Did I say Hyboria? I meant Funcom. Yesterday we have learned rather troublesome news about Funcom studio re-structuring.If your business model isn't working then I guess it is a good thing to "mix it up". What is NOT good is Age of Conan: Secrets of the Dragon's Spine and crafting update getting sacked for another few months (at very least 3) and the carefuly set schedule is going to hell. I really want Funcom to be successful so they can make more content and keep the game rolling. Bad things tend to happen to AOC. However every single time when I am thinking: "things are looking up for AOC" Funcom will fail in a major way and it's like watching a retarded bear. No one wants to see that. Want a recent example? FC doing great job on energy/sprint revamp and then a bad job with......fucking up servers for over a month. But this post is not about Funcom and them dropping the ball, it is about AOC. For the first time I am actually afraid that in near future AOC might be gone. MMOs come and go and recent events show that even successful ones can get sacked. People (me included) get upset about Age of Conan and the change in the schedule and so (that is just bullshit), but no one would like AOC to simply go away. I wouldn't want that for sure. All this "re-structuring" and FC's financial situation is taking out the wind out of my sails when it comes to Hyboria. Should I continue to play this game? Should I dedicate any more time at all to this blog? Should I marry of the the devs? (ok I wasn't considering that...yet). Monthly Development Update - January 2013 says that "All the stuff we have mentioned at the end of the last year, the new Dragonspine content, and the trade-skill revamp is all still in progress. In fact the team has taken pride in finishing up as much as they can to take over to the new team. The new team fully intends to ensure most, if not all, of those content updates are released this year. The schedule however will of course be affected by this change, and the new team will need a little while to set their new schedules, and get things in order. Expect to hear more in next month's development update on that front". This is hardly ideal. SDS update series were supposed to come in summer of 2012 and it seems like it will be early spring of 2013. Yes, we already got SOME of SDS on live server but it turned out to be "all show and no go" type of content where you can do the quest line in one day and then REALLY there is no point in returning to the Spine as it offers little to no repeatable content. I have to admit that AOC real chance to make it "BIG" again and to attract new and old players is a SMASHING crafting system. From what we have already seen on preview video FC actually managed to create such system and it is highly anticipated.
However AOC is largely perceived as MMO "with little development and constant delays" so one can only hope that new team will change that. Re-structing is of course a good thing as the cash flow must be maintained, but more delays on a content promised ages ago is just wrong.
The crafting, for the sake of AOC's future, better be best thing since sliced bread.
