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| An empty battlefield between Tortage and Khitai |
I started this post a long time ago and just sat on it. Much like how I've sat on this blog and done nothing recently. Originally I didn't want this to be a doom and gloom post because I was naively hoping it would turn around. Then Slith left the community over a year ago and I felt like that was a sign of the times. Nothing has happened since to make me rethink that.
As I type this, I realize AoC and I are also fading apart. When I log in and really play, I still enjoy it but with minimal content being developed my relationship with this game is changing. It's like your fun yet undependable college buddy. A few years after college, you hang out and have fun from time to time, but you tend to drift apart as you grow up and time becomes a precious commodity.
The announcement of Conan Exiles told me where their resources for the Conan license were going to be spent. I haven't tried that game, and based on the reviews I've read, I don't want to. Funcom abandoned Age of Conan to work on Exiles. This felt worse than when development resources went to The Secret World. That was a new IP and felt like something that could help Funcom stay solvent and could possibly create some cross-over content (monsters and some environments). Exiles just feels like a re-skin that is trying to latch on to the new survival game fad and was released far too early, but I'm sure that last part sounds familiar. But Exiles allows you to model your character's schlong. Too bad it's size isn't automatically tied to the quality of your gear.
Here's the timeline of updates on the Age of Conan website:
June 30, 2016 - New Premium Membership + True Freedom to Play
October 18, 2016 - Face the Slithering Chaos
May 17 2017 - Age of Conan 9th Anniversary Celebration
My 31, 2017 - By Popular Demand: Celebration Extended
[Undated - August 2017?] - Gamescon Community Event (not AoC-centric)
[Undated - October 2017?] - 720 Day Loyalty Rewards
So in 16 months, the business model changed slightly, a six-man dungeon was introduced, and a few trinkets were given away and some old content reusing old areas was brought back. And someone wrote six short blog posts. Can you at least act like you give a crap? As my subscription winds down, I'm trying to figure out why I should continue to put money into this game. And more importantly, why I should continue to care.
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| A beautiful Cimmerian vista devoid of players |
Forums have a few dedicated posters but it's become toxic except for a few defeated loyalists. There's only a handful of new messages a day, so it's not even active enough for daily reading. I stopped reading it regularly about a year ago and weirdly didn't miss it. All the signs point to a game that would've had its plug pulled if run by anyone other than Funcom. As much as fans malign them, they do tend to keep their games online unlike larger corporations like Sony.
As for the blogging community; Cynara still posts occasionally as does HenryX. And that's it for the blogging community. Two. Three if you count this (and I wouldn't - I haven't written AoC in almost two years). Conan College is gone offline, Slith's site is still there but he retired from blogging with a wordless post, and This Machine Age went silent three years ago (killer gout). There weren't many to begin with and we're down to two who've written a total of 6 posts in same time as Funcom. Now Henry and Cynara spend waaaaayyy more time writing their posts than Funcom as Cynara essential builds loot tables for everyone and Henry makes beautiful videos that promote AoC better than Funcom ever did.
There was an opportunity to snare board gamers during the Monolith campaign and during the Modiphius RPG campaign, yet it felt like Funcom didn't try hard enough. Those Kickstarters had in-game items for people to try AoC. Funcom: could you at least try to act like you give a crap?
I've routinely paid for the subscription a year at a time and not thought much of it. For the past two years, I've mostly only logged in to update offline training. Is this worth about $100/year?
"Your subscription helps keep the servers running," will be the response. And they're correct, subscriptions and in-game purchases keep games like AoC alive. I love the music, running through Tortage for the 30th time, and questing in a lot of different areas. I've leveled more than 10 characters to 80 and have countless hours spent running around Conan's world. It'll be sad when I can't log on and get that Conan fix. I left and played other games like SWTOR, Dragon Age Inquisition, WoW, the Witcher, and TSW. But I'd always come back and AoC was always there. I compared many of these games to AoC. I even wrote a post I never finished comparing DAI to AoC. DAI's mind-numbing combat is so bad I don't ever want to play it again, despite my love of that dark fantasy world.
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| Sanctum of Burning Souls is still a great instance |
One of the reasons I went in on the Monolith board game so hard was it utilized some of the art of AoC. I felt like it was a way to have a tangible thing to remind me of this game, besides the soundtrack and collector's edition book, as well as an outlet to adventure and battle in that world.
May 2018 is the tenth anniversary. I'd love for Funcom to do something cool for it. But I'd be delusional if I think there will be anything other than some useless items for subscribers and a subscription offer.
If/When they announce the shut down of the game server, I will probably log on watch the server countdown to zero, watching the chat until it dumps the remaining few players to the load screen. I expect a mix of "Good bye Conan!", gold-sellers, and [You know who] yelling, "AoC is dead! I told you all it would happen!". Until then, I'll most-likely go F2P and just pop in and out and enjoy the game a little bit here and there when I have time.
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