March 8th, 2010 | 
Author: 
RETRACTION for Age of Conan
This is the first time we have ever found ourselves in the position of having to post a retraction. We are aware that the overzealous attitude we expressed on No Prisoners, No Mercy Show 55 and our recent article entitled The Reports are exaggerated may be a bit catching. If you got caught up in our excitement and had a great time we will say “Bravo, good for you.” However, if you had the same experience we did, we apologize. When we returned to Age of Conan this weekend we found the same problem that has plagued the game since day one, over two years ago – low frame rates per second (FPS). Even on our computer which exceeds the recommended system specifications, our frame rate per second never exceeded 20 fps, and usually hovered around 10 to 14 fps, sometimes dipping as low as 3 fps. If anyone had as bad a time as we did, we apologize. We have, in fact, posted about it. While the letter in the post is not the one we sent to Funcom, we did send a letter to our contact at the company.
Quite frankly we are a bit hurt by the whole thing.
The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team
The link for the show is on the right or you can listen here.
The early release of the No Prisoners, No Mercy show 55 is live, for those of our listeners who demanded the ability to hear it before the show goes public to ITUNES and the Virgin Worlds collective. After all, Saylah, of Mystic Worlds fame and a regular guest, tells me it is one of the only three podcasts she listens to.
Now many of you may see the picture above and think we have become an Age of Conan podcast. However that isn’t the case. Some of our long term listeners will remember that we actually started out as an Age of Conan podcast entitled “Age of Conuns” back “in the day” as they say.
This time, the picture is actually in honor of this weeks guests, who are Glen Swan and Oliver Kunz, two of the community managers from Funcom. The community managers talk about many topics, including where the name “Famine” in Glen “Famine” Swan comes from, they talk about the new Age of Conan Expansion, debunk some of the opinions by the blogging community about the decisions made in the development of Age of Conan, and talk about their new mmos (including The Secret World) as well as other topics.
We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did producing the show.
Posted in Article Archive | 
Tags: Age of Conan, Funcom, No Prisoners No Mercy Podcast, The Secret World
Well, if fc community staff accepts that player leave aoc just because there are some other mmo on the market – maybe it needs some “renew”.
It thinks this is the wrong attitude, they should care much more about how to make players stay instead.
So I couldn’t read any request for “spaceships” in test-live forums as they said in the interview – but if fc community staff actually could find this…what else?
Yes it’s true, the last patch had good feedback – but thats not a big surprise as there hasn’t been any similar content like this in the game before, since the last two years (!)….so big surprise this way.
And that’s what I can read in all the DIFFERNET aoc forums (keep in mind, forums are separated to different countries) in all over the world:
Complaints about boringness and lack of content, and many suggestion how to make from aoc with its console-rpg-setup a real mature and solid mmo-game, where people want to stay longer than 2 weeks after a new patch is launched.
But not wondering now about poor progress, if all that fc understands when reading player feedback in Test-live forums is: “spaceships….”
all the best.
Well what can I say Adamo except for “No prisoners, what…oh yes…no mercy.” It has been awhile since I was active on a funcom game. Unfortunately our efforts are not funded by any outside source and there are only so many subscription dollars to go around. I will be the first to admit (and I did on the show) that I stopped playing my character at level 57 so it has been awhile since I was on Age of Conan, and thus don’t have access to any of the same forums that you do. And so I will simply have to allow you a place to have your say, rather than agree or disagree with you.
All that said, and believe me that’s a mouth full at this hour in the morning, I am simply happy that two professional community managers were able to share their time with us. They just strike me as a couple of down to earth guys doing what they love (and believe me it would be up near the top of my dream jobs if I was able to get it) for a product they believe in.
Thanks for the comment.
Julie
Hello Sr. Julie,
thx for answer;
Of course I do understand how precious it is for you to have such high-grade employers from funcom in the show. And of course I am happy to get ANY further information, too (as GDC10 has already started days ago)
Well, thats for it alone, but can be sure I quitted this pod-interview after hearig the word “spaceship” from somebodys mouth, who actually was expected to know better, if ever took a serious look at Test-Live forums where player try to explain what should be improved (e.g. trading interface (buggy, search doesn’t work correctly), Minigames (finished after 1 round), or again delayed pvp content; to sum up: THINGS that players are waiting finally since 2 years to fix (!!), (not to mention of other heavy technical issues) – not because of boringness – but just to get the game finally working!
And again concerning comment to this interview: accepting player to leave aoc and subscribing other mmo’s instead is not the best attitude, to get players ever back into game again…
all the best.
Glen ‘Famine’ Swan and Oliver ‘Tarib’ Kunz talk about many topics, including where the name “Famine” in Glen “Famine” Swan comes from, they talk about the new Age of Conan Expansion, debunk some of the opinions by the blogging community about the decisions made in the development of Age of Conan..
Debunk what exactly. Nothing to debunk. Both Morrison and Swan were completely owned on the Fury forums because of their consistent lies. So much so that they had to tuck tail, run, and lock the thread.
Tranca – [RUS corp]
Hi ladies, it’s been awhile since I’ve commented on your show. Unlike you, I hadn’t played Age of Conan until just recently. Having burned out on WoW and not having interest in any other offerings, I decided to give the trail a chance. After all, 20 levels of unlimited playtime on the isle of Tortage for free…why not!? And I like it. I don’t know if I’ll like it past Tortage, but I’ll soon find out as I’ve ordered a retail copy.
I enjoyed listening to your guests. They seem to have made the game they wanted to make. I appreciate that they listen to the community, but still stick to their guns on certain aspects. After all, the most vocal of a “community” is not always right. I’m sure many people in the forums have good suggestions, but sometimes even the smallest change or addition to a game can have huge consequences that may not be realized at the start. My advice to people unhappy with the state of the game is to be patient, and if a game infuriates them that much well… put it in perspective, it’s just a game. Find other things to do to occupy your time.
Anyway, thanks to you for another good show, and thanks to your guests for creating a game I think I’m going to like a lot.
@ Seritaph: Thanks for the kind compliments. Good to see you around again, we minssed you. Mr. Swan and Mr.Kunz were delightful to listen to. They have me wanting to go back to Age of Conan.
@ Tranca: In listening to the show what I heard was to gentlemen who love what they do who shed some light on popular opinion that some bloggers have about why game design decisions where made. I personally have never heard of the “Fury Forums” and until proven otherwise we will side with them. To quote Sister Julie, who often quotes Shakespeare, “Me thinks thou doest protest too much.”
@ Serapith, Webmaster
Sadly disagree here:
Keep in mind, we are talking about a fee-required game, that was sold with announced features, that actually cannot be found in any certain working way until this day -
Of course the little number of devs are gentle people, that work hard for their money – but that’s not the point.
The point is that funcom as a company clearly does not aim to satisfy their customers, but simply just focusses taking profit. Well, surely we all know that alone is not a crime – as far as general conditions are present – and thats exactly the point:
I couldn’t remember a worse release disaser the last 10 years than the one from age of conan 2008. Important and LEADING game features just like missing direct x 10 and any PVP concept in a pvp-mmo cannot be found until that day. Even the murderpoint system appeared just month later after release.
Instead of fixing this, an expansion was announced (Kingship) and then the team was splitted and continued working on tsw. You can read this in community-announcements in the forums.
All right, then the instance ymirs pass found its way into the game; Please read community announcements of that time, every single post in that time around christmas was an excuse and delay for anything else. And this coninues until today, as again rise of the godslayer expansion will arrive, and other content or fixes are again – surprise – delayed…
So if Mr. Glenn Famine, who just understands “spaceships” when reading suggestions for improvements in Testlive forums like in the interview, and claims to be part of the community and to be a “player”, I would like to ask him the following question:
Would you play and pay for a game, where you can wait 2 years for improvements (as “content is not content”: maps&quests are not the cind of content that aoc lacks – and thats not just a subjective opinion as you can read in all forums (if you don’t want to understand just “spaceships”)) and company ignores and denies the significance of it?
And instead creates further maps that leads to more player-distribution (keep in mind, most player left the game, we had already the second server merge as a result of continous player leavings!).
And beside these basic FACTS the same company annouces a second mmo, which on one hand was of course financed with the monthly fees from aoc players and on the other hand fc didn’t shrink from distributing beta-accounts of tsw to their aoc-community, that is waiting for the game to work and fulfil all its announced features until today? (!)…
So, maybe Mr. Swan and Mr. Kunz are delightful and can listen, too – but finally all that counts is what can be found ingame of course – the last two years.
Now compare what other mmo-companies in the same monthly fee price class actually accomplish during the same time (2 years).
And even if just one single dev was working on dx10, after two (!) years he has to deliver a working result with proper framerates – not no mention basic bugs or other technical issues that are known since 2 years, too.
If fees are not taken for more devs and further proper “results” but other projects, things obviously gone wrong here, the company is not able to understand or to satisfy customer needs…
all the best.
@ Adomo: Well, not being a 2 year vet, I obviously don’t understand yet the depth of your concerns or frustrations. And having only played the trial to this point, I cannot comment on any part of the game past that point.
I did notice that playing in DirectX 10 seems buggy for me. I have Win7 64-bit which supposedly supports up to DirectX 11, and my GeForce 9800 GTX+ supports DirectX 10, so I’m not sure what the problem is. To be honest it had me a little frustrated at first. But then I realized, hey, the game runs and looks great (better than many others) in DirectX 9, so I don’t see that being any reason not to play.
As far as game release disasters, I can think of one that was just as bad, if not worse, and that’s Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. And I think it’s inspiring that SOE continues to support that game when I’m sure many would say it should be scrapped. In addition, there are always huge cries of despair from this vocal community when an MMO gets taken offline (Auto Assault, Matrix, and Tabula Rasa to name a few). So the fact that Funcom still supports AoC, makes efforts to improve the game, and continues to expand the world, earns respect in my opinion.
You also seem upset or slighted that they are moving on to new projects, like the Secret World, using profits from AoC to fund the development. Do you think non-growth for a company is good? At some point, as a developer of games, they are going to want to (and be be expected to) release something new. And that’s going to reduce how much work gets done on older titles. If anything, should TSW become a success, perhaps some much needed resources and support could filter back into AoC — as the two people interviewed seem to still have enthusiasm for it.
Would I pay to play this game? Well, I’ll find out. I found a great deal on a retail boxed copy which I would assume comes with a month of play time. Even if it takes me more than a month to decide, I’ve spent more money than $15 on terrible food, cheaply made products and bad movies, so the cost of an additional month would probably be a bargain. If it doesn’t suit me or frustrates me, that’s it, I’ll move on. Perhaps I’ll check back in 6 months to read up on what’s new, but I certainly won’t hang around in a game I don’t enjoy paying to post my complaints on a forum. If it turns out I like the game, then I have no problem paying the subscription fee, because personally I think MMOs are a great entertainment value.
I don’t know if I’m off-base, or missing the point, but that’s my perspective.
@ Seritaph
Hi,
yes, I can understand you very well. There were a lot of people with that cind of optimistic attitude two years ago, and you can believe me I was one of them.
But as time goes bye all that is left after two years waiting for the realistions of announcements is the bad taste of profit. Not because the game is bad, but if a company simpy does not care enough for their product (permanently delays, etc please read forums!) that needs permanently fees, (please mess aoc in the same monthly fee priceclass and compare further developements (or in case of aoc: just it’s completion), things gone wrong here.
So if you pay money for something, then it is usual and MINIMUM to get what is written on the “box”.
And of course I know there are a lot of other software products that are not perfect. But we are not talking about whether horses are green or white
To sell a product with a feature like DX10, which actually could’t be found ingame at release is far away from that, you can’t deny this – and more a case for a lawyer. Never seen this before. Its a technical feature, not only just some content like a map that’s not ingame…
And best of all that feature, two years later still not properly fixed…but sold at release for FULL PRICE, knowing all that lacks! What more can I say?
And sadly this is just one single point..
Well, people mostly deal with capitalism in two ways: there are some that don’t care what happens, and some that do. Some that close their eyes and feel good, some that can see and don’t like what they see and care…
all the best.
This show was alot of fun to produce, and the community managers from Funcom were loads of fun to chat with. Hopefully they will be with us on an upcoming show as well.
However, I am closing comments because this one particular show is being innundated by a spambot using what appears to Russian Language.
Thank you all for listening to the show and your comments.