It's been a while since Age of Conan launched, and I'm having a bit of a hard time remembering how it went.  As my shoddy memory recalls, the near launch beta had load times of several minutes, and other bugs, but this was fixed by what people in game called a "true miracle patch".  Sometimes lately though, I read that Age of Conan's launch was actually quite bad.  As I can't really recall how it went, I was hoping someone could be so kind as to enlighten me.

Part of the reason I'm asking is because Funcom's stock shot up, probably due to The Secret World's approaching April launch.

Just try and keep it constructive, ok?  :)

easily: they didn't listen to the beta feedbacks and released a game that was far away from being a release candidate. Sadly this is the case with most companies these days.

All that I remember is the enormous crowding in the starter zone, and about a million players complaining about lag.  The video optimization wasn't finished, among a host of other annoying issues.  It was like watching the game reflected in a slow stobe light...flash...flash (you moved three steps)...flash (passed the door you were aiming for)...flash..  All on a very good machine, at the time.

And later on, once off the starter island, the sparcity of content.  I mean, there really wasn't anything else out there early on.

It wasn't solely the launch that was the problem.  It's just one of the major things people will remember among all of the things that left a bad taste.  As has been said, the game was not ready to be released when it was.  I don't know if it was because so many things were unfinished and broken or just the way Funcom worked that things took so long to be completed and fixed.  It also didn't help that a couple major patches before the game was even a year old were very poor and did a lot of damage to the playerbase total.  After 18 months random guildees and I were still getting locked up and kicked out of raids by the game routinely.  Old bugs like the oom error (out of memory) and whited-out maps continually resurfaced every few months.  There were still problems with sieges and that was really suppose to be the major part of pvp.

I guess my main point is that they didn't or weren't able to fix and finish enough major things in the first six months to a year to retain much more than the most dedicated. 

Some of the major promises made by Funcom were not kept, so a lot of players were severely disappointed. Guild vs Guild city sieges never worked, getting out of the neatly crafted, voice-overed and story-heavy Tortage to your usual MMO maps was a jarring experience for many (oddly, to me it was actually pleasant, I didn't like Tortage and found it claustrophobic).

But let me remind people here of something that went positively, one that's not often talked about:

About 3 days before launch, the game didn't work. Like, at all. Like 1 frame per 5 seconds and crash. This was true for an unprecedented amount of players. If Funcom hadn't managed to fix that, it was on its way to be the absolute biggest crash and burn in the history of major MMO launches, because there would be few people managing to stay online indeed. And Funcom honestly didn't look confident that they'd pull it off... But then they rolled out a last minute patch and managed to fix it for a lot of people. Beta testers even called it "the miracle patch". True story. 

Still, it doesn't say much for a game when it's golden moment at launch is managing to not crash and burn instantly. :)

Originally posted by kadepsyson

It's been a while since Age of Conan launched, and I'm having a bit of a hard time remembering how it went. 

Part of the reason I'm asking is because Funcom's stock shot up, probably due to The Secret World's approaching April launch.

 

Launch (from FunCom's perspective) went rather well. Servers did not crash and people could connect to them with some queuing.

Customers had mixed experiences but many were angry with the lack of many of the advertised features. A lot of people experienced technical issues (memory leaks, graphical issues and performance problems) but one of the biggest problems were the patches issued in the weeks following launch. Each one apparently breaking more than it fixed.

The end result was that many (if not most) players left within the first month.

If you wan't to play with FunCom stock you need to be aware the amount of publicly traded stock is rather limited. FunCom did indeed double it's current value compared to nov. 2011. Close to and immediately following AoC launch, their stock hit above the 50 NOK mark. (After years of hovering in the mid tens).

If you are willing to make a bet that FunCom can "hype" their next big game (without a licensed IP) to the levels of AoC, and you are willing to bet that people in beta will respect the NDA then maybe, just maybe, a month down the line would be the right time to have a look at their stockprice. But remember the golden rule: Free stockmarket advice are usually worth less than what you paid for it :-)

Seriously: I played some of what I could afford to lose on AoC and got away in good shape. At this point I am not going to take a chance on TSW.

i actually never had a problem with AoCs launch. i hardly ever had lag and had alot of fun building the guild from day one on the pvp server. it was so much fun being able to attack anybody with no factions. biggest problem for me is the sieges were totally broken and it was hard to keep a pvp guild together when there was nothing to do at max level other than fight in kesh for hours and hours.

its to bad they didnt have the pvp points system for pvp gear when the game came out, at least we would of had that. but then they really fubared it with guards and that was the last straw for me and alot of others.

The game was completely unfinished outside Tortage.  The next few zones had limited quests and in the high level areas there was nothing but grinding mobs to max level.  Fortunately at release one could hit max level in 2days but to do so one had to  AOE grind in groups in unfinished zones.  Once 80  the endgame was reroll and play again through unfinished content.

What made matters worse was the bait and switch and lies.  Funcom said there was a miracle patch and the version the beta players were playing was not the same version that would release.  They said there was lots or finished content which never existed.   They said they had directx 10 in this miracle patch that would be there at release along with a ton of other things. Then they used open beta to expose non beta playes to only level 1-13 which was well done but hid the rest of the game from them.

Once most people got out of Tortage and realized the state of the game and how much they had been lied to things went downhill fast and people stopped playing.  By the end of the free month it was a ghost town.  After 7 months they had to merge all the servers into 6 servers.  It was arguably the worst AAA launches since well AO.  But what made it a 100 times worse was the dishonesty and deciet of Funcom.  What they did killed games rep and doomed it.  Funcom spent more of their time the first few months deleting threads from their forums rather than actually fixing the game.  There was massive rebellion form the players going on non stop when people realized how Bad they had been lied to.  if Funcom had been honest and did not lie and do the whole bait and switch there might have been some long run hope for the game even with the premature release..  But their bad rep from their lies and then Fincoms behavior on their own boards pretty much sealed the games fate.  It was not long before the lead dev was fired and made the scapegoat.

If one looks at bad launches AO's probbaly ranks number one along with Dark and Light, AoC, Shadowbane and Mourning.  But for a AAA MMO AoC was arguably the worst launch ever along with AO.  Given the lies and behavior by Funcom.  The game had potential to be a huge success and it ended up being one of the worst released MMOs ever.  To make matters worse many people will never ever play a Funcom game again.  They will have to do something very good with TSW to rehabiltate their rep.  When I think of Funcom now I think of SOE. 

"Well loading up time to go.... *PKed*.. great"