Age of Conan gets new king

Funcom cofounder and game director Gaute Godager resigns after 16 years with company; Anarchy Online producer named as replacement.

The Hyborian Age will soon see a new era. Funcom today announced the resignation of Gaute Godager, company cofounder and producer/game director of its new PC massively multiplayer online role-playing game Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

Godager is looking to leave the industry entirely after Age of Conan.

"I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with," Godager said in a statement released by Funcom. "I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom."

While it was commercially and critically well received, Age of Conan's launch was beset by technical issues. Players of the game have also complained about a lack of content for high-level players, interface issues, and the absence of features that had been announced for the game.

Godager will now move on to "new ventures outside the gaming industry," while Funcom has found his replacement from within its own ranks. Former Anarchy Online producer Craig Morrison will be taking over as producer/game director for Age of Conan.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is also in development for Xbox 360. An expansion to the PC original will arrive next year.

77 Comments

  • Tedkan

    Posted Oct 31, 2008 7:32 pm PT

    Lack of content for higher level players huh? So this means that funcom is not willing to add content to the game when the player gets from level 40 to 80? I've wanted to play this game for a long time and now I can, since I have a new computer. But what I see here now makes me really think that I should continue playing world of warcraft.

  • cliffyamo

    Posted Sep 26, 2008 1:56 pm PT

    i played aoc from launch purchasing the collecters edition and left wow to play it.
    there were a few technical issues but what annoyed me the most was i picked up every loot item i found sold stuff on auction and vendered trash items and having gotten to level 40 had no money of any value in the game to buy anything! final fantasy online was the same you should have to be able to kill a few trash mobs to afford to buy a potion not play for 5 hours just to afford to buy a potion giving a small amount of health.the game mechanics for money and items was way out of sync

  • dcook42

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 4:55 pm PT

    This game is AWESOME and it just keeps getting better. On my 2nd lvl 80, this game has given me everything that WoW, EQ2, TR, and Vanguard did not. I'll be playing this for a while.

  • merlin19783

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 4:47 pm PT

    Just to Mech a few posts down maybe people don't understand what programming is all about but as gamers we know what we like and don't like. So far this game has been the biggest let down of my MMO list. It had/has so much potential to kick WoW right where it hurts and yet so far failed because of a sloppy programing team, poor PR and lots of broken promises. Thanks to the Gem exploit only one of the five crafts is worth doing now.

    WoW, Lotro and the rest all run simular but under the hood are so very different. I have played AoC from launch and have just resigned as GM of a guild on Fury server. With a new guy at the helm they are promising lots. So in three months if it has all happened I will return to the game. For now I have been playing WAR at I have to say it's a breath of fresh air. Everything works and it's brimming with features and content. Yes it could be mistaken for a WoW clone at a glance but I'd say give it a few days and you can see Mythic have taken a proven format and injected it with rocket fuel! The graphics are also less gordy and more gritty than WoW

    Well done Mythic

  • P0T

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 10:28 am PT

    Lol it seems the 360 version is vaporware.

  • pavakah

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 5:57 am PT

    kid-poker1973
    Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:24 am PT

    "Too little too late? Funcom may have missed their opportunity to make AoC a mainstay. I have to laugh at all the so called "Fanboys" spewing their nonsense about how it's unfair to compare AoC to WoW. Bottom line is...NO amount of whining is going to change the fact that WoW is and will continue to be the measuring stick ALL other MMO's with be compared with because Blizzard was the first to really master the genre'."

    Albeit the phrase "really master" is somewhat subjective, it should be mentioned that Everquest, regardless of whether a person liked or disliked it, was the first widespread 3D mmorpg. (Notice I said 'widespread 3D' -- so all you Meridian 59 and Ultima Online people can settle down.)

  • Kenuty

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 3:20 am PT

    This is awsome, I can't wait to come back to play conan! Everything is going to get fixed up perfectly. All the players will come back and this game will have over 30 people playing on a given day!

    lol yeah right.

  • sephiroth_gr

    Posted Sep 19, 2008 3:05 am PT

    i am playing aoc since release date.i have played l2,wow from release date also.for a strange reason everyone forgets that the same problems(bugs/lack of end game content) existed on the other games...strange.people are trying to sabotage a mmo that has the potential to kick another mmo who's graphics are a little worse than like n64...nice.fine,go play that crap wich looks a little more mature than smurfs and ignore atlast a mature mmo with a control system and gameplay that looks like an action game,sure,smashing 2 or 3 buttons is better...jesus christ

  • Un4givingAsault

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 10:09 pm PT

    I hope its alright for the 360

  • majere613

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 5:06 pm PT

    I played AoC from launch, and it's been a bit of a debacle. The biggest single problem was that there were no end of problems that should never have made it out of the beta, and the patches to 'fix' them either failed completely or broke something else. On the plus side, it made me re-evaluate MMOs in general, and now I have more money and free time

  • mechranma

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:51 am PT

    "its amazing how critical gamers can be of a game, most of whom know nothing about nothing about programming or whats actually involved in making a game.

    I'm not saying we should have (a lot of)sympathy (having 'some' is being kind though) for developers who make bad games, but just highlighting the fact that the modern average gamer has become spoilt with great games and a highly competitive industry. Its an amazing time for the industry."

    I kinda know where your coming from, but with standards set so high with other more popular mmos out there, technical problems, incomplete gameplay features, and "boring" high level quests are merely unexcusable. (expecially with all the time they had prior to the launch XD)

  • Toek

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:33 am PT

    The last patch solved some major technical issues it seems. (released on the same day as Godager leaving, btw) I enjoy playing the game and will continue to play.

  • soeppel

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:24 am PT

    The negative spin on the internet for AoC is fascinating phenomenon. Everyone hates it. I bet most of those who post haven't even played the game.

  • neonblueshadow

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:22 am PT

    its amazing how critical gamers can be of a game, most of whom know nothing about nothing about programming or whats actually involved in making a game.

    I'm not saying we should have (a lot of)sympathy (having 'some' is being kind though) for developers who make bad games, but just highlighting the fact that the modern average gamer has become spoilt with great games and a highly competitive industry. Its an amazing time for the industry.

  • advocacy

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 9:40 am PT

    The honorable thing to do, considering how bad the launch of Age of Conan turned out to be.

  • Dapsone

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 9:39 am PT

    Good riddence, AoC was a huge dissapointment.

  • Hekynn

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:35 am PT

    Nope AOC will kill Warhammer its getting more and more stable plus they just released their pvp update

  • 4rkady

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:31 am PT

    Haha, he's "dissatisfied"? Hilarious, when you consider the kind of crap he tried jamming down everyone's throat about how awesome his unfinished, piece of garbage game is. He lied about features and content time and time again, and after launch, their armies of forum moderators would delete any threads mentioning these missing features (until the complaints got so widespread that they no longer could play whack the weasel with forum threads)

    Good riddance. This game doesn't have much life in it left, and will probably go the way of Hellgate: London. Or at best, it will remain a tiny niche game with 50k players. Now with an Anarchy Online producer leading the team, it will probably get even worse. Anarchy Online has been out for years and years, and is still plagued by some issues and bugs they've had since launch. Longest Journey games were good, but that's because they had great stories... the gameplay of the first was derivative of every other adventure game, while the second simply sucked.

    I have no faith in Funcom producing a good game. They have no concept of customer service, go completely against common sense and do whatever they please, and then act all shocked when it blows up in their face. Their stock doesn't have much further to fall... it's down like $47 since launch. Let them burn.

  • xslappyx

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 8:09 am PT

    Well it is a sad day when a game that tried to change the way MMOs are Viewed and Played fails, now all we have left with once again is WOW one of the best Ideas for a game that was executed well until it was released. After that a great game was reduced to a mass of Forum Trolling b!tchy little girls (srry ladies that's the saying)that for some reason the Devs like. And have helped turned the good game and an industry into a cookie cutter nightmare, where an Attitude of Lets be like WOW and Water down and make uninspired content that we can rehash and reuse to milk he community. Lets hope that something can come out to put a dent in WOW fickle Armor. Until that game the MMO market will have to sit and wait for Korea to make a good one lets hope it can survive.

  • RockySquirrel

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:29 am PT

    Just proves that topless women couldn't even save this game... the nerds of the world wanted more.

  • kid-poker1973

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:24 am PT

    Too little too late? Funcom may have missed their opportunity to make AoC a mainstay. I have to laugh at all the so called "Fanboys" spewing their nonsense about how it's unfair to compare AoC to WoW. Bottom line is...NO amount of whining is going to change the fact that WoW is and will continue to be the measuring stick ALL other MMO's with be compared with because Blizzard was the first to really master the genre'.

    If MMO companies learn nothing else from AoC's monumental hype and EPIC failure...take the extra time to make sure your game is functional. If you can offer the public a game that is at LEAST user friendly (LIKE WoW was from day one...I was there with the 3 hour queue times on day one.) Players will be patient for content if there is a basic playable structure to the game...

    Oh and Customer Service...oh never mind you wouldn't understand if someone pointed out its importance anyway.

    Good Riddance.

  • shawnanthony

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 6:48 am PT

    I thought the captain was supposed to go down with his ship!

  • rahl247

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 6:44 am PT

    "Dexz

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 5:27 am PT

    I'll say it's really hard to get in to the MMPORG market.
    The very instant the game is released it gets compared to wow. world of warcraft has been around for over 2 years and just constantly getting better and more balanced with all the patches. It's pretty unfair to compare games like AOC to it after such a short time.
    But on the other hand you got to give it to blizzard for really making sure the game is more or less flawless before they relaese it. Something funcom should have had in mind..."

    where u been wow been out almost 5 years now. wow comparison is not what killed this game. it was lack of content and technical issues. if it had content mopre people would stick round for the technical issues to be resolved i know i would have. but throughout levels 30 to 40 you are doing level 20 to 30 quests. then from 55 to 80 the majority of your time is grinding out levels in mindless mob fest. finally get to 80 and notice there really is nothing to do, so what are people gona do leave.

    Apparently you where not there at wows launch if you think it was close to flawless you do relize they gave us like 2 weeks free due to server shutdowns and technical issue. wow you fanboys that are not true fanboys that come into the game 3 yrs into it and think wow this is the smoothest game. daha been oput 3 yrs to smooth oput the game. it took wow nearly a yr to smooth out alot of the stuff then the next 4 yrs to balance and still smoothout the game and thats not even talking bout all the content they put in after release not at launch.

  • TheVlaka

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 6:17 am PT

    bit late but well worth it

  • FirstDiscovery

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 5:56 am PT

    LULZ Failcom!

    WAR is going to kill their userbase = (

  • Dexz

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 5:27 am PT

    I'll say it's really hard to get in to the MMPORG market.
    The very instant the game is released it gets compared to wow. world of warcraft has been around for over 2 years and just constantly getting better and more balanced with all the patches. It's pretty unfair to compare games like AOC to it after such a short time.
    But on the other hand you got to give it to blizzard for really making sure the game is more or less flawless before they relaese it. Something funcom should have had in mind...

  • defjam33

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 5:19 am PT

    should have fixed or improved the interface before it got released was 1 of the glaring mistakes...

    not releasing the API for Mods which let's face it - mods are common nowadays was another glaring mistake...

    but to me not having a UI Scaling slider sucks balls...

  • RO-nIn187

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 4:26 am PT

    I'm tired of all the people praising WoW, i played that too and got tired after a month... bs graphics, boring gameplay... I'm playing AoC now and yes, it has it's flaws but don't act like WoW was perfect from the moment it was released... their constantly working on it, releasing patches every week and it has improved since its release... just give it some time and don't give up on it... there will be enough high level improvements coming in time... maybe they should have waited with the release but now it's too late... be patient and give it a chance....

  • dippy88

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 4:17 am PT

    AoC was terrible, nuff said.

  • IDarkNight

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 4:10 am PT

    AoC is good but need more work and more content

  • brianpoetzel

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:23 am PT

    I didn't think AoC was that bad. I enjoyed it while I played. That's what counts, right?

  • FriendBear

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:03 am PT

    Really disapointed with Funcoms handling of Conan, I was following the development of it since 05', an active member of the forums and beta tester and for those few early months when the game 'was' actually fun to play, everything seemed great until FC started to obviously fail to deliver on promises and to make matters worse, swing the nerf bat extremely hard. Whilst i'm sorry to see Godager go, I can't forgive Funcoms lack of decisive action taken on Age of Conans development and future, and now with WAR out, this title will surely die.

  • forhekset

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:24 am PT

    Every single MMO has growing pains, it always takes a year or so to really get going. I guess AoC won't have that chance, since everyone is abandoning ship. If this game was enough to make the head producer/director leave gaming forever, I can't imagine anyone will be comfortable with its future now.

  • Syzgygy

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:41 am PT

    Hope to see Gaute show up somewhere in gaming again at some point. Thanks for delivering The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online, both which are excellent games.

  • Tekkor

    Posted Sep 18, 2008 12:32 am PT

    Yet another example of having great graphics but incomplete gameplay are not enough.

  • methzoom

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 11:28 pm PT

    I played this game for about a month and then quit. I really loved the game and still do for some of its concepts but the technical issues often bugged me. It seemed like multiplayer Gothic 3, and as with Gothic 3, i still played it. I quit because I had no time to play it but i`m sure i`ll go back. The game has a lot of potential and I hope Funcom will fix it.

  • GrimGravy

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 11:23 pm PT

    bummer, well glad wrath comes out in 2 months W00T

  • death919

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 10:34 pm PT

    I was going to buy it but then Warhammer Online is coming out and WoW Wrath of the Lich King is coming soon so maybe later I will get it but TBH the above 2 MMO's will probably keep me busy for a looong time. XD

  • Jaded

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 9:08 pm PT

    Oh and by the way...if you havent quit yet, the hiring of A.A exec should convince you to "move along, nothing to see here". Good grief Funcom...

  • Jaded

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 9:05 pm PT

    Good for you. I quit this game because of the same reasons and this has to rate as the "dropped the ball" game of all time. Shame on you Funcom or more like...I feel sorry for you!

  • pparache

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 8:43 pm PT

    Had lots of hopes, but the game was too buggy, lack of content and you are paying monthly fee for a beta? give me a break.

  • yanni1

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 7:54 pm PT

    people who dont play AOC have no idea. there is literally nothing to do, thats why i quit. why should i keep paying them my monthly fee for nothing? and what about those promised seige battles? nope
    funcom is a joke, they have had more than enough time.

  • lozvil

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 7:53 pm PT

    i bought this game and just played for a month... i'm not satisfied so i didn't continue playing... i'll just stick to WoW for in the mean time...

  • Dryker

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 7:44 pm PT

    I was really looking forward to the 360 version of this. This news does not bode well for its quality.

  • foxfire0666

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 7:15 pm PT

    wow had more then its own share of problems at launch and didnt have much high lvl content either, everyone seems to forget that, it took alot of time to get a resonable amount of stuff for it

  • Alex_09

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 7:03 pm PT

    Thats a shame, he seemed like a good guy and its unfortunate hes getting the boot, Im sure he was against many of the problems that Funcom had.

  • cashassa

    Posted Sep 17, 2008 6:53 pm PT

    The rats are leaving the sinking ship...

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