Daedren pulls no punches on Erling Ellingsen interview

Marketing people are the worst.... Age of Conan maybe was a good game if they waited 1 or 2 years more before release it. At this moment its just junk. Lipstick on a pig so to speak.

A very very ugly pig with 3 legs.

I like how EE just sticks to his gun, but for the first time he doesn't sound so convinced himself. Odd, isn't it? Maybe he's getting ready to jump ship.

Anyway, nothing new, they're still in full denial mode; AoC is perfect, the sky is blue and they have a gazillion "real" subscribers.

Too bad WAR is going to steal away some of their players, and after that WotLK will run them into the ground for good.

Are you two like the guys in school that fall from peer preasure from the bully that saids "damn that kid sucks" and just because you don't want to be that kid you nod your little heads and agree.

First of all, this is Erling Ellingson job, if he would praise the game he wouldn't work for Funcom in the first place.

Play the game, if you don't like it, switch. Simple, I played hardcore the first couple of months and I thought it was boring just like World of Warcraft, and just like I would if i had any interest in playing World of WAAAGHcrafT?

But not I am taking it easy, exploring the job the quest guys did, the dialogues and the story. It's fun.
At least I think so, but hey maybe I start a blog and tell people about it.

Where did all the hate come from?
Really?

Games have promised stuff before that didn't deliver in time.
Do people hate the game so much so they make remarks about peoples appearance that works on Funcom?


Did WoW make it okey to be haters online?

The one nice thing about MMO's is that when they fail, they can't blame piracy like some other game companies do. :)

I think EE handled that pretty damn well.

How the hell is what AoC released with not a basic PvP system? Half the frikkin' MMOs (*glares at WoW*) come out and you barely even have the option to fight other players! AoC's PvP was way ahead of the majority MMOs right from the get-go, one of the big things it always had going for it.

The AoC hate is really tired at this point. FunCom was over ambitious for a small company, dur. So walk away and come back in six months and you'll have an actual damn good MMO. No QQ necessary.

Just posted my crappy experience from their pathetic company. its the 5th one on the list if your interested.

I will never be a customer of Funcom's in the future, screw that company...

LotD officially pulled the plug on our AOC efforts on Sept 14th, and in all their blunders cost them 150 accounts right there. Our server, Deathwhisper, is a ghost town. What’s left are small groups of players who are trying to figure out how to merge what’s left of the population into 3-5 guilds to keep competition going.

LotD was the only guild on the Deathwhisper Server to have a full Tier 3 city AND a full Tier 3 battle keep. It cost us 480k resources, 4 full months, and several thousand gold to build it all. Its not something you abandon lightly, but at some point you just can’t keep playing a game being run by a bunch of incompetent people who are out of touch with their community. Erling is like Bagdad Bob, he’ll say anything but no one believes him anymore. His credibility is an absolute joke, and I don’t know of a single guild that has moved on that would bother ever coming back to this dung heap of a game.

The community told them what needed to be fixed asap, and they didn’t listen. Instead they increased the exp needed to get to level 80, made guild city building entirely too painful, shut out the smaller guilds, and the list goes on and on to infinity.

In games where you require guilds to participate in the high end stuff like city building, crafting, sieging, etc you don’t just lose a single customer………you lose the whole friggin guild.

The last man in AOC please unplug the servers on your way out.

Um, well, thanks for the feedback I guess. ;)

@david: You hit on a point I'm covering in my next article. I know how you feel.

At those saying "if you don't like it, don't pay for it" -- well, most have done that. However, some of us enjoy to talk about the game industry. Age of Conan, even assuming it continues down this downward spiral, can at least be used as a lesson to other design teams on what *not* to do. (Queue the Demotivator)

@Hades: Thanks for that note, that's helpful. I'm extremely interested in how Funcom will handle the subscriber issue in the coming months, what with War and WoTLK on deck.

There's an expression; "falling on the sword for your, and your leaders mistakes" - how appropriate.

The picture of a moron with to much makeup, incredible i missed this earlier, so damn comical, he is wearing more makeup than some women.........the game loses, and so does he/she.

@NMaster: People always seem to invoke the "WoW" when it's convenient. No, WOW didn't have a real PVP system in at launch. However, it also didn't advertise itself as a "PVP Oriented Game" - which is exactly what Funcom did.

Now for the best part. In Closed and Open Beta, there was a working PVP system - gear, PVP levels, etc. It wasn't perfect, but it was something.

They ninja'd this out of release and tried to play it smooth -- "Coming soon, in June!"

Advertising a game as a PVP game and then launching with only the ability to attack other people - with absolutely no consequences, reward, or point at all - is just plain silly and unprofessional.

Anyone who defends otherwise is just deluding theirself.