"Everybody" knows that MMO launches quickly followed by server merges are often the kiss of death. MMOs are expensive, after all. If a game has so few players that hardware is gathering dust, it makes sense in a for-profit company to pull the plug. The problem with things that "everybody knows," of course, is that they often turn out to be untrue. In at least two high-profile examples -- Anarchy Online and EVE Online -- bad starts followed by player defections were followed by retrenching, retooling and growing positive word-of-mouth that turned those products around. Those are the examples that Craig Morrison, the new Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Game Director, is looking to now as he and his team continue to work on the barbarian-themed MMO, which debuted in May 2008.
Holes in the Armor
"I've always liked challenges," Craig Morrison said as we began discussing the current state of Age of Conan. "I'd been working on Anarchy Online for about two years when they asked me to take over Age of Conan." Morrison replaced long-time FunCom staffer Gaute Godager (who had shepherded the game to launch) in September 2008. When he came in the game had had a spectacular launch, boasting decent review scores and quickly swelling to 400,000 players. Even so, clouds were gathering on the horizon. While the critical and fan consensus on the game was that Age of Conan had the fundamentals of a great game, the noticeable lack of polish (a dearth of high-level content, technical glitches, bugged endgame and out-of-control PvP scene) would doom it unless the company addressed them relatively quickly.
Morrison himself isn't reticent about discussing the game's problems. "We definitely had issues that needed to be dealt with," he said. According to Morrison, the key goal for the team to date has been fixing infrastructure and filling in holes left in the game at launch. There's a note of pride in his voice as he reels off what's been done so far. "The most important problems we had to face were technical ones. We've solved most of those." He cites some nasty memory leak issues in the game client, graphical slowdowns, and difficulty getting endgame keep sieges off the ground.
Vast Wastelands
The problems with the game didn't end with the technical, however. A huge issue was that the game's first 20 PvE levels left a great first impression. From levels 20-40, though, the content started to dry up, and once past level 40 players found they'd have to mostly grind monsters in order to progress to the level 80 cap. Elsewhere, the PvP system, while in much better shape technically, had similar issues. Without compelling things to do, players on PvP servers were reduced to ganking each other and interfering with each other's questing. In both cases it reduced the game's appeal to only the hardest of the hardcore, who didn't mind either non-stop unexpected murder or killing hundreds of the same monster over and over again without a break.
