No progression hurts AOC

I am very upset by a feeling that Age of Conan ia stuck in this perpetual cycle of waiting for "better stuff that is coming" and receiving stuff that is aimed at fresh/intermediate lvl 80 character that no one really wants (fresh lvl 80 characters have almost too much content options already).

Age of Conan is not build on tried & true MMO rules such as faction split and raising level cap and that creates a lot of issues in the long run.

Let me be honest: I like that the pop is not split into two factions (a'la horde vs alliance) and I like that we are at lvl 80 cap while trying to re-use old content and make the whole world more dense and usable. That's cool, I can get behind that. What I don't like is the fact that for the last 2-3 years game pretty much stood still for me with little to no new content. You might be shouting now (if you gave two shits about it) "No new content Slith? We had tons!" sure we did, but I believe that at the very core of MMORPG lies the very basic idea for progressing your character and that is sorely lacking.

AA progression

I like the AA system even thou I am well aware of it's flaws. It was an elegant solution to the "lets rise lvl cap to 90 and make old world empty shell" and it worked, for the most part, very well. In truth you just need about 50% of all AA perks because whatever else you will get after the essential stuff is just a filler that won't benefit you with passive buffs nor you will ever  use other active stuff that most popular 2-3 perks.

A lot of veterans are by now capped on AA progression, not only on that meaningful 50% of stuff worth getting, but literally they have bought every AA possible. I am also AA capped and by this time and, considering how casual I am about group pve, I think many others are too. Too add insult to injury I am still getting mastery/prowess points so by the time we get new AAs, say in 2015, I am almost sure that I will be able to simply buy out everything with few clicks. For this reason alone I think new method of progression should NOT be part of AA because, since programmers didn't have the forth sight to cap AA points at certain amount, veteran players have already hoarded tons of AA ready to be spent on new stuff.

Item progression

I am sure that this is the "Achilles heel" of AOC as the game have struggled with itemization from it's very beginning. The issue with old system was that it made creating "meaningful gear progression" very, very hard (I would agree) so it was re-written into more classic stats system in 2009. Four years later Funcom got cough in it's own loop hole as it's super hard to create anything that it better than Khitai, but not so close to T4 that it makes raiding obsolete.

Example?

T3 quest item. Awesome at it's time of realise.

New unchained dungeon drop. An utter shit in 2013

 So freshly made lvl 80's have lots and lots of loot options while veterans can just get all Khitai stuff and stay in T4 raiding (if they want and CAN raid T4 with their guilds). It makes the new dungeons in Dragon's Spine very unattractive and, while they are  PUGed on Crom, on Fury even guild teams are not doing them.

If there is not item progression incentive then only people that are extremely "PVE passionate" will go there. There is nothing wrong with making hard dungeons with weak loot that are ran only by said passionate players that all are about PVE challenge, right? Well I am not a game developer (but I play one on TV!), but spending a limited resources to create content that will appeal only to niche group of players at are small percentage of overall population, generally speaking, sounds like a very bad idea.

What is the solution? It sure as hell is not plain "better loot" because indeed at some point devs will crank out something that is T4 equivalent or better and whole kind of hell will get lose. At the same time shitting out garbage like Hell Walker amulet is just aggravating. We need a new system to address this because this issue is otherwise solved by raising level cap. Sure raising level cap makes your hard earned epics worst that trash blues in the new zones, BUT you have new stuff to be looking forward to. I prefer THAT over buying a hyrkanian dagger in 2011 and getting stuck with till 2014.

Before Funcom got re-structured ye old game director had this idea of set bonuses. The idea was if you were wearing full set of certain armor you would get bonuses for doing so. It was far from perfect, but you couldn't argue one thing: it made getting full set kinda desirable. Otherwise I am sure as hell NOT getting new Crawling Chaos pants to get 7 hit rating upgrade over my Brittle Blade ones. And so I didn't. I am paying for Dragon's Spine content as premium member, but to say that I have underplayed it is a gross UNDERstatement. Dragon's Spine is just bad and it is prime example why Funcom can't create new content without introducing new mechanics first.

PVP

Talking about beating a dead horse here :X The amount of pvp lvl 10 players is just staggering and that is not only thanks to Bori (I am of the opinion that Bori PvPers left the game long ago out of sheer boredom), but because, it the end, it's not THAT hard if one it really into pvp. The upcoming unchained minigames, as I see this, are same old same old minus gear.

which brings me to other issue called......

"Catching up game"

It very much seems like Funcom is making everything with "new people that need to catch up" in mind. By the very design if FC makes any more progression to veterans it will create bigger gap. Why that is an issue? If someone has 3 years of advantage playing AOC then no one should be handled tools to "catch up" aka given a shortcut to reach a destination which took others years to reach. I am not saying that new customers shouldn't be taken care of, but I fail to see the reasoning to give them preference over veterans when creating content. Unless... Oh yeah, it just occurred to me that it's easy as pie to create new content for fresh lvl 80 characters and it's very hard to do the same for vets. Still it is the veteran players who keep this game running and keeping one vet in game will probably create more income than several casual players who will just do some F2P gaming and jump onto new & shiny MMO that is coming  out soon.

What is the solution?

I am big fan of customization. HUGE fan in fact. Buffing veterans further is not really all that creative and +5% to my GC damage won't really add all that much to the game play and my enjoyment of the game. 

Here are few ideas that I would like to see in game in some shape or form:

1. leveling up weapons - kinda borrowed from LOTRO, but it would be nice to be able to get that form of personal attachment to the weapon, especially if you could name it.

2. glyphs system - WoW has this. It's pretty much a way to customize your old abilities with new stuff. For example we could have glyp of souls and glyp of lotus weakness. If equiped these would add to the lethargy combo either chance to capture soul shards (gryp of solus) or add -10% magic damage debuff (glyp of lotus weakness). Of course this would another issue with the balance of the classes, but at SOME POINT Funcom needs to face this (over avoidance of it is painfully evident).

3. class specialization and new trees - it would be awesome to upgrade your character into "hero version" of it's original class. Assassin would be Master Assassin, Dark Templar would be Dark Crusader and so on. This would open up another tree similar to current feat trees and in order to get points to spend them there you would need AA points. Again it is question of balance.

4. New levels a'la paragon system in D3 - What are paragon levels?

The current system of Paragon levels was added into Diablo III in the v1.0.4 patch on August 22, 2012.[1] The system is an end game feature that provides additional levels and bonuses for characters once the reach the max level of 60. Once at max level all experience gained by a character counts towards his Paragon level. Characters can level up to Paragon 100, and each level awards that character a passive bonus of 3% to Magic Find and Gold Find, plus the same attribute bonuses as a normal level up (3 to the class main stat, 2 vitality, 1 to the other two stats).

So this is a small benefit that you can get over time. Not my definition of "fun", but is still a form of progression.

5.  crafting - crafting can be a form of progression, but it doesn't have an universally appeal. Some are just NOT crafters nor they will ever be regardless of how good the new system is. At the core of the game is brutal combat and cranking out "really good mage pants" via crafting will never have same impact on general population and it's enjoyment of the game.

6. new pvp levels - YES PLEASE! If Funcom intend to keep this game around (the company have Conan license up to 2019!) you need to throw pvpers a bone.

I hope that 2014 will be the year of meaningful changes to AOC and not a constant stream of unchained, old dungeons with loot that leaves much to be desired. 

Bloodshed in the dreaming west - Age of Conan Assassin PvP Video

Dagger and a bowl of rice ep.10: Jade Citadel

I would have never thought that I will be posting anything in "Dagger and a bowl of rice" series after the Final Word post. Three years after the realise of Rise of the Godslayer I find myself in most unlikely place: the Jade Citadel, a Tier 4 raiding zone. 

Why unlikely? I swore on Mitra many times that I am, at the very core of my being, a PVPer and not a Raider. Given the choice between Raid content and PVP content I will always go for PVP and doing raids always goes with it's PVP applications in back of my mind (in short: I need them PVE weapons). Since I am currently presented with no new PVP content (and this trend with continue with oh-no-so-innovate unchained minigames and lolwut?-Hyborian Race) I have decided to take raiding for a spin. Surprisingly I have enjoyed it and almost as much when I was struggling at the 1st boss with previous guild or when I was part of unstoppable force with my current guild, cutting down all bosses on 1st attempt. However this post is not about how "I am doing raiding because there is nothing else going on" (you might get that impression) or because I want PVE gear for PVP (I am hoping upcoming crafting will solve that once and forever), but rather it is about how Jade Citadel is just
a delicious experience in general.

In Age of Conan the Hyboria feels very "segmented" because each zone is pretty much a different part of a huge world. That is by design. In ROGS the team moved away from that concept and made each zone close to each other so you can move between them almost seamlessly. The other nice change is "what you see is what you get" philosophy that pretty much boils down to player being able to explore, in one way or another, whatever is visible on the map. And so the first time I have laid my eyes on the Jade Citadel I knew that one day I would like to go there and boss the Emperor around. And so I did. This is my story:

I really like the open spaces that are present in first 3 encounters. The fight with the General feels very epic and there is just so much stuff going on at the same time that it makes me feel small and insignificant, just another cog in this grand machinery of war.

Next is Basilisk which is really relaxing to fight as it is not a very demanding boss. The visual design of the Basilisk always fascinated me because it has this very weird and alien look, a total departure from classical lizard-like creature from the myths. Using ballistas to pummel the boss is also a nice touch and it adds that little bit of spice to otherwise pretty uneventful fight.

The imp that dwells in Citadel's garden is a swift change of pace after General and Basilisk. Clever mechanic and interesting looks of the boss, packed together with stunning visuals of the garden itself creates an unforgettable experience. Because the boss room is split in two the fight feels more up close & personal.

Zodiac is the ultimate puzzle boss that requires great amount of focus from the entire raid. First time around I got "carried" through this fight by the whole raid because they allowed me to just stand next to tank and DPS away. Second time around, however, I was expected to contribute in more meaningful way, by actually helping with the puzzle itself. I had to memorise 4 spots to stand in and needless to say it have proved itself to be quite a feat to perform when you have only few seconds, can't mess it up and you are in a room that makes you easily lose your orientation. 

I think you will agree that I have found a rather elegant solution. Yes, those are sticky notes placed on my monitor.All I had to do is stand in the same place every time and the proper spot to move to would be indicated by a note. Genius! Well, no, but it did the trick. 

I am feeling very humbled that I can be a part of this raid team because I can only imagine the grueling hours that it must have taken to crack this puzzle, learn it and then perform in a constant manner.
I didn't have to do it so it feel like "cheating" when I can have the opportunity to take down Zodiac on thefirst try, without much of an effort. I know it is only because the work raid team have put in when I was jacking around in minigames. 

Next stop is pretty funky fight with the Emperor in the court yard. I was baffled by Emperor's appearance: he looks like a GIGANTIC NERD, and that is coming from a guy who actually, indeed at this very moment , writes an Age of Conan fan blog. The fight is pretty OK, but the "mightiest sorcerer of the east" is an gross overstatement.

The memory cloud is probably the most genius part of the Citadel as it reuses old world locations. It felt weird to land on the beach of Tortage as lvl 80 assassin and then re-visit Strom and his merry band. The fights are entertaining, but I didn't like the trash mobs all that much. Granted, T4 is almost trash free compared to other tiers so I shouldn't really complain.

To sum it up I would have to say that I am very delighted with T4. Having some little experience with T1, T2 and T3,5 and completing T3 I have to say that T4 offers fun and balanced content that is topped off with a story that is worthy finally to a very well written Khitai saga.

What about Entity? Well, that is still on my list.

Interview with Gaute Godager

I give you an interview "to rule them all" with the Godfather of AOC - Mr. Gaute Godager.

1/ could you introduce yourself to the those of the readers that weren't following AOC development history from the very beginning?

Hey! My name is Gaute Godager. I was a cofounder of Funcom and was Game Director on Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures. In addition to that, I produced Anarchy Online, Funcoms previous MMO released as early as 2001. 

I was the "Vision owner" as Game Director on AoC. It basically was my baby, but I was by far not the only father nor mother. There were hundreds of dedicated, open minded, creative and supertalented people working on that title. It was probably why i decided to quit gaming back in 2008 after AoC was launched. Having worked so hard, with so many talented great people, on such a fantastic product with such a huge budget - and not having it succeed the way I wanted, I realized my career after that could only go one way - you guess where. I worked on AoC for 5 years. I was the first on the project. I pitched it. I designed all major systems of innovation (like the battle system), but it was honed, improved and made fantastic by all the others. 

2/ how exactly did Funcom pick Hyboria as a setting for the new MMO? Was staying so close to the source material a requirement from Paradox or was it something that the team felt simply very strongly about doing?  

I picked Conan / Hyboria as I wanted to express some violence and take a "pulpy-30s-fantasy-into-cheesy-80s-movie" IP (both cheesy and pulpy lovingly meant by me) into a deep, stylized HBO like grown-up game. Very few in Funcom welcomed the idea except managment and marketing, and the small team (Jesper Hansen (a super brilliant programmer now working in IO Interactive - I think) and Didrik Tollefsen (A masterly tallented Artist / art director) + myself) believed this would be a good product. People shook their heads and wondered why?`Now, for me, I reread Hour of the Dragon (had read them in my youth, im 43 ;p) and got going. I wanted that licence as we wanted something evocative, adult, violent and  different. Something non-cartoony. Believe it or not, we discussed many titles then, for instance Fire and Ice seriees, now made into Game of Thrones. Or maybe Joe Abarcombe, but something mature fantasy. 

The stroke of luck we had, was that Paradox had just bought the rights to ALL REH works, they were Swedish, and was seeking to revitalize the intellectual properties. I must say, having worked with both Disney and many other IP owners over the years, the Paradox guys were super nice and super professional  They, I think, hit it off with us because they sensed we "got" Hyboria. The darkness. The estrangeness. The anger. The corruption. The adolescence fantasies (tits and ass). The american dream incarnate (Conan). 

I wanted to stay close to the source material. They wanted it. They had refusal and approval rights, naturally, but they trusted us and let us run with the ball. In truth, they wanted our interpretation of Hyboria to be distributed to the makers of the later arriving movie. I felt they approved in our sense of style and attention to detail. They were great partners and inspirators. 

3/ Why the Hyboria world is so instanced? What was the reason for developing the game in such way?

Hm. Technological, historical and lisense based. Tech: We had good instance tech. It made the world server distribution much simpler. It makes the clients not break down. It makes us make the environment lush and graphically heavy (as you dont have to save polly count to support hundreds of players). Historical: In Anarchy Online we tried HUGE static areas. It crashed and burned, literally. Hundreds and thousands of players gathered to stress the game and try to take the servers down and crash coplayers with less expensive pc's out of the game. We got burned. We vowed: never again. License  We wanted to give players only the juice parts, the areas coolest areas REH described. Long travel seemed boring. This was not a sandbox game, it was a amusement park filled with attractions.

Did i want a huge open sandbox game - yes sir. Was Hyboria suited for that? Sure, but I still don't think that was the most important aspect. If I had got it free of cost, free of risk, free of creative loss - would i have put it in? Sure thing! 

4/ Why have you picked the post Hour of the Dragon era as a setting for the game? Hour of the Dragon or the Scarlet Citadel sound like a great ideas for whole expansions. You could have started in post Phoenix on the sword time-line.

I could have. But, I felt the villain was better, more classic Conan. I wanted the Acheron angle, that plot-line was epic. I needed, just like in Phoenix, a plot and setting where Conan was central for all players in the whole world. Also, it was googling "best conan story ever" or something like that, i found some vote on a conan fan web site, placing HotD at top. I couldnt find it again now, as I tried, so it might have been a dream. Anyways, HotD inspired me. 

5/ The Combo system: where did you get the idea for it? It is still, after all those years, a unique and very fun to use system. Have the system turned out to be everything the team wanted it to be?

Back in 1993, just after starting Funcom, we did a conversion of a fighting game called Samurai Showdown. To get into the mood, we had one fencing lesson. Only one. The instructor said "all sword fighting are based around only 6 attacks. Up left, up right, straight down, down side up left, down side up right and stab. There are 3 ways to defend against these." These sentences just stuck in my head, left there to ferment. When we started making conan, I wanted something as visually stunning and brutal as God of War that just then came out. Also, all combat so far in MMOs had been so slow indirect, with exception of City of Heroes by Cryptic. I wanted to make the combat even faster and more action oriented than them. All this combined into the systems main idea. It was iterated on many times after that very first prototype that Jesper made. Directions were cut down. It went from a+b+c + d = combo to something like combo-starter + a + b. It gradually evolved. 

It was the most unique selling point of the game, and I think it made a huge difference. I think it changed what type of combat people accepted in MMOs. Look at EQ 1 and draw a line to Neverwinter. You will see conan in there directing the speed, intensity and flow of combat. 

6/ There are few things that the community has been arguing about since day 1 of Age of Conan so please settle those feuds once and for all by answering these:

1. why there so many female mobs in the game? It isn't true to the REH's world that, for example, Nemedian army is full of female warriors. Valeria is rather a rare breed of Hyborian adventurer and yet zones and dungeons are full of such warrior women.

2 reasons: a) Because we wanted to have more tits and ass in the game. Trueness to the letter was sacrificed to being true to the spirit of tits and ass ;-p

2. have you developed AOC as a PVP centric game or PVE centric? Or perhaps have you tried to reach some kind of optimal balance between those two types of content?

We said we tried to do both. But I guess we didn't really believe the game could stand on its own without good PVE, and felt that not many PvP centric games made it big, back then - so PVE drove the development. It changes with time. I might have made it differently today. 

3. what happened to weapons sheath? Older AOC videos cleary show a barbarian using 2 hander and having a sheath for it on his back.

What? Is it gone? Ask my successor! I loved the sheathing! Damn you all! It wouldn't have happened on my watch, I tell ya!

7/ What were the ideas for the future expansion in terms of the location? Was the Khitai setting your idea?

Yes. It was one of the last things i wrote before i left back in 2008, writing up the high-design for the expansion. It was to try to break into Asia with the game, making it Asia centric. It wouldnt have been my ideal expansion had the game become an financial massive success and thus being able to chose whatever I want. I would have moved towards the classical "middle-eastern" inspired countries, middle-euraisia inspired areas - ending in Khitai. Maybe some revisiting the places of famous Conan-in-his youth stories? I wonder what the tumbled down ruins of the Tower of the Elephant would look like? What would be hidden in the rubble? Sword Coast? Maybe a piracy expansion? That is one of the great, great things about REH and pulp - it simply has it all. It is pizza with marshmellows and beer and a great car and a sweet woman - all like mixed together. Its like only eating the best pieces of all juicy dishes, never minding the rest. Never minding that all doesn't mix that well.

8/ What was the most awesome idea for content that wasn't possible because of technological limitations at that time?

Yes - player kingship. Having a massive combat PvP system that would enable a guildleader to become actual king ordering NPCs around, deciding on laws, putting people to jail and enforcing justice. We sold it as "You can be king!". It was a flop - we canned it.

9/ Are you following AOC news at all or even playing the game or is it a closed chapter for you?

I play it perhaps once pr. year, just to see. I still have many Funcom friends and follow it all, from the sidelines. Playing it it makes me sad as I so miss the time developing it and "owning it". I miss the great atmosphere in the Funcom ACHA team (as we wanted to coin it), the talented people, the knowledge that you worked on something epic, the late night dinners with coworkers and friends, our parties, our work-crunches, our development breakthroughs, the time spent helping giving birth to the beautiful music with the very talented composer Knut Avenstrup Haugen, the lunches with Didrik and discussing art and how to visualize Hyboria with him - how to do to Hyboria what Peter Jackson clearly had done to Middle Earth, the sessions of motion capture where i tried to instruct true fighters in how to look more violent by being less effective, the long-sweaty review meetings laughing and joking as we tried to get the game to run, the first time i rode a horse in the game, the first time I saw Cimmeria spring to life in the game,  the E3 marketing stunts, the meeting of fans shaking their hands and feeling like a castmember of Star Trek on Comicon. Heck, I even miss the disputes, anal-lore discussions with other Conan fans on the team and general conflicts. But, I miss most of all working on something I was oh so proud of. 

So I let it be. It is still your baby, but it not yours. It just makes me - sad. Its like driving accidentally past the house of your ex girlfriend. You see her being happy without you. You are a bit angry and a bit happy for her and a bit sad - all like bungled up inside. So I let it be. 

But that is just me. It makes me happy if people still enjoy it. It truly does.  

10/ Were you a fan of REH's Conan or was it just a material that you had to work with during the development?

Eh, I hope you get i was a fan by now?

To me Conan was, in my youth, the essence with how good it would be to be a grown man if life was simple. You fight. You live free. You destroy corruption. You travel. You form great friendship. The women are all beautiful and though they try, they can never resist you, in fact - secretly they all want you. It is the essence of adolescence male fantasy. It made me fall asleep with a grin on my face remembering I could wake the day after to express that in a game. 

----

Slith: And I would like to personally thank your for developing such a wonderful game. Not only it allowed me to make a lot of new friends, but also to express myself. But most importantly AOC exposed me to the wonderful works of REH which I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Thank you!

Gaute: /bow I do appreciate your kind words. And thank you for allowing me to walk down memory lane with a purpose.  I felt now I did something great, building on something fantastic like the works of REH, and I am very happy you agreed with me. I guess history would define AoC as more dubious a success, but I don't care.

50.000 bites the dust

It is next 10.000 already? Damn!

Not only I have rounded up my kill score to the whooping 50.000 but also finished capturing all the footage for my pvp video (currently editing it down).

So how does one feel with 50k on his hands? Empty. That's right, I am not really all that pleased or proud of it or whatever. Why? Nothing to be looking forward to.

Last couple of months my pvp was fueled by my passion for making a pvp video and minigames - to be honest - were all about getting that sweet sweet kill and capturing it via Fraps. Now that the project is done (at least some stage of it) PVP seems, again, a little meaningless. With crafting pushed back the only things we have on the horizon are unchained minigames and ridicules "The Great Hyborian Race" .

I was fully expecting a new, creative juiced to be flowing through AOC's veins, but we are still getting highly Funcomized content which I am calling "old stuff, minus something".

Blood & Glory server? Old pvp server minus guards and Bori.

Unchained minigames? Old minigames minus gear and AAs (yeah, giving out all the gear is pretty much taking it away).

The Hyborian Race is so stupid that it makes, in retrospect, PVP World Bosses seem like a grant idea.

So in a nut shell The Hyborian Race will be a race to lvl 80 and highest pvp level over period of 3 months on a new B&G type of server. After the event is over the server will get removed and all the existing characters will get moved onto old B&G server (post mergers it will be Rage server).

This is "content" that requires you to pour hundreds of hours into new character if you want to be any were close to competitors. In the end of the day the race will be won not by the best pvper , but by a man (or a teenager most likely) that will dedicate most time to the endeavor. You cannot out-pvp-lvl someone that might just be average at pvp, but still has the time to simply pvp more than the rest. Racing to lvl 80, on the other hand, will be a PURE form of re-doing content (and for some: re-re-re-re-re-doing content). 

This content is pretty much a big nothing that  supposedly won't take any resources to create.

In other words: if we set the expectations at rock bottom we cannot fail.

The Hyborian race, for me, is pvp equivalent of horse racing track: no one asked for that and devs are delivering because its dirt cheap to deliver.

But there is other issue that is bothering me more and more: Game Director Nusquam attitude on forums.

While I appreciate that Game Director comes to the boards with replie,s more and more so some of the posts are just cracking wise at paying customers.

Example?

Nusquam Forum God

Quote: Originally Posted by K4nnyc  +1 As far as I'm concerned thats a very below average letter. The Hyborian race, not quite what I was expecting for the B&G ruleset. I will not be partaking, dont want to make another character, I have too many already. I was hoping for some NEW game systems, instead its the same content rebranded with "Hyborian race". I'm sure nearly all vets let out a huge sigh and did either a single or double facepalm at Funcom. Getting us to roll another character on yet another server... Shame. 1.Can you give us news on the merge? Date/Times, the letter didnt tell us anything new at all. 2.Can you give us news on crafting revamp? Date/Times eta? 3.Can you give us any real information because this letter is lacking in fact and intention. 4.Can you tell us definitively what EXACTLY are your short term and long term plans for pvp. No more messing about now, we waited too long already. Because if you have no plans tell us so we can fvck off to another game. And if you have plans but dont tell us until you put it on testlive then regardless of if its crap or not we all know it will be pushed to live. So start talking now, it will only benefit you in the end. Lol first of all at the implication that I am somehow hiding information. I have been as upfront with you guys as it is possible to be, without making things up just to "have something to say". 1. http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpos...6&postcount=47 2. No. I'd be talking about my hopes if I gave even a tentative estimate and then people would make it a promise. 3. Yeah, sure. I'll make sure next letter I stop adding "false information". 4. You have been told. Multiple times. Minigame in Dragonspine, Unchained Minigames. Great Hyborian Race. General fixes as we have time and see fit. That you expect more is fine, but that is what we have on our worklist. You either like the game or you don't. If you are hanging around because you feel like I am stringing you along with false promises, don't. I am telling you the state of development and the plans for development.

 I personally don't enjoy this "forum buddy" attitude in Director Nusquam and posting "lols" in replies along  pretty much "you don't like the game then quit". That is the kind of stuff that I can get from other forum posters, I don't think it suits paid professional with high position in MMO industry.

That is something that I actually admired in the previous guy in charge:  Silirrion . He didn't post on forums very often (but he did reply on twitter quickly), but when he did he would take all the pitchforks and torches and cotton candy like a champ. I understand that no one wants to be personally attacked (and that DOES happen on boards), but professionals are expected to maintain their professional integrity and for me that is NOT getting into forum flame wars with paying customers. Granted those customers might be rude fucks, but still they are paying YOU to provide service.

This Hyborian Race thread reminds me a lot of old [Petition] Stop developing the PVP Wolrd Boss thread and I think Silirrion handled it well: he posted a lot and still defended his stance on bosses, but there was a professional politeness to his replies.  Nusquam is just rude.

Anyway I wanted to get this off my chest, weave my epeen around with 50k kills and get it out of the way for the big interview I will be posting next week: exclusive with Gaute Godager - AOC's creator.

Slith's cheesy exploration guide ep. 12

There has been some talk about Palace of Cetriss on forums as of late and it seems like people are under impression that Palace of Cetriss will be new T5 raid (makes more sense than another T3.5).

And what better way to spend your time than arguing with strangers on the forums while drooling over youtube videos featuring unfinished, half baked content? I am here to provide!

While people got to the Palace before me I couldn't find any youtube videos documenting it so I am posting my own.

Getting into the zone requires very little effort and it boils down to finding the right place to jump.

Tip? You know the entrance to the Palace that is blocked with rocks? Turn around and find a way on top of the mountain behind you ... and jump over the gap from there.

As a bonus check out http://joannatsui.com/ for some Dragon's Spine concept art, including Palace of Cetriss. Somewhat exciting (yes, it's a slow news month).

Interview with Craig Morrison

Craig "Silirrion" Morrison, movie buff, twitter enthusiast and former Game Director for the Age of Conan took his time to answer few questions about his day-to-day routines in MMO development.

What does Game Director do on a daily basis? Let's say that it's Monday morning, you have your cup of coffee steaming and now what?

I think it’s important to note up front that my personal role changed a lot over the years, and there was a reason I also had the various production titles down the years, first as Producer, then Executive Producer, and ultimately as the Creative Director for the Montreal studio, so my days could be very different from what they were like when I first started out as a Game Director on Anarchy Online.

There were there though certain elements of my days that were pretty consistent and tied to how I approached the positions I had.

I was pretty much an early bird, and liked to get into the office relatively early most of the time. When I first got in I tried to spend an hour or so just browsing industry news and information. I had a list of websites that I worked through to keep up to date, from the MMO specific sites like Massively and MMORPG.com through industry sites like Gamasutra and Gamesindustry.biz to the more general gaming sites like IGN, Kotaku, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and a lastly a few more pop culture centric sites to keep up to date with the other creative industries. IO9 is a particular favourite. It might not sound important, but I always feel that it’s important to know your industry as well as you can, even the stuff that doesn’t always naturally interest you specifically.  

Then I’d start with my mail; I could easily be accused of being a little OCD when it comes to a clean and organised inbox, and so anything urgent would be dealt with first thing. Check there were no new fires burning! That would lead me to the stats, as I would get three specific overnight reports that I checked every morning.

There would be one on server activity, how many players logged in, hours played, class breakdown, level breakdown, activity levels by server etc, this would quickly show me if anything worth investigating was going on that we weren’t expecting. Then there would also be a report from the billing and customer service side of things, which showed payment info and stuff like that, it could also flag stuff up that needed looking into.

Lastly there were the shift reports from the QA and customer service departments. The QA report would give the status of their testing on whatever builds they were currently working on, while the CS folk would provide an overview of the issues that affected customers on the live servers.

Then I would try and spend an hour or so going through the various forums for the games, and some external ones. It was almost important for me to keep up to date with what the voices in the community were saying.

We used a task management system called JIRA, and our awesome project managers had a suite of reports that gave me an overview of progress and where we were at with things. I would go through the top level reports each morning and make sure I didn’t see anything that alarmed me.

I would chat with the producers for a bit, make sure there were no major problems they needed help with. We would go over anything they wanted to discuss, or just wanted some feedback on, or if I needed anything looked into based on what had cropped up in the reports etc.

That would generally take you through the morning and then the afternoons could be anything! With such a changing role there were any numbers of meetings that might occur, anything from the hiring process, through meetings with Marketing or management, to content reviews, design meetings, or meetings with partners or external folk.  

Generally I talked with people, but if that sounds banal, I’m kind of underselling it. A lack of communication, or miscommunication, is usually the root cause of many of the challenges you face in game development with a large or medium sized team, so the talking becomes important. Whether it’s just chatting to the team to see progress or making sure people are talking to the people they need to be talking to, often nothing beats just having that extra conversation. It can save you a lot of time down the line!

How much creativity is there is in Game Directors daily routine? Do you design anything? Have a lot of meetings with the members of the team to see what have they come up with? Do you give the team a general idea for the new content or are you reviewing their plans?

I think that depends on the person, and the team. When I was first a Game Director on Anarchy Online we were a small team, so it was very creative and very collaborative and we all had to pitch in. We were only four or five people on the game design side, so it was very organic and we were all involved because we were all talking together pretty much all the time. I guess I was ‘in charge’, but to be honest it never felt like that, we were an awesome little team, and I really enjoyed that environment. Everyone on that team was experienced and knew what they were doing, so we rarely had much conflict outside of the normal creative discussions. 

That’s simply not possible on a larger team, so working on Age of Conan was a very different challenge. The team was close to two hundred people when I took over, and even years later, prior to the time they downsized all the teams earlier this year, there were still thirty people directly on the development team.

It’s the hardest part of transitioning to more of an executive role. Is coping with the realization that you can’t do everything yourself anymore, and worse, you absolutely shouldn’t, because it’s generally not conducive to keeping a happy team.

It also depends on the person I guess. Some Game Directors are more hands on than others. While some like to micro manage more, others prefer to take more of a behind the scenes role.

Personally I like to get a bit metaphorical and compare it to the role of the pilot that joins a ship to see it through a river channel or a dock. The team are the ship and the producers the captain, the Director or Executive producer is not there to tell them how to run the ship, but we are there to point out where the rocks are and where they need to get to. I have found the best balance for me results in that kind of a guiding role.

So we would be the ones laying out the intentions, drawing the box as it were, and then it would be about trusting the team and empowering the team to fill the box with the content. If your systems, tools, and general directions are understood by the team then they can usually work some magic when allowed to really own, and take responsibility, for their own content. I’ll always prefer that to designers feeling like they are just peons rigidly implementing someone else’s ideas. You will almost always get better content out of happy, inspired designers.

That’s not to say they are left to their own devices completely, we would review the content as it went along (and the producers and lead designers do a lot of that), and I made sure to play through everything before it went live, both on internal builds, and more importantly on the test servers, as there I could also do it with real players.

Generally however, as long as the set-up and briefings were done right, we didn’t run into too many problems with people going ‘off the reservation’ as it were. The team knew what was required of them, and went at it. The challenges were usually more likely to be implementation issues, or trying to push the tools a little too far! When you have creative people they are always looking to push the boundaries of what is possible with their tools, especially as they get more experienced, so sometimes you have to balance ambition against the time available for a particular piece of content.

If you could make one more add-on for AOC is there a particular   REH story that you would want to explore?

The original team had already tackled one of my favourites in ‘The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and in some ways it was hard because of when in Conan’s timeline the game was set, after Hour of the Dragon. That limited some of the direct implementations we could do. So we had to get creative, as we did with ‘Shadows in the Moonlight” for example, I loved what the team did with that one, and see the players revisiting one of Conan’s adventures years later.

Personally, I would have loved to have found a way to explore the great barbarian’s pirate years and his time with Bêlit, in “Queen of the Black Coast”. That was one of the first Conan stories I read, and I always liked it. The main issue was that it risked feeling a little like we were retreading Tortage, and the timing just never seemed to work out to do something there. I would have loved to do something with it, in particular as Dark Horse did such a great job with the comic adaptation last year.

What tools did you use to keep tabs on Age of Conan project? I imagine there was a lot of things to track of.

As I mentioned earlier we used a reworked version of a tool called JIRA for our task management. There were also the reports I mentioned earlier, I tried to keep constant tabs on what was going on with the game. There is a lot going on, and a lot of teams interacting, so keeping track of things becomes very important.

What is the toughest part of being GD and what is the most satisfying about it?

The toughest part is always having to play the bad guy. Even under the best circumstances you invariably have to say ‘No’ far, far more often than you say ‘Yes’. With so many great creative folk involved there is never a shortage of ideas or suggestions and you simply don’t have anywhere near the time and resources to do them all. So the toughest part is trying to prioritise between what might be two, there, for or even more really good ideas for what you can do with say one available slot for new work. You might think that all of them would make great additions, but you can only do one. Those are usually the really tough choices and the hardest part of the job.

The other end of the spectrum is an easy answer

The most satisfying thing for me is always happy players J.

Playing on the live servers and seeing players enjoying what the team made is a great feeling. Really it’s why we do what we do. The creation process delivers some satisfaction in and of itself sure, but it pales into insignificance compared to the feeling you get when you see the positive impact it has on the players’ experience. At a fundamental level that is why most creative people want to create, to have it enjoyed by others.

Nothing beats that for me. 

What do you think was the biggest achievement of the development team and what was not entirely satisfying?   Stats system and Bori are not permitted as answers :]

I have a soft spot for the Savage Coast adventure pack. When it comes to the balance between the size of team and what they achieved that was probably one of the best deliveries we made. The team did a good job of making the pack, while still providing live updates, and the finished results were some really cool content. The instances clicked for me, and I felt they were the closest we got to really nailing a ‘Conan’ experience.

In terms of something I’d have liked to have done better, I think I would have preferred if we had stuck to the original concept for the alternate advancement system. Our original idea did not have any ‘passive’ abilities and everything had to be slotted in one of the six available slots. That way players would always have had to choose and we would have avoided the issue you see today with veterans having a real advantage, in particular in PVP.

It is one of those situations where hindsight is 20/20. At the time there was a real concern that such a system would not motivate players long term, and they would get the six to twelve skills they wanted, and then not care about the AA system. Even the player feedback backed that up, and lack of longer term goals was one of the driving criticisms for adding it in the first place. It was a trade off, we could foresee the potential issues with passives, but at the time we decided that it was worth those risks. If I could go back and change that back to what we originally said I would.

In many ways it’s indicative of the challenge with bringing more open systems to a progression based game. Fear creeps in, and you start inching towards what you see as a ‘safer’ option. That is one of those times I wish we had been a little more adventurous.

From professionals perspective how big of a shift have you noticed in the MMO market since AOC went live? Is there any other industry that you would compare the changes  to?

Night and day to be honest! The market has changed massively since I started working on MMOs. The audience is larger, and also more demanding, not just in terms of content consumption, but also for quality and experience. The online space itself is changing. More and more genres are moving towards having almost compulsory online experiences, some for the better, and some maybe not so.

Essentially we are fast becoming a more and more connected society, and games are simply reflecting that. It’s all new and still, to a degree, unknown. We are also a relatively young industry, and haven’t matured yet. Think about it, movies have been learning for over a century, TV for over eighty, so we are very much the proverbial new kid on the block. That’s an exciting thing to be a part of, but it also means the future is very hard to predict. I point out to people that when I started at Funcom, you tube didn’t exist … think about that for a second … it’s now so influential, so pervasive, yet it didn’t even exist less than a decade ago. An iPad was a prop from Star Trek.

Personally I think that’s an amazing thing, and yields a lot of potential for creating future virtual worlds and games. We have learnt a lot from the generations of MMOs so far, and I still believe that someone is going to take them a step further, and then a lot of doors will open. There will be challenges for sure, and ultimately we might have to move beyond the way we have thought about them so far, but that is probably a bit away yet. Each generation teaches you something new, and will challenge our perceptions about what works and what doesn’t. The key is taking the best parts from each generation and continuing to evolve the genre.

I’m not sure there is anything else that can compare to the potential, as games have always had the unique element of interaction, and MMO style games have the added element of human interaction. That brings with it a lot of good, and a lot of bad, but has the potential for interactions that go far beyond simply scripted thrill rides. I’m looking forward to continuing to explore that potential!