Now that Age of Conan has lost any momentum it once had, can things get any worse? We ask AoC Producer, Craig Morrison, some tough questions to find out.

With the huge economic changes that have been galloping across the globe, a lot of our focus has been on which MMO companies have been hit the hardest. Today, however, we managed to catch up with Age of Conan's Producer / Director, Craig Morrison to chat about FunCom's hardcore M-rated MMO. For those of you who aren't really paying attention to the MMO sphere, Age of Conan launched about 9 months ago to a WotLK starved audience who were eager to sample AoC's 'real combat' system and hardcore PVP. In fact, AoC received so much hype that within the first few weeks of launching, they managed to sell almost 500,000 copies. This number would later expand to an announced 700,000 subscribers. So what happened? Numbers being thrown around today note that there are no more than 100,000 subscribers in Age of Conan's rich environment, and Funcom's shares have been dropping faster than... well... something that drops fast (terminal velocity aside...). While I haven't played AoC myself, I was certainly very curious as to how something as well received as Age of Conan could tank itself so fast. Not only that, but does the game still have the same problems that dissuaded it's early players? Thanks once more to Craig Morrison for taking the time to answer my questions. Onward!

ZAM: While MMO industry leader World of Warcraft may have had its own shaky beginnings, the fact remains that Blizzard launched WoW into a developing market that had no dominant leader. Because there was no dominant MMO that disgruntled players could fall back to, World of Warcraft had its own grace period to really develop into the polished juggernaut it is today. These days, critics will argue that if an MMO wants to stand a chance against World of Warcraft, their launch, and game-play, need to be as smooth as possible if they hope to retain a significant player-base. All arguments of fairness aside, this leads to the following questions:

What factors drove Funcom to release Age of Conan when it did?

Craig Morrison: To be honest I'm not the best person to answer that as I only took over the team after the launch. However I think in general it's very easy to say with hindsight that it should have been delayed. A title's 'polish' always benefits from additional time, and that's very true of MMOs as well, so I am sure the game would also have improved with extra time. The feedback right after launch was actually very good. A lot of the issues people had with the game only showed up a little further down the line, so I'm not sure how easy it would have been to say with certainty that the game 'wasn't ready'.

If it had really been seen ahead of time that there were fundamental issues then I think it would have been pushed. As it happened though, quite a few of the issues that really prevented retention of customers were not those so easily highlighted early on. I think players would have tolerated a certain degree of missing polish if the experience had been compelling throughout, which, as you mention above, was what World of Warcraft benefited from when it launched. What we didn't manage was to make the experience compelling enough early enough.(Is there some reason these questions and responses are not attributed to anyone?)

ZAM: How does working in an industry that's entirely overshadowed by Blizzard affect the development of Age of Conan?

Craig: I wouldn't say it really 'overshadows' development in any way. Rather, I personally think that overall it's a good thing. While it can be a touch frustrating on days to know that you don't even get the benefit of any leeway at launch since people now compare a game with four years of live time behind it with something with four weeks, it does force you to 'up the bar' and try and work towards higher standards. That can only be a good thing in the long term.

ZAM: Speaking as a competitor, what do you think the presence of World of Warcraft does to the development of the MMORPG industry as whole?

Craig: It has opened up the genre to a wider group of people and has meant that MMOs in many ways have to adapt and find ways to appeal even more broadly than before since more people will try an MMO title. Given that MMOs already appealed to quite a diverse set of game-styles and player preferences it definitely means we have more to consider these days if you truly aim to try and take a title to a mainstream audience.

The fact that World of Warcraft is so well known and played by so many people, as it is today,  does though make attempting a mainstream MMO title riskier when you don't get anywhere near as much time to work out the early kinks as World of Warcraft did when it launched. So in terms of risk, in a market segment that already sees relatively few big titles make it to market, it might mean you see fewer, or much more specialized titles being developed. Aiming to go 'mainstream' is a huge undertaking and I think it might mean you will see quite a few titles aiming for very specific niches in the MMO gamers market rather than trying to take on World of Warcraft.

ZAM: Almost all major reviews of Age of Conan posit that the game had an incredibly shaky startup, with many reviewers noting that the game was entirely too glitchy on release, had little content past 20, did not have a 'fully' implemented PVP system, etc, etc - I'm sure you've heard it all. There are also rumors circulating that say that beta testers were not satisfied with Age of Conan before it launched, and they explicitly advised Funcom to develop for a few more months before releasing, but Funcom did not listen.

Does this particular rumor (about the beta testers) have any merit?

Craig: That depends entirely on your perspective I think, we work on an online product, and there are always 'rumors' on the internet! There are always people in any beta community saying 'the game isn't ready'. So did some people say that they weren't satisfied with the beta experience? Of course they did. There were also those who said they thought it was ready. Again, with hindsight it's very easy to be 'right' in such cases. I also think that many reviewers actually rated the game very highly, and the early experience was good. Major press and game sites gave the game good scores. It was issues slightly later into the game experience that started to show up the issues where people felt the game wasn't compelling enough. I think the one thing we'd have most liked to have not missed for launch was indeed the PVP system, and that was why it focused on immediately after launch.

ZAM:  In hindsight, knowing that a bad launch would forever negatively 'brand' Age of Conan (I know you're working to fix this) would you have approached the development and launch of Age of Conan differently?

Craig: That's an easy question to answer as I don't think any sane person would not try and approach something differently if they knew that people weren't going to like it!

Again, hindsight is a wonderful thing! I am sure that the team at the time would have made some different choices if they had been able to see into the future. I think the issues we have addressed and resolved already since launch show that some of the design choices missed the mark.

ZAM: Rumors also persist that Funcom has laid off up to 70% of the company's American workers. Not only that, but Funcom's stock has  gone from $24 a share - spiking to $54 - to $3.56 a share. Finally, in August 2008, it was noted that the CEO of Funcom, Mr. Trond Aas, sold 400,000 Funcom shares (18.7% of his total owned) to cover 'acquisition costs,' and 'accumulated wealth tax costs.'

First, are these layoffs simply a by-product of a slowing economy, or is this an indication of a faltering company.

Craig: Neither really. It's easy I guess for the internet to indulge in its two favorite hobbies of paranoia and exaggeration when it comes to such matters (with a little bit of taking things out of context for good measure!).  The staffing situation in the US office was pretty straightforward. It's our customer support office and we were staffed up for a successful launch, which in fact exceeded expectations and was very successful so we even staffed up a little further to cope with the demand early on.

Then, when, as is well documented now, the subscriber retention wasn't as good we had to naturally scale back the customer service operation to an appropriate level. It's just sound business basics. It really wasn't any more or less dramatic than that. The numbers weren't even a secret given they were in our financial reporting. We had staffed up for over 600,000 customers at launch, went up to over 800,000 then at the end of the quarter reported publically to having 400,000 subscribers. It would not make any financial sense to retain a large support overhead with fewer customers. Of course it is always sad to let people go. That it was caused by us not being as successful as we would have hoped for is never nice, and we would all have loved for it to not have been necessary but likewise it isn't the sign of any financial difficulty on the company level. It's actually a sign of sound organization and financial planning. In fact I think it would have been negligent of the company not to scale our operation appropriately.

Likewise the CEO (or any other member of staff) having traded stocks is nothing unusual and regulated here in Norway. I am no accountant and won't profess to offer a 'qualified' opinion, but there is certainly nothing untoward in it; stocks are bought and sold all the time. If that sale was a 'bad sign' then I guess the fact he bought more recently must be a 'good sign'. I think it's very easy sometimes for people to hear only the 'sound-bites' and jump to incorrect conclusions without actually researching the situation, in particular when it comes to the financial reports. There aren't many MMO companies with publicly available financial reports so it's maybe not always the easiest for people to digest and analyze correctly.

ZAM: What do these economic problems mean for the future of Age of Conan?

Craig: The company is actually in a pretty good situation, and relatively speaking in these harsh economic times we are in a very favorable position compared to many other developers as we have a good amount of 'cash in the bank' as it were. Again, I am no accountant, but we do already have the capital to work on our future projects as well as continuing to develop Age of Conan. As a European developer the international exchange rates are always a concern, but we have dealt with that for quite a few years already!

So in terms of Age of Conan I think we will continue to work on the product, support and build it. Remember we already have one MMO fast approaching its eighth birthday, in the form of Anarchy Online, which is still profitable, so we see MMO development as a long term strategy and see many years ahead for Age of Conan.

ZAM: Moving to game-play discussion, players comment on the forums that exploiting end-game content is rampant amongst top guilds and Funcom has done little to monitor and/or track this. All of this occurs despite other players claiming that they have spent hours attempting to report the exploiting.

Is this true, and is Funcom doing anything to look into these exploits?

Craig: I think there will always be those who try and push, poke and prod the system to try and exploit. It happens in every game and ours is no different. We work hard to catch and address exploits wherever they occur and do so in each and every game-update as well as the hard work of a dedicated customer service team. It's a never ending game of 'cat and mouse' though. There will always be those trying and we always have to adapt and try and prevent them from doing so! It's certainly not true that we haven't done anything to monitor it or deal with it. A lot of resource is spent ensuring that exploits are tracked down and resolved.

I realize that these questions sound negative in nature, but the real goal behind this article to set down Funcom's official stance on AoC, and move on to the future of the game. Ignoring the past, however, has hindered the AoC team a lot because players are arguing that 'sugar coating' the game means you haven't learned from your mistakes. I really just wanted to get the negative rumors out of the way so that people can see that you're acknowledging the negative aspects of AoC. Most would agree that a company that acknowledges criticism is one that has a much larger potential for growth as opposed to a company that simply develops patches and releases sunny 'letters to the community.'

I think that anyone who has been following the game will have seen that we have put in a lot of time and effort into ensuring we are speaking with the community, and I think if you read all our recent interviews you will not see anyone shying away from answering the tough questions and addressing where we felt the game didn't quite deliver, what it got right and what it didn't. I'm not into 'sugar coating' things, and I don't think anyone here is doing that; it's certainly not hindering our development now. We have been hard at work on the issues that the players did bring up after the launch, addressing them and resolving them.

The game though is a good game, and always has been at its core. Yes, there were kinks, some serious, to iron out after the launch, but we are proud of what the game brings to the market, and we have been the first to acknowledge the flaws and make sure they get resolved.

A lot has already been done since launch. The game now runs and performs pretty smoothly and the 'out of memory' technical issues that some experienced at launch were dealt with as the first priority and have been resolved. We filled in the major gaps in the quest content with new quest and content additions. We also re-vamped almost all the launch dungeons to improve the experience there as well. The PVP leveling that didn't make the launch was added and was expanded with a full PVP consequence systems as well that has started to address the needs for PVP and to provide more goals and objectives for PVPers. Lastly, the fact that players felt item and character progression wasn't strong enough is being addressed in the upcoming update cycle. So overall I think when you assess the additions and improvements to the game since the summer, objectively you see a pretty good picture in terms of the games current position.

ZAM: To end on a less critical note, then, what are the biggest changes that you think would really appeal to players who left Age of Conan after its launch?

Imagine you could personally speak to every individual who played AoC and left, as well as players who believe the rumors and negative branding that floats above your game, but haven't experienced it themselves. Why do you think players should come back (or try out) Age of Conan?

Craig: I think the best suggestion I can make is for them to ask people who actually are playing the game actively and see if they vouch for the improvements. Word of mouth from a friend or fellow gamer goes much further than anything I can say here. It's easy for people to dismiss interviews and such as being marketing driven and saying 'of course he is going to say that!' so I can ask them not to take my word for it, but to check it out for themselves. We are starting to see very positive signs amongst the community and while we are still hard at work improving and building the game, I think that the community does acknowledge that effort and by and large does reflect that in their feedback.

Of course there will always be those who didn't like what they saw at launch and won't come back regardless. That's natural and understandable, but I think the majority of those who start asking a few questions might start to like what they hear about the game from those actually playing rather than be scared by it.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com