Funcom has big plans and shows up on The Big Bang Theory.

According to a recent interview on MTV's Multiplayer site, Age of Conan's Product Director Jørgen Tharaldsen gets it. He undertsands that AoC did some things very well right out of the shoot. He also understands that the game has a long way to go deliver upon the expectations of the gamers who came and then left. In a very candid article, Jørgen admits that they under-delivered on some areas of the game:

"I think it’s okay to say that we simply didn’t deliver as good as we should have on all the launch features. That said, I do think we went out the gate with some extremely strong ones too (i.e. combat, graphics, presentation, audio, maturity, story and quests, Tortage etc.), which made us a giga-hit in retail and gave us some great reviews. But on other features we just didn’t polish it well enough, including our items, tradeskills, system performance and PvP."

See, he gets it. He goes on to discuss the current state of the Xbox 360 version of the game:

"While there is a dedicated specialist team working on the Xbox version, it’s the live PC game we want to speak about and focus most of our resources on right now. We feel confident that there is a time for consoles as well, but right now we put most of our devs on the PC version."

As John McCain would say, that my friends is what I want to hear as a PC gamer (I think McCain said "my friends" 150 times in a 90 minute debate last night). The AoC team understands that if they don't fix the live game, they don't have to worry about the Xbox version because nobody will be around to play it. The good news is that the teams seem motiated and directed to get some of the key ingredients like balancing and PvP fixed. For additional insight, check out the latest Ten Ton Hammer interview with the New Game Director Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison.

In other news, Age of Conan was featured in The Big Bang Theory. I haven't watched the show, but I've heard good things about it. Whether the cute blond getting infatuated with the game (while her groceries spoil in the hallway) really portrays gaming in a positive light is suspect. Heck, World of Warcraft on South Park was a hit with "Mom bring me a potty!".

For a quick snippet of "AFK" and "noob" humor, go to CBS' The Big Bang Theory..