07/04/2008: "Fixing Age of Conan's gender bias"

Funcom is busy addressing complaints from players of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures that female characters are weaker than their male counterparts when making combination attacks.

The developer has admitted that the problem is real and is caused by the length of the character animations rather than an intentional slight on the fairer sex.

"Let me begin with saying 'yes, we here at Funcom agree with you; this is an unacceptable bug,'" said Age of Conan designer Svein Erik Jenset told the game's forum. "We never intended for any character to be stronger/weaker than another based on its gender."

"The main reason for the discrepancy in damage output that you're seeing is that the length of an animation isn't equal for both Male and Female characters in many cases," Jenset noted. "This is what we're currently fixing, but there's roughly 800 to 1000 animations...this naturally takes a lot more time."

That means it could be three or four weeks until the issue is resolved, but resolved it will be.

So chalk another point up for equality. Oh who are we kidding anyway, most female characters will be controlled by 12 year old boys.