Funcom: Don’t expect Age of Conan launch problems

Funcom does not expect any server problems when hotly anticipated MMORPG Age of Conan launches just days from now.

Speaking to VideoGamer.com at the game’s official launch in Oslo, Norway, product director Jorgen Tharaldsen revealed that the developer has scaled its server to cope with 600,000 players on day one – 17 May for those who have paid for early access codes.

Earlier this week Funcom revealed that it has enjoyed one million sign ups to the Age of Conan open beta, what it believes is the largest ever beta sign-up figure in the history of the genre.

Tharaldsen moved to reassure anxious gamers following concerns raised due to Funcom’s infamously difficult Anarchy Online launch back in 2001. He said it has prepared adequately to cope this time around.

“The biggest issue is the unknown,” said Tharaldsen. “What happens when you have 500,000 people trying to go into the same door? We went through this before with Anarchy Online back in 2001 and that was a gruelling experience. We thought we knew a lot but we didn’t know anything when the systems really started to burn.

“Now we have a back up on the back up on the back up. If this happens we do this, these are the people responsible, this is how you do it, this is the hardware. If the forums go down we have four servers, smack, bang. If our websites gets issues, shut it down, this is the temporary, emergency website. If this server gets filled up it gets cycled back to the bottom. If there’s too many people, this is the queue system, etc etc etc.

“We’ve been about a year working on the launch. We have our own launch groups, our own beta meetings, we meet pretty much every day. We go through, OK what’s important, how do we do it, how do we prep our systems? We’ve been burnt before and we’re trying to ensure that if there are mistakes and holes that we didn’t see coming they are most likely stopped. But hopefully we have guarded ourselves and cast such a wide net that we will be able to pick up stuff quite fast.”

You can check out the rest of our interview with Jorgen Tharaldsen right here. When you’re done there, be sure to check out our Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures game page for some brand new trailers and screens.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is due out on PC in Europe on 23 May.