by Stacy Jones on Aug 01, 2012
The Secret World managed to test the waters for Funcoms single server technology for the Dreamworld engine, and Age of Conan (AoC) is about to begin reaping the benefits. The first stage of a multi-part transition to regional single server technology will begin this month. While US and EU servers will not be merging together, they will enjoy their own single server tech for their region once the transition is complete. Funcom is requesting feedback from players about how best to implement the restrictions such as PvP and PvE players cross-mingling, so add your thoughts on the official forums.
Additionally, the update also revealed more changes for the upcoming crafting revamp and what changes the devs are considering in their approach to new content development. One option on the table is that rather than releasing huge content updates as before, Funcom is considering a return to smaller updates. If this happens, expect to see smaller more frequent content patches. The idea is to develop content as usual and just release a given part of the update when its ready as opposed to all at once in one larger update.
So one of the things we are considering is moving away completely from larger content drops, and instead moving over to much smaller, but more frequent, content additions. We haven't come to any definite conclusions there yet, as there are other considerations, but it is something that many of you expressed was important, and something we feel we need to consider.
So for example rather than launch an entire area, as we did with previous expansions and adventure packs, we could release each playfield, dungeon, raid or arena, one by one, as they were ready. It may cover a similar development period, but would mean the content comes in much smaller pieces over that length of time.