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Funcom slashes Age of Conan servers

By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted Jan 12, 2009 10:10 am PT

Norwegian MMOG developer plans to reduce Hyborian Age realm count from 49 to 18 beginning this week.

After its mid-year launch, Age of Conan appeared to have all the trappings of a successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game, logging a strong critical reception and respectable initial sales. However, the MMOG environment is nothing if not hostile, and Funcom soon found itself scrambling to retain the game's player base, thanks to Blizzard Entertainment's genre stalwart World of Warcraft and Mythic Entertainment's strong contender, Warhammer Online.

Soloing this man would probably have been difficult.

In September, Funcom said that to maintain a healthy player community, it had decided to redistribute server population by merging a number of its game realms. On Friday, the Norwegian developer revealed on its official forums the extent of that consolidation, saying that it would be slashing its total server count from 49 to 18 beginning next week.

US-based servers will see the bulk of Funcom's consolidation, with 24 servers being whittled down to just six. The remaining realms will continue to cover the fundamental rule sets currently available, with player-versus-environment, player-versus-player, and role-playing-themed servers all still available. EU servers will see similar cuts, with 13 servers being merged together so that only four remain. Funcom said that it still plans to maintain its German, Spanish, and French-language servers.

Server consolidation is only the latest rough patch that Funcom has hit since launching Age of Conan in May. Along with merger news, Funcom revealed last September that game director Gaute Godager had resigned from his position, citing irreconcilable "dissatisfaction" over portions of the game. In November, the game maker confirmed staff cuts for its US operations, with various online reports indicating that up to 70 percent of the company's customer-service and quality-assurance teams had been laid off.

77 Comments

  • samiup

    Posted Feb 13, 2009 1:05 pm PT

    makes total sense, are those guys at funcom idiots or what?

    here in the US, having the best product is only 30% of success, marketing is the 70%.
    Wow commercials run on every channel and the results are clear.
    if they don't want to loose the remaining players they better start an aggressive marketing campaign.

  • mortalsting

    Posted Feb 11, 2009 1:51 pm PT

    Ive back to game and im pleased! yeahh a lot of ppl to pve and pve! gj ;D

  • targetlkd

    Posted Feb 4, 2009 2:23 pm PT

    Since my toons have been merged onto "Tyranny" things have been great, there is plenty of people to pvp against, during prime time there is anywhere from 2-4 instances of kesh with people pvp'ing. There is many people to group up and quest, level, and instance. Funcom is working on adding dx10 into the game and from what I hear from the people on the testlive server that the game is running very well with the latest update. I've seen several people say "dx10 runs just as good if not better than dx9 and comes with all the eye candy" to me that is a huge plus since many previously released dx10 games run like crap except for FC2.
    If you played and enjoyed AOC before the merge and left because of the ghost towns then now is the time to resub because the servers are booming with people.

  • stianrin

    Posted Feb 1, 2009 7:34 am PT

    Love this game. But then again I didn't really like WoW all that much. Mybe it isnt for the average WoW'er.

  • Duke_Bootee

    Posted Jan 28, 2009 6:11 pm PT

    The main reason i would leave is because my computer's good GPU took a crap and my current one isn't DirectX 10 compatible

  • Gooeykat

    Posted Jan 19, 2009 9:19 am PT

    This was a good move by Funcom, it will make their existing fanbase happy and maybe bring back a few more (like me, who re-subbed this past week). Basically, it stops the bleeding, now they just need to work on fixing PvP, adding more content (which they did already back in November - Ymir's Pass) and getting DX10 in this game. Overall this game has a good upside and if I were betting on MMO's I would put my money on this one.

  • Triplekill

    Posted Jan 18, 2009 12:59 pm PT

    I hope they wont cancel this game for 360, I really cant wait for it.

  • starbead

    Posted Jan 17, 2009 11:57 pm PT

    "If don't believe me create a character and go to Tyranny server now"

    What server will that be next week?

  • Mr_Yule

    Posted Jan 14, 2009 7:33 pm PT

    While I'm sad to see this happen, I can't say it isn't unexpected. after losing half of it's subscriber base in the first 6 months, then to have people leaving due to low server populations (which wasn't because of few people playing, it was way to many server options to play one) it was expected that this would happen. But I agree with Mad-Mack, this is a good move, and the new director is fixing many of the errors that had plagued this game at launch.

    On a side note, @ mcbizzle28: I have to disagree with you, especially since WoW can be compared easiest to Mcdonalds. It makes a product Widely available, fairly cheap, and something that many people enjoy (Mcdonalds: burgers, Wow: Social gathering that kills time). But to call WoW perfect is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Lets Compare WoW in the first year to AoC in the first year: Both had crap for servers, both lacked a lot of content, neither had very good class balance. The difference? WoW came first, and eventual improved these issues, and people aren't willing to wait for AoC to get to the level that WoW took several years to get to. My 2 copper,
    Yule

  • Mad-Mack

    Posted Jan 14, 2009 5:55 pm PT

    Im not here saying Age of Conan is better than WoW. WoW is the most popular MMO to date. Those who hated AoC had different expectations. I see it as the most immersive MMO out in the market. The launch was good, but it lacked higher content, and they had stability issues as well as some PVP issues. To say the game is garbage is a joke. To say the game is going to go away is a joke. The game is healthy, improving, has new content with more on the way and the new director is righting the ship. The consolation of servers is a good thing, and the game will only continue to get better and thrive in the years to come. I say enjoy WoW if you like it...I dont, but I do enjoy Age of Conan like many others, and many others who are coming back daily.

  • SuperSpicoli

    Posted Jan 14, 2009 1:29 pm PT

    I must say I agree with Mcbizzle. I purchased this game, let it soak up way way too much of my hard drive, played it for a few days straight waiting for the greatness that everyone talks about to take me, and when it never happened and the game play only got worse as I went on, I became irate and quickly uninstalled the waste of space and immediately re-installed WoW because this game was bad enough to make me sign back up after a year of not playing because it made me see how great of a game WoW really is. Thank you Funcom for sucking so much that you made me give my hard earned duckets back to Blizzard again. BTW pparache, good things do take time, but you don't release a game for months while you fix all the bugs and expect the end user to pay full price to be your game testers! Funcom, the way I see it you owe me $9,750. $50 for the software that I can't even give away with a Big Mac to a homeless person, $4,700 for time wasted testing yourt product for you, and $5,000 for punitive damages since something inside of me is dead after playing it! I'll see you on Judge Judy!

  • mcbizzle28

    Posted Jan 14, 2009 11:53 am PT

    Just to go on and get to the point... this is quite possibly the worst MMO I have ever touched. I bought a new graphics card and upped my computer to 8gb of ram to find out that it was just a waste of time. The first 20 lvls or so seemed okay but something seemed to be missing... oh that was the open world environment. With great hope of heading to the continent to find only more loading screens as you go in and out of town and heading to new environments, I was all but slightly assumed. The voice sounds didn't work anymore and I confirmed that this was not just my computer but the games fault. I hope they close all the servers and give me my $50 bucks back for this steaming pile of dung. WoW is not McDonald's (as some of you have said), WoW is perfect and will continue to provide stable, enjoyable, addictive, and open ended content. If you are remotely considering this don't waste your time or money!

  • pparache

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 10:05 pm PT

    HaHa, the game its just great right now, if u don't like paying 15 bucks a month or you find it expensive go elsewhere. The game its great for those who have doubts. Bugs are much less now. Good things take time. The game was brought to sales before it was finished? yes , probably they needed to pay all those developers that had worked for 5 years ? probably. Its safer to play a mmo after the first year after launch but since we all wanted to played right away they delivered. Final : The game its getting better and better and its not dying for sure. If don't believe me create a character and go to Tyranny server now

  • JS0123456789

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 6:01 pm PT

    I still hope they go ahead with the 360 version, maybe that would bail them out, if they were the first MMO on XBOX Live.

  • Deckard2323

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 5:24 pm PT

    Funcom wanted to avoid the typical MMORPG pitfall - not having enough servers at launch time to accommodate the demand they were hoping for and did generate. Unfortunately, relatively smooth start did not save them from another pitfall - lack of polish and content. I enjoyed the game for the first couple of months. Cimmeria has never looked better on PC. But, when compared to its competition, there just wasn't enough for me to stick around and pay $15 a month for an unfinished product.

  • teirdome

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 1:54 pm PT

    Not sure why this is such a huge deal. Warhammer only has 19 NA servers that they haven't encouraged people to transfer off of. Both MMOs needed to be delayed until after Lich King. WotLK absolutely slaughtered any chance they ever had.

  • Elbowsmash

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 12:25 pm PT

    Bring on the 360 version!!!!!!!!

  • Mad-Mack

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 9:34 am PT

    McDonalds is the most popular restaurant chain and makes tons of money. I am a chef, and would never want to work at or even own a chain like McDonalds, so consider Age of Conan a fine dining restaurant, and WoW McDonalds. I dont deny WoW's success, but dosnt mean its a quality product that I enjoy.

  • AzureWind213

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 9:23 am PT

    Everyone wants to be WoW. Wow = $$$$$$$$$$. You don't have to be an aeronautical engineer (^_^) to understand that...

  • Mad-Mack

    Posted Jan 13, 2009 8:40 am PT

    And AoC is going nowhere...trust me, the game will be around for years to come, maybe not as the WoW killer (but then who wants to be WoW...just because its the most popular, dosnt make it the best). If any of you are interested in trying the game, now is the time...There is new content, PVP patches, more stability on lesser machines, and an expansion coming in the end of 09 (well, knowing that FC takes their sweet time, maybe early 2010). Seriously, this is not the end of Conan...it is a fresh new begining. Consider this the launch Funcom should have done in the first place.

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