What is the deal with the new patch?

[Slith]

IMHO, 50% discount for subscribers is compromise in situation when game has small player base and developers needs some support for producing new content more regularly...

Agreed but not for stuff of this size and quality.Its too small and not polished enough (story, glitches, itemization) to justify any fee. Turan was a good compromise between price and quality.

[Roragar]

The main story is very short and it can be prolonged only by endless killing of pretty tough mobs that stand in your way of just burning through the quest.

This^^

Decided to give the second run through a shot in a group last night & probably killed 400+/- Vanir during the whole thing, its tedious & laborious at best an by the time you get to Heimdall you just want to turn it off & not even play.

This expansion seems very similar to the way they are handled in Neverwinter, return daily for a few revolving quests to mash your way through to get a shiny at the end.
Now that in itself wouldnt be so bad if the content was new, new mobs, areas & put some new things in the cash store but to just be the same old smattering of mobs well.....

Edit: Also Slith you need to grab a shot of the textures by the ladder in Fort Snoddybom, the one on the way up to the catapults, thats an amazing feat of design there for sure like someones stretched granite.

[Slith]

Edit: Also Slith you need to grab a shot of the textures by the ladder in Fort Snoddybom, the one on the way up to the catapults, thats an amazing feat of design there for sure like someones stretched granite.

I noticed it too. Its where you go to perform leap of faith. It brought me back to Quake 1 days.

[Derek-Drake]

After the initial anger, what concerns me the most is the long-term plans with thoses Tale of Hyboria packs.

I fear they just cancelled the previous roadmap for 2015 (arenas, crafting revamp and end of Dragonspine) and decided to replace them with thoses half-b2p products with mediocre to low quality just to fuel the microtransactions and hope for better incomes from AoC. If it's true, i hope players won't buy much the first one to send a message to Funcom deciders that we doesn't want this change and keep the previous model of content release even if it's a the cost of more delays.

It would be nice to have a clear vision of what they expect from AoC model in 2015-2016, since we doesn't get GD letter anymore (and we doesn't even know who replace the GD in terms of decisionnal process), we're in total confusion and lack of communication. Time to adress thoses issues, PR folks !

There was a GD letter written by Joel a few months ago where he straight up gives the patch number that would have the crafting revamp. Guess what? That was supposed to be patch 4.6 which is this patch. Not only that, but no FC official has mentioned the crafting revamp in a long time now. I would be willing to bet that it turned out to be an impossible mission for the current developer and that they're going to attempt to quietly let it drop.

Not only that, but they can't charge us for the crafting revamp. I mean you can't have some people using the new system and some people using the old system, so they have to drop the whole revamp in for free. Notice how their new content plan, according to the most recent GD letter, is to start adding more of these halfbaked, cut & paste "play areas" into the game... for money. With Joel gone, pretty much the only content you'll see in this game from now on will be microtransactions, or in the case of this recent patch; microstransaction quality content at full expansion level pricing.

[skranken]

Okay, we pay your salaries, we have been for 6months without almost any content, and now we actually believe we finaly get something...but that we're supposed to pay extra for? What did we pay for the last halfyear? Keeping the server up? for 15 euros per month? Wheres slithering chaos? Wheres Cetriss?

It feels like we're paying the development of secret world, not Conan. and we get to pay extra for our own content, I cant believe we are being charged extra for content that should be included in the monthly fee.

We get a new content pack for only 12€!!!

Look at Everquest and Everquest 2, they have like 15-20 expansion packs each.. many of those with less content than "Shadow of Vanaheim", still they sell each new expansion for 30$ in the ingame store. More than double the price of "Shadow of Vanaheim".

Running a game like Age of Conan has a bigger cost than keeping the game servers online.

Employees needs to be paid
Office rent
Electricity bills
Hardware for employees
(that is only the top of the iceberg)

The monthly subscription fee for todays MMO's is the same today as it was 15 years ago, still the cost of running these games has increased. That means they have to generate some extra income somehow.

Finally I would recommend you to sign up for the new 16 months for 85€ offer. Thats like 5,3€ each month.. A lot less than the 15€ that you keep on paying each month.. With the savings last 6 months you would have been able to buy the content pack for yourself and 4 friends

[Derek-Drake]

"Stuff"

I don't think you quite understand the situation here. The Secret World went buy-to-play a couple of years ago, yet it still gets regular full sized content updates that they call issues. AoC is a "F2P" game (Really it's just free to level, and pay to raid), but since the only raid content worth doing is still locked behind a subscription fee, then that's just smoke and mirrors. You'll still sub to play this game.

Where's that money going? It sure isn't going to generate regular new content for AoC, and before you say it NO, changing an old world dungeon into unchained mode is NOT new content. It's simply rehashing old content in a desperate attempt to keep people around and generating sub money.

People are angry, myself included, because it's quite evident that our sub money is going, all or in part, to develop The Secret World which currently has a much larger player base than AoC. Ok, fine, whatever. I can deal with AoC being in maintenance mode. What I can't deal with is AoC being in maintenance mode, almost never getting any substantial or worthy new content and then when new content finally comes out they make us pay up to $30 for it... which will be spent on creating the next "issue" of The Secret World.

I mean seriously, they are NOT giving us the same level of content that other subscription games get for their monthly $15 fee. For instance EVE Online has added ten times the content that AoC has added this year and since we pay a subscription fee, ALL Of the new EVE content was 100% free.

The level of quality of this "adventure pack" or whatever it's called is worthy of maybe $10 max, definitely not even remotely in the range of a $30 expansion. Not even close. I've bought whole games for $30 (Torchlight II) that had weeks of content. Paying $30 for a couple of hours and an epic necklace that, oh surprise is also cursed, is just a slap in the face.

[ne-X-us]

Turan was a good compromise between price and quality.

Sadly, but addons comparable to Turan is to "heavy" for AoC developers team today...
I'm would have been completely satisfied, if we receive same as Shadow of Vanaheim once 1.5-2 month in price 10$(+10$ for CE) with 50% discount for subscribers...

[Burbot]

I don't think you quite understand the situation here. The Secret World went buy-to-play a couple of years ago, yet it still gets regular full sized content updates that they call issues. AoC is a "F2P" game (Really it's just free to level, and pay to raid), but since the only raid content worth doing is still locked behind a subscription fee, then that's just smoke and mirrors. You'll still sub to play this game.

Where's that money going? It sure isn't going to generate regular new content for AoC, and before you say it NO, changing an old world dungeon into unchained mode is NOT new content. It's simply rehashing old content in a desperate attempt to keep people around and generating sub money.

People are angry, myself included, because it's quite evident that our sub money is going, all or in part, to develop The Secret World which currently has a much larger player base than AoC. Ok, fine, whatever. I can deal with AoC being in maintenance mode. What I can't deal with is AoC being in maintenance mode, almost never getting any substantial or worthy new content and then when new content finally comes out they make us pay up to $30 for it... which will be spent on creating the next "issue" of The Secret World.

I mean seriously, they are NOT giving us the same level of content that other subscription games get for their monthly $15 fee. For instance EVE Online has added ten times the content that AoC has added this year and since we pay a subscription fee, ALL Of the new EVE content was 100% free.

The level of quality of this "adventure pack" or whatever it's called is worthy of maybe $10 max, definitely not even remotely in the range of a $30 expansion. Not even close. I've bought whole games for $30 (Torchlight II) that had weeks of content. Paying $30 for a couple of hours and an epic necklace that, oh surprise is also cursed, is just a slap in the face.

I am in complete agreement. I'm not happy about what transpired here and neither are several of my friends that just came to the game recently. We don't mind paying for things, but this is clearly a grab. If this is the model going forward, we are out.

[skranken]

Answer to stuff.

TSW has alot more subscribers than AoC have.. I am sure that game can fund its own developement. TSW generate more income -> get more devtime -> Get more content.

I dont think AoC income goes into TSW, I would be surprised if there is any money left after covering running costs + some very rare content release tbh.

Of course we wont know for sure, but counting the number of people I met ingame I am happy to just get new content.. And if paying for that content will help fund future content, then im happy to do so.

EDIT: I have been an Anarchy Online subscriber the last 12 years before I came here, and there we get new content once every 3-4 years.. Maybe that is why my expectations are way below yours..

[Roragar]

TSW has alot more subscribers than AoC have.. I am sure that game can fund its own developement. TSW generate more income -> get more devtime -> Get more content.

I dont think AoC income goes into TSW, I would be surprised if it there is any money left after covering running costs + some very rare content release tbh.

Of course we wont know for sure, but counting the number of people I met ingame I am happy to just get new content.. And if paying for that content will help fund future content, then im happy to do so.

Any money that TSW does generate is just filling the grave it dug from when it flopped at launch.
AoC & AO have both been keeping Funcom afloat for a while it seems, only now that things have stabilized for TSW does its fortunes seem to be turning.

That said im not sure of the potential for new content there either now, with even the newest episode having many of the same rinse an repeat features we see here may suggest that development for all of their titles is at a bare minimum.