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Darkfall's failure and Age of Conan's new found success.
TheNinjaboy
Member Posts: 243
Disclaimer: I want to start off by saying I am a fan of both games and am rooting for much success for Funcom and Aventurine.
Darkfall's launch all of a sudden makes Age of Conan's original release look flawless!
I resubscribed to Age of Conan just shortly before the server mergers.
My jaw dropped at how much the game as improved for the better.
Their replacement of the Lead game Designer Gaute Godager with Craig Morrison was the best thing that ever happened to Age of Conan.
Bugs started getting fixed, communication between Funcom and players started happening, and player input started becoming a reality.
The recent reports of Funcom being around (or just under) 100k subs in the CFO article was a report from 3 months ago and based on Q4 08 information. More reasonable numbers estimated from that period were closer to 140k subs.
Age of Conan has seen a steady growth of almost 25% a month since that report data.
The bleeding started to stop when Gems got disabled and continued as bugs were getting fixed.
Craig Morrison added PvP XP / Gear, announced Server mergers, and released one of the greatest success of AoC since their launch: 1.04 Content patch.
Population increased from 100k-140k (estimates from DnB in the Maximum PC CFO resignation article on 23rd and other estimates from reputable sources/members ) to current numbers of 180k-200k subs in a matter of 3 months.
CURRENT activity on game monitoring sites has Conan # 9 out of all the MMOs online.
It has stayed in the top 50 of all games monitored for the past 60 days.
This is a HUGE jump compared to what we were seeing on the same sites in Oct./Nov 08.
What's the point?
Aventurine can survive through a bad launch as well.
Other games have done it however this is 2008 and 2009.
People expect a SMOOTHER launch then what happened in 2003 and 2004 with other MMOs.
If you enjoy the concepts presented in Darkfall and have the patience to wait out all these growing pains you will get a good game with an active community that is going to increase in fun as time passes.
Comments
None has even played this game properly yet. The starting Area on darkfall is better then the whole of AoC!
Yeah, there wasn't much wrong with AoC's launch. It was fairly smooth.
The problem was the whole game was crap. I like the lore, the scenery, and the other stuff. But the game itself...was crap. Loading screens, bottlenecked zones, and a small amount of them at that.
Cool, did they remove the instancing and add full loot?
No?
/fail
AoC is a good game right now and getting better and better.
And AoC's release was pretty great even without comparing it to Darkfall. No problems during launch, except the game itself was lacking.
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I was waiting for Darkfall.So i thought i would try Aoc again .I played for 1 hr,and remembered why i quit the first time.I got the e-mail today that my accout had expired.Wasted $15 . Have since uninstalled so i wont make that mistake again
There is no new found success for Funcom's Age of Conan only loss of stockholders money. I will grant that they being Funcom can talk a good story but lack walking the walk part. That is only my opion but i think there may be alot more who feel the same way.
MAGA
Yeah, I was impressed by the uberness of a boring town, terrible animation, and 1 Goblin Camp for 100 people to fight over for gear. WEEEE!! Let's all run around naked, and LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB!!!!!
Darkfall is hardly great. I give 3 months until total failure.
Yeah, I was impressed by the uberness of a boring town, terrible animation, and 1 Goblin Camp for 100 people to fight over for gear. WEEEE!! Let's all run around naked, and LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB!!!!!
Darkfall is hardly great. I give 3 months until total failure.
While AoC starting area features cinematics, voice acting and unique combo system
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The problem with AoC still remains, I too played at release, I also quit and returned around 1-2 months ago for a few days to check in on things. Yes the game runs better, yes not any major bugs left but what still gets me and caused me to just unsubscirbe after only a week of playing just a few hours is still the absolute worthlessness of pvp.
You lose NOTHING for pvp and gain NOTHING. The pvp levels are a joke, I have a 80 ranger and this is what I would do - stealth and either kill someone in 2 shots or be killed in 2 shots, res, rinse and repeat. It was stupid it was just like 20 lvl 80's taking turns killing eachother over and over because there was no penalty for living or dyeing.
Enter darkfall - People actually need to think before repeatedly killing themselves in pvp, why? because they lose there equipment, on the flip side if I actually think out my pvp and play it careful I can make a living doing it in Darkfall, in AOC its all worthless.
I wasn't trying to make this an Age of Conan vs. Darkfall.
I was just trying to say that even with Age of Conan's failures in 2008 they HAVE and ARE turning it around in 2009.
Stockholders are VERY happy in Jan 09 and Feb. 09 because the most recent numbers have shown around a 80k population increase within 2 billing cycles.
But enough defending AoC anyone that has tried the game and knows the current stats can see that if the trend continues it will be one of the greatest MMO turnaround stories in the history of gaming.
My point is this can happen to Darkfall and in a shorter amount of time.
They have some great ideas and concepts and just need some more time adjusting to and fixing their game based on the new population increases since Beta.
Yeah, I was impressed by the uberness of a boring town, terrible animation, and 1 Goblin Camp for 100 people to fight over for gear. WEEEE!! Let's all run around naked, and LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB!!!!!
Darkfall is hardly great. I give 3 months until total failure.
While AoC starting area features cinematics, voice acting and unique combo system
Yeah seriously. I'm not a HUGE fan of AoC, but it has a LOT better potential than other games INCLUDING DF. That whole full loot thing sounds great, until you realize it's kinda not. I mean no one is going to be roaming around with worthwhile gear, and money anyways, and no instancing means what? All worthwhile mobs will just be forever down basically.
I don't see the thrill in that unless your "hardcore", and lack a life outside of gaming. I'd put my money on a game with cutting-edge graphics, tons of room to grow, and a solid player-base.
But I digress, since I could really care less if either game survives. Just wanted to point out the utter failure of people trying to hype up DF. It COULD be good, but really, it needs to be in someone else's hands I think. Like ANYONE.
As someone who has extensively played AoC calling the game successful is far from it. I played release till September. In that Time I was doing raids. There was little reason to do PvP so all you did was raid. It was WOW a supposed PvP game that was based on raiding for items. Later came PvP armour. The goal was to earn PvP points and then unlock the ability to purchases armour and weapons. The system was severely flawed and easily exploitable. If you did not have the gear you were useless. I would talk about Gems but the one thing that let you have fun PvPing was nerfed. Oh wait theres more. Have you ever crafted anything in AoC? I guess not. Its a terrible crafting system. Want to make money??? Lets go farm 4 instances in Old tarantia and hope for purple drops. Hmm now lets merge a PvP server with a RP server. OH NOES we screwed up the merger. Lets try again a month later and take away peoples Tier 3 cities and battle keeps and put them on a server they don't want to play on. Finishing blow? Lets open transfers for free. Wow said server becomes the "solo experience server".
Failcom < Adventurine
lol @ ;OP
AoC failed b/c it barely had any of the features promised. Df, on the other hand, has most of the features promised, the features that are in are horrendously implimented though, I still think AoC is worse featurewise though.... because its a 100% themepark game whereas DF is only 40-50% a themepark game
When I'm energetic I'm:
the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
When I'm at default I'm:
WHITE/BLUE
Lol according to this I'm bipolar :O
I could argue about "most of the features":
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/225957/Darkfall-has-not-lived-up-to-promises-Heres-why.html
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Well, I feel that the full loot isn't quite as bad as some people make it out to be, as gear is not very important and extremely easy to get.. Hell, you can kill Dark Knights by exploiting pathing issues while naked with only a bow and some arrows, and get a huge stockpile of nice armor (terrain and pathing exploits have been around waaaay before the sync problems on release). If you are idiotic, and don't start piling up gear in the bank early, sure, getting looted sucks, but gear isn't exactly hard to procure. You're not going to lose some incredible plate piece that took you weeks of running a dungeon to get. Great weapons and armor are easy to stockpile on the first day of playing DF, if you know what you're doing.
Oh I forgot about battle keeps. WOW a hole in the WALL!!! Lets sucide to defend our score. Oh wait we can walk through this wall. WAIT we can logout in base and log in when its time (as the enemy). OHnoes i was warped to a capital city when I died and can no longer enter an instance. Siege weapons that cant dmg targets. Wow this is fun.
You just made the game sound even worse. Do you mean "know how to exploit" by saying "know what you're doing"? Is knowledge of exploits a neccessity to be able to do good in Darkfall?
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I was there for AoC's launch so can't really see how many consider it good now, Even the beta testers were all but demanding it not be released yet because it had fail written all over it. Ah the memories, falling through the world, no not just me, many others. The bugs and glitches of yore, while things started out rocky with AoC, they had a good spin doctor lol. EE, would come out and say, Day 2 all is well, nothing to see, the game is great. Yet we continued to complain, and yes I am reffering to live game lol. Mods liked to play Nazi house keeper though and remove any and all negative posts.
On the plus side though, they turned a rocky start into an utter disaster. Each pacth broke it a bit more and more and more lol. For 3 months it was the largest pile of chit out there. Then it started to get a bit better, just a little, but it was getting better lol.
This wasn't even going into missing or simply broken content lol.
So no, DFO's launch so far isn't great, but it is far from the debacle AoC's was. Time will tell if it makes AoC's launch look good though, still a bit of time left in that first 3 months.
I could argue about "most of the features":
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/225957/Darkfall-has-not-lived-up-to-promises-Heres-why.html
other than player owned shops and houses, we knew all of those features would be out for quite some time, when i say "promised" I obviously don't mean the FAQ page, b/c nearly nothing from there is actually in the game :P (the page is several years old).
We knew everything that would be in the game and everything was cut before hand b/c the devs told us, prestige classes are out, hirelings are out, etc.
The problem with DF, like i said earlier, is that the implimentation of the several features in game is horrible atm.
When I'm energetic I'm:
the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
When I'm at default I'm:
WHITE/BLUE
Lol according to this I'm bipolar :O
So you've done DF's crafting? It wasn't exactly good man. Crafting in almost ANY game is worthless now. DF is no better. Vanguard had prolly the best crafting system I've seen in a while, albeit a huge time sink.
I expected this thread to be another attempt to bash Darkfall/Aventurine, but I was wrong. Thanks for the simple but quite truthful post. Indeed, a rocky start does not mean the end for the game. It was something I anticipated and am in no way disappointed over. It just means we have to wait a little more, while we can obviously see they're working extremely hard to fix the issues presented.
So you've done DF's crafting? It wasn't exactly good man. Crafting in almost ANY game is worthless now. DF is no better. Vanguard had prolly the best crafting system I've seen in a while, albeit a huge time sink.
No crafting system was better than the one in SWG (EvE online follows this). I care more about PvP than crafting now anyways. I have not extensively played DF. I did get a preorder spot and could not play becasue of sync issues.
Even tho both launches where and are terible you cant comepare both why?
AoC is themepark game it guide you through game and have insane amount of instance/loadscreens.
AoC have carebear pvp no risk of loosing anything its limited to 50 max per server load and many maps are small linair path through maps is easy gank for groups.
Darkfall is sandbox one huge world and no instance loedscreens or guidance ingame.
Darkfall is a true free for all game with full loot(starwarsguardtowers/alignment sytem are however terible)
Darkfall clantowns are scattered all over the world in all sizes some secretly hidden others dominant in some areas.
Darkfall have superior FREEDOM if compare to AoC.
Choice is easy if Darkfall overcome all the hick ups the and problems they have with this launch, there is no difficult choice no competition at all DARKFALL WINS, would be foolish to play AoC over Darkfall.
Good luck with AoC but all who like Darkfall will never take step to THEMEPARK CAREBEAR MMO.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Yeah, I was impressed by the uberness of a boring town, terrible animation, and 1 Goblin Camp for 100 people to fight over for gear. WEEEE!! Let's all run around naked, and LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB,LMB!!!!!
Darkfall is hardly great. I give 3 months until total failure.
While AoC starting area features cinematics, voice acting and unique combo system
Yeah seriously. I'm not a HUGE fan of AoC, but it has a LOT better potential than other games INCLUDING DF. That whole full loot thing sounds great, until you realize it's kinda not. I mean no one is going to be roaming around with worthwhile gear, and money anyways, and no instancing means what? All worthwhile mobs will just be forever down basically.
I don't see the thrill in that unless your "hardcore", and lack a life outside of gaming. I'd put my money on a game with cutting-edge graphics, tons of room to grow, and a solid player-base.
But I digress, since I could really care less if either game survives. Just wanted to point out the utter failure of people trying to hype up DF. It COULD be good, but really, it needs to be in someone else's hands I think. Like ANYONE.
Indeed. Full loot sounds great, till you are a couple months down the road and cannot bear another sight of a goblin!
Not to mention you will get bored out of your skull running around naked doing the exact same thing you were doing at launch.
No one is going to give a toss about gear other then some Uber uber L337 guilds that farm the shit out of noobs and goblins for money and drops.
So what has the average player going for in Darkfall? Other then Pew Pew another noob who has nothing worth to loot, just like you.
The only reason EVE online has become so succesful is because they have an insurance system in place. Making losing all your stuff somewhat bareable for people to cope with.
Otherwise EVE would have bombed hard as all the PVP'ers wouldn't have come further then Pew Pew eachother in T1 frigates only.
That's why I give Earthrise a much better chance in succeeding then Darkfall at the moment. As Earthrise is following a bit the same model of FFA PVP as EVE Online.
You do know that FC had roughly 50 Mio. USD in cash on AoC release day? They burned 11 Mio in the past 8-9 months so they stand at 39 Mio. cash left. Their revenue dwindled from 18 Mio. in Q3 to 8.7 Mio in Q4. There is a reason while FC is a pennystock nowadays. Percentwise the stock went up about 80% from december untlin now. But worthwise only from 0,25 EUR to 0,43 EUR. And before AoC they had a pretty stead 3.5 EUR. At launch they peaked at 7.00EUR. They survive, right. But you can't compare that to AV, or do you think some mild soul gives them another 11 Mio. USD to toy around with and eventually lose?