Hi FUNCOM,
So you got this amazing Age of Conan MMO which has been around for years and sure its dated but there is nothing out there so I still keep coming to this game. And you have that Conan Exiles test project. When are you going to combine those two and make a proper MMO aka Age of Conan 2 ?
MMMO features, atmospere and stories from Age of Conan with the graphics and builder stuff from Conan Exiles.
I hope you are already working on this no brainer.
Never.
Also, from what I understand, the Unreal engine is really bad for large amounts of people playing together.
Theyâre 2 totally different playstyle, type, whatever word you want to use, thereâs no way they could combine them even if they wanted to.
Not to mention, but Conan Exiles isnât a âTest Projectâ, but a fully formed game (paid for by outside investors).
The time of the MMORPG has passed. They are still âa marketâ but a small one. Only companies with incredibly popular, pushed, funded and cross advertised media licenses can hold up their games and make profit. When SWTOR didnât become âthe next WoWâ it was clear that no big publisher in the Western world (Asia is a different beast) would ever invest as heavily into an MMORPG.
I am just thankful Age of Conan still exists and works, so we can enjoy the great game it became over the years of its active development. In addition I think making a second edition of an MMORPG is never a good idea. If anything Funcom would need to build on the basis of Age of Conan and expand the game piece by piece like World of Warcraft, Eve etc. have done. Itâs a waste of good, expensive content, assets, coding to throw everything away. Even 300+ Million couldnât make SWTOR launch with even close the amount of content compared to WoW and no company - let alone an indie one like Funcom - is ever going to invest that kind of money into an MMORPG ever again.
Now Conan Exiles is far from a test project. To me it could be a blueprint though. Maybe of a totally different Conan project. Maybe become the core of an Age of Conan RPG in the vain of a Witcher, with Conan as the main character. The tech they have now handles huge worlds, complex AI, the new combat system looks very interesting and they have now more experience with Unreal to handle such a project. If anything, that is more likely and reasonable than Age of Conan 2 - yet even that is unlikely given the investment needed to compete on that stage - against Skyrim, TW, Fallout.
Maybe if the Conan TV series manages to capture people imaginations and revives the license, a big publisher will want to make a Conan RPG and knock on Funcomâs doors? Providing the kind of money needed? One can dream. Till then, enjoy Age of Conan as the awesome game it is.
[quote=âWaldgeist, post:4, topic:181, full:trueâ]
The time of the MMORPG has passed. They are still âa marketâ but a small one. [/quote]
This âsmallâ market is still making more than virtually every other market there is.
WoW still has around 5-6 million subscriptions.
FF14 has around 4 million subscriptions.
1,000,000 x $14.99 a month = $14,999,000 per month or almost $180,000,000 a year.
SWTOR failed because Bioware made a single player, MMO hybrid and not a real MMORPG. No game like that is worth a subscription yet they managed to squeeze enough out of players to make a large profit before going F2P, then earned a hell of a lot more.
The problem with Western game companies is that they look at WoW, and how much money they made and make a game around THAT, then when it doesnt measure up, they give up on it mostly.
As for Funcom, they have the same issue a few other companies like Turbine hasâŠthey dont understand how to make a cash shop that actually brings in money all while handicapping F2P players to the point they dont want to stay.
EA gutted SWTOR. But they filled their cash shop with actual MICRO transactions to unlock everythingâŠAoC should have a TON of vanity items in it. Loads of costumes and weapon skins. It should have some gold cap increasesâŠeverything currently in it, should have lower pricesâŠits membership should give Funcom points like it used to so having a membership actually has real value.
Funcom could still be making decent money off the game but doesnt because it hasnt learned anything from the market much like most other companies havent learned to stop trying to make another WoW and instead just MAKE A â â â â â â â â FUN GAME and let THAT bring in the players.
And it would.
@Jarhead You are confusing the Asian market with the Western market. As I said in my post, Asia is a totally different beast. But Western companies - aside from Blizzard - were never successful on the Asian market. Of those millions of WoW players the largest majority is from Asian players, the same goes for FF14.
@Waldgeist incorrect on both.
Blizzard does not count for example, South Korean players in its subscription totals because they do not subscribe, they purchase play time in blocks of 1-2 or 3 days and there are still twice as many AMERICAN servers for Wow as there are in Asia.
FF14 sold more copies in the West, than it has anywhere else and the only place it achieved any popularity in Asia is in Japan, where its made.
WoW alone has more players in the West than almost EVERY Asian made MMORPG combined if you remove FF14 so Asian companies have the same issue with the West, as Western companies have with Asia.
Plain and simply due to cultural differences like having cutesy and or fluffy characters that so many in the west find too cartoony and or weird to get intoâŠwhile many Asians dont like ugly or too evil looking characters and find it a real turn off.
This is a really good discussion thread with a lot of interesting points of view. Personally I donât feel an AoC 2 is the way to go. As people have said this game in its current form is fantastic. I would like to see the game developed though and have more input in from FC. The success of saga, aside from some peoples short term dislike, demonstrates there is a large aoc community that want active participation of FC input into the game.
It would be good if they continue to develop that community aspect of the game with regular, and different seasonal events. The halloween event is a good example but I think we could do with more and utilising places that rarely get used. Paikang, Heavenâs lake, is a beautify area as is the coastline and water there but it is rarely if ever used. Dragonspine is abandoned and again could be a much wider used area for events to do with seasons or dramatic epic events. The world bosses are fun, being mostly for social drops but I think entire events could even be on the expansion scope scale of things. For example an event that dramatically changes an area that the players need to cure.save or even join and helpâŠit would be good for the option to join in with the âbadiesâ side occasionally as playing the saving hero gets same same after a while.
Expanding the game has been really innovative so far, with AA, then critigation values and runes etc. Considering the level is hard capped it makes development beyond that pretty difficult i can imagine. Nevertheless, players still need things to go for with their main characters. I think some kind of pve style battlekeep would work well. For example a guild could have the option to take over entire play areas, such as the wild lands, for example. It would be something that is achieved on a scale of a t7-8 raid content and would give signification guild-wide buffs that could help in later raiding content. Even providing guild wide critication values to make t1-3 armour more valuable than they currently are. Maybe this area is linked with pvp/pve content because I do feel its time fury and crom merged and the epic zones become pvp active zonesâŠno one uses epic zones anymore except for social armour in fotd (which could just drop of normal zone bosses).
Also, and i know the development would be quite high but still, new classes! With the release of Khitai there was a feeling new classes would come out specially as the mobs demonstated a variety of new animations and combat concepts.
A few ideas:) 
War Monk: multi-cross class (healer/mage)
This is a close melee combat fighter that uses meditations. A debuff and buff specialist able to really provide great utility to group members or raid-wide buffs that will greatly empower their team. Unlike a lot of other things, such as rearguard etc there may be little passive buffs and debuffs but have to actively be on CD rotation for the greatest effects.
It would be super fun to see elements of friendly player control in this class because at the moment things like RF and later content raiding can fail due to one single person. So having a class that can repel friendly, 10meters from a raid might just save a raid from a blood-draw or similar. Or having the ability to pacify friendly from the environment may guard someone from that bomb in Celestial Necro.
I donât see the healing in this class being particularly on par with other healing classes but their ability to significantly buff heal rating for AA feats would make them an end game class that has significant favourabilityâŠif played well.
Weapons used might be talismans, that almost put into effect the alternative version of what hox was meant to have been with the dagger/tali combination that kinda never really took off.
The multi-class aspect would open up either SF or UC AA perks.
Beast Tamer: multi-cross class (rogue/tank)
This is a pet class with one pet, either a wolf/tiger or scorpion for stygians that fights aloneside the character.
Depending on spec this class can dps or tank:
Rogue spec would be, fairly high dps (not assassin scale) with lots of distraction ability CC (later raid content relevant) and would rely on the combination of the pet and character working dps together. We have already combat pets in the game so this is a natural progression to make that useful game contents.
Tank spec, single target tanking specialist that tanks via evasion tactics. doesnt bubble like guard, doesnt overcome with shear force or life tap but dodges and side-steps with evasion and distraction with pet. Because of the link to rogue there could be use of poisions to dull and distract the tanked target. An interesting addition to this tank class would be its ability to access cheat the reaper skill.
A multi-cross class could have access to both FH/TW and Resolve, which might address issues of lacking particular skill base for some groups of friendsâŠalso passively addressing the limitations of the holy triniity in mmosl.
Weapons used would be either a polearm or two-handed blunt so a cross between a guard style and BS.
For me personally I think there are gaps with the current system that makes getting groups quite restrictive, specially for khitai content. The need for a rogue to always have and feat certain AAâs (same with other archtypes) forces those players to play a certain way and may even exclude some players but those players who donât mind that role would be able to, with those new classes, step up to those roles and mult-task them.
Also, would just be fun to see more classes. It is always a bombshell to drop new classes into the mix but that just makes life interesting
@Aocchick Those are great sounding suggestions that could really improve the game, but unfortunately it is pretty much all far beyond the scope of what Funcom would do for this old game. They wonât invest that kind of time and money into the game.
Now if someone were to give Funcom a few million dollars to specifically develop new stuff for AoC, things like this could happen. But that is pretty much the only way.
The have been a lot of successfully community funding projects that may work to do that though and I think mmos just are better the older they are, wow being the oldest is a good example i guess and runescape.
The problem with Age of Conan is that almost all of its content has become progressively obsolete over the years with no real content to replace it. For a game where the development cycle has ended I find it amazing that this has been allowed to happen, and now Raid Finder, T6 (and T5 to a degree) and Slithering Chaos is the only real form of character progression, everything else can be skipped.
Things naturally become obsolete when new content is added, ie; all of those old world 6 mans became obsolete when Khitai was released. The issues come in when you add things like World Boss, and with it, make, T1/T2 irrelevant. The raid finder being spammed to eternity the minute you hit level 80 with no penalty for relics to buy T3/T4 (or even Erlik) gear, thus making those raids, and by extension every 6 man that isnât called Slithering Chaos obsolete content.
With the development cycle over there should have been an effort made to keep as much content relevant as possible, such as new difficulty settings for dungeons to reflect the power creep and Raiding, 6 mans and Raid Finder working alongside each other rather than destroying each other, and still something that could be accomplished with some development work and thought given.
To be honest, after so many years, Iâm very much surprised to see this game is still available. Not sure if thereâs a chance for AoC to get the relaunch treatment SW got. That could be an option, as remote as it seems. I instantly got hooked again with this Saga trick they pulled, and the server is active enough, but not sure how many will carry over to Crom. Would have to be considerable to make any future investments worth their while. One can only hopeâŠ
I would pay good money for a AOC Legends or something. I still play this game from the launch from time to time. Too bad it had a bad start and many never came back. A relaunch like SWL would get AOC the attention it deserves.
Throw in some QOL things from Conan Exiles, housing, farming, updated graphics and it can give the current top MMOâs a run for their money.
They could do some more Unchained versions without too much effort. All the way from Black Caslte and Sanctum to Xiba and Iron Tower, there are plenty of instances that coul be made to work in Unchained mode. As for rewards⊠well⊠more ways to get various tokens for various vendors already in place?
They should make new unchain hms with mastertimer achievments included
I tried to remember it several times on the old forum too.
This was an official promise that had been made by the same Funcom and then reneged, to gradually transform each dungeon under 80 into an Unchained (Black Castle, Sanctum etc.)
Donât forget master timer need to be made easy enough for everyone to be able to achieve it! donât look down on people.
I think if funcom handles more conan games, we should play conan games where we get to play as conan, participate and wild stories probably playing in the style of god of war or something else surely, they could also make an rpg or something like the witcher! Funcom now just made a good survival game after a good mmo as you call it (I have not tried the mmo but am going to) I love how funcom seems to be the only ones taking it upon themselves to bring back a legendary universe from the 70âs-80âs? Not sure but they are potential developers on sucha title as Conan. If anyone else could bring more of the savage man from CIMMERIA I WELCOME IT!!! RIPS MY TUNIC OFF AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! lol
The original Conan stories are even older, the first original ones are from the 30s and yes, it would be totally awesome if they could make a singleplayer RPG set in Hyboria but I canât imagine that they have enough money and for such a huge project.
FYI, this is not true. WoW made more MONEY because it was a subscription but it never came even remotely close to more than a few Asian games. Both Lineage games had at the very least, 2x the amount of players as WoW. Ragnarok âmayâ have had far more than that, Nexus the kingdom of winds had so many players and made so much money that it made the company Nexon Inc one of the most powerful Asian gaming companiesâŠand that game was FREE up until the last levelâŠthink about it, the game was making them an average of 100 million a year without a subscription and did that for over a decade. The game Perfect World had upwards of 50 million players, almost all in China but you cant argue it wasnt popular because the company was making massive profits for some 4-5 years off it, enough to buy out Cryptic Studios.
If you just factor in âregistered usersâ, dungeon fighters has over 400 MILLION of them, even Runescape has over 200 million accounts created.