MTV Multiplayer: How does Funcom feel about the current state of “Age of Conan”?

Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom product director: On some parameters, we are happy about how the game is going. For instance, on how we have been able to greatly evolve “Age of Conan” since launch, turning it more into the unique and visionary MMO we want it to be. But on other parameters, we still have ways to go.

I think it’s okay to say that we simply didn’t deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features. That said, I do think we went out the gate with some extremely strong ones too (i.e. combat, graphics, presentation, audio, maturity, story and quests, Tortage etc.), which made us a giga-hit in retail and gave us some great reviews. But on other features we just didn’t polish it well enough, including our items, tradeskills, system performance and PvP.

So this is what we are working on now, merging the various strong and weak points into one cohesive “great” whole, where every addition we make is about getting great quality, across the board.

We did add new servers shortly after launch, but in our eagerness to please I think we also rushed the deployment of too many servers too fast. So what we are looking at now is actually merging servers, since this will make the game better for our players.

MTV Multiplayer: How is the Xbox 360 version of “Age of Conan” coming along?

Tharaldsen: While there is a dedicated specialist team working on the Xbox version, it’s the live PC game we want to speak about and focus most of our resources on right now. We feel confident that there is a time for consoles as well, but right now we put most of our devs on the PC version.

MTV Multiplayer: Is Funcom aware of fans’ disappointment with some of the promised things not appearing in the game? If so, how are you addressing those issues?

Tharaldsen: Oh yeah, very aware, I would say. And we are naturally working hard to ensure that this disappointment gets changed into something positive. Firstly, it’s important to note that these kinds of “things” break down clearly into two very different situations. You have some ideas that were just that: ideas, when we came to actually implement them in the game they simply didn’t work well, or at all.

Sometimes when you take an idea from concept and plans on paper to balance in the game it just doesn’t fit, or causes too many other issues. In those cases, it’s actually better that we cut them; those were informed decisions in the best interests of the overall player experience — formation combat was probably the major thing here. In practice it just didn’t work anywhere near as well as it sounded like it should on paper. We are glad we didn’t try and force something through there for the sake of it!

Then of course there are the areas that, at some point during the final stretch, we were caught between a rock (time and resources) and a hard place (our promises), and that the end results did not deliver on all the promises made. Personally, as I see it, I think this let down some people more than what the game actually delivered (because “Conan” is an awesome game in many ways!).

As a result the game many played in their heads before launch didn’t necessarily match the game delivered. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight, but now that we are past the launch crunch we have time and resources to focus more on the quality of each deliverable, as well as time to put focus on what is important to the players, right here and now. And this is the way forward: more real results, and then results which lead to fun and meaningful experiences inside the game.