Funcom fails to celebrate Age of Conan's first birthday.
Last weekend, Age of Conan celebrated its first birthday. In order to celebrate this auspicious occasion, the developers announced that a party would be held, kicking off at 3 pm European time, last Saturday. Unfortunately, when players arrived, they found no festivities of any sort, just others hanging about waiting for stuff to happen.
Seeing as the game is called Age of Conan, and the event was being held outside said Conan’s castle, the expectation was that the barbarian king would appear. He didn’t, and to make matters worse, the vendors spawned for the event seemed to only exist for the first instanced copy (Age of Conan creates instances for certain areas to prevent overpopulation). Players waited and waited for something to happen and, eventually, well, nothing did.
It seems an appropriate metaphor for the lack of content that brought the initial high praise for Age of Conan to a grinding halt. Players assumed a technical issue was stopping the festivities until forum moderators finally clarified things. There was never any developer-driven stuff planned for the event. Instead, the intent was that players were to ‘party down’ all by themselves. This took the form of the following forum post from community manager Tarib.
The announcement of this happening might have lead many players to expect a bit more than it actually was intended to deliver. The main idea was to provide a place where players can gather to celebrate and maybe use their firework items in bigger masses and get great screenshots for the competition described in the last newsletter than it is usually possible.
So the ‘festivities’ in front of Conan’s castle are there to give players a point where they can meet, buy food and drink and celebrate.
We apologize if some expected more and are now disappointed.
Of course, this didn’t go down well with players. The event designed to celebrate a year of the game instead turned into antagonism of those people who had stuck with it, despite the flaws. Funcom quickly cancelled the US version and promised that it would come up with another event to celebrate the anniversary.
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squirrelz
2009.05.27 20:00
Epic fail. I think its time Funcom stopped thrashing that dead horse and accepted their fate. Time to turn the servers off and shut the doors.
Stange
2009.05.29 10:36 ~
I think that's a little drastic. The game has a lot going for it, the starting island alone proved to me that Funcom has a ton of potential. Fully voiced quests complete with dialogue trees made for a far more immersive MMO, something i think Bioware is attempting to do with their Star Wars MMO. The problem is that the starting island is so good that you expect the rest of the game to have that same quality, but it doesn't.
What it does have is a very unique fighting system that relies on skill far more than World of Warcraft or EverQuest does, gear that has less of an impact in PVP, graphics that are highly detailed and pleasing to look at, and the ability to cut off your opponents head. The mounts have actual momentum; even the speed of your mount determines how much damage you do. The game launched with a severe lack of content; i haven't played it for awhile, but i hear that that issue is resolved.
Although World of Warcraft is my MMO of choice I think Funcom has a technically impressive and well thought out MMO.