Anarchy Online: Status Report #1
Wouter "Hyrrix" Ryckbosch, 2003-07-30

In the Status Report feature we bring you a short Q&A on a regular basis with people from the live team of currently active mmorpg's. It is our aim to provide you with a short overview of the changes and improvements that have been accomplished in the past few months or are still in the pipeline. Today we offer you the first installment of the Anarchy Online Status Report with Funcom's project manager Jorgen Tharaldsen.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: It has, hasn't it? *Jorgen smiles brightly* Shadowlands, and Anarchy Online, is a truly unique product, and that is recognized by gamers. Besides, we greatly changed how we do PR and marketing earlier this year, it seems to have worked out ok so far.

Hopefully this intro question, like I have seen so many times, will be a thing of history soon. The bright side of this is: Funcom has shown how a launch is not supposed to be done. The industry sees, learns, and moves forward. Ultimately the RPG players earns, big time, from our mistake. We also introduced the "free trial" download to the industry, since retail saw us as dead due to our less than good launch. That has meant that you, as a player, can try more and more MMO games for free before buying them. Perhaps it would have happened anyway, but we started it. At least we pay a bit back to those who suffered :). That experience taught us so much.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes, we are growing. Notum Wars was the big turning point (Game of the year - best expansion, CGW), we had a very solid launch compared to all recent games. We expect further growth with Shadowlands.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Quite simply because it's the best MMORPG on the market. It's original, has great graphics, is incredibly stable, is extremely advanced, has content on demand, A PR person's dream come true; but still true. RPGfan said we were the "pinnacle of creative online gaming", more and more people see the same, FINALLY!

So, the word of mouth is spreading, Funcom leads the way in MMOG game design. Besides, according to our fan sites, we have the friendliest community in any MMOG, so beginner's are welcomed, not harassed.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: 10 million Euros spent before launch really does something to your fighting spirit doesn't it :)

Jorgen Tharaldsen: The path of least resistance is all nice and dandy, but…your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. If you have plans to become a class online developer, you can not stop at the first major hindrance. We believed we could turn AO, so we put all effort on that instead of fleeing to the next opportunity.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes, it does attract a lot of new players. As the wrong perception is replaced with reality, the blindfold falls and people see us for what we are. Every single preview of Shadowlands so far has been positive, with good reason, and that makes people think; why wait? Being an elf killing an elf is all well and good, as long as it's fun anything goes, but I think people like to see companies that actually dare to do something different.

We are also seeing a lot of players who have never played an online game before and it is truly a joy for us to be able to be their first experience with this.

 

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes, most definittely, but Shadowlands is unique in that regard for several reasons. First off, we almost double the amount of content in AO. Like IGN said "it feels like a whole new game". Secondly, you can start as a new character inside Shadowlands and no other expansion has done that before. We have taken a lot of notes based on our experiences, and with Gaute Godager as a tremendous RPG game director we have taken alot of steps to avoid the scenario you describe. Training areas, PVP only in selected areas and with little punishment when dying, the only game with a human greeter, newbie this, newbie that, a new character creation etc. We have thought about the same thing you see ;) So far, our masses of returning players tell us that there is nothing out there that compares to what we offer and that they are glad to be back as well.

For many games this is a problem though, especially the pure PVP ones can be a pure hell for a beginner unless the game has good mechanics.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Well, I must correct you there. Shadowlands is the first expansion pack which offers en masse content for all level ranges. I would especially like to mention :

*Several playfields just for beginners, actually the whole Nascence theme is for beginners!
*An own island in the floating city of Jobe for beginners
*You can start out as a new character in Shadowlands, right of the bat. A whole new experience.
*There is a truly great new introduction area in Shadowlands.
*We introduce geogameplay, it has never been easier to understand a direction in an MMORPG
*Our unique ARK program, where real people meet new players, is becoming better and better.
*We have a new, much simpler GUI. At launch it will be "simple", but as soon as the first period of re-balancing and bugs are sorted out we will try (note my words this is not a definitive promise) to stage the GUI. Few choices on level one, a bit more choice on e.g. level 3, 5, 10, 15 and then the full thing.
*Our customer support is, according to a recent industry survey, the best there is. For Shadowlands it will be a few tough days around launch, but I hope new players will appreciate all the work which has gone into this aspect as well.

And much, much more. There has never been an expansion which gives more to beginners.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: I think I said "a somewhat linear experience", but then again :)

Ok, Shadowlands is an alternate dimension, the place of creation for mankind. Much like The Divine Comedy, where Dante ventures from paradise deeper and deeper into hell, so the players start out in Nascence, the birth, and from there they need to traverse the land much like an outdoor dungeon, if you catch my drift. In order to come to a new area, you need to overcome various obstacles; boss mobs, quests, camps, dungeons and more. Still, you will still have maaany ways to choose from, but you "know" where you are heading.

Also, we have hand-crafted Shadowlands, instead of auto generating vast empty landscapes, like you saw to begin with in AO, or by looking at other recent MMO's. We have learned now that nudging you in the right direction with intelligently created landscapes full of content will, hopefully, give you a far better experience.

You know the level threadmill, well, here there is always a new area to explore, a new item to have, new monsters with different tactics to battle, new geographical setting etc. etc.

 

 

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes and no. There must be a balance. Mythica surprised me at E3, it looked great. We seem to have similiar thoughts on some aspects. They look to do a stunning job. But, if everything is linear you need to produce _gigantic_ amounts of content. A purely linear game might become boring fast if there is nothing else to it after you have "ended" it. I, for one, can't stop if I get hooked on a game ;)

I believe AO has found the best balance in any MMO so far with Shadowlands. The openess and choices of Rubi-Ka, with fast transportation and a zillion choice, blended with the focus of Shadowlands.

One danger about the linear experience is choke points and load at starting points. We do expect it to be heavy load on certain chokepoints around launch due to the extremely large number of new players, but we are working to minimize this as we speak.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes and no, this is after all the strength of the MMO's. But....people are always looking for goals and direction. Freedom under guidance perhaps is the best path, like we try to do now. If more people are to play MMO's however it must be more focused, at least until they learn the basics. That alone can take weeks. We strive to offer both freedom and paths to meet the diverse needs of our players.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: In Oslo there is exactly 48 people working full time on AO (just counted). Do note; Gaming industry full time. Additionally, we have a really great customer service office in North Carolina, kudos to them, so all in all we are 60+ people inside Funcom on AO. Accountance people not included.

Besides that we have hundreds of valuable ARK's, our volunteers, who are truly dedicated and that do a great job in the game. The volunteer program is the strongest of any Graphical game based on the level of assistance they are allowed to provide and the large numbers of our volunteers that have been with us for a very long time.

And even though they aren't Funcom, we have thousands and thousands of players who are active on boards, in IRC, with fansites etc. The players choose to dedicate time to express their opinions in contructive ways. This is of extreme value to us.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: We will continue to work on Anarchy Online as long as there is an economic foundation to do so.

We have already mentioned that we will make a large social addition to the game, with the ability for players to create own towns, gardens and clothes. The concept for the story forward is also drafted. I know this is just too normal PR speak (yada yada, insert long lines of fluff), but....

When Gaute told us his thoughts and concepts for the future of AO after Shadowlands I was just blown away. I can't wait to talk about it.

 

 

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Next to none. It's a non topic, and the team, led by Ragnar Tørnquist who directed The Longest Journey, mostly came from Midgard after a short transition period on AO. It's been in development for more than a year now.

Funcom has learned a very important lesson, one you only gain be going through it: You need to have a tight focus. Ideas are cheap, you can do "anything" with online games, so many things which seems like a golden path. But if you try to do everything, nothing becomes really good.

Right now, our entire focus is Shadowlands. All thoughts, all the time, goes into Shadowlands. We are not doing motorbike or car games anymore, we are not doing parlor games (even though we had more than 500.000 registered users when we closed it), we are not doing cell phone games anymore, we are not looking to become the "worlds biggest online company" anymore, we do not spend time and money looking to sign other games, we do not try to spend alot of time looking to release NOW in Asia since Lineage has so many players...I can go on.

We are just trying to be a really, really good publisher and developer of adventure and online roleplaying games for grown ups. Organic growth with focus and the best possible people, not looking to become EA tomorrow.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: No, I can't and I won't, but it will be something truly unique and original as we always aim to be.

We had a playfield demo up at E3, and showed the video to a few people. So far, I haven't seen any online game in development which surpasses us in regards to graphics and feeling.That includes what I have seen from EQ2. Nuff said.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Yes, of course. It would be nice to have more, but I would like to remind everyone that events in online games are easier to catch if you are active in creating your own as well. We do have a volunteer created and ran Event team that provides in game events and again, our players do this. I have seen everything from beauty pageants to yalm races organized by our creative players.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: People are expensive. I take on my business man hat for a sec. If you reach 3% of the entire player population through co-ordinated company staged events in a month, what is better: hire even more GM's to reach, say 5%, or use those money on actual in-game content staff, who are making updates which is being patched out on a regular basis? Content that everybody can enjoy.

It needs to be a mix, but I would go for the ingame content for everyone firstly, and rather try to make the world more dynamic so people can take matters into their own hands secondly. Then there is events thirdly. I continue to be surprised at the extreme creativity and love the MMO players have for their hobby, they understand that they need to take matters into their own hands as well. If you play soccer you need to go for the ball, not stand still and wait for it to come to you. Enabling player pro-action through tools, setting and content is the best way forward. That is just a personal opinion.

 

 

Jorgen Tharaldsen: There is no longer just one thing which is most important in these games, even though the word "group play possibilites" springs to mind. But that can be anything.

Any MMO needs to have a base set of features now, that is the most important part. This base set of features needs to create a highly involving world, with great social possibilites, and lots of fun.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Well, after the next month or so we will change focus from develpment to customer satisfaction as the game is released. We will be extremely busy providing player education, player support and providing post release tweaks to make it all run more smoothly. Our job is never done, it just switches phases! I actually believe that we will have a pipeline longer, bigger, stronger and better than any other MMO in a month or so, just give it some time to settle down.

Famous last words, I cross every fibre in my body that it will stay so even after the horde enters.

Jorgen Tharaldsen: Thank you for giving us this opportunity to answer. A long reply, but you didn't set a maximum word count ;) Check out Shadowlands, people, if you already play an MMOG you will be surprised if you take the time needed to learn it.