It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since I was stuck at load screen for two hours with a hanged game. Despite my last doom and gloom post, the lead up to the anniversary was nice and the Saga of Zath was a neat idea. It's also the type of thing that fits perfectly in Funcom's model for AoC (or any game on maintenance) - minimal effort for creating new assets yet still deliver the customers a fun event.
I didn't quite get to 80 on my Saga character (now if I was subbed, I would have - oh the irony) but I don't recall ever just pounding the game with one character for so long. And I had fun trying to get him there.
The anniversary was, kind of as expected, a rehash of old events with some new vanity items for sale. Getting log ins for 14 days over the 3 weeks to get the lion makes sense - although it's a shame it's not account wide. I didn't check the store but I'm sure there's a way of buying something similar. Likewise, giving loot boxes daily was a nice bonus and is one of the few times I recall getting gifts from Funcom.
While I was tempted to resub, I decided to remain F2P for now for all the reasons I stated before - I don't have time to play enough to justify the expense.
Servers like Saga of Zath won't save AoC but I think they can help get small bumps and remind people that "hey, there's still a fun MMO over here." But, I also hope they show restraint and only do this one, maybe twice, a year. Any more than that and it'll just get stale. I'm not sure I'd jump on and try to level another toon before the fall under a similar rule set. The interesting question will be - what are some other ways to generate the same buzz in a slightly different manner? Can you make character clones, like they do for TestLive, baseline their gear and put them on a PVP server? Do you make a higher level version of Tortage for your characters to experience again? (Not sure how to do that without needing to create new quests/assets).
Happy Birthday Age of Conan! Here's to the first 10 years and hopefully many more to come.
