Live Age of Conan interview today

By Robert Purchese Published 21 January, 2009

Craig Morrison on the year ahead.

Age of Conan game director Craig Morrison will be answering your questions live on Eurogamer from 2pm GMT tomorrow.

As with all our live interviews you will be able to input queries via a moderator, and Morrison's responses will pop up automagically on the same page. Answers can be submitted up to an hour before kick-off.

Craig Morrison took control of Age of Conan last September after a disgruntled Gaute Godager walked away. Morrison steers the barbarian-themed MMO out of a difficult year, one that began with a server merge to address a dwindling population and resulted in the closure of around half the total number of realms.

But he has an aggressive schedule of updates for Age of Conan to entice players back, including lots of sorely-needed high-level content and better character progression and community elements. Plus, Funcom is soldiering on with the very first Age of Conan expansion.

There's plenty there to quiz him about, then. So join us tomorrow from 2pm GMT for the answers.

Head over to our Age of Conan gamepage to find out more.

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About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (23) 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • iokthemonkey #1 3 years ago

    L.O.L.

    EDIT: You know what would be really funny? If we all just asked "Where can I get my money back?"
    Edited by 1 at 21/01/09 @ 14:31

  • Slabbathepave #2 3 years ago

    I'll be interested in what he has to say. I might have a question or two myself. I'm sure all the insightful questions WONT get screened and all the usual banaal bollocks wont get answered.

    I'm sure the whole thing wont be a waste of time.

    Craig...who would win in a fight between you and Gaute?

  • iokthemonkey #3 3 years ago

    Exactly. I have quite a few questions I'd like answering but I won't give him a stage on which to spout the same bollocks he does every time anybody criticises the game or Funcom.

  • Benno #4 3 years ago

    I will be interested in what he has to say, this could turn out to be a historic comeback if they fix the game up.

  • iokthemonkey #5 3 years ago

    I will be interested in what he has to say, this could turn out to be a historic comeback if they fix the game up.

    ----

    Do you really think there's still an audience for the game, though? Those that did want to play are either still playing or have left due to the absolute clusterfuckage that was the release and I don't see many of those people coming back following that.

    Personally I can't see anything Funcom could do to the game to attract me back, as I played it and found it flawed on so many fundamental levels, the kind of stuff you can't just tweak or improve without scrapping it all and starting over. Aside from the simplistic button-mashing combat, there's nothing innovative here. In many ways, it's a backward step in game design and tech. The horrible instancing, hard zone lines, terrible quest balance/difficulty, level grinding... It's all just so 1990s...

  • Benno #6 3 years ago

    You are talking on deaf ears mate. I am the audience. I enjoyed the core game but couldn't get past the plethora of issues that plagued it at release. I only played for 20-25 days or so. If they manage to reform many of the issues, I would love to go back. You are an audience as well. You say you dont like the game yet I have seen you spamming every post and comment thread about the game. You are 3 of the 5 comments on this page for example. I bet you will read what he has to say and post in that thread as well.

    You aren't a sock of Gaol are you?

    And since when has innovation being necessary for success? (wow)

    Chances are that this will never recover and I will never play it again, but I am not one to refuse developers a chance to reform their game, especially when its spoken from someone who wasn't responsible for the "clusterfuck" launch.

  • iokthemonkey #7 3 years ago

    But that's what I'm saying - I asked the question as to how many people who hadn't played it would play it now and how the game could grow if the audience were either already playing it or had left. I don't think there IS a large enough audience for this game to survive.

    I was then pointing out that I personally wouldn't touch it again as I considered it a retrogressive step in game design.

    The reason I mention innovation is that - despite what people may think - WoW WAS innovative when it came out. It made MMOs accessible, introduced the concept of questing for XP as a viable option (in EQ, for example, despite the name, you rarely "quested" and only earned real XP by grinding mobs) and did more to advance the genre to the state it's in today than any game since.

    Beyond that, the point I was making is that AoC followed WoW yet learned nothing about moving the genre forward and - in many cases - included technology, such as hard zone lines, that we shouldn't be seeing in modern games.

    Finally, the problems from launch continue in Funcom's approach to the game. It's all "soons" and "we're working ons" with no firm dates or straight answers. Add to that the fact that the game STILL lacks features promised at launch (and included on the box) and you'll see why I hold them in such low regard. And Morrison is as guilty as anybody else of this fuzzy attitude to their customer base and this whole "it's coming soon, honest!" mentality.

    I respect that other people might want to play the game and will have fun with it. More power to them. But the point I'm making is that Funcom's bad business practices have destroyed any potential mass-market userbase the game could have attracted and it'll be a cold day in hell before a large proportion of that userbase would come back to playing this mess.

  • Slabbathepave #8 3 years ago

    @iokthemonkey

    Perhaps a little too much. I was disapointed with AoC too....very disapointed and it irratates me that such a promising game failed on so many seperate accounts.... but i do want to see it recover...alot of love went into it, you can see that at least and it does have alot to offer that other MMO's do not.

    I think alot of people went away from it feeling cheated, i know i did. The fact they are obviously trying so hard to make up for it can only be a good thing and if Craig Morrison is as smart as he needs to be he will answer some uncomfortable questions tomorrow and not spout bullshit rhetoric to easy and safe questions. I think the people who bought the game, payed thier subs for the first month after the30 free days ( in other words showed a little faith) but were inevitably unrewarded deserve that much at least.

  • iokthemonkey #9 3 years ago

    if Craig Morrison is as smart as he needs to be he will answer some uncomfortable questions tomorrow and not spout bullshit rhetoric to easy and safe questions.

    ----

    I doubt Eurogamer would actually allow those questions to be posed.

    And personally I fail to see what it has to offer. Tits?

  • Benno #10 3 years ago

    The tits WERE the innovation

    thats moving the genre forward imo
    Edited by 1 at 21/01/09 @ 16:29

  • iokthemonkey #11 3 years ago

    So will the planned expansion be "Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Bum, Tits, Fanny, The Lot?"

  • Snooz #12 3 years ago

    A funny side note is that a filthy rich, smart, hottie of a cosmetic millionaire called Celina Middlefar(t) (T not used abroad :p) just invested in Funcom.

    Well, she only needed about 100k £. Still this made a news story for the media and maybe shes just having a laugh about the hype and selling her stocks in two weeks. OR maybe she's doing the Uwe Boll-conspiracy-theory where she uses a tax loop hole if thats possible in Norway.

  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #13 3 years ago

    Of course we won't screen the uncomfortable/difficult questions about the game. Giving you guys a chance to ask them is a big part of why we're doing this interview.

    As long as they're not impolitely put, and are actual questions, we'll be eager to pose them.

    As for banal answers - well that's for Mr. Morrison to avoid, and you to judge if he has.

  • iokthemonkey #14 3 years ago

    Is "Can I have my money back?" a valid question then? ;)

  • Pirotic #15 3 years ago

    On the year ahead?

    job cuts followed by the servers being closed I suspect.

  • 1simen1 #16 3 years ago

    Well Monkeyboy, i take it you will be first in line crying your heart out about how Funcom svindeled you out of your money when they tricked you into buying AOC.

    I do hope you introduce yourself the same polite way you have in various threads regarding AOC.

    You quit AOC long before they fixed many of the main problems with the game.

    Quest have been added, bugs have been fixed, stability problems have been fixed, content has been added.
    Next patch will add 2 more zones for level 80 and probably DX10. Servers are beeing merged making populations dence again.

    You have been bitchin' about how bad this game is in every comments section ever made by eurogamer for months now. In your own words you quit after a coupple of months. And here you are talking filth again in 7 out of 15 posts in this comment section alone. All time high , even for you...lol

    I have said it before and i'll say it again. Let it go....It's a game!! You didn't like it ,apparantly, move on...Continue to play your game of choice LOTR.

    Edited by 1 at 22/01/09 @ 00:26

  • Orange #17 3 years ago

    The game should have never been released in the state it was in, people have a right to be pissed off with that. Treat customers like shit and they will dump it back on you.

  • iokthemonkey #18 3 years ago

    Servers are beeing merged making populations dence again.

    ----

    Dence (sic) populations.

    Classic.

  • HMAN #19 3 years ago

    1Simen1 - Face it pal the games a pile of shite that was released about 2 years too early. Still missing features I expected at launch (and paid my money out on the back of these promises). Its a joke and will surely die the death it deserves. Some kind soul should put it out of its misery...

  • actionfitz #20 3 years ago

    Question: Do you sincerely believe that people who purchased AoC at launch / pre-order got value for money?
    - if yes then:
    Can you say (with a straight face) that your first wave of customers were not ripped off when there were features advertised on the box that were still missing many months after release?

    If you were paying for a service from a company and the service was missing vital features, contained numerous technical issues and failed to live up to the advertising hype that enticed you in the first place... resulting in you cancelling that service...
    Would you come back for more on the promise that the service is now approaching the level it should have been at launch?

    or would you decide not to throw good money after bad, and stay with the competitions' far sleeker and richer and dare I say superior product?
    Edited by 1 at 22/01/09 @ 12:20

  • iokthemonkey #21 3 years ago

    Question: Do you sincerely believe that people who purchased AoC at launch / pre-order got value for money?
    - if yes then:
    Can you say (with a straight face) that your first wave of customers we not ripped off when there were features advertised on the box that were still missing many months after release?

    If you were paying for a service from a company and the service was missing vital features, contained numerous technical issues and failed to live up to the advertising hype that enticed you in the first place... resulting in you cancelling that service...
    Would you come back for more on the promise that the service is now approaching the level it should have been at launch?

    or would you decide not to throw good money after bad, and stay with the competitions' far sleeker and richer and dare I say superior product?

    ----

    Or like I said,"Can I have my money back?"

  • sargeant_paulson #22 3 years ago

    I dont think it's here in the comments you ask the questions.
    Edited by 1 at 22/01/09 @ 12:38

  • Bleh #23 3 years ago

    Can't be online for the interview but maybe someone could ask following question.

    Are they planning some sort of welcome back for old players?