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So finally the truth is available: Age of Conan is dying (albeit a slow death)
LitigatorAB
Member Posts: 36
I'll get the admissions out of the way first:
1. Funcom did better than I thought they would. By a good million dollars. By every indication I had the company losing ~25% of its revenue. That number was apparently ~12.5%. Good for Funcom.
Now to the facts:
1. Funcom is not keeping trial players. You really only get one kick at the cat with a free trial, and Funcom failed miserably here.
2. The situation is only getting worse. Funcom is losing revenue from AO (whatever amount of the $1 million/quarter it was earning in 2007-2008 being a mystery) and from Age of Conan. How can you know this? Well you don't, but history makes it pretty clear. Funcom has NEVER missed its guidance and its guidance is anywhere from $700,000 to $2,700,000 lower. That means Funcom is anticipating losing anywhere from 10% of its revenue to nearly one third. You can spin a 10-33% loss in revenue ANYWAY YOU WISH, but it is still a horrible situation. Remember, Funcom has 6 weeks of the 12 week data already in. They know.
3. They still have 14 million dollars in short term debt (or equivalents). As those come due over the next year, it will continually eat at their supposed "strong cash position". Not to mention to have any hope of being viable they will need to spend heavily on advertising The Secret World and the AoC expansion.
4. No doubt they are making a US profit...their operating expenses are plunging as the currency gets hammered. But it also eats at their cash position. Cash that is increasingly becoming hard to find as revenues decrease EVERY QUARTER.
5. A game can't grow if they can't afford to advertise it. And the continual cost cutting (in two quarters Funcom has cut its operating expense by 60%). At some point you can't cut your operating expense anymore and you are left with spending and going into debt or cutting staff.
So sure, spin this quarterly report anyway you want. To me it looks dismal.
Comments
When the hell did everyone become a Financial expert all of a sudden?
Cant we just blast game mechanics of games we dont like? Must we pull out the spread sheets with annual profits?
Aren't we geeky enough for playing God damn MMOs?
Must we add onto that and add stock market lackies also?
AoC suxs ass.
I hope AoC dies and when AOs graphics Revamp Failcom realizes that they made a massive mistake by pulling the devs off a much better MMO.
AO>AoC Easily!!!!
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
wow....opinion made fact again.....
AO was good...so is AoC. They are different....get over it
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
wow....opinion made fact again.....
AO was good...so is AoC. They are different....get over it
Has AoC risen in subs at all since release? Do you even know?
I know AO did after its release.
AO is also what 8 years old? Think AoC will last that long? sure about that?
I doubt it
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
wow....opinion made fact again.....
AO was good...so is AoC. They are different....get over it
Has AoC risen in subs at all since release? Do you even know?
I know AO did after its release.
AO is also what 8 years old? Think AoC will last that long? sure about that?
I doubt it
Yes...it has many times...and also declined.
AO almost CRASHED because of its terrible launch...And declined quite a bit. Almost losing most subscribers. But they kicked ass and won people over over a two year period.....were you there?
I was...from beta til launch
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
I miss DAoC
wow....opinion made fact again.....
AO was good...so is AoC. They are different....get over it
Has AoC risen in subs at all since release? Do you even know?
I know AO did after its release.
AO is also what 8 years old? Think AoC will last that long? sure about that?
I doubt it
Yes...it has many times...and also declined.
AO almost CRASHED because of its terrible launch...And declined quite a bit. Almost losing most subscribers. But they kicked ass and won people over over a two year period.....were you there?
I was...from beta til launch
I was there and it makes me sick that failcom ignores a quality game like AO.
I been playing on and off for a very long time and even plan to go back with a Few eve players to start a new guild once the graphics update hits.
Starting over with the new engine I cant wait ( if the engine ever gets here).
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
Loved the skill trees and crafting system in that game, pretty much everything else sucked but if they had made a AO II using the AoC graphics engine and no mission terminals I would be playing.
I miss DAoC
Funcom keeps coming out with patches and updates, they keep the trolls at bay, as long as Funcom keeps improving the game, which they are...there is absolutely no agrument about there finances. so to the OP, say what you want, they are coming out with alot more content...wow i guess they dont have any money....LOL wake up...enough said.
Ok, what the hell? Since when does a corporation/publisher's financial position have ANYTHING to do with the future popularity of a game? Are you suggesting EVERY company that's making a loss right now, all their games are "dying" ?
You can spin the exact same tale for EA-Mythic , as EA made -massive- losses of epic proportions. Does that mean Warhammer is dying too? Maybe. Most publishers except Blizzard made losses, massive losses, does it mean their games are dying too? If so, then you can harp about Funcom all day, but it can easily be EVERY and ANY other MMO .
Everyone analysing Funcom's finances is somewhat missing the plot. It's like analysing Microsoft's Finances to determine whether Windows 7 is good.....yea the next Windows must be VERY good if you do that.
Also i'm somewhat confused as to the statement about AO being named as such a "loss-making" game for Funcom...yet everyone is saying Funcom is IGNORING AO ....huh? I believe AO has been paid off years ago , they probably have a skeleton crew and cheap servers , how that can dent their finances to any extend is beyond me, a Freaking open-source-volunteer crew can run AO and they'll survive just fine..why won't Funcom?.
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fe24.no%2Fboers-og-finans%2Farticle3077376.ece&sl=no&tl=en&history_state0='
Badly translated through google, so beware.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
They'll release an expansion in a year or so, allowing them to add to their line up of mediocre games. AoC will no doubt end up F2P without the expansion but you pay to play with the expansion in a few years time at most. Instancing killed the game for me, the rest was just too mediocre or non existant to hold any interest.
Soon AoC will be sent to the retirement home where it can play cards and watch re runs of "The Golden Girls" with AO, whilst Funcom gears up to launch their brand new MMORPG with half the promised features missing!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I feel you on that, I feel the same way about Reakktor, they won't revamp Neocron MMORGP, a very cool cyberpunk sci-fi mmo... instead they are focusing on Black Prophecy. Sure it looks good but I don't care about space mmos that much. AO would be a great candidate for a graphics overhaul, just like Neocron should.
The failing of companies these days is that they think that the "New" is the solution to all their econmic woes. But perhaps, in these hard economic times, it would probably be more prudent to work on existing titles, and revamp then with graphics overhauls. Some old titles out there still stand the test of time in regards to fun, gameplay mechanics, and immersive world ideas. Perhaps we'll start seeing "revamps" as a cheaper way to maintain a good game, and keep it's fans happy at the same time.
My point I guess is that in hard economic times of today, perhaps it would be best if game companies adopted the "revamp" strategy.
OP made predictions and failed miserabely. I he hadnt been such a hater i would have felt for him.
Oh, btw. "spin their quarterly report"??? that made me lough.
I will now continue dying my slow death.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
I'm not a AoC fan and I did not subscribe after my trial.
But I did see lots of people asking "I was doing the trial and subscribed, how can I activate the other chats". {EU-servers}
I tested the game after launch, and I tested it again till level 42. It's way better than it was before. It's not perfect, no game is.
I believe the game is improving and my experience tells me their subs will increase and AoC will become a leading MMO. No, not like WoW. Because you need a decent pc to run the game, and by leading I'm talking about the quality of gameplay and not the numbers of subs.
And as a gamer myself I dont care if the game as 10mil or 1mil subs. I'm only interested on the quality of gameplay and the fun I get from playing it.
I think it's time for funcom haters to find a game they like and leave AoC alone, dispite of the bad policy Funcom at launch. They are now doing the right thing and the game is improving.
One thing I should say about Funcom. After AO I thought they learned about launching a game far from being finished. Yeha I was there from beta to launch, and worked 3 years with their QA dept. testing bugs and helping to improve the game. Maybe you should do the same? Or bitching is easier?
Regards,
V
Living is pain, death is sweet release... sorry your post inspired me. Hope you don't mind. XD
THEY MADE 1 million dollars this quarter! Never mind they wrote off 33 million last quarter and revenue is down and X fire numbers are dropping after the contsts and free trials.
Oh well at least they seem to be laying off people or doing something to keep overhead down.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
I can't get into all the financial details because that is way out of my element, but I can say that the game has only appeared to be same old MMO stuff to me. AoC isn't necessarily worse than the other available MMORPGs, but it is just the same old stuff to me. For this reason, I feel that most MMORPGs are struggling. They have all created essentially the same product and therefore have spread the clients thin among eachother. WoW survives easily because they have fantastic advertising and they were one of the first to strike gold with this same old level quest grind MMO style of gameplay.
However, AoC has fantastic graphics in comparison with the other games, but it doesn't have as good of a name as the others.
Man there is a lot of stupid in this thread.
Guess I should tell all those folks playing and enjoying AoC that their game is dying.
You know I get that if someone doesn’t like a game they don’t play it, but...the only reason anyone would go to the extreme that some of the Funcom haters go is that they are either A: being compensated monetarily, or B: have some creepy Unabomber agenda.
or we could be just regular gamers sitting at the house on a rainy day waiting on our game of choices servers to get back up from their weekly maintenance
everything isn't a conspiracy you know
quite frankly I wish I did enjoy AoC right now, I am bored with forum cruising
I miss DAoC
Funcom will not fall. It is a European company with government backing. Think of them as the GM of the MMO world. Personally I like AoC, but I just have too many MMOs on my shelf to play one steady.
or we could be just regular gamers sitting at the house on a rainy day waiting on our game of choices servers to get back up from their weekly maintenance
everything isn't a conspiracy you know
quite frankly I wish I did enjoy AoC right now, I am bored with forum cruising
Yeah guess its monsoon season and server maintenance has lasted nearly a year.... no everything isn't a conspiracy but some thing are blatantly obvious.
AoC isn't the only MMO out there Jack if you're that bored. Do what I did pick a tolerable MMO and find a decent guild.
Here is a fresh finance rapport from AoC. It shows Funcom's economic state and future plans for the company. Enjoy:)
http://www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/FUNCOM-Q109-presentation.pdf
Where is your 'truth'? Links please?
You are a troll without it. My guess is this is a literary piece of rubbish.
He has no evidence. That is the MO of shills.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_62/363-Im-Evil