I have some suggestions on what to give to the world next in the Conan universe.
Why don’t you rebrand Age of Conan Unchained with state-of-the-art graphics like UE5? Keep the combat system, the brutality, the nudity and the finisher system. Give us an early access release, including full Tortage and release other zones like Stygia or Cimmeria with updates when the graphics are finally reworked. So you should have plenty of time until the new Movie will be released in 2028. Keep the monthly fee monetization and sell the early access for 30€, for example, or 70€ as a full title, or 100€ with style stuff (NEVER EVER pay-to-win stuff!), and maybe 130€ with a Conan figure and art-style book as a hard copy version (perhaps with a world map of the Conan universe like it was when Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures was released). The early access version only includes Tortage and you have to pay for more zones to unlock with the updates, so you can get every zone with a maximum cost of about 90€ (you have to benefit to support the developer by buying directly the full version). I’m talking about the core version; the Khitai expansion should be sold as an expansion. So it is up to the players to decide how they want to support the development, or, better to be safe first. Age of Conan MMO has one of the most unique selling points of any MMO: it’s brutal, it has nudity, it has a perfect combat system, and it has a finisher system you can’t find anywhere else. Plus, you as a Norwegian company have the perfect music, singer, and so on. Not to mention your mythology fits totally into the Conan universe, like Ymir, Asen, and so on. Who, if not Funcom could do it?!!!
If Funcom releases the Age of Conan MMO as a rebrand with state-of-the-art graphics, you will make millions. You won’t make the mistakes you did with the release in 2008 because of the early access! This buys you guys time, and you don’t need to rush. You would have had even more success with the release in 2008—much more success if the early access concept had existed in 2008!
Just think about it! The Conan lore deserves it; it is an unpolished jewel. And only an MMO can give the deep dive into it! Conan Exiles has too many flaws to waste time on it. And the market is full of such games even you developed too games, Exiles and Dune. It won’t make millions of dollars anymore. Windrose will be better in the major aspects. I know you won’t like to hear it, but the truth is the truth, and at least it doesn’t have a lot of unique selling points; it has only one: Conan universe. But you can’t give us the immersion with the lore in a survival craft building game that is played on a server with 30 people.
It would be good if Funcom remastered AoC with the unreal engine 5 like they did with Conan exiles. People are yearning for a good MMO to play. Wow is stagnant. Now is the time to strike Funcom!
Absolutely there is a lack of decent MMOs alive today especially with that amount of unique selling points. Age of Conan last for close to 20 years and so will the rebranded one, maybe even longer if Funcom won’t give up like it has in 2011. There are a shi*load to say, develop and show us in a MMO in the Conan universe! And Funcom doesn’t have to start from the scratch, it’s all there!!!
totally agree with you guys, same thoughts was in my head for years. But FUncom remains silent about their next games and they already said in past that they wont do new mmorpgs cause they are small indie company now
So why do they do Dune Awakening then? It’s in the same genre as Exiles is. This genre is full of games sharing the same player pool. Only the top 3 will survive for a long time. MMOs like Conan are rare. And they got everything already. Funcom doesn’t need to do stuff from scratch. Even with the UE5 engine, they are experienced! There is no such MMO out there, and with early access and the rebranded UE5 release, you will be able to get the generations that were too young in 2008 to play the game. Maybe they never recognized or heard about the Age of Conan? And you will get 90% of the Exile players too because of the deeper story and lore stuff and to be able to explore more of the Conan universe with more people, raid epic bosses, and so on!
And MMOs have a social aspect, like creating a guild, getting many people and new friends, setting goals, reaching them, and then setting new ones all together. Guild meeting in real life, which becomes a family. This is what makes MMOs last long time! No survival game will do so. I don’t even know people playing together on a server knowing each other in real life before and playing regularly for even a year.
Well, Funcom has almost no devs left and exactly zero working on Conan things.
Just a few on Dune, another of their failed games.
Exiles was remade by a third party studio they hired only for that job (they have their own games to manage too, which they will go back to once the job on Exiles Enhanced is done). They did that because it’s their best game financially, makes them money (in game shop) and the best and biggest servers are ran by the community. Also a fully moddable game, so players can do whatever they want, there’s Cyberpunk, Star Wars, D&D servers etc.
All Funcom MMOs have failed, including Dune which they now market as a “not really MMO”. And it’s not that the games are bad, it’s just that Funcom is not capable of running online games in a way that can make them be big and last long.
The company still exists today because it’s a national treasure in Norway, a small country where the government has unlimited money (oil). In any other country it would have closed after the AoC flop.
On the upside for us, they don’t close their old online games, they just leave them running on cheap hardware. So be thankful that AoC still works, but don’t expect anything from the company, or you’ll be disappointed, again and again.
Don’t understand how company with 33 million annual revenue and Norwegian oil money can completely unstaff an online game. That has to be illegal right? What if someone gets groomed or something? How can a company with 500 employees have exactly 0 people allocated to this game?