I’ve heard lots of comments lately (especially pertaining to Age of Conan’s open beta) about the amount of content going into this game at launch.  One particular comment was from the thread on FoH:

I think theres enough content in the game to keep peoples interest until they can add more content…. They have a solid month of gameplay for casuals that has a reasonable level of polish.. if they fix up the 50+ zones that will turn into 2-3 months of content and with cities and crafting if they are good and worthwhile thats content for the forseeable future.

So you’re a new game on the scene.  You’re releasing your game at a time that is a relatively good time to launch - the big boy is still between expansion cycles (WoW), some newer games have launched within the past 6-8 months and haven’t made much of a dent in your audience (PotBS, Hellgate:London, Tabula Rasa, etc.), some games are sort of chugging along but not doing anything terribly exciting right now (LotRO, EQ2).  People are waiting for ‘the next big thing’ and you hope to capture those people. 

How do you balance the amount of content you’re providing vs. how polished your game is?  We’ve seen games that have provided a decent amount of content but have been low on the polish (EQ2 at launch.  We’ve seen lots of games that were high on polish but low on content at launch that have grown substantially (Lord of the Rings Online comes to mind most of all).  And we’ve seen games that provided a good amount of both (WoW).  We’ve also seen games that failed to provide much of either (Vanguard, Hellgate:London). 

How much content do you think is the bare minimum to launch your game?  Where would you place the bar for how poor your polish can be as long as you have plenty of ’stuff’ for people to do?  Where do you think Age of Conan fits in the spectrum?  How little polished content is acceptable, and how fast do you need to put out new content to satiate the appetites of your new subscribers?  Do you subscribe to a game in hopes that eventually there will be a lot of things to do, or do you wait until they’re in and be "behind the times" a bit while you catch up? 

As someone mentioned in the previous thread, here is the latest patch release notes just about the Demonologist class alone:

Demonologist
» Updated numerous names and descriptions on spells and feats for the demonoloist.
» Demon Heart of Chatha should now increase both mana and health regeneration.
» Cursed by Hell should now have a more consistent effect.
» Cursed by Heaven should now have a more consistent debuff and effect.
» Chaotic Blast should now deal area damage if Cursed by the Heavens or Hell are active.
» Consume Flames now has the proper cooldown.
» Demonic Frenzy now correctly adds splash damage to pet spells.
» Demonic Heart now correctly lowers the caster’s Holy Invulnerability.
» Some issues with Detonation should now be resolved.
» Diabolic Insight has been converted to a single rank spell. Ranks 2-4 have been removed from the game.
» Earth Recharge should now trigger off all ranks of the spell lines affected.
» Fires of Gehenna (Rank 6) should now have the correct fatality chance.
» Gates of Hell should now deal damage upon expiring if the target is a Demon.
» Gates of Hell should now have the appropriate visual effects.
» Greater Flames should now properly increase the damage and casting time of Fires of Gehenna. Spells granted by feats should no longer persist in the spellbook after untraining the feat. Spells granted by feats should now have manacosts based on a percentage of base mana at the character level instead of a static amount.
» Hell’s Pavise Rank 3 should now grant the correct increase to the damage shield granted by the Demon Avenger.
» Infernal Knowledge has been converted to a single rank spell. Ranks 2-4 have been removed from the game.
» Let Them Burn should now have the correct cooldown. It will also now properly increase in damage the longer it is channeled.
» Living Thunderstorm should now correctly disappear after exploding.
» Overload should now trigger from and affect the Fires of Gehenna, Shockstrike, Inferno of Amher, Shockblast, Hellfire Stream, Shock and Wicked Bolt spells.
» Planar Shift will now correctly reduce the aggro of targets in the vicinity. Planar Shift no longer mistakenly decreases the caster’s miss chance.
» Set’s Chosen should now correctly decrease the periodic damage dealt by Pact with Set and Bloody Pact with Set.
» The secondary splash damage from Shockblast is now limited to 3 targets per splash.
» Thunderclap now has the correct 40 second cooldown.
» Unholy Hate should now have the correct description.
» The Whispers of War spell no longer exists. (Note: If you already had this spell trained, you may have issues in your spellbook if you attempt to use the spell.) The Demonic War feat now grants the Demonic War spell.
» Base damage of Hellfire Stream has been increased
» Base damage of Shock has been increased
» The base damage of Inferno of Amher has been decreased and its benefit from bonus fire damage increased
» Inferno of Amher now has a 3 second reuse time
» The base damage of Shockblast has been decreased and its benefit from bonus electrical damage increased
» Shockblast now has a 3 second reuse time
» The base damage and benefit from bonus damage on Chaotic Blast has been significantly increased
» Pyromancer and Natural Conductor feats now grant significantly more bonus damage, to be in line with normalized bonus damage contributions.
» Fixed a problem where Fiery Torment was not doing correct damage when you have Infernal Knowledge running.

Wow.  That’s a lot of class changes for right before launch.  I haven’t yet played Age of Conan so I’m not going to pass any judgement - but that’s a bit scary. 

Anyway, content vs. polish - the age old debate.  Is content really king with a game launch?  And here’s the money question:

Is it harder to recover from a launch with low polish or a launch with low content?  The answer might not be as simple as it seems.