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Executive Producer Discusses PvP, Dreamworld and More

Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison chats with Massively about the new PvP server, PvP balance, grind and the Dreamworld intergration.

If you're dying to find out more information about the upcoming Blood & Glory servers and what that means for PvP, then when have a little fix for you. Age of Conan Executive Producer, Craig 'Sillirion' Morrison takes some time to reveal some more information on the upcoming changes to Age of Conan. He covers the upcoming PvP rulset labeled, "Blood & Glory," some of the teams plans on handling that new server ruleset, the latest details on the next big update to the game engine and much more!

Massively: The new server ruleset sounds pretty awesome, even to occasional PvPers. Once the initial euphoria of the announcement wears off, though, many players are asking themselves if they want to go through the AA grind, the gear grind, and all the endgame stuff that is required to have a chance in competitive play after already having done so on their existing characters. Are there any firm plans to lessen the grind or lessen the effect of gear on PvP on the new shards?

Craig Morrison: That is something we are willing to tweak and adjust somewhat during testing. We are already making some serious adjustments to the endgame content in particular to significantly combat that feeling of grind, and that will roll out across all the servers, so I think that will also help to mitigate at least some of the concerns there.

We understand players are usually, I think it is safe to say, somewhat sceptical when a developer says we are going to significantly improve things, but on this occasion I am fairly confident that the changes we are making there are pretty fundamental and wide-ranging, and I am not someone prone to too much hyperbole. In the expansion content we kind of made one of the classic game design misjudgements of making our base case for progression centred on what the hardcore player could achieve, rather than the majority of players, so this is something we are serious, really serious, about addressing. It is being done now and will roll out at some stage relatively soon after the Dreamworld update is done.

Gear is a slightly different case. There are some things that won't be changing, and that is mostly the core system itself. If we changed too much, like not having alternate advancement and/or the same available gear on the new server, it would make maintaining this different ruleset much, much harder in future, and it would also mean that we could not introduce the cross-server functionality when it comes around sometime next year. So there is longer-term logic at play here as well.

So all core gameplay and progression systems in themselves will have to be maintained consistently, so that is the only area where we probably won't try to make many, if any, specific changes just for this server. The rest of the content and features, though, those are wide open for change, which leads to seeking the players' feedback.

Read the rest of the interview with Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison on Massively.Joystiq.com!