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How to get half a million players (who quit) back to Age of Conan?
Shillz
Member Posts: 36
Since launch Age of Conan subscriptions have gone from an estimated 800k to only 100k. That means there could be over half a million players that have tried AoC but didn't like it. Some players will never come back but some might, and Funcom needs them.
There was supposed to be a some kind of a win-back-program, but for some reason Funcom hasn't launched it yet. The question is: Is this win-back-program enough, or does Funcom need to do something else?
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Comments
I don't think a public admission for lying to the community is the right way to go about attracting subscribers.
Public apology will not come. They have made all the admissions they are willing to make. Read between the lines, they know they dissapointed people and are working on reedeming themselves. They are now looking forward.
As for your questions. The proof is in the gameplay. If its fun, like Craig Morrison focuses on, people will play. They will return, they will stay in game and pay ther monthly fee. Most players play for fun and dont feel personally insulted by Funcom, only a few very vocal players are still insulted.
How will you get them to play? Well thats down to marketing. And guess what, Funcom has one of the best marketing teams in the MMO world. They are working on the winback program and one way is simply to send a mail to all former players, give them free time and maybe a free ingame item. Make them feel important.
As for your numbers they are most likely wrong. AoC has probably sold more than a million copies by now and probably has around 200K paying subscribers (of which some are not active playing anymore). Before you ask, no I cant verify the figures, but then again neither can you.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
The win-back campaign will come after patch 1.5 hits the live servers.
Craig Morisson's first interview, the first thing he did was a public appology about the state of the game. That was the very first thing he did, after Gaute left the company and he took his place.
The win-back campain has been discussed in great lenghts and is likely to come when Patch 1.05 has gone live.
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You could attract more people if you made the game significantly different to every other MMO out there...
I played AoC recently and I found it to be a visual wonder but lacking the fun factor. The classes all seemed very bland to me and the world narrow and confined. Combat felt extra clicky and less on tactics than most game I hvae played.
I think they need a major class and combat overhall to have any real chance of getting folks to return. The bottom line is that if a game is not fun people wont play it, no matter how good it looks. I would glady give it another try someday if they made sweeping changes to the problem areas.
I resubbed a couple weeks ago because of all the hoopla people have been making about the state of the game. I gave it a few days but didnt find it worth the monthly fee so cancelled shortly thereafter. The game just lacks a fun-factor.
Isnt erling flicked enough of an apology?
Like all niche games, Age of Conan is not for everyone.
10% absolutely love it!
20% play it because there is nothing more interesting for them at the moment.
70% hate it with passion!
If you have tried Age of Conan before and didn't find it fun, there is no need to resubscribe. The game hasn't magically changed. It's still the same game and if you didn't like it before, than guess what? You won't like it today.
I think they would have to address the reasons people quit before they offer any return incentives. I can't speak for anyone else, but I left the game over the piss-poor itemization. Screenshots show that the game hasn't improved at all in that department. Every character still looks the same and brown. I know this sounds like one little thing, but it's one of hundreds of common reasons people didn't like the game at launch, and I don't really think most of those concerns have been addressed.
Conan was such a train-wreck at launch, and so different from the game that was hyped, that I have lost all faith in Funcom. No only will I not be going back to AOC, I also won't have anything to do with their new MMO. All the time spend on that game should have been directed to the quickly failing MMO they already had on the market.
-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
The only thing they can to to bring me back is paying me to play their game, because its just that damn borring.
Yeah that would do it. But I still couldn't do it full-time no matter what they paid me.
To the OP: Change the name of the game and the splash screen and it might work...for a little while.
The game apparently was optimized for nvidia but not ati, and they ignored the problem for the first month or so. Basically my free month that came with the box purchase was wasted.
Now if they want to give a free month trial, I might give the game another go. Otherwise, they got their money but I feel ripped off because I met the system requirements but in cities outside of the starter area my fps dropped down to 5 or 8 fps. Not really fun or playable, atleast for me.
Craig himself blurted out in an interview that Age of Conan currently has only 100k subscriptions. Geez.. how much more proof do you need?
No he didnt. This is a shameless lie. If this ever came out in an interveiw it would be all over the stock chat forums and it would have been reflected in the shareprice . Thats my proof. Can you disprove me?
So you're right because no one can prove you are wrong?
Of course they can.
1) Search chat forums that follow Funcom stock. See if you can find anyone referring to an interview with CM and him talking about 100K. (dated before today :-) ) There are none, i follow several norwegian forums.
2) Look into their share price and compare the date of the interview with the shareprice development.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
To much spine and not enough substance is why I left the game and for me to even bother loading it on my machine it would have to be free. I alway pay to play my games but the damage done by Funcom is far to much this time to get me back with a short free period and a fancy items which most likely every man and his dog has the same, so sorry Concom you out of luck.
Next time they might just listen to their beta tester before panacing and rolling out another pile of Sh!t tbh, they never listened with their feed-back from AO and the same thing happened here with AoC too so the chances of anyone having an inpact on their mind set is very low. I will not even bother to beta test any other project they care to invest in either totally had enough BS from this company to last a lifetime.
Tilt game over for me.
Bandit.
Asbo
What was the video card you were using back then? Maybe it wasn't powerful enough and you had the game settings set to very high?
Let us know what was the model of the ATI card...
Only possible ways that I can forsee, for Funcom to get back those lost players, would either be if the majority of the people forgot about funcom, then found them again (unlikely). Or if they changed their name and released a good game for once.
I'll be the first to say I loved age of conan, I bought three copies of it, one for me and two for my friends an a game card for each. Then came the problems, they could never launch the game, they called and emailed daily with an above minimum requirements rig. The problem wasn't even in the game it was in the launcher itself it wouldn't download the files at all, or downloaded them slowly like they were still in beta. It drove me insane trying to figure out how to fix the problem and with the data copy protected I couldn't do like in the days of yore and just use a data transfer cable to send the patched launcher and game to my friends.
Add in the RP servers not really being rp at all just a bunch of zergs and kids you start to get grey hair, then they made it impossible to kill grey cons because they didn't want us farming look armor for our toons. They never put in the prestiege classes they promissed, and the decided to axe without telling most of the comunity.
The only way I would consider coming back is if funcom went back and actually put everything they promissed to put into this game and cut down on the grinding by adding in way more quests. As it stands Age of Conan could have been a great game, but they took the wrong angle at it. They didn't take the lore or the world seriously, I am and always will be an avid fan of Robert E. Howards writings, especialy his Conan works. So when I read the books written to help promote age of Conan I got very upset, as they did some tongue in cheek humor to down play conan.
I get they wanted to make people see hey there can be other hero's but you don't downplay your main hero to do it. When I quit the game at two months in it wasn't entirely funcoms fault, I will lay some of it on the guild I was in. As the loremaster I had to proof read character profiles for lore infractions within a game that already had lore problems. So I was spending more time doing guild work than playing, partly because people were lore correct for the game but not the written works. In the end I miss the game I wish AoC would have become. But the game they launched as AoC wasn't what I had expected, not one little bit.
I never listened to the hype , Just bought the game and although i had fun the computer i had could not run it the way it was meant. Got a new computer and am having a blast. Love the combat, I decided to try Lotro and eq2 because they had a trial, not mind you I hav e played these games befor but i just laughed and laughed when i did the combat thing on those otherwise good games-it was just so lame, did not look like my character was hitting anything, so the combat in AOC is heads over heels on any other game the only one that comes close is City of heroes!
the graphics and now the performance are light years ahead of most of these games, when I look out on the world it feels so real not like a saturday morning cartoon.
Yes the game is somewhat linier but so is Baldurs gate and half life 2, this helps keep your focus , there is nothing worse then wandering off into a no mans land with nothing to do and no one to see, you can still do some great exploration in AOC just in a bit more orgnized fashion.
Crafting is crafting , does anyone really have fun crafting, just admit it you know you dont "but if i dont say so on the forums i will look bad" crafting is just a filler to take up your time when you get tired of killing things and aoc has this to,
How about fishing-get a life , nuff said
I am having a blast and i have not even done seiging yet which i hear is alot of fun, so as long as the developers keep doing what they are doing at least I will be happy. See you later eq2, lotro, vanguard, dod, any korean game, swg, with your bad graphics or lousy combat or bad performance.
In the absence of hard evidence, educated guesses are all anyone has to rely on in determining some statistics.
From various activities in the past, including the server consolidations, previous news stories, press releases, finanacial reports, and other such information its a pretty safe bet to estimate AOC subs somewhere near 100-200K and not 800K.
Accurate, no, but fair enough to hold a discussion that AOC is hardly a rousing success and certainly benefit by some sort of campaign to really boost up sub numbers.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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I like the lore, graphics and some of the combat. But to get me back, they would have to redesign the entire world to have large zones, like MMO's are supposed to have. I have said it before, but there is nothing "Massive" about AoC.
My personal and somewhat inexperienced opinion, since I'm relatively new to the game.
1) BE ABLE TO SKIP TORTAGE
2) Make Soldier classes un-gimped. Some of us like to play tanks and not die every time there are more than 2 mobs on us at once.
3) A little more graphic variety, especially with cloth items.
4) I don't mind loading zones/screens, but most people do, so this is an issue.
5) Make non-Guild PvP worth a damn.
6) Clearer crafting and, again, easier non-Guild PvP on non-PvP servers (FFA ganking isn't everyone's cup of tea, but they will want to fight other people).
Again, just my opinions.
Came back to this came 2 months ago, but only ended up staying for the duration of my month. Can't say much has changed, still the same 'ole bullshit and honestly I don't think there is anything Funcom can do to get me to ever come back again. I mean, it is afterall Funcom. Not like most people had high hopes for one of their games actually being really good OMG SECRET WORLD WILL BE SWEET.
Anyway this game is a failure that will not likely make any kind of big comeback in the near future, regardless of what they do. Just another title that had potential and failed to fulfill it. Level 80 is mindblowingly boring. 1-20 (at least on the servers I played on) was a 100% gankfest. Had to play before all the high school kiddies got out of class if you wanted to quest without being killed every 5m. Good times.
Pros: I love the classes, I love the mature nature of it, the lore is great, no dwarves and gnomes, combat system keeps both hands on the keyboard/mouse. Names of spells and abilities are unique and cool.
Cons: Crafting still sux, 50 player max instances (good and bad), Linear, Armor is very lame(but realistic I guess).
Gems are useless, very single player based.
Still top 5 games I have leveled in but endgame stinks, its more like a console rpg to me. I maxed out my character and made a couple alts and then quit.