This week New Attitude takes another look at Age of Conan, a bit about Funcom’s track record, and the efforts they are making to make it a real contender in the mmo arena.

Read on…

*update*

At the bottom of the patch notes for today (6/23/2008) I read the following under “General”

Performance:

A number of code changes have been made to improve client performance.

New advance video options have been added for particles. Turning down the particle settings will increase performance.

It appears that developers are listening to the complaints that fill forums and chat. Let’s hope the changes make a big difference.

Julie

“You are not prepared” - Illidan Stormrage, World of Warcraft

Many years ago, long before I was born, my grandmother asked my grandfather to paint the attic. Now mind you it was not an attic such as the ones we see in modern houses which is little more than a storage space accessible only through a hatchway in the ceiling. In those days the attic was a full room with walls and could be reached by a set of stairs you pulled down out of the ceiling - an actual room. So my great grandfather set out to paint the attic. However, as it turns out, as a painter great granddad made a good cement contractor. Mostly, that’s because that’s exactly what he was. And so, once the attic was inexpertly painted my great grandmother was invited up to the attic to see the finished product. She took one look at it, and was a bit dissatisfied to say the least. Still, not wanting to hurt my great grandfather’s feelings she took a step back and took another look at the paint job. She considered the whole situation and stepped back again - once again considering the poorly managed paint job. She repeated this process, noting each time, out loud, that “the farther back you, get the better it looks” - until she eventually backed up too far and fell right down the steps up to the attic.

I have played Age of Conan (AoC) up to level 43 so far, and my experience has been much the same as that of great grandmother and the newly painted attic - with a bit of a difference. The farther back I step from AoC, considering the entire picture, the better Everquest 2 looks. As I consider all of the points to the game, both good and bad (and make no mistake - there are a good many positive points to the game) one phrase leapt to my mind when I considered the latest message that Funcom had to give to it’s players. That message, like the words of Illidan Stormrage above, would be a message directly to Funcom:

“You are not prepared”

Here is the message I was treated to when I logged on this last weekend:

“The first massive siege battles have taken place. We are aware of several issues appearing as a result of this, and this message is all about how seriously we take it, and what you can expect to happen when. Let me start by stressing that even though this is our top priority, it is not our only priority. Many other bugs and issues are being fixed and patched out - as I am sure you have noticed with our frequent updates!

Read on about issues and what we are doing, here…”

It is perhaps a telling comment that when you click on the word “here” to read about what they are doing, you are greeted with a message that tells you that you are not logged in. Once again Funcom has put the cart before the horse. Rather than fixing the basic like broken game codes, a broken crafting system, and broken quests they are more worried about an end game that players may have a hard time reaching anyway as things sit now. You would think by now a company like Funcom would have learned from it’s own past mistakes if not at least someone else’s. Consider the following review from the opening weeks of Anarchy Online:

“It’s safe to say that Funcom’s online role-playing game, Anarchy Online, has been one of the most widely and eagerly anticipated games this year…What’s more, the game suffered from (and continues to suffer from) some serious lag and frame rate problems, due in part to a lack of bandwidth on Funcom’s servers and the game’s own memory” - Gamespot.com

And here is the tag line to the review:

If it can conquer its technical problems, Anarchy Online will be the very best online role-playing game around.

President John F. Kennedy once said “knowledge of the past prepares us for the events of the future.” It’s too bad the good folks at Funcom have not learned from the mistakes of THEIR past - it seems they are doomed to repeat them, again and again.

This is not to say that AoC doesn’t have any good points - as I said earlier it certainly does. There is no denying that it has brought a little fresh air to the “same old, same old” combat systems we usually see. Most mmos bring us various variations on “press the button and watch the combat animation.” At least this time around it is necessary to consider one’s angle of attack.

But it is hard to give the combat system the admiration it is due when the game has more crashes than a Los Angeles freeway.

But a unique combat system is far from being it’s only asset. Where Activision/Blizzard established a definite look all it’s own, I feel that Funcom has done the same with Age of Conan. With the game set on high all you have to do is take a look at the mist hanging over the fields of the dead to appreciate the work of the artists. The game is beautiful - no doubt about it. Then again, so is a Rembrandt still life and both have about the same frame rate per second.

As things sit now, one of the largest threads in I have seen on “The Older Gamers Forums” (a group that is about 14,000 members strong by some estimates) is entitled “how many people are playing AoC until World of Warhammer comes out”?

At about this point in the article, you are probably telling yourselves “Wow, Julie really hates this game.” But actually, nothing could be further from the truth. If I hated a game – if I thought it was so painful to play I would rather pull my teeth out through my nose – I would just dismiss the game as not even being worth my time. Ask yourselves why you, or I, or anyone else would be upset about a game that was “much anticipated”? One possible answer might be that I could be upset about the money I spent on the game in the first place. Considering the time I have spent playing the game so far, however, the money has been well spent. I would have spent much more money if those hours had been spent in some activity like bowling or even buying a console game.

The truth of the matter is that I care about this IP and the way it was developed. The developers have done some great work so far. That shows in everything from the artwork to little touches like being able to mark waypoints and take notes on the in-game map. And as I have mentioned on more than one occasion, the combat is a visceral experience that is not to be missed. The guild I belong to in AoC already has their own fully finished player city. How could I not look forward to a bit of end game pvp, war mammoths included?

But first things first. I am still pulling for funcome to pull their proverbial “Fat out of the fire” - so much so that I am even working on an Age of Conan podcast. With time (and truth to be told they don’t have much of that until Warhammer Online comes out) their efforts could result in turning the game around as Sony was able to do with Everquest 2. The last thing I am anxious for, at this point, is to see AoC and up another would be – heavyweight mmo languishing by the side of the road muttering to itself “I could have been a contender.”

I can also think of no better way to end this weeks column than with the same tag line used by Gamespot.com’s review of the first release of Anarchy Online:

“If it can conquer its technical problems, Age of Conan will be the very best online role-playing game around.”

I just hope that Fucom manages to make that tag line come true this time around.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather