Living Hyboria

Funcom and Russian game company 1C Games have signed an agreement to bring a localized version of Age of Conan to Russia in Q4.

According to the agreement 1C will fully localize voice and text and operate local customer service, communities, websites and in-game support for Age of Conan in Russian, while Funcom takes care of back-end technology, server infrastructure and continuous development of the game. A dedicated Russian realm is to be created, giving the Russian community an opportunity to stay together and communicate with each other in their native language.

Read the press release for more, but beware of the PR hype machine, it’s a nasty beast hiding in texts like this…

The short answer is no, they are not. However, WoW Riot is claiming it is, trying to tell us that Funcom is desperate, that they dropped the ball on Age of Conan, and whatnot. The news is also reported by Rawcool, who shared the link in a comment to a previous post here on Living Hyboria.

While I’m certainly interesting to know how Age of Conan really fares, and I am wondering about the attachment rate, I believe the whole presumption of the story reported to be wrong. The stock decline, which we’ve covered previously, is what is backing up the whole “Funcom goes bankrupt” argument, but that decline is really the result of a temporary high after the games release, and the impressive sales. All in all, the Funcom stock more or less doubled what it was traded for, and then it went back to normal. This isn’t all that uncommon with games companies having a small portfolio, them being very dependent on a few key titles.

There is a new PvP (player versus player, you knew that) system in the works, having already been outlined in the system notes on the official forum. However, Massively has got a few nifty little tidbits on how the new system works on the Testlive test server right now. Some highlights include:

Many players had assumed killing an Innocent of your own level would result in Murder Points, but it doesn’t. The research actually shows that you can gank players of up to two levels below you (and any amount of levels above you) without any penalty other than being temporarily flagged as Criminal.

Criminals will get a crossed swords icon over their head, while Murderers will get a skull. It also appears that becoming a Murderer will be pretty easy, with every innocent kill “awarding” you with at least 10 Murder Points, with 100 meaning you’ve got your devious status.

Also:

PvP XP amounts have also been clarified. You get 100 XP for a kill (to a maximum of 150 XP for a target 5+ levels above you), divided among the group. You lose 300 XP for a death even if you are grouped.

Read the full story on Massively if you want details.

Crazy Yahtzee is bawling about Age of Conan in his latest video review over at The Escapist. Spot on or not? You be the judge. A lot of fun guaranteed no matter what!

Now you can buy Age of Conan via download, weighing in at a whopping 15 GB. However, at least in Europe, it is more expensive to actually download the game, compared to picking it up in stores!

EUR € 49.80 Incl. VAT ‡
GBP £ 39.67 Incl. VAT ‡
USD $ 49.99

Crazy. I’d go with the boxed version, still.

So this is cool, 700,000 player accounts is massive. Eurogamer compares:

To put that in perspective: long-running space-trading cult EVE Online is known to have around 250,000 active player accounts, while World of Warcraft famously has 10 million. Korean hits Lineage and Lineage II are thought to have around a million subscribers apiece.

However, although Funcom can celebrate, I think it is a bit premature. Trial accounts are still numerous, if the game’s sales are anything to go by (and it is, of course), and the true attachment rate after 30-90 days is a much more interesting number. Still, nice to see.

It’s been a bit quiet here. That’s due to amazingly good weather, vacations, and staffers waiting for a REAL design for our page. The latter is close now, and the vacations are ending for some of us, so expect more action shortly.

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