by Main (interesting) things:
ZAM: Shifting tracks here, you just recently released a November Development Update where you outlined a lot of things going into Age of Conan's future. In broader strokes, what are your key focuses going into these upcoming updates? I know there's a good amount of PvE content on the way, as well as some PvP balancing and platform fixes, but is there one overarching theme to your current development approach that you want to deliver with 3.1 to 4.0?
Morrison: The main focus is on continuing the good work we did this year and continuing to add to the game. There are three major areas we want to develop this year. The first, which is always true, is adding more content. This will be in the form of the new raids coming up, new PVP content, and the new adventure pack in the summer. Then we have two other major areas we want to get done, overhauling our tradeskill system completely, and integrating the new single server technology.
It is also important to give the players these new systems so that we build on those systems that can help the players have longer term goals outside of the pure content. A good solid tradeskill system is something we have been lacking, and is something I have wanted to get done for a while now, but have had to wait until other things were done. Now though, it is time to try and add something to the game that will add a real extra layer of depth for people. Even if you don't tradeskill yourself, you might very well be tempted to buy what the best tradeskillers will make, or be tasked with finding them some resources. It's an area we are looking forward to expanding upon.
ZAM: The other feature addressed in your Development Update was your "Dreamworld Single Server Technology," which would enable cross-server mini-games, as well as a group/instance finder. While cross-server technology does wonders for speeding up the time it takes to find a group, more traditional MMORPG players like to reminisce fondly on the days of tightly knit communities where players would constantly run dungeons with the same crowd. What are your thoughts on cross-server technology? It's obvious that the AoC team approves of it, hence its eventual implementation, but is there a design philosophy behind it?
Morrison: This is actually something we are very excited about in the long term. For me the ability for people to find teams faster, or take part in PVP with the entire population is a good thing. I was used to having it with Anarchy Online when I was Game Director there. AO had two main large servers that were much bigger than traditional MMO servers, so we never had as much fragmentation, and that was something I missed when making the move to Age of Conan. In real terms the old fashioned 'server' set-up only existed historically due to various technical restraints and database limits. If you can go beyond those restraints there is nothing saying you can't make a perfectly good community a wider base. It doesn't do any harm to a game like EVE online for example, and while yes, EVE is a very different type of game, it also shares many elements.
Beyond that starting point, however, there are some really cool areas that this technology opens up for us, and that is in allowing players more control on where they play and with whom. Traditionally, those old restraints have meant that a player had to make a specific choice that they were bound to for as long as that character existed. I don't think that restriction is a necessity outside of those technical limitations, so once the technology moves beyond that limitation, then it opens the doors for a lot more customization, and we have some exciting plans there that we will talk more about next year.
On a technical level the process will take place in several stages. Early next year the technology infrastructure will go in, essentially pulling all the players together onto our new single server technology. Then we will start to roll out the features that this opens up over the course of next year. I wish we could talk more about this one right now, I am honestly quite excited about some of the possibilities, but we need to get the first technical stages done first. Players can rest assured though that there we are working on some cool options here.
