Age of Conan Dev Talks Problems, Future Plans 83
Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom's product director, recently spoke about some of the problems with Age of Conan and how they are planning to make the game better. "I think it's okay to say that we simply didn't deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features." He goes on to talk about how they're working on improvements to the PvP system, tradeskills, and class balance. Tharaldsen also spoke with Strategy Informer about the development of the Xbox 360 version of the game, which he said was "not our key priority as there are a massive amount of PC gamers already playing the game, and we rightly have the focus on them."
And why would you make a 360 version a priority? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually (Score:4, Interesting)
At launch WoW's capacity was fine. For about a month everything was good. Their problem was they didn't think it would grow as big as it did, and certainly not as fast as it did. That isn't to say they dealt with it well once it became a problem, but it wasn't a launch problem, it was a problem a bit later when people really discovered it.
The difference, of course, is that as you noted WoW is fun, AoC really isn't. So with WoW they didn't realize that there were so many people who'd like to play MMOs but hadn't encountered a good one. Thus sales took off and crushed their infrastructure. Their initial sales were nothing compared to what was to come. It has basically been nothing but growth. With AoC it was the opposite. They figured they'd steal tons of WoW players, and so were prepared on the infrastructure. However the game isn't good, so it has had trouble keeping people. Thus they may well have seen their peak on launch, and it'll only go down from here until it stabilizes.
Re:And why would you make a 360 version a priority (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, the Xbox 360 has sold 20 million units? of those, how many are connected to the internet? A tiny number compared to how many hundreds of millions of PCs are on the internet. The PC has been helping people communicate with one another online for years. Theres enough PC users around for AoC to becomes 10 times the size of WoW.
Well, there's an inherent flaw in your logic. While, yes, AoC could potentially become that large on the PC, it won't. The reason? Well, just because a PC is connected to the internet doesn't mean there's a gamer sitting behind that keyboard. With a console, your odds of landing a hardcore gamer are significantly higher.
Furthermore, the prevalence of MMOs on PCs causes problems. In general, many people don't play more than one MMO at a time, and if you're competing against WoW, Guild Wars, EQ, etc., your market size shrinks considerably. Consoles are essentially MMO free. If you make a killer MMO work great on a console, there's a serious untapped market to be had.
That there is the problem. Console MMOs suck, because everyone refuses to build from the ground up for them. If you design a game with solely consoles in mind, you don't (always) get "watered-down crap". Sometimes, you get a fantastic game with a sweet concept (best example: EndWar). Trash consoles all you want, but they are getting some really cool innovation, and innovation sells (whether that be on PC or console).
Finally, there is one HUGE incentive for developers to switch to consoles; piracy. Say what you want about it, but piracy is a cancer on the PC market. Is your game actually going to do well, or is it gonna get pirated to hell and back? Will you even make a return on that investment? Consoles have significantly lower piracy, and that makes them a safer bet.
Mark my words; console MMOs will be huge. Someone will hit it big sometime, and it will rock the gaming market. It'll be that console generation's Halo; it'll prove (once again) that consoles are viable not just for genre x, but genre y too. You just have to work with them.