14 DAY TRIAL // Craig Morrison, the game director for Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, hopes that the game will get the Player versus Players consequences system as soon as it's done, which probably means this week.
While talking to Eurogamer, Morrison stated that “It's very, very soon. It's been on the test server for three or four weeks, and we're actually doing final tests on it this morning, as I speak to you. The hope is that if it's not this week, it'll be early next week”.
Age of Conan initially promised a complex Players versus Players combat system but the game pretty much failed to deliver it on launch. Players complained that the system had to be reworked and Funcom decided to work hard on a completely new experience which it aimed to deliver via two updates.
Players versus Players leveling already exists in the MMO and there are some pretty strong incentives to take out other players, but the problem is that there are no consequences to less than ethical tactics, like attacking low level players repeatedly. There is no mechanism in place in order to limit unfair tactics and to encourage players to be constructive in their combat yet. Consequences will make it harder for high level players to gang up on those that are weaker while making sure that match ups between people who have characters that are almost equal in strength are engaging.
The MMO should really do something to attract new players and keep the ones it has. The launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King will convince some players to abandon the Funcom developed MMO, which is bad news when taking into account the fact that servers have already been consolidated in order to keep populations constant.