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Interview With Funcom's Craig Morrison
Funcom's Craig Morrison on Rise of the Godslayer and why Conan is worth your time.
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Craig Morrison talks Rise of the Godslayer, Conan changes and why boobies are ok in Germany - but not America.
Rise of the Godslayer does not introduce a new level cap. Morrison explains the reasoning behind this decision, and what players get in exchange:
Morrison: In some ways we wanted to make sure that we could bridge the gap much more seamlessly, because one the eternal struggles of an MMO expansion is when you raise the level cap you make everything obsolete before. What we wanted to avoid was the players playing for one day and being instantly more powerful than they were the day before ... I think Everquest have gotten better at it they used to do it in the old days, World of Warcraft certainly when you get an expansion you're instantly more powerful, and we wanted to try and bridge that and not make it as dramatic. We wanted it so that the players could go back and still experience some of the older content but with their newfound powers so it's more gradual and it's adding more diversity to the classes ... It is definitely a different approach but we felt it gives the players more options to control their own way of development and we wanted to add more character development options that the player had control over so that they could choose their own path because these feat trees are as large as the ones that exist in the game and they're completely on top. So were not just reworking and adding a couple more to existing feat trees, we're actually adding a whole other layer, equally as big, on top so that there's going to be a lot of these abilities that players will be able to go through and get.
Faction allegiance is essential to Godslayer gameplay, dictating what quests and areas you have access to. Morrison discusses how the through gamer can squeeze every ounce of gameplay out of the factions:
Morrison: There's going to be options for people to betray their current faction. Again, the consequences. It won't be an easy choice, it won't be like an on/off, becasue the immediate period after they betray a faction they're going to be in a situation where they have to do specific things because the faction that used to hate them doesn't just instantly love them because they hit the "I betray them" button. So they have to do a series of quests and there will be a period of time that is more difficult for them because their old faction will be pissed with them and they haven't quite made friends with the new faction either. So the choice will be there, and I'm sure there will be, there always is in MMOs, there will be players that go through and do everything and want to experience all of it. Some of the bonuses will be that you have to stay in the faction to get the bonuses, some of them will be ones you can take away so they will be able to collect stuff and then betray if they want to and try and work with the other one.
It's tied into the storytelling and the quests and really trying to surprise the player a little and present them with challenges that maybe they didn't expect. For example, one of the factions that they meet quite early on is the Priests of Yag-Kosha the lot you saw bringing Conan [effigy] in the trailer, and they're a very benevolent and noble sect. They look after their community. Clearly when the player meets them, in any other situation they would be the good guys, but they want to kill your king. So the player is presented with that choice. Likewise in another playfield there's a sect, a faction that has the true heir to the Khitan empire, but they're a nasty bunch - but their claim is the valid one. The player again has this choice of "these should be the bad guys, but I'm presented with this choice and they have been wronged", and so all the way through there's quests where we hope the players will come into situations where early on they did something in the quest and then later on they're kind of, "Oh crap, I'm repsonsible for this. I've made this situation happen with my choices."
I think it creates some very interesting storytelling dynamics. We wanted to try and get away, like I said, from the black and white. Sometimes I think you play games these days and you read the dialog options and say yeah, ok, that's the good one and that's the bad one and we really wanted to try and move away from that and not make it clear for the player so that the stroy telling is much more interesting for them as they progress through the quests.
Cat: There is a trend in gaming to move away from the traditional idea of heroism, how do you see that playing out in Conan and Rise of the Godslayer?
Morrison: ... In MMOs people have to resurrect when they die, and in our game they've been granted immortality by the ancient magic. They are immortals and the Godslayer actually ties into what the player is, too. There's quite a few quests for those that are interested in listening to the dialog and going through the quests where it plays on the question of "What is it to be a god?" They're immortal, are they gods? Conan is not immortal, he avoids death through his cunning and his strength, does that make the player better or worse than Conan? Conan has killed gods before. There's an interesting storyline arc that goes through that as well is kind of questioning, or asking the players to question, what they are as the hero. Are they the hero in the game or are they just a minion of Conan, and what does it mean for an immortal person to serve a mortal? They serve King Conan, they work for the King, so the storytellers and the lead writers, it's one of the things that they've really tried to play on. They'll love that question, I'll tell them you asked it. (laughs) The lead writer, it's one of the threads in the storyline that he really loves putting in there for those players that really like to get into the lore and are interested in story. There's all these threads about the question of immortality and what does it mean to be a hero. There's some really interesting stuff in there.
Rise of the Godslayer handles leveling in a rather unique way, and even offers lower level players a taste of the experience.
Morrison: What happens is between levels 20 and 40 the players can play the Gateway to Khitai so when they leave the starting area at Tortage they can arrive in Khitai and go through quests between level 40, and then they'll have to return to the mainland for parts and then the content picks up again at level 80. So the majority of the content is for the level 80 players, is beyond the Great Wall...they can start to experience the faction system because the Great Wall kind of acts as this cool barrier for us that lower level players can get into Khitai and kind of explore around up to the gates of the wall and then it's the high level players that are actually powerful enough to be able to pass through the wall and experiences adventures in the other four play field regions ... We've ended up putting gameplay in the gate because originally we hadn't planned it. We asked the artists to make the Great Wall of China, that was our brief with some stylistic changes, we wanted the Great Wall of China across this mountain range.
Originally it was just a gate, it was something the player passed through, and then we got the model back from the artists and they'd done such an amazing job, they'd crafted the inside and they made stairs up so you could get on the top because they wanted to make it in the right scale. They hadn't been asked to make it specifically for gameplay but they really wanted to have gameplay in it so they made it so that it could have gameplay. Then when we saw it in situ and saw it in the play field. It just made sense to put gameplay in there and make a quest out of it and make that passage. ... With the new technology we've developed, with the stitching the play fields together, you can actually literally look out across two play fields while you're walking across the edge of the wall. So you can see the one that you've just come from, the gateway, and then you can see out over the northern grasslands which is the first play field in the level 80 areas.
Tigers are one of two epic mounts in the expansion, and something players will want to show off.
Morrison: You will [be able to take them back to the live game]. The tigers are definitely not something that people will pick up on the first day. They're one of the most epic quest lines in the expansion ... for the majority of players it's something that will take a degree of dedication to go and get the tiger and be able to show off.
On existing content in game, rebalancing and additional quests:
Morrison: There's certainly balancing because obviously we're adding the ultimate advancement system so we have to make sure that it's balanced to within the budgets that we're expanding up to, but I mean live development will continue at the same time. We're not stopping off things for the live game, so there will be live game updates all the way up until the expansion launches as well. Like currently we're going through the classes and giving them some attention and doing some tweaks. You know we did a new RPG system a few months ago and since then we've been going through, because we always do, when you revamp an RPG system like that you don't just do it and leave it. It's not "Oh, ok, well were done!" so we've been doing the follow-up updates following on from that and tweaking, and that'll continue. It's an important part of designing an MMO, its an evolutionary process rather than a once-off so that'll definitely continue.
It's definitely worth going back. I'm really proud, I mean everyone's more than aware of the issues the game had last fall, but the team have worked exceptionally hard to work through and address those things. I think we've done seven major game updates since we took over last fall, in making everything come together ... Behind the scenes there were 76,000 tasks that have been done since the game launched. I think that plays into how hard the team have worked to really look at the issues players had immediately after the launch and start to address them.
I think it's definitely starting to have an impact, because we're starting to get the positive word of mouth again you know, there's players talking positively about the game and to me that's the most important thing because I can sit here and tell you how great we are and we're wonderful and we've done all this hard work and look how exciting it is and cool, but it's insignificant compared to what someone's telling their friend when their friends goes, "Yeah, I tried Conan and I wasn't too sure," and he goes "Actually I played and it's cool, they've fixed a lot of stuff, you should come back and try it." ...
It could have been easy to quit and kind of like "Oh, ok, we'll put it on the minimal team and we'll just keep it rolling," but we didn't. We invested in it, we still have a hundred people working on Conan and we've reinvested in making the game realize the potential that it has.
Cat: After you've done all that work to curb the loss of players, the X-pac is a bit of a rebirth.
Morrison: For sure, whenever you have an expansion pac there's more marketing that comes with it. We're here doing things like this and kind of getting the message out there that players can come back and try it again, and get new players, there's always new players coming in. It amazes me today how many people, even at shows like this, don't play MMOs. There's still a lot of gamers that don't try MMOs. There's obviously a lot that do now in the era of World of Warcraft and games like that - well, there is no other game like that - there's a lot more people playing MMOs.
Cat: But everyone's watching The Guild -
Morrison: (laughs) Yeah! It's definitely an opportunity to get back out there and show players a chance to come back and check it out. The marketing guys are doing a great job with re-evaluation campaigns and trials to get players back, to come back and try the game again and see how it's going, to see what those 76,000 changes have actually meant in the game itself.
Cat: And you mentioned tuning in to the forums to see what the community was saying, is that something you looked to frequently as you were making those 76,000 changes?
Morrison: Very much ... It's not just the forums, it's making sure that developers are playing the game and spending time. We have sessions in the office, which are actually mandatory, for people to play. We do things like three or four hours a week where your job is to play the game for a few hours not just work on it. So we actually stop production, people play the game for a few hours together as a team, because it's important. The forums are one channel, in-game's another, going to things like this is another, but the community is very important to keep in touch and see what people are talking about, what kinds of things people are saying, because you pick up on all kinds of cool little things. I was out there earlier and someone was playing and they were like, "Man! They haven't copied WoW at all so I have no idea how to use this interface!" (Laughs) They were like, "I"m so programmed for World of Warcraft!" So I was just sitting explaining it, but you know it's good feedback, knowing what areas we can make adjustments.
You can't please everyone in an MMO, there's hundreds of thousands of players, and I can't get ten developers to agree.(Laughs) There's a reason we have people in charge. it's about trying to find the best thing for the most players.
Cat: The game is not like WoW, trying to be like WoW is a fool's game -
Morrison: Yes, you're not going to it better than them!
Cat: - but among other MMOs, what do you think is Age of Conan's biggest draw?
Morrison: I think we've got a very mature setting. We're the only M rated MMO on the market. We've got that dark, brutal, very sexy world and it allows us to tell more mature stories. Howard was a product of his time and his world is very mature and very dark. It deals with issues of prostitution, of drugs, of corruption. Howard really didn't like society, he had a big thing against society, he felt it was decadent and bound to fail eventually in corruption and chaos. We're able to translate that into the game, I think we can tell much more interesting stories than many other games. We're able to put those elements in. It's a very different experience. We've kind of re-embraced the rating of the game, it's not just about blood and the violence, it's also about the ability to tell these mature stories and we can engage the players as adults and tell an adult story that isn't just about some nudity here and big swords there. The writers take it very seriously that they can tell these interesting stories.
Cat: Though the nudity stuff gets really big hits on N4G...
Morrison: (Laughs) Oh, it always will! It's really different in the different regions. You can really tell what things key on people in different areas. The different rating boards and dealing with the different certification processes, it's very different things in different countries. Like the Americans don't mind, you can chop off as many heads as you like, but don't you dare show a nipple! You can go to Germany and have completely nude models, but don't show me any blood! Very different things you've got to account for. It's very interesting, and I think that's the key differential for our game because in this market it is about saying that there is something different.
On top of it I think we have the best looking MMO out there. We made a decision to go high-end with the graphics and the visuals, because you're making an MMO for five, ten years. You're not thinking about, "OK, we're launched, we're out, it'll have an eighteen month life-cycle, it's done." Anarchy Online, our other MMO, is nine years old this year and so with Conan we very deliberately raised the bar so that in three years time we still look great and we don't lag behind because of advances in graphics. I think we have one of the best looking games on the market, and certainly the best looking MMO and then on top of that with this very different setting enabled very different story-telling. I think it really does set us apart from the other games. On top of that you have the gameplay elements like the combat and the much more interactive combat system. I think we have a very different offering that can offer people something a little different than some of the other titles.
Cat: An MMO has a life cycle longer than some consoles -
Morrison: ... You see the same things, I think MMOs get better as they get older and I think that's the challenge for MMOs now, because World of Warcraft is such a huge success and a fantastic game. It's also a fantastic game with five years worth of development added into it and then newcomers to the market have to compete with a game that has five year's worth of content that several hundred people have been working to put in. So it's a real challenge for the genre and that's where being a little bit different and being able to differentiate yourself is important, so that you can offer something slightly different. Whether it's in theme - it doesn't have to be in mechanics - it can be in theme, in setting or in style. I'm sure the guys at Bioware are going to have great success with Knights of the Old republic because it's a different setting.
Thanks so much to Funcom and Craig Morrison!
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