Director Letter – MMO Fallout

Age of Conan Reveals Great Hyborian Race

Funcom has released the latest Age of Conan monthly Game Director Letter, noting that the planned server merger has been delayed due to the team moving offices. Also on the plate for this month is the Great Hyborian Race, which it turns out is not a new race of playable characters. Instead, The Great Hyborian Race involves the creation of a new Blood and Glory server, challenging players to race each other to the top, with prizes awarded for the first to reach level 80 in each class, as well as rewards for players who meet a certain PvP threshold.

During the Great Hyborian Race, we will be asking players to roll a new, fresh character on a Blood and Glory ruleset server (completely new server) and race to the top in PvE and PvP. For the duration of the event, you will be unable to use Offline Levels and we will place restrictions on the use of XP potions and instances.

Players are encouraged to work together with their guild, boosting each other while simultaneously murdering your potential competition.

(Source: Age of Conan)

Funcom Director Letter Details TSW Anniversary

Boy, The Secret World, has it really been one year since you graced us with your launch? Despite some hardship along the way, our good friend Joel over at Funcom is proud of what the team has accomplished over the past year. July 3rd marks the beginning of the Guardians of Gaia event, for The Secret World’s first anniversary. The event will task players with defeating the Guardians, the second line of defense for the planet against the Filth. Why are players fighting the guardians of the planet? That depends on your faction, but it primarily has to do with the Guardians breaking the secrecy of The Secret World, that they consider human casualties as an acceptable collateral to stopping The Filth, and that they aren’t very good at their job.

The event will bring in bonuses, gifts, and discounts to all players. Additionally, anyone who has ever played a Funcom game will be able to access The Secret World for a week. The event will kick off Issue #7: A Dream To Kill, where players will uncover a dark force that threatens the entire world.

Check out the whole letter at the link below.

(Source: TSW Director Letter)

Age of Conan Director Letter

Funcom has released Age of Conan’s Game Director Letter for June 2013, discussing the upcoming server mergers, achievements, and more. Foremost, the process to bring all of Age of Conan under one mega-server is still going according to plan, taken on in phases in order to reduce downtime as much as possible. The next phase of the operation is to merge the US and EU servers together, which should be completed by the end of the summer. As part of the merger, Funcom will be archiving characters that have been inactive for a very long time. Note that this is different from when Funcom simply deleted low level, inactive characters nearly three years ago. An archived character will be accessible, according to the post, it will simply take a bit longer to load them the first time as they are pulled from archive.

Also noted in the letter are upcoming stability fixes and dungeon revamps. In response to community feedback, Funcom is looking into adding achievements to Age of Conan and is soliciting suggestions on how they should be implemented.

(Source: Director Letter)

The Secret World Teases Event Leading To Tokyo

Funcom has released the latest Game Director letter for The Secret World, detailing the upcoming updates of Issue #7 and #8. Coming in the next few weeks, Issue #7 deals with a new threat facing our Secret World co-conspirators: The Filth. The event is set to take place over the course of several events, spawning from the Tokyo district and moving to other areas of the world. The event will begin after the release of Issue #7 and after the first anniversary event for The Secret World.

Over the coming months as we ramp up towards Tokyo, players will be fighting to contain, and drive back the filth which is tainting the world tree. With every patch, this event will move to a new phase until eventually, if players have done enough, they will gain access to Tokyo itself.

Issue #8 deals with players proving their worth by completing training situations with the Council of Venice in order to be certified to enter Tokyo. Only the bravest and most capable will be able to take on the threat that awaits and the Council must be sure you are able to stay alive long enough to make some headway. Scenarios are repeatable and pit the user in a variety of random situations to test their adaptability.

We’ve heard this word random thrown around before, so let me provide a concrete example: Imagine a Scenario in Kingsmouth Church, where the player has been tasked with helping a group of survivors get through the night (12hrs). Every hour or so (in game time 5 minutes), huge numbers of zombies spawn around the church and move to attack the survivors. The player has multiple options to defend against these waves, including traps and tricks they find lying around. Where the random element comes into play is the chance of something else occurring on the waves: Special bosses spawning, survivors panicking and fleeing the church, an infected survivor turning and attacking the others, a helicopter dropping additional supplies or lightning striking randomly in the spaces around the church.

Sounds fun. This comes alongside an augmentation system allowing players to customize their powers toward specific uses. You can read the entire letter at the link below.

(Source: The Secret World)