Page 3: Interview: Turning AoC Around

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

How successful are you expecting this re-evaluation offer to be, has there been a huge influx of former players, and how many are you aiming to retain?

Correct - we recently did launch the re-evaluation campaign for Age of Conan, something I believe is a very strong indication on where Funcom believe the game is at the moment. We're looking very much forward to seeing how it's received among our former players.  I can't really comment on our goals for the re-evaluation, but it goes without saying that we really hope that as many as possible of our former players come back and that they will hopefully be convinced by how it's improved. The amount of attention Age of Conan has had the past 2-3 weeks has been incredible, and we've seen news stories, feature articles and videos on major websites all across the world. This is giving the game a lot of attention, attention that I believe is very useful to any player who are contemplating returning to the game. Being able to inform players through the sites they usually read is great.

So far, what we've picked up among members of the press, is very encouraging. WarCry said the changes were staggering and encouraged people to return to it, while IGN recently said that the game was back on track. That response is very humbling to us, and it only helps to keep us pushing harder to make Age of Conan even better!

There are many other MMOs of the same genre, and players can only afford so many subscriptions. Blizzard said earlier this week that it's possible WoW will be free to play with microtransactions one day, would you ever consider changing AoC to a free to play model?

We're certainly not ruling anything out, but we don't have any current plans for that. However, we've had huge success going free-to-play with our other MMO Anarchy Online, and we strongly believe its a viable business strategy for these kinds of games.

Just how big of a task has it been to get AoC back on track?

It's been quite a challenge, but it's definitely paying off. We're seeing it in the feedback from our players, and we're seeing it in the way public opinion and word of mouth is turning around. Word of mouth is an incredibly powerful thing and it takes a long time to turn that around, but I think we're getting there with Age of Conan now. With the most recent update out the door, we've really noticed the difference and with the re-evaluation now launched we hope that players will return, enjoy it, and tell their friends. And if they don't enjoy it - we hope they still tell us so that we can strive to make it better! Our development team, with Craig in the lead, has done a fantastic job so far and when I look at the plans we have for Conan's future I am certain that players have a lot to look forward to. We're announcing our first expansion at GamesCom in August, and let me tell you it's looking amazing, and we're also working on our next major free update for the game. We'll be able to talk more about that soon, but for now we'll just say that guilds have a lot to look forward to!

Turning an MMO around is team work. We have a great development team working on the improvements, and we have a great marketing and communications team that are fighting with tooth and nail to bring attention to the game well after it was launched. In the end it's a work of passion for all of us, and we hope that shows both in terms of the quality of the game and how we talk about it publicly. You haven't seen the last of Age of Conan, that's for sure, and we'll make sure to make it very hard for gamers to avoid hearing more about the game in the months and years ahead!

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