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My partner and I are huge Conan fans. I grew up on the Schwarzenegger film and it introduced me to the rest of Robert E Howard’s work.
When I met my partner, I had discovered she had never seen the movie or read any of his work and grew up without any exposure to the franchise.
She’s an archeologist and an anthropologist with a passion for Egyptian, Viking and Greco-Roman history, so early in our relationship I arranged a movie date with her where we camped in front of the TV and another avid Conan fan was instantly born.
So now, fast forward to the launch of Conan Exiles on consoles. Here as we sit with a leather bound collector’s edition omnibus of Howard’s collective Conan stories on the shelf and battle-ready replicas of the Atlantean and Father’s swords from Windlass Steelcraft hanging on the wall, we dove into renting a private server and immediately adored the game for its authenticity and its vision.
Granted, we had many troubles. Lots of bugs and lag while Gportal insisted on $23/month for a minimum of 20 slots for the server. They told us they can’t provide a 10 slot server due to technical constraints with the game’s netcode, so it was with a heavy heart that we had to set the game aside and hope for post launch support.
Then we began to watch the developer live-streams. We subscribed to this subreddit and we began watching the videos Funcom uploaded to their YouTube channel with company progress reports for investors. We realized the game launched without a production phase because, as it turns out, Funcom was facing the possibility of bankruptcy.
We listened intently to what Funcom said about their plans for the game, what we can expect from the game’s post-launch production and what kind of passion they have for the franchise. We’re from the Atari/NES generation of gamers, so you can imagine we were impressed by the honesty and transparency coming from a game company in the form of these YouTube videos.
So we purchased the first two DLC packs out of faith, knowing Funcom told us it would help with production costs and even though we were not actively playing the game. You can imagine that we felt we were taking a big leap, considering all of the anti-consumer stuff happening in other parts of the games industry. Then, one by one, we began to watch a miracle.
First, we noticed Funcom community staff began to actively participate on Reddit and Funcom’s forum. They were answering their fans with the same friendliness and transparency we heard in the company’s various live-streams and that felt very good.
Next, we saw numerous game-changing optimization patches roll out. Soon came some network optimizations, framerate stability, crash fixes, challenge balances, combat reworks, and much more. It didn’t take long to realize what we were watching was a video game company doing what they said they were going to do in an age where too many video game companies don’t.
Fast forward to this week when I reinstalled the game to scout out what changed with this latest patch. I’m blown away. The game felt smoother, I felt in control of combat, I no longer felt cheated when I died (and in fact I died a lot less now that bug related death wasn’t a factor).
I’m now level 35 on an official PvE server and I didn’t even see any giant walls blocking story content or resources. In fact, what I saw were nice people making stairways and bridges that helped me reach content, not wall me off from it. I even began to see written signs that told me I was approaching an area designated for mining, or logging, or simply a petting zoo.
Granted, I still had a couple bugs. I was having the “Failed to place building” thing, and it took me ten seconds to see it was in fact listed as a known issue in the patch notes. Then I noticed an older bug where thralls wouldn’t equip their weapons or attack properly, and I asked about it last night here. As I write this, I’m waking up to a quick and polite response about it and my post was tagged with “dev response”.
Suddenly, I was triggered with positivity and I had to write this. I’ve never seen such quick, honest, transparent and genuine effort put into a video game before. Funcom told me what my money would be used for and that’s precisely what they appear to be doing.
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone involved for being so honest and forthcoming about every part of what this project is and what it has coming for it. It truly is a wonderful game that keeps very faithful to the Conan franchise but there’s also a wonderful company behind it, one that isn’t afraid to admit financial woes and allow their investor calls to be visible to customers. One that actually has a shared passion for the franchise and wants us to be informed and satisfied with the game. In a world where spending our money on a game can sometimes feel like a lawless Wild West full of bandits and robbers, it’s hard to describe how refreshing it is to do honest business with an honest people.
To my surprise, just as Gportal promised, they even finally offer 10 slot servers at $11/month now that network improvements have happened. So, Funcom, you kept your promise and now we’re keeping ours. The remaining two DLC packs will get factored into our April/May budgets and we’ll pick up the others as they come out. We’re also likely going to restart our private server in April since 10-slot servers are literally half the price of the old 20-slot servers (I did a math there).
Thank you for using our money the way you promised us you would and thank you for not letting us rabid Conan fans down.
Sincerely, a very impressed couple of returning players.
PS: Please pass along my request for a Stygian culture DLC pack. I’m a Pict guy, myself, but my partner is a Set fan and she would love it.
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