I find this subject pretty fascinating due to my personal experience with other games that have done a âclassicâ experience.
The one that comes to most peopleâs mind is World of Warcraft. When Blizzard offered the classic experience, they did so in a way that was⌠well interesting. They didnât have a functional copy of the original release of the game and instead had to use a version set to just before their first expansion, Burning Crusade.
Well⌠this suited them just fine. Balance changes were already done and it would have made for the best âvanillaâ experience and allow them very little effort into unlocking content over time to get that vanilla WoW experience. At least once it was all setup.
That setup wasnât easy. Getting the 2004 code to work with Windows 10 systems (and 64-bit OS I might add) was one thing. But also setting up a modern payment system and user verification system on a very old game was another. Canât simply cut and paste in the one from the live version.
Then you had to make sure the game works on modern CPUs, Mobos, and GPUs (shouldnât be too hard, but tweaks are needed). And do so out of the box.
There was considerable effort across the board. And one that was a bit of a risk at that. What if they spend all this effort, resources, man hours, and payments on hardware and setup only to have less than a few thousand users. Thatâd been a catastrophic failure.
A failure Blizzard feared for years and why it took them so long to actually try it. Why did they actually even bother to try in the first place?
Well two major reasons. One being the player ran servers being quite popular. As well as the success of WoWâs major competitor for decades, Everquestâs own progression servers.
While Blizzard put the effort into giving a classic experience on modern hardware. Daybreak (or rather Sony Online Entertainment when they started this) took a different route. So when you login to a progression server on EQ1 or EQ2 you donât use another client. You use the modern client.
How the servers work is they have switches that limit your level, your abilities, and whether certain zones are accessible and whether certain NPCs spawn or items drop. This gives a âclassic-likeâ experience using the modern version of the game.
The benefits is they donât need to use heavy development setup to work it out. They donât need to use multiple branches of development. And they get to use ALL of their modern microtransaction shops on everything.
The end result was astounding to say the least. I remember when they released on server set for EQ1 TLP, they used a prototype server hardware setup. It had a server capacity of 10,000 instead of 5,000. It filled up and used the queue system (developed for a previous TLP server) which prompted them to launch another sister server, which also had a queue. So over 20,000 players were trying to login at once.
Now⌠hereâs the problem. Blizzard doesnât see the same ratio of players to live to classic servers as the Everquests see from their live to TLP/TLE servers.
The reason I bring that up is while the Classic servers for WoW seem to do well. They arenât as universally successful as EQ1 and EQ2 do within their own communities.
Thereâs no guarantee that Conan Exiles could have a thriving classic server. Much less a whole dedicated development team and project to it. You have to understand WHY people tend to play on progression servers or classic servers in these games.
The main reason is because of the experience of starting over alongside everyone else getting that community wide starting fresh experience (trust me, its fun). For EQ, EQ2, and WOW, you need to go to unauthorized sources if you want your own experience unless Daybreak or Blizzard offers it. In Conan Exiles. You have singleplayer, private servers, and (had) Blitz servers.
So we already have authorized if not Funcom-provided sources of that experience. And donât get me wrong. I love the experience. I have started over due to wipe, new servers, and rerolls about 2-3 dozen times. There is a certain appeal to starting over with everyone else on a server.
But the problem with Conan Exiles versus a game like Everquest or World of Warcraft is getting back to speed is much much quicker in CE. What takes months in a game like EQ or WoW takes days in CE. Its not a game that lends well to that. Its a Sandbox game vs a themepark game. The content comes mostly from how you play the game and how you interact with other players, or for our solo folks how they like to express themselves in game.
None of that is especially enhanced in Conan Exiles as much as it is in those themepark MMORPGs. I mean in EQ you could take a while to get to finish a current expansion and your friends and you could take a while, dropping in and out randomly working towards your goals. Where in Conan Exiles, you could literally get to 60 and get all recipes and such in a weekend your friend has to work and when youâre together again the disparity is way more apparent then maybe getting a FBSS in a weekend of Lower Guk.
With all that known, is it worth it to Funcom to put in the effort? Bring the 2017 (or even the 2022) version of the game to modern specs and get the shop working, or simply using switches to turn stuff âoffâ in the modern version in a new server setting?
I donât think so. I doubt there is even enough people to fill a single server.
The less than half a dozen looking for the âclassicâ or Age of Sorcery Conan Exiles experience are stuck using a google search to find the ways to provide themselves with the experience and all the limitations and issues that come with that.
I would also point out that those looking for a bug free experience arenât going to find it with earlier versions. Thereâs definitely some rose colored nostalgia happening there. I have a decent memory of many complaints (even more than Age of War) during both time periods mentioned (2017 and 2022).
Also any procedural and policy changes Funcom has done since those dates would still be in effect in a separate branch of the game. Weâre not going to see non-FOMO bazaar bundles turn into $9.99 DLC you can steam exploit into getting for a few bucks.