I know most of our coverage of Funcom's Early Access survival sandbox Conan Exiles has been directed at a single feature: the size-adjustable and physics-enabled male genitalia. In my defense—not that it's much of a defense—I have the mentality of a 12-year-old when it comes to dangling, jiggling manparts: they're just sort of funny, especially when set to music. Plus, in a Reddit AMA on Friday, Funcom spoke about the possibility of a related future feature for Conan Exiles: the ability to cut the testicles off another player.
First, though, a more important topic. In a post on the Exiles Steam page, Funcom acknowledged the server issues some players (including myself) have experienced as their game hit Early Access:
"We have already released several patches and the entire team is working on getting the next one ready. We remain one hundred percent committed to the Early Access model and that means listening to the community and making sure we improve the game constantly. Right now we are focusing on the most pressing issues like rubberbanding, disconnects, and other server related issues, and as soon as we have that under control we can start looking closer at gameplay improvements as well as new content and features"
The issue arose from an unexpectedly high demand for servers, something many multiplayer games have experienced upon launching:
"Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming demand for servers and our needs for administrating them, our official partner has been unable to deliver the level of quality and service we require. Because of this we have mutually agreed to end the partnership. We are in the process of finding new partners with the ideal hardware we can move the existing game databases to. However, due to the high demand for Conan Exiles servers, many hosting companies are simply out of the hardware that we need and as such this process might take a few days."
Moving on: didn't I say something about a possible castration feature earlier? Yes. The revelation came in response to a question during Funcom's AMA about how human sacrifice would work in the brutal survival sandbox.
"Similar to the way in which you capture thralls, we would like you to be able to drag players back to your altars and sacrifice them for a massive boost," Funcom responded. "We might also add specific killing equipment such as iron maidens etc. In addition we really want you to be able to harvest the heads of your foes and stick them on spikes outside and around your bases. Maybe even at some point...castration."
Yikes. Looks like those of you running around with your balls out in Exiles might want to take some time to craft some pants after all. Perhaps several pairs. Perhaps made out of metal.
Of course, not all of the AMA revolved around testicles. In terms of their overall vision, and where they see Exiles fitting into the survival sandbox genre, Funcom said:
"Our vision for the game is to find the line between Skyrim and Minecraft. We want to have a game where NPCs inhabit a living, breathing world, but where players make a real impact on the environment and become a part of that world."
Combat, which is currently a bit sloppy in Early Access, sounds like it's a priority for Funcom:
"Right now we are improving the control feel of combat, a bunch of small things that lift the experience that we just didn't have time to get to before Early Access launch. We're also looking at how bows and crossbows work. Beyond that we are planning to separate light and heavy attack buttons which gives us greater flexibility. Oh and dodge, we need to take a pass on dodge. So yeah, we will keep working on combat for the foreseeable future."
Finally, returning to the matter of the now-notorious size-adjustable dicks, Funcom was asked whose idea it was to include an endowment slider in the first place.
"We discussed nudity early on and decided that for the lore and setting, nudity was something we wanted to go with," Funcom responded. "The slider was a natural evolution of that, especially seeing we had a similar slider for breasts. Equality and all that."
