Should you give Age of Conan a second chance?

Game director Craig Morrison says yes. Find out why inside.

Funcom wants you to give its MMORPG Age of Conan a second chance. It’s reactivated everyone’s account and allowed them to play, for free, for two weeks. But why should you bother? We caught up with director Craig Morrison to find out.

VideoGamer.com: You’re re-activating the accounts of everyone who has ever played Age of Conan so they can play for free. Why are you doing that?

Craig Morrison: We’ve obviously made a lot of progress over the last year since launch and we wanted to give players the chance to come back, revisit the game and see for themselves. It’s very easy for us to sit here in interviews with you and other members of the press and give a slightly biased opinion when it comes to how far along the game’s come and the things we’ve changed and fixed and adjusted and whether they’ll like what they see. The real test is in getting players to come back and see for themselves and try it out and see what’s changed and get to experience it all for themselves.

VideoGamer.com: What are the details of the promotion?

CM: The re-evaluation offer will be going out to all the players who have previously subscribed to the game. It will give them a period of time to play for free with no commitment and just try the game. They’ll have full access to the characters that they had last time they played. If they had a character above level 50 when they last played they will also be able to take advantage of the new system that we introduced in the last update that allows players to create a new character at level 50 if they’ve already got that far, so they can even try out a different class if they like.

VideoGamer.com: How long will it last for?

CM: 14 days. They have a full two weeks to play and see the changes and get an impression of how far along the game has come in the last year.

VideoGamer.com: For people who have played Age of Conan before but don’t currently, what has changed?

CM: It depends on when they last played. Obviously since launch last year an awful lot has changed in the game. We’ve added a lot more content. We spent the first six months after the launch assessing the feedback from the players, of what they felt worked and what didn’t quite work after the launch. We’ve put a lot of work and effort into addressing those areas and making sure that we have taken into account that player feedback and look at the kind of things that we could add to resolve the issues that players had at launch.

If they played pretty soon after the launch, they’ll see quite a dramatic change. There’s an awful lot of new content. We’ve done three major content additions in that time. We’ve revamped all of the dungeons in the game that were there at launch. We’ve added whole new PvP systems from launch, so they can gain XP and items through that. In the latest game update we completely revamped the items and statistics in the game and how those bear on the character. Some of the early feedback when the game launched was that the players felt that the items and the statistics in the items were a little bit obtuse and they didn’t affect the character enough. So we’ve done a major game update that went live recently that addresses those and allows the player to see very easily – the items are much easier for the player to understand now – how they affect their character. So there is an awful lot of stuff that we’ve changed. And that’s before we go into all the new actual new content that we’ve added. There are large new play fields, several new large dungeons and in the latest game update an area called Tarantia Commons, where the players are in a very urban environment in King Conan’s capital city, which is a large outdoor play field with two separate dungeons.

VideoGamer.com: For those who have never played Age of Conan before and might be tempted now the game is having this re-promotion, how would you describe it?

CM: The beauty of Age of Conan is twofold. It’s different than a lot of other games that are on the market at the moment in that it’s a very mature and brutal setting. The world of Conan that Robert E. Howard described in his original writings is a very visceral and brutal environment. It’s not a high fantasy setting; it’s a low fantasy setting. It’s a very dark and foreboding world, and the game world captures that. It does instantly feel very different to the other types of MMO games that are available at the moment. It’s obviously one of the best-looking games in the genre, by far. The visuals bring it out and allow players to see and experience that great world. Secondly, the game’s combat system offers something very unique and different in the genre. It’s much more interactive and dynamic. The players have to think about their positioning, how they use their attack – it just makes for a more involved experience. The player is in the middle of the fight, as it were. It’s not very standoffish as you get in some of the other games in the genre, where it’s very much just waiting to press a button. It’s a very immediate, involved combat system, which gets the player into the thick of the action. It’s more exciting than what they’re used to in the genre.

VideoGamer.com: How much does Age of Conan cost to play in the UK?

CM: For UK gamers the current price at retail varies depending on where you’re getting it. The game is obviously a year old now. I would imagine that it’s perfectly possible in the UK to find it at £19.99 or below. Obviously high street retailers will have their own discounts and sales on older software. The subscription varies depending on how many months in advance you pay for. If you’re paying month by month it’s £14.99. If you commit to longer periods you get discounts on the monthly price based on the duration you’re subscribing for.

VideoGamer.com: Is it good value to be paying for an MMO at the moment?

CM: For sure. In the current economic climate there are very few entertainment options that offer the kind of value for money, especially if you’re going to break it down by how much you pay per hour, for the type of entertainment you get. MMO games are a great source of entertainment when the financial climate is the way it is at the moment.