James Lee
12:05 (BST)
17/09/2008
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Funcom: Godager stepped down as "consequence" of Conan problems
Gaute Godager, co-founder of Funcom, stepped down as a "consequence" of failures in Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, according to the company's European product manager, Erling Ellingsen.
Earlier today, it was announced that the producer and game director of Age of Conan decided to quit the developer after 16 years, saying he was "dissatisfied" with the title.
"We don't want to go into all the specifics on what he was dissatisfied with - it's sufficient to say that there were elements in the game that he was not happy with and he wanted to take the consequence of that," Ellingsen told GamesIndustry.biz. "The consequence was him leaving the company and allowing someone else to take over the project."
He went on to say that the Age of Conan's new lead, Craig Morrison, previously producer and game director for Anarchy Online, would focus on a variety of issues raised by players.
"Right now there are hundreds of thousands of players and pretty much all of them have an opinion - that's good, we want everybody to have an opinion on what direction we can take the game in," Ellingsen commented.
"In a post launch period it is very important for people to listen to what the players want and then acting on it and that adding more content at certain level ranges, make player vs. player combat more interesting, adding more items, fixing issues, problems with the game, and so on."
"That's basically our big priority from now on, acting on what the players are asking for. I think Craig is going to be really good for this because he has a very, very solid experience in working with online game communities," he added.
Ellingsen said that what players are calling for the most is more interesting player vs. player and new content updates, and that is what Funcom will focus on.
"The first things will be that we are updating the PVP, we're adding new PVP features and that's something players have been requesting for months now, they've been screaming at us," he explained.
"Next new content will introduce new areas into the game, new quests, hours of more exploration and so on. That's two of the things we're working very hard on right now."
Adding:"I think bringing more content, keeping people entertained, is one of the top priorities."
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