Interesting blog post about AOC fail or sucess...

Lobotomist

This is reposted from an interesting blog

http://stroppsworld.com/2008/07/08/why-age-of-conan-will-succeed/

 

It is a good analysis of grim situation AOC is facing, but also explains how AOC could easily turn around

 

 

Why Age of Conan Will Succeed

Posted by Stropp on July 8, 2008

I ended up canceling my Age of Conan subscription today.

When I did, I was directed to the usual cancellation page that firstly offered a drop down list offering a number of canned reasons, and then to a page with an edit box where I was asked to go into a little more detail.

To paraphrase myself, I simply said that I was unsubscribing because the game was buggy and was released too early. I thought about adding that I wasn’t inclined to pay full tote to beta test the game, but didn’t want to be churlish.

So as of today, I have fifteen days left in my account. I might pop in once or twice before that time expires, but given that I’ve got a couple of other things on the go at the moment…

One of the unique experiences of any MMORPG are the official forums. Originally, perhaps somewhat naively, I expected that a mature game might have more mature forum posters. Boy! Was I wrong about that one. I would never have thought that any forums could be worse than the World of Warcraft forums, but the Age of Conan take the cake.

Essentially unmoderated, the bulk of the threads seem to fall into one of two main categories. These are "Why Age of Conan is great" and "Why Age of Conan sucks." The Age of Conan is great mob tend to consist of the fanboi element and their argument contain the logic that not only is the game great, but it is better than all others, that no other game was as good at launch, and we should not expect it to be so. They believe Age of Conan will be around for a long time.

The Age of Conan sucks mob appear to be the disgruntled players who are sick of bugs, but who also expect the world on a silver platter, that everything should be working as intended, and that the game should have five years of highly polished content at release. They also expect that Age of Conan will go the way of Asheron’s Call 2, and Auto Attack and join the MMO Deadpool as soon as Warhammer Online comes out.

While I’m not what you could remotely consider a Fanboi, I tend to side with the first group when it comes to Age of Conan’s future. I don’t think that Age of Conan is going to go for a swim in the deadpool in the next few years but will, after getting over their early release blues, build up to a solid long term game. What follows are my reasons for this view.

1. They’ve sold over 700,000 copies of the game. Funcom have been a bit loose with their sales stats since launch. Press releases stating they’ve shipped over a million copies are nice, but that doesn’t indicate how many were actually sold. Funcom have just recently announced that they have have 700,000 accounts. While that doesn’t also indicate how many will go on past the first month, it does figure into actual box sales. At 60ish US dollars a box, that’s a gross revenue at store front of 42 million dollars. (How much Funcom actually gets of that is another story.) That’s more than enough to pay the bills for a long while.
2. Provided they resolve the issues, players can always resubscribe. There’s two aspects of sales: Getting a customer, and keeping the customer. The fact is Funcom have managed to convince 700,000 customers to part with their money to buy an Age of Conan box. There’s no doubt that they are losing some of those customers now, and some of those have been lost permanently. But… each one of those departing customers has already done the hard part, they’ve spent the money and now own an account. It’s a lot easier to come back later when all you have to do is reactivate your subscription.
3. Funcom are good at marketing to their old customers. They’ve had a lot of experience with that sort of marketing with Anarchy Online. Of all the games that I no longer play, it’s Anarchy Online that I get marketing from the most. Funcom are not shy about putting out the special offers, and free game time to old players. Once they’ve sorted out Age of Conan you can bet they’ll start emailing canceled account holders with offers to lure them back in.
4. Age of Conan is an IP with a lot of potential. It’s clear even from the current state of the game that there is a huge amount of potential for fun and adventure. As I’ve said before the Tortage experience is one of the best newbie area experiences I’ve had. Get the rest of the game like this and players will come back in droves.
5. People still want a MMORPG in the mature niche. And Age of Conan fills this desire. As far as I know, there aren’t many MMOs out there that do that, and there’s not that many in the pipeline either, at least not for the next few years as far as I can tell. When AoC is polished up, that alone will bring subscribers back.
6. Funcom is an established player in the MMORPG market. Though that doesn’t preclude them from stuffing the whole thing up (just look at Turbine and Asheron’s Call 2) it also means that they have been there and done that. The fact of the matter is that they brought Anarchy Online through one of the most infamously bad launches in MMO history and into success. AO has just celebrated its seventh birthday and is regarded as one of the great MMO games. Given this history, I doubt Funcom will just give up on AoC.

Given Funcoms track record, I don’t see Age of Conan fading into the sunset any time soon. I suspect the reality will be somewhere between great success and failure and that around 2015 we will be receiving press releases from Funcom announcing the seventh anniversary of Age of Conan.

What do you think; will Age of Conan have a long and successful run, or a short and ignominious life?

Reborn17

I disagree, despite selling 700k units, the game cost 70 million to make, and continues to cost development dollars since ITS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT. At last check the gamecards are 418th on amazon's bestseller list in its first paid month meaning its hemorraging subscribers out of every orafice, so to speak, and will not have the money to update as frequently or as effectively as they need to, they have also alienated their own playerbase by lying and squelching dissent  and abusing the power of the only NDA to ever be enforced after a game's release date. They have also destroyed the most important thing any mmo can have with its players, good will, and no amount of fake or fanboi posts will make the hatred left in its place easily go away. At the end of the day, as the actual next gen mmos, not just the BS ones marketed as next gen, come into being, cantancorous, clunky, broken, incomplete crapfests like AoC will fade into the annuls of game history as part of the darkness before the dawn.

 

 

samuraislyr

Originally posted by Reborn17


I disagree, despite selling 700k units, the game cost 70 million to make, and continues to cost development dollars since ITS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT.
 
 

 

Last I heard the budget was capped at 25 million..... sure with 750K boxes at 50-90 bucks each well I'm sure they got their money back

Papilotti

Originally posted by Reborn17


I disagree, despite selling 700k units, the game cost 70 million to make, and continues to cost development dollars since ITS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT. At last check the gamecards are 418th on amazon's bestseller list in its first paid month meaning its hemorraging subscribers out of every orafice, so to speak, and will not have the money to update as frequently or as effectively as they need to, they have also alienated their own playerbase by lying and squelching dissent  and abusing the power of the only NDA to ever be enforced after a game's release date. They have also destroyed the most important thing any mmo can have with its players, good will, and no amount of fake or fanboi posts will make the hatred left in its place easily go away. At the end of the day, as the actual next gen mmos, not just the BS ones marketed as next gen, come into being, cantancorous, clunky, broken, incomplete crapfests like AoC will fade into the annuls of game history as part of the darkness before the dawn.
  

 

Couldn't say it better myself.

Inzra

Originally posted by Lobotomist


Given Funcoms track record, I don’t see Age of Conan fading into the sunset any time soon. I suspect the reality will be somewhere between great success and failure and that around 2015 we will be receiving press releases from Funcom announcing the seventh anniversary of Age of Conan.
What do you think; will Age of Conan have a long and successful run, or a short and ignominious life?

 

Well they've had AO running for 7 years, free to play since 2005, so I definitely think AoC will have a LONG run.

Then again there are several games that will have that, UO and EQ still running, I think we'll see alot of games in general run for a LONG time.

As for successful, depends how success is defined.

If successful would mean being a WoW killer, then it, and all other games in the genre have failed utterly.

I think Funcom regards AoC to be a success even as of today, they probably have more subs than what they expected.

If it will be MORE successful depends how they handle all the bugs and errors, what the expansions will be like, if any other future games will be able to provide the same with better and more...a.s.o.

Stuka1000

I stopped reading after he refered to the official forums as unmoderated.  This alone shows that he wrote that blog in the 1st week.  After that the forum moderators all turned into Funcom is god automatons with any hint of dissent being squashed.

mo0rbid

unmoderated? you get banned if you say anything they don't want others to see

Reborn17

Originally posted by samuraislyr

Originally posted by Reborn17


I disagree, despite selling 700k units, the game cost 70 million to make, and continues to cost development dollars since ITS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT.
 
 

 

Last I heard the budget was capped at 25 million..... sure with 750K boxes at 50-90 bucks each well I'm sure they got their money back

 

Possible, but unlikely, a standard console game can cost 20mil to produce and it doesn't have a quarter of the software and networking concerns an mmo does. There's also a lot more to the costs than just making it.:

• "Development spend: How much it costs to develop the game (i.e. the budget of the game). If it's marked as "incremental", it means it's a cost over the base development budget. To work out the total cost you must also include any licensing costs (like middleware or licensing a brand name).
• Developer royalty/unit: This is how much money the developer gets from each copy of the game sold. It can be GROSS (from the money that comes in the door), or NET (the money came in, but the expenses were taken out.) Needless to say, there's a massive difference between 10% of GROSS and 10% of NET. (Royalties tend to range from about 10% to 45% of NET depending on who you are, allowing for a fair definition of net.)
• Marketing spend: How much is spent advertising the game. (Commonly 10% of the project cost)
• CO-OP Advertising: How much money you give retailers to stock your game. (Normally 2.5% of project cost)
• Markdown Reserve: The proportion of all the copies of the game that won't sell at regular price and will need to be liquidated.
• COGS/Royalty: COGS means "Cost of Goods", or the cost of the box, the CD, the instructions manual and everything else that's included in the box. "Royalty" is how much money must be given to the owners of the platform (e.g. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) for each ccopy sold. This line is the sum of these two elements.
• Variable cost: This is cost that increases proportionally with the number of copies sold.
• Distribution: The cost of getting the game to the stores. (Commonly 2.5% of project cost)"

Based on presentation given by Kathy Schoback, GDC 2005. With Conan's hype I expect its advertising % to be larger.

Gamasutra article http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17028 regarding original IPs for single player game on console:

"Industry teams are growing, noted Zmak ( Radical Entertainment's president Kelly Zmak) , and that means costs are going up. "30 million is development dollars, the audio, all the aspects. How much does it cost to market? Ballpark 20 million. So you’re up 50 million bucks and you haven’t even got to shelf. Then you’ve got distribution costs. $7 per unit. $57 million in."

 

With Conan's scope, 70 mil seems reasonable, and a number I've heard a few times, and considering the upcoming xbox 360 release, and the continuing development dollars being expended, 70 mil is starting to look conservative, but who knows for sure. They say GTA IV cost 100 million altogether.

 

 

 

miagisan

whoever wrote that article is either blind or someone who lives in la la land

Kwailo

hmm unless they changed things.

I just canceled today also, no drop down box's, just a comment box and that was all.

Mithlean

There is IMHO 1 clear reason why i and alot of pvpers with me will never ever ever ever consider comming back to this game and what might even kill it for pveers too...

INSTANCED, all of it... in busy zones 30+ alternate reality's. And even if they do fix the whole summon to instance thing for party's etc. I couldn't care less. I always thought i hated games without PvP the most in the mmo genre which why i never played games like lotro etc. However this fully instanced pvp stuff takes the cake... Grats a new hatred is born atleast for me.

Smilex0311

Originally posted by Inzra


Well they've had AO running for 7 years, free to play since 2005, so I definitely think AoC will have a LONG run.

 

There is only two ways I would ever play ever this game again..

1.  Funcom delivers everything they promised in the "Hype-up" campaign, with minimal bugs. (not happening in the near future)

2.  Funcom makes AoC Free to play. (again not happening in the near future)

Cruzin

Hi guys,

 

I found the link here through the AOC forums.Frustration with the bugs,lag spikes,and unstable condtion of the game,has casued me to read the forums more often then actually play AOC.

 

  I had high hopes for AOC,but as of today,my sub is canceled.It's sad really,the game has so much potential,but with the lack of communication from Funcom,players are left to wonder  whats going on .Not the best way to keep your player base.

Unknown

Normally I would agree with the guy who wrote this blog.  However AoC has one major problem that makes it a special case.  It has a foundation of lying/dishonesty.

 

Real or percieved at this point it doesn't matter.  A large number of people have concluded Funcom was dishonest.  People don't forgive that.  And they actively work to destroy people or organizations they see as being dishonest.

 

Vanguard got "lucky" people blamed Braid McQuaid for most of it.  And the game is now essentially mostly under SOE and not Sigil.  SOE was not involved at all and for the most part has made VG "better".  Like or dislike the changes VG is certainly more playable now that SOE is putting more sane development on it.

 

VG can recover.  I doubt that it will but it can.  AoC may not die, but it can't overcome its stigma.

 

Nowhere have I mentioned anything about game mechanics or bugs etc.  Because in the end my whole reason for saying AoC is a special case is purely based on social issues.  It could run perfect and have plenty of content.  And then if they had released and said "Sorry guys some of the stuff we promised we couldn't quite do"  then they would maybe recover.   But as it is now their percieved dishonesty means they are at best niche and possibly worse.