Is Conan An Immortal?

By BigDo6 February 11, 2009 1 Comments

One of our first posts was entitled R.I.P Age of Conan and it detailed my sadness at the passing of what I felt was a great game. This sadness notwithstanding, I was unable to remain a subscriber to the game; I gave into the same issues that had driven away so many. Like them I moved on, chalking up the experience to a fond memory of an opportunity lost. I assumed that Funcom wasn't up to the task of fixing the game's myriad of problems or reproducing content that was of the same quality as the areas that had originally memorized me. But, MMOs are unique in that they get more than one press cycle.


The first of these cycles was a mixed bag for Age of Conan. Sure the game got positive reviews, netting a game ranking score of 81.0%, but the word of mouth was atrocious. I was unfortunate enough to experience this negative reaction first hand, when close friends of mine who I bullied into trying the game, would return with nothing more than a list of game breaking bugs, hard reboots, and visually disturbing graphic glitches. Some of these graphic glitches were actually fairly humorous, I find myself recalling one in particular that caused the breasts of female NPCs to dance up and down much like the lemurs in the film Madagascar. But, on the other hand some were infuriating, causing the world to be drawn in only low res muddy textures, or having your avatar’s hair either change color for entire log ins, or completely disappear. Although one was only able to enjoy these visual bugs when you were able to actually play the game, which the crushing memory leaks, and the hardest of hard locks made more difficult than necessary. But, just as the positive reviews disappeared under a mountain of negative press, so did the game’s problems disappear in my absence.

I really didn’t expect it on my return. I figured I would play it for 15 minutes and then uninstall it, as I am known to do with old PC games. Slowly however, I noticed that the bugs that were once mocking in their persistence were gone. As that realization sunk in I began looking for other bugs I remembered, to prove to myself that I hadn’t counted Funcom out too early. But, in my search I realized that almost every bug of any significance was gone. Not only that, but the game had improved from a reasonably objective standard as well.

The horses that were originally punitive in their pricing were now absolutely attainable by the lonely solo player. The graphics in A.O.C. are the stuff of legend, but required a computer of an equally mythic proportion. But, upon my return they seemed to be much better optimized. Frame rates were up by about 10 in every zone, textures that had previously popped in like a Gears of War 2/Halo 3 cut scene now appeared immediately after loading. The quests which before seemed to peter out after about level 27, now seemed to ooze from every zone I could make it to. These improvement though impressive aren’t what has me the most doubtful of my previously prognosticated demise of A.O.C.

It’s the content that lies just around the corner. Funcom earlier in the games life announced it was cutting employees due specifically to the falling subscriber numbers. But, these cuts were apparently not aimed at the content design team, since a quick search of what they are working on is impressive in its quantity. A new zone Y’mir’s Pass was just recently released along with a sweeping pvp update. This pvp update is being followed up by a second expansion in the next patch, which is scheduled to come out in the third week of February. In the near future Funcom has announced a new zone called Tarantia Commons District where the game play is said to mimic Assassin’s Creed with on-roof fighting and movement. As someone who knows the game’s engine well, this is really exciting. Additionally they will be adding, more items through the three new raid dungeons they are introducing, the pvp ranking system they will continue to flesh out, and their commitment to completely redesign all of the dungeons in the game made for 6 man groups. This redesign will include more engaging boss encounters that are said to be inspired by World of Warcraft and traps inspired by action movies (one includes I gigantic rolling border careening down a narrow stair case once it is sprung). So was my previous lamenting premature?

I don’t think anyone, even Funcom, knows that yet. The game has two chances at a “re-launch”: One when the new Conan Movie comes out in 2010 and the other when the Xbox 360 version of A.O.C. arrives. Either of these events will give a large shot in the arm to a game that is really ready to present itself to the world. And, until this “resurrection” takes place, or the world comes crashing down around my avatar’s head, I will be enjoying Hyboria.

This post is cross posted from http://videogamestheory.blogspot.com/

1 Comments