With server merges in place Hyboria is seeing a revitalization in game and nothing makes this more obvious than Game Director Craig Morrison's zeal for moving forward. In a recent interview with GameSpy, Morrison had this to say:

According to Morrison, as the company worked through its opening-day problems, it also shouldn't come as a surprise that the company would scale back when it needed to. "The server merges were done and dusted within 48 hours. We're very pleased with how it went and the communities have come together pretty well." Among other elements, Morrison cites the fact that all battlekeeps were deleted when the servers were merged, yet all the available spots were claimed and being fought over within a few hours.

"The bottom line is that players are happier when there are more players around," Morrison said regarding the server merge. "The main thing we needed to do is focus on new content and improving the areas that launch players didn't like. As we've done so and the game has gotten better, the community has become much more positive and started to spread positive word-of-mouth. The more that happens, the more people who have left might think that maybe they should give the game another chance and the more new players might decide to jump in."

In fact, Morrison stated that only one major area from the launch remains to be addressed: the lack of decent gear. That, he says, will be addressed in a big itemization re-work that will help clarify item statistics and make gear more meaningful in the game. Going forward, he's looking toward brand-new ideas and systems that the team can finally start thinking seriously about. "Just recently the balance has started to shift from fixing old things to working out new things to add to the game," he said. "As we get through this year, we're looking to add all sort of new community features and guild functionality. [Age of Conan] has so much potential that it's finally beginning to reach. It'll be nice to be able to move on to new stuff."

Morrison also talks about Age of Conan's PvP and consequence system and the tricks of keeping those balanced.


If you'd like to read more of this interview, stop on by GameSpy to get the full story!