Questioning Conan

We've definitely seen in our community feedback that the most interested group of people, in terms of age categories, is 18 plus. The highest levels of interest come from people even older than that.

Besides, the average age of an MMO player is supposedly 27.

I think that stemmed from the initial analysis that was done about five years ago. We wanted to know how we could make MMOs more mainstream, how we could increase interest and get new players to test it out. There were a lot more players playing single-player RPGs than there were playing MMOs.

I think at that time, the MMO market was much more hardcore than it is today - now we have much more casually oriented MMO titles than we had back then. That was part of the decision. We wanted to have an easy transition for offline MMO players.

Funcom is well known for its stories, and I think a part of the original design intention was to make sure that we were telling a real story in an MMO. A lot of MMOs tend to fail at that - we really wanted to tell a strong single-player story, and that thread runs the whole way through the game, not just from 1 to 20. If you follow the Destiny quests all the way through the game, you'll really feel the single-player experience very strongly.

We've been taking beta feedback for quite some time, and we saw the need to make some changes there - to make the game more appealing and easier to grasp. Some of us have been playing for a really long time, so for us it's like second nature - we have it in our blood. Once we started getting beta feedback, it was clear that we needed to make some changes to guarantee the success of the game a bit more.

I think the intent is that we're going to enable the old system as you get further up through the levels. The idea is to make it an easy transition, to learn and get to grips with the combat system - we're just making it a little easier to understand initially. We haven't removed the ability to activate the combos by just hitting the attack directions themselves, it's going to be unlocked at harder levels.

It's not because we want to 'WoW-ify' the game - it's really down to the beta feedback. We were very up front about that when we delayed the game, we actually stated in the press release that we had to work more on the combat system.

In terms of those features, it's an ongoing process. We really test them, and we want to have them as good and as fun for the players at launch as possible. We've launched MMO games before, and we know there will be issues with some of the features - that's why we're trying to plan ahead, to tackle it and be proactive, rather than having a launch and then going 'oops!', and having to go back to the drawing board.

Also, as Erling mentioned, based on the beta feedback for combat, we decided to take responsibility and go back and make some changes ahead of launch.

We're not releasing half-baked features. We'd rather wait and patch that feature in later - I'm not saying we're going to do that with any of the features, but it would make no sense for us to put out something that's half-done.

This is always a difficult question, because what can we say - 'no, it really works! I can show you the code!' *laughs*

The beta feedback has been so positive on that front. Personally, I've never heard about lag interfering with the combat system - and honestly, we wouldn't release this combat system if the technology didn't support it. Again, we're not releasing half-baked stuff.

The code is actually based on Anarchy Online's code-base, so it's something we've been working on for ten years.

I think also that if you look at the beta feedback we're getting, we don't hear stuff about it being laggy - it's more about class balance. That means that we've managed to get a certain distance - we've got a product that has come sufficiently far that people can actually play it and give us detailed feedback on the balancing, and not on other issues like lag or technical problems.

I think we're very clear about wanting Conan to have a casual appeal. We don't want to exclude the hardcore players, but they're not the primary focus, in the sense that we're aiming towards a more casual-friendly style of play.

You don't need to grind twenty hours a day to avoid the risk of your friends levelling away from you, or anything like that. That's not the focus of our game. We believe people should have fun as they play, not just grind up as quickly as they can to get to the end game.

You have both aspects, really. Conan is a very PvP centric game, for instance, which implies that it's a game for very hardcore players - but it isn't. You also have a strong focus on quests, being able to do quests quickly, and on jumping in and doing solo stuff. You don't have to group - the game can be soloed from 1 to 80. There's something for everyone. If you're a really hardcore player, you'll probably spend a lot more time doing the PvP stuff.

When we talk about sieges, and massive PvP, the way that it has been conceived and designed is that you'll have stuff to do for the bigger guilds, but there will also be a role for the smaller guilds - those with fewer players, who have less time to sink into the game. They'll be able to have an active part, and have fun - there's a role for them, whether it's helping out a larger guild, or cutting out a piece of land for themselves in a bigger space.

For example, if you're a big, organised guild, you can try and take the Battle Keeps in massive PvP - the huge keeps - but if you're in a smaller guild, you can try to capture smaller towers, resource nodes, things like that.

Another thing about massive PvP is that we have something called a mercenary system. If you're in a guild, and you're attacking a battle keep, you can say to all the players on the server that you need more people to fight for you. Then, if you're not in a guild, you can just accept these tasks from other players - you jump right into the action, help that guild, and get a certain amount of gold for it or whatever.

It's a great way of getting players right into the action without having to be in a guild - you can experience that gameplay without doing the daily guild meetings and all of that!

One second you're plucking berries and the next second you're chopping heads.