Live Age of Conan interview Comments by Robert Purchese

Yeah, sure you knew about it... /rollseyes. Look back over your posting history and see how many times this has been raised and NOT ONCE have you mentioned this information. And that's because you only found it yesterday. If there's one thing worse than a liar, it's a bad liar.

And as I've pointed out before, the OFFICIAL SITE didn't include the information even AFTER release. So answer that one please. If this information was so widely distributed, why didn't their site include it?

Then there's the fact ONE DAY BEFORE RELEASE (or four if you're in Europe) FUNCOM "INFORMED" THEIR CUSTOMERS OF THIS, DESPITE KNOWING FOR OVER A MONTH, MINIMUM. That's not at all shady, is it? Go on, defend that one.

And what about those who pre-ordered the game? Did they get the option - or time - to cancel their order? No. So explain that one, too.

Funcom KNEW they were falsely advertising a feature that wasn't in their game FOR AT LEAST A MONTH (probaly closer to SIX MONTHS) and waited until the last minute - when it was too late for those who'd pre-ordered or for word to get around - to release this information, a fact they didn't bother to include on what most people would take to be the "official" source of information, their own website.

And please, you're talking about "spin" when you're the one squirming around about "well, it says 'optimised for DX10'" and trying every trick to make out Funcom did nothing wrong? Please...

Funcom misjudged NOTHING. The game was in beta testing for long enough to identify their issues, but they simply didn't care. They took the attitude of "let's shove this thing out the door, recoup some costs by ripping off the audience, then string them along with a bunch of promises as we try and patch it up to the state it should have been a year before release."

And there you go again. If AoC really is this awesome, incredible gaming experience, why aren't you playing it? Why aren't you supporting your countrymen by doing what really counts - not coming here and promoting their agenda but giving them the financial support they so desperately need, considering they've only retained about 25% of their player base. Go on, "give it a go."

Or is it because you're scared you'll discover - as the majority of players have - that it's STILL full of bugs, lacking content, includes retrogressive features, simplistic gameplay and nothing worth paying your subscription for?

Monkeynaive: There you go again. You know ,resorting to slander adn calling people liers will not win you the argument.

I just told you why i didn't write about the Press release from Funcom regarding DX10.
Got tired of listening to your "Funcom" is lieing BS. So i googled "no DX10 for AOC" to get the exact date which i didn't remember. Just remembered that it was put out by Funcom before launch.

Again, anyone following AOC closely through development all the way until launch and claim they had no clue that DX10 wouldn't be there at launch must have had their heads buried in the sand those last few weeks.

It was all over the internett in all mayor gameingsites. DX10 will not be ready at launch for AOC. Also it was written everywhere stating that the DX10 version would be shown at the gaming convension in Leipzig in August 2008.

If the biggest selling point of AOC to you was DX10 and you bought it anyway when you must have known it wasn't ready, well as i said thats on you for not paying attention. The information was there for anyone to see.

Thats the facts. Deal with it and stop repating yourself. That part of the discussion is over and done with.

You claim to have 15 years of game development under your belt, yet you seem oblivious to some of the problems of MMO game development. You can beta test for years and there still will be problems at a MMO launch. It's in the genres nature. The real beta test if you will ,only start when the thousends of paying custumers start hacking away at the game. They will think of and discover many things that the devs wasn't aware of or though would function differently. Thanks to feedback from their new community they can fix things as fast as they can.

Could Funcom have done a better job at that? I believe so. But there might have been som internal problems aswell slowing things down. Gaute Godagers retirement as gamedirector comes to mind....

Again, with the lies.

You didn't know about the DX10 "announcement." You'd have mentioned it sooner. And again, if this article was "all over" the gaming press, why didn't Funcom's site include this information?

And why did they wait until THE DAY BEFORE THE US RELEASE to announce it? They knew MONTHS in advance that it wasn't going to launch with DX10 support, yet did NOTHING but issue some weak, half-arsed comment mere days before launch, AFTER people had pre-ordered the game.

And AoC's issues were found in the beta, yet they did nothing to correct them. In MMO launches (and trust me I've experienced plenty of them) some issues do become apparent after the game has finished beta. But issues such as memory leaks that crash the game every 30 minutes, the item stat code not working, content not being present are ALL issues Funcom were informed of but chose to ignore, instead hoisting a broken, feature-incomplete mess upon their customers then simply stating they'd fix it "later."

And again, you dodge the point: you haven't played AoC. Go play it. Then we'll talk, because until you do, I have no more to say to you on the matter, as you're speaking out of your arse.

Monkeymonkey: I am not lieing. Period. I resent the accusation.

Oh and Funcoms site still to this day have this information:

http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/cona...

Stop it already you are just making yourself look bad.

Go play it yourself. You havent since August was it?. And have no experience of what the game is like to day. Just like me.

So if anyone is curious about AOC's current state, go to the official forums and the existing players will tell you the good and the bad as the game stands today on january28'th 2009.

The problems Monkeyboy and others faced close to launch are gone, making all his arguments obselite exept for one that i totally agree with.

AOC was released to early and problems should have been fixed sooner, but hey you can't relive the past now can you....

1. Yes, you are lying.
2. Funcom's site THE WEEKEND AFTER LAUNCH and the supposed announcement STILL LISTED DX10 as a feature.
3. I have more experience of the game than you. So go play it and prove me wrong (yeah, right.)
4. Second-hand information from a biased source. The majority of people quit AoC leaving only a dedicated hardcore of players. So yeah, sure, that's going to be balanced. Why not go to the WoW forums and ask the posters there what their favourite MMO is?
5. It's still valid when Funcom are continuing there "it'll be here soon" approach to the poor souls still playing AoC and will remain so until they issue an apology, refund everybody they robbed and start giving proper dates and schedules for upcoming releases.

Go play AoC for yourself, Semen, then we'll talk.

Monkeycild:

1 : I am not lieing. You still resort to low blows when you know an argument is lost. It will only continue to refelct poorly on you.

2 : Semantics. It's a feature. Not now, but it will be when implemented. Since just before launch Funcoms official stance have been that it will be put into the game when they feel its good enough. They are getting there, sadly slower than anticipated.
I would rather have it in when its working as intended instead of half assed. According to your agrument i take it you share that opinon.

3 : Granted you have more experience than me. Doesn't take much since i have never played the game. You haven't played it since last summer. You quit before the big fixes was in. Making your experience old and not up to date.

4 : The official forums of any MMO, will bring you all information you'll ever need. Some of the games biggest critics will always be present there.For instance I played SWG for over 2years. Believe me there was outrage and hysteria going on the whole time from existing players.
The same is the case in the AOC forums. People will say their piece good or bad, and they do. I'ts nerf this and nerf that,change this and change that, this and that is bugged and what not. It's all present for anyone to see in AOC's official forums.
Since there hardly are any bugs left and the game runs stable it's more nerf this and that bableing, and gameplay elements that some don't like that get the evil eye nowadays.

5 : They have already said in several interviews that they are sorry for the problems many faced during the launch period and first months.
I for one like the new game directors policy of not setting fixed dates for updates. Things will be put into the game when it's ready and functioning as intended. Then they will avoid the problems they got when they were patching left and right in the first coupple of months. Patch fixed an issue and created two new ones...

And a refund....Grow up!!!

Go play AoC for yourself, Semen, then we'll talk.

The game inmproved a lot. No bugs to be found anymore, a lot more content.......and a rapid growing number off players.

Most of all .....at the launch there was DirectX10 included. It only was taken out at the first patch. I played it the first 2 weeks with DX10.

Btw. Funcom is a much better company than many others. They do their best to solve problems with games, something what I can't say about other game companies. Biorware is 10x worse than Funcom. Recently I had some Bioware folks on the phone about a bug in one of their games. They only replied with: "bugs, thats your problem". Well, 40% of the players have the same bug. Its a Bioware problem, not a players problem.

So to all gamemakers we can say "Can we have our money back!"

And what to say about Blizzard? Those ordinary thieves. I hope that one goes bankrupt.....I want to have my money back which they stole from me.

So to those who dont want to hear it, or to listen to it, or to believe...............Conan is the best there is. No matter what those anti-Conan Nazis tell.......

@ 1simen1.

It's great that AoC is getting better, but the damage done was the fault of Funcom. They can't expect users who were disappointed and burned to run back a few months later because they added the features that should have been there from the beginning. It just doesn't work that way.

The Sonic argument was an extreme example of what Vanguard launch was like. You would not release a single-player game that wasn't finished (although lately I am starting to worry about that). Funcom may have needed to get it out, but it shows us now that an unfinished MMO - or at least, a technically unsound MMO - isn't going to fly.

Funcom's next step, if they can claim that AoC is better, is to offer the olive branch back to those who left very early. Two to four free weeks, invite people back. They screwed us over remember. It's not my job to go back to AoC now and go "Wow, it's so much better!". It's Funcom's task to get old players like me back - if it's better, two weeks of free play to check out the new actually-finished (or at least, reasonably complete) game is enough. We'll know if the extra time has been worth it.

Anyway, next.

Say what you like about World of Warcraft Roxette (I'm not being nice about it of late either) but the game now is technically sound and has an absolute crapload of content for whatever you want to do. Bugs all companies strive to fix - it's unfair to point a finger at Blizzard because I've never seen a company that tackles large bugs so quick. SoE are too, but then they had to rebuild a whole game in Vanguard so even there I cut the devs some slack (I do wonder how much coffee is required to keep them going 24/7. Do they have their own coffee plantations?).

As for AoC having no bugs, that's a blatant lie. MMO's will always have bugs. That's the nature of the beast. There's always balance to maintain, things to be fixed. If there were no bugs there would be no need for maintainance and patches only when introducing new content. That's a fairy land that we're not at yet.

No-one is demanding their money back. I never did with Vanguard (I paid full price and a couple weeks later it was £5. That's what you call f**king painful). I paid for Founders with Hellgate London. We didn't get all that we were promised and the extra money we paid for a lifetime sub was gone. I loved Tabula Rasa and that died, they just didn't have the funding to add content so basically tweaked the PvP endlessly. And now AoC. A game that launched with a catalogue of problems each more game-breaking than the last - and it got worse as well after I left!

I'm no stranger to how the MMO scene works. I've wasted good amounts of my own cash on it. I don't get paid to write about it (though I am looking for work if anyone wants me!), I just think sometimes people who've only seen the good can't relate to those of us who saw the worst of it all. Funcom still have a good chance yet, I admit it. But the ball is very much in their court, and users who left are still potential customers to return. But we were burned. So how to make it work? Offer them some free time, minimal - two week trial or four week period - to come back in and see it for themselves.

If we're happy, we'll stay. If we think it's still broke, we'll bugger off again. It's worked for WoW. EQ. FFXI. Star Wars Galaxies. And other MMO's.

It's not my place to confirm AoC is finished now. I paid for the game. I gave them a chance. It's Funcom's place now to coax back people like me.

Most of all .....at the launch there was DirectX10 included.
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ORLY?


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Btw. Funcom is a much better company than many others. They do their best to solve problems with games, something what I can't say about other game companies
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Problems they themselves created in the first instance.

And I don't know about you, but I prefer to buy products that, you know, ACTUALLY WORK... I dunno, maybe I'm just out of touch with this crazy modern world but somebody selling me a product using false advertising that's not fit for purpose doesn't really leave me thinking, "Hey, they're a great company! I want to give them MORE of my money and one day I might actually get the product I paid for, instead of a broken mess!"

But hey, if you're having fun, good for you...