, it's another when parts of the character skills themselves do NOT work or when some of the basic features just simply do not work.

c. balance change, gotta love the balance change they made, xxx and xxx now does 100% more damage. Yep when they make balance change they turbocharge it alright, not that there's any problem with that but it doesn't actually quite fix the balance problem for the most part and often introduces new one.

d. Hi mr brown shirt no 4671, AoC needed more variation with their item visuals especially.. they addressed that partly in the addition to the patch but more... it needs more... partly because the basic gears look pretty damn crap.

e. a hell a lot of broken instancing, now i don't particularly mind instancing myself but when you CAN'T gather your party properly because the stupid instancing either doesn't work properly (especially in some dungeons) or because one of your party is in the wrong instance and now they have to trek all the way to rez point to change instance (which sometimes does not work either and requires a zone change or client relog) then you'll start seriously tearing your hair off.

f. GvG?? more like slideshow, frame rates were poor in large battles... and by poor i mean dropping to single digit and watching every melee classes vainly trying to connect their combo and missing by a mile.

The opening area of the game was fun. But I lost intrest once I got to the mainland and let my account expire.



That put me off too. I saw a lot of high level players who looked like homeless peasents. Didnt feel like it was worth the grind.

I think Krogan said it best; I stopped playing because I didn't find it fun. The open world stlye of WoW is good, I like that about the game. Whacking every area into it's own little confine with loading times and bridging great distances that you'd normally travel on foot/horseback/flyingthingback in WoW with loading scenes really shrinks the world down. It really does feel single player, which just doesn't do much for a game that is supposed to be massively multiplayer.