Profile: AranStormah
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• • Post-Godager interview with Funcom in Norwegian paper VG - translated

  • Well, yeah, but then again it's only natural to bring up someone that people have heard about for sake of comparison, and in that regard it's better to refer to  WoW than a random MMO (seeing as pretty much everyone between the ages 10 to 60 has at least heard of WoW once in their life).

  • Posted: 9/17/08 7:07 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Post-Godager interview with Funcom in Norwegian paper VG - translated

  • Please pardon my bad grammar and spelling, but the article had a few comments that I've not seen in english interviews so I thought it'd be worth translating.
    --------------------------------------------

    Conan's director resigns.

    (VG Nett) Gaute Godager resigns as producer and director of the game "Age of Conan".

    As stated by Funcom in a recent press release. The company writes that he is quitting in favour of finding new options outside of the gaming industry.

    Gaute Godager was one of the founders of Funcom, and has been with them for 16 years.

    Godager will be replaced by Craig Morrison, who according Funcom has alot of experience as a producer and game director of the online game "Anarchy Online".

    According to "Age of Conan" product manager Erling Ellingsen, neither Gaute Godager nor Craig Morrison wishes to adress the media today. But Ellingsen can still shed som light on this decision.

    - Gaute is dissatisfied with certain elements in the game, and wishes to take the consequences of that. That's why he's leaving Funcom, says Ellingsen to VG Nett.

    - He has also worked long in the gaming industry and wants new challenges. In addition he feels that "Age of Conan" needs new, fresh eyes to meet the challenges the game is facing, he adds.

    - That he's leaving the wheel of "Age of Conan" to someone else is understandable, but it's dramatic that he's also leaving both Funcom and the gaming industry. Has the Funcom management tried persuading him to say with the company?

    - I can't comment on that, says Ellingsen.

    - Why is Morrison the right man for the job?

    - We have great faith in Craig, he has a long experience as a director for "Anarchy Online", but he also has a long experience as a leader for online communities, and has in addition written for IGN, says Ellingsen, who adds:

    - That experience comes in handy in a time like this, alot of the work now consist of listening to the players and acting on that, and we believe Craig is especially wellsuited for that.

    - Alot of the criticism you get these days is that you're not listening to your players, does this mean that you're accepting some self-criticism at this area?

    - We feel we're doing a good job of communicating with the players as well as we can, but there is definitly room for improvement and this is an area where we wish to become better. Communicating what we're working on and what we wish is a challenge, as we have to be careful not to be too detailed incase something has to be change before an update is done, says Ellingsen, who also feels the criticism against the game is not unexpected.

    - There's alot of people who've looked forward to "Age of Conan" over several years. It goes without saying that there's many feelings and wishes going around, and if the players aren't satifsfied it's only natural that they react to it, says Ellingsen.

    - This is pretty common when games of this magnitude are released, also to a degree with "World of Warcraft" before Blizzard did the many improvements they've done over the last years, he adds.

    - There's no doubt that you have a job ahead of you to turn this negative trend. What are you doing about it, concretely?

    - What we'll do is improve the game based on the feedback we recieve. We'll add new content. We'll fix the problems with the game, and a key focus in all this is our desire to communicate these changes with our players, promises Ellingsen, who adds:

    - What's most vital to us is meeting the players demands whenever possible and to improve "Age of Conan" together with our players.

    "Age of Conan" is Funcom's big gamble for online based gaming.

    According to Dagens Næringsliv (economics/stocks-newspaper) the game looked like it was going strong when it was released this spring, but it's suffered a substantial loss of players. DN writes that the game is criticised for having a solid start, but not much content as you progress from there.

    Online games gets the major part of their income from subscriptions, and not on the box sale of the game itself. So this development has lead to an immense fall for the Funcom shares, after the release-optimism.

    Original article

  • Posted: 9/17/08 6:54 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Fearing playing as a female character

  • Just ignore them if it happens, which it will (in any game).

    If you're not female, I don't see why you'd be anything but rolling your eyes at how hopeless the online generation is.

  • Posted: 9/01/08 5:58 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • What is Warhammer?

  • WAAAGH!!

    Warhammer is okay I guess, but Warhammer 40.000 is the best thing handed down to us by the glorious God-Emperor of Mankind since sliced bread.

    If you've seriously never heard of the franchise, you've either lead an unsheltered life outside in the sun, or you're lieing :P It started out as a fantasy tabletop game borrowing lots from Tolkien and popular fantasy culture, and it's evolved into several other forms of entertainment and games. 40K, for example, being a science fiction merge of Tolkien, Aliens and World War 1 and 2 - and spawning alot of quite readable fluff like the Gaunt's Ghosts novels by Dan Abnett.

  • Posted: 8/29/08 3:35 AM
    General Discussion
• • The evolution of the term "troll"

  • I don't care for analyzing the history of "troll", but the current expression "trolling" is remarkably close to the word "trolling", which is the fishing term for when you drag your bait and hook after your moving boat. Coincidence? I think not.

  • Posted: 8/29/08 3:27 AM
    General Discussion