Page 2: Interview: Turning AoC Around

14 Jul 2009 at 13:55:47 by Bill Vaughan

There were rumours that the number of subscribers were extremely low at one point, and you merged several servers. Was AoC ever in danger of shutting down?

I can't comment on subscription numbers, but it's quite natural for most games - except the elephant in the room (we all love that elephant by the way) - to have a drop in subscribers after launch. However it's important to note that we are actually among the all time top 4-5 MMOs in the west! Also, Age of Conan sold extremely well, which just made it harder for us to not have a drop after some time. And indeed, the game had problems and word of mouth did turn sour at one point, which made it more difficult to retain players and bring in new ones. However, Age of Conan is performing well and with the slew of massive updates we've put out after launch, we've slowly built up a more positive word of mouth over time and recently this has culminated in a lot of positive feedback both among players, gamers in general and the press. Craig Morrison, the game director, and his team has done a fantastic job turning the game around and as far as we can tell, people are realizing that throughout the industry. No, Age of Conan was never in danger of shutting down. We love this game, and we did whatever was needed to improve on it.

It certainly seems that AoC is on the up again now, how have you gone about turning things around?

It's been a long process for us, one that has claimed a lot of blood, sweat and tears! Immediately after launch we sat down and planned out in utmost detail how we wanted to realize the game's true potential. We set up a long road map for what we wanted to do, and for a period of time we focused intensely on getting rid of the most important issues that our players put to our attention. Our entire development team focused on improving the game after launch, and even today we have over one hundred people working on adding to the game and improving upon it! We've gone through pretty much everything - we've improved combat, sieging, city building, tradeskills, existing content, we've added new content, and just recently we completely revitalized the entire items and RPG system. It's a work of passion for Craig, his team of developers and the entire company in general, and I think it shows.

So far we have put out five major updates to the game, and what we've been doing is trying to get as much attention as possible for each of those updates. Usually these updates contain a large content update - such as Ymir's Pass and the Xibaluku dungeon - and a host of improvements, changes and so on. We've worked closely with the gaming media on getting attention for these updates, through trailer videos, new screenshots, interviews and articles on what these updates actually do. The interest has been great, and I think we've succeeded in keeping Age of Conan firmly placed in the spotlight since launch. We're also very focused on working with the community, and we're doing significant community communication for every update with newsletters, game director letters and more. For Funcom it's not just launching the game and moving onto the next thing we're doing, we're working just as hard now with getting attention for the game among gamers and the media as we did before it was launched. And personally I think it really shows.

How are the figures looking now, are things looking good?

It's a question I would love to answer, but I can't comment on subscription numbers! Generally, though, things are improving for Age of Conan on many levels.

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