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Age Of Conan Interview
Without question one of the most prolific figures in comic-book fantasy, Conan is gearing up to take the MMORPG world by storm, leaving a trail of carnage and bloodshed in its wake.
Funcom's Erling Ellingson stopped by to chat about the mammoth new title... swords, axes and hammers were all checked at the door...
Thanks for joining us Erling, can you introduce yourself and tell us how you’re involved with Age of Conan?
My name is Erling Ellingsen and I’m a product manager at Funcom. That means that I work with all our games on several different levels.
The first 20 levels are played out in single-player mode, the first time something of that nature has ever been attempted. Why did you decide to adopt that approach, and how do you feel it will impact the social aspect of the game, as players will be accustomed to solo play from the start?
There are really huge differences between single-player games and the massively multiplayer online games (or MMO), and it is often these differences that makes it difficult for new players to get into them. Whereas a single-player game can tailor the gameplay and the story to you, an MMO has to take into account that there are literally thousands of other players playing along side you. Because of this, you often feel like “just one fish in a pond” and while this does get entertaining once you amass friends and get into the community, the start of the game might appear very disappointing.
In Age of Conan you will play in a single-player experience for about five to ten hours, or about 20 levels of experience. We did this so that we can bring the player into the world more smoothly and so we can create a tailored story and gameplay experience around him or her. It will make it not only easier but a lot more fun getting started. We can do world-altering events, we can make the story revolve around the player, and we can sort of ration the amount of information the player has to digest.
The only impact it will have on the social aspect of the game, is that you won’t be around any other players for the first hours of the game. That being said, we have the ability to start mixing players together in the single-player phase of the game – the technology is there, and we just have to decide if that is something we want to do. Even still, this is a fully-fledged massively multiplayer online game and there will be all the community you are familiar with these games. It’s just the first few hours you are into your own story.
It’s also important to understand that you still play against our servers all the time, so you will be able to chat with your friends while in the single-player portion of the game.
Rumours are rife that Age Of Conan will extend onto a console as well as PC – can you comment further on this, and if it goes ahead how do you plan to remedy the major limitations that console controls have - will it be the usual case of having to juggle a handset and a keyboard, or do you have something else in mind?
We have not yet confirmed that the game will be out on consoles, but it is definitively something we want to do with Age of Conan and all our future MMOs. When it comes to Age of Conan, everything is set up for it already. Especially when it comes to controls, the Age of Conan combat system is very much adapted to game pads. Even if you play it on a PC, playing with a game pad will work fantastically. The directional combat system – where you strike in different directions – works perfect with the directional control on a game pad. There are, of course, challenges to overcome when it comes to chatting with other players, but if there is a console version that is something we can work out.
You are intending Age of Conan to be not a cartoony fairytale, that it is made by grown-ups, for grown-ups, giving online gamers the chance to unleash the ultimate havoc and fury. History has taught us that parents can be very lax about age ratings. Do you worry about younger players having this game? And how are you looking to deal with this eventuality?
We don’t want anyone underage playing this game. It is indeed a game aimed at the mature audience, which basically means 16+ in Europe and 17+ in the US if I remember correctly. I definitively think it is the parent’s responsibility to monitor which games their children play, and Age of Conan is not a game they should let them play unless they meet the age requirements. I think it’s easier to prevent those underage from playing a mature online game, basically because you need a credit card in order to subscribe and play. That’s when they usually run off to their parents asking them to pay for it, giving the parents the chance to say “No, this is not a game that you should be playing”.
Single-player games are a different matter, quite simply because it’s easy to “smuggle” a mature game into the house and install it without the parents ever knowing.
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