By Crom Delayed Again

Posted by Stropp on January 21, 2008

It seems like it was only a few days ago that Funcom announced March 25th as the release date for Age of Conan. It looks like the Barbarian gods weren’t all that pleased because the date has once again been pushed back. Now to May 20, but still 2008.

There are a few commentators saying that it’s better to push the date back than release a buggy game, and I have to say that I agree with this sentiment. Anarchy Online was released by Funcom to a pretty ordinary launch. By ordinary, I mean disastrous. It took them a long time to recover from that, but in the end had a pretty good game that is still doing well.

Times have changed though. A bad launch back a few years ago didn’t spell the end for a game because there wasn’t as much competition. AO had time to recover. Compare to Vanguard which has improved since launch, but because of increased competition isn’t recovering.

Funcom has also recently cut back on the number of classes. I also think this is a good thing. I know there were a lot of people hanging out to play those classes, but it’s better to have something working now than having a half-arsed class that plays badly and takes a long time to fix,

The beauty of the MMO genre is the ability to add things like classes to the game at a later date. It’s always possible that the removed features will make an appearance in the future. But for that to happen the game has to be successful at launch.

Let’s hope that Funcom make the most of the additional months and get Age of Conan out the door with the minimum of problems.

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