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Age Of Conan: First Impressions

The Case Against Funcom and Eidos

So, the game is not perfect or "Blizzard-polished". But all that is just code and art - it can be fixed - and there are very few fundamental issues. Far bigger issue is Funcom themselves. The game has been out for a few days, and they have already scored several major self-inflicted wounds while trying to provide a gaming service to the customers.

The launch has been less than perfect, but not due to game-related isssues. It's been mostly service issues and hare-brained decisions by Funcom and/or Eidos. First the confusing pre-order drama ended with a limited Early Access - leaving tons of annoyed players out of the head start before the actual launch. All this was done in the name of server stability, but considering that in the EU, Funcom has since added only a couple of additional servers, the explanation is a bit hollow. Then again that's old news by now - but the lack of communication and poor planning of the whole Early Access left many with a sour taste.

The communication also failed due to the completely closed official forums. That's right - you can't even read the forums unless you have an active Age of Conan account. Funnily they even "banned" all the accounts created using preorder product keys that couldn't fit into the botched Early Access - so not only were you unable to join the game with your friends, you couldn't even read the forums. I'm still baffled by the motive behind all this. I can understand limiting posting privileges to paying customers, but is Funcom so afraid of negative comments that they have to hide what players are saying about their game from prospective customers?

Then came the blunder of the year. Eidos and Funcom managed to ship a faulty batch of EU Collector's Edition boxes at launch with non-working product keys. No word on how widespread the issue was, but in any case it took Funcom more than ten hours to publicly acknowledge the issue on the official forums, and most people are still in the customer support email queue waiting for working keys. The related thread on the official forum has over a thousand posts by now, and that's only from people who already had a working Early Access account - those who just bought the CE and were unable to create their account couldn't even read the official forums to find out what's up - let alone complain. The official community page still has absolutely no mention of the problem, and the whole site feels like the work of a PR agency.

Community pages are supposed to be there so the company can communicate to the players - so far Funcom treats their community page as one big ad for the game. Funcom also appears to fail in other ways at MMO Communication 101 - If you nerf something, you put it in the patch notes. Period. Players will find out either way, and if you didn't tell them, your forums will turn into a pool of hot magma. The game is just a few days old, but they already managed to sneak in couple of nerfs for some of the most obvious balance issues. What annoys me is that they did not mention the changes anywhere.

Customer Support? Huh?

By this time, people new to Funcom also found out that Funcom has no phone support. None. Only way to contact support is by email, and even that was borked for part of the day during EU launch. Even when the support email works, you first get a canned response with FAQ answers that probably have nothing to do with your issue, and the response time is very poor. Same goes for in-game GM petition response times with hundreds of people waiting in queue for 12+ hours to get simple bug-related issues with their quests or characters resolved.

MMOs these days are very much a combination of a game and a service, and the service side of Funcom seems to be taken completely off-guard. Either they put a considerable portion of that pile of money they just collected (with over 800.000 copies shipped, that must be tens of millions) and invest it to customer support, or destroy their reputation as people start canceling over issues that could be easily handled by proper support. It may be expensive to offer phone support, but that's the cost of doing business these days - people expect it to be there when something goes bonkers. While many tales can be told of Blizzard support, at least it's there and for Blizzard the biggest issue seems to be that they just can't hire enough people for their support centers. At this point, Funcom doesn't seem to be even trying.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: The Case For Age Of ConanPage 3: The Case Against Age Of ConanPage 4: The Case Against Funcom and EidosPage 5: Tech Of ConanPage 6: Summary, Initial Verdict

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