Funcom to Merge Age of Conan Servers; DirectX 10 Version Almost Complete
By Stephany on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 8:47 AM PST In Age of Conan, Computer, FunCom, Gamer Life, Games Industry
Craig Morrison, game director for Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, has confirmed via the MMO’s forums that the company is currently at work on merging the North American and European servers.
Morrison issued a two-part statement yesterday regarding some of the upcoming gameplay changes that will be occurring over the next few weeks, which mostly entail added content and an enhanced PvP consequence system which can result in a player no longer being welcome in certain parts of the game should they choose to gank another player. These changes have been expected for quite some time now, but the most interesting thing Morrison decided to address was the possibility of a server merge which had been discussed by gamers on the forums.
According to Morrison:
“I can today confirm that we are actively working on an approach to merge servers, both in Europe and North America. It’s important for us to ensure the best gameplay experience for you all, and more healthy populations on each and every server will make sure we maintain healthy communities for the game in the future.
That work has now started, and we are naturally making sure that guilds and players can get to new servers in the best possible way. We will come back with more info on this, but I hope that this will serve as a positive injection to the social scene in the game.”
This could mean one of two things. First, an easier way to manage the servers from an IT standpoint, or secondly, Funcom is loosing money on Age of Conan and it is more cost effective to combine the servers into one locale. I would almost assume the latter is the case because according to some research by Joystiq, stock in the company has fallen to $5 per share, which is down $20 since July and down $50 from Age of Conan’s pre-launch. Stock in Funcom was already headed downward before the current economic crisis.
Also mentioned by Morrison in the forum post was that the long-awaited DirectX 10 version of the game was almost ready for launch. This version has been kept on an internal test-server for quite some time now, but when the next update is made players can expect to see some DX10 functionality in the test environment.
“How long it will take to transition to live will depend on the testing of course,” stated Morrision, “But it’s starting to shape up nicely. Having done some reviews of it internally over the last few weeks I can admit that a few of the features really do give some added visual punch.”
Hopefully, both the merging of the servers and the launch of the DirectX 10 version will give Funcom the much needed boost it needs to keep Age of Conan going and draw newcomers to the fold, despite the plummeting stocks. I know a lot of gamers out there who actually enjoy the game, and I would hate to see an MMO with so much potential go by the waste side so soon after a promising launch.
When it was such a big failure, why don’t they just drop it and begin over again? It’d be much easier, and people would probably try it.
Speaking as someone who saw the signs 6 weeks into the game’s life, I’d just like to step back from maturity a bit and send out a hearty “HA! Told YOU!” to all the Fanboys. This means you Protus-AOC.
Its a great promising game that over extended its promises and obviously is spending quite a bit of money trying to make them reality.
I hope they make it better and it lives on. No one should want to play one game forever, this is already worth a try and if it gets better than I’m happy to have another MMOLG that i can log into for a month or so than switch back to one of the others I already have installed on the computer.
I would like to know how i can get my money back on the dx10 promise.
This is another case of a Company false advertising and getting away with it.
Hopefully President Elect Barak Obama Will live up to his promise and get rid of
corporate greed and make these Bastards pay.
I Guarantee you the reasons thier stocks dropped is because most of the shares were owned by the higher ups and they sold all thier shares when they saw this game was a failier.
Wonder why one of Funcoms founding members left after 16 years?
He didnt want to be around When the s_ _ _ hit the fan!