Podcast Episode 2: Craig Morrison and Age of Conan

October 14th, 2011

All right! Looks like the podcast might become a monthly thing. And it's all thanks to my second guest: Craig Morrison of Funcom, who stopped by to talk about Age of Conan Unchained. We discuss his work at Funcom, including Anarchy Online and Age of Conan, his experience leading the game through to its current Free to Play incarnation, talk about Extra Life, and peek into the future of Age of Conan and Funcom's upcoming The Secret World! Still no luck on beta access, but I'll keep you posted if we get any keys to hand out :)

Stream this week's episode:



You can also download the whole episode in MP3 format.

If you haven't tried Age of Conan yet, check out the Official Site to sign up and play. It's free, after all! They seem to have a refer-a-friend program, but it looks like I have to input someone's email directly rather than post a link on my website, so I somehow doubt I'll be making any referrals this time :(

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Posted by: Soulrift

The Age of Conan Begins! (belatedly)

May 26th, 2011

Yes, here it is, I'm finally back from Vancouver so the Age of Conan category can be added to the site. I could have technically added it remotely but I lacked the technical utilities to create the icon for the button. Anyhow, all's well that ends well?

I recall a conversation I had with Craig between sessions last week. He asked me if I had played Age of Conan and I replied that I had, but never got into it. When he asked me what I didn't like about it, I was at a loss for words. Turns out the only thing worse than someone who is vocal about why they hate your game is someone who can't even remember having played it. So I was, of course, going to give it another whirl. I loaded it up on my laptop and played through part of the beginning before my trip back. Turns out they don't like you playing MMOs over Wi-Fi on Air Canada flights ;)

Playing it again I immediately remembered part of what I played the first time: I definitely played up until I killed Saddur, the fat slaver you encounter within the first, like, ten minutes of the game. But everything after that was new to me. So I must have bailed on the game pretty darned fast the first time in. That's pretty unusual for me, I normally grit through games much longer than that. I mean, I grinded to 50 in vanilla DAoC, didn't I?

Both the first time I played and the subsequent efforts I made this week have been with mage-type characters. I tend to gravitate towards mages or other DPS classes, especially pet-based classes. And maybe that's why I lost interest in Age of Conan so quickly before. To say the least, the early experiences I've had with two of the mage classes (demonologist and necromancer) in this recent playthrough have been painful.

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Posted by: Soulrift