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Free trials and Age of conan plummets to an all time low?
finaticd
Member Posts: 843
Did the last patch drive away that many people? Age of conan is 46 up from 47 yesterday!. At rock bottom it was 44 a few months ago.
The X fire contest and free trials wore off and it looks as if this game is DOA again. Correct me where I'm wrong.
up from #47 yesterday
Highest: #4 on 2008-06-01
Source:
www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/
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
Comments
Let's face it once a game has gone to the dogs free trials or wonder patches never turn the tide of leaving players. People may cite EVE as an example of a game winning back players but EVE never had any to start with, it didn't earn itself a bad rep first and it gained subs over a long time slowly bit surely.
AoC has a very bad reputation now amongst most MMORPG gamers due to failure to deliver features they described in hype before launch. Although they mentioned before launch many of the features "Would be added laterTM" it was just too late as they'd spent a year or so hyping them. The mass hype resulted in high expectations which were dashed at launch and the game a year later still doesn't meet those expectations.
In my opinion wonder patches and free trials to bring in lots of new subscriptions are just urban myths, alongside the fat woman who flushed the airplane toilet while sitting on it and had her guts sucked out. Interesting story and easy to convince children of its validity but it never has happened nor will it.
Therefore King Conan is destined to live out his days on his throne never coming out even for live events *chuckle* with close to 50,000 subjects by this time next year. Some would say I'm being negative but I'm just being realistic, AoC already has below 100k subs and has been steadily falling this year. I don't think there is anything more Funcom can do except balance classes and add dungeons and instances which is why the last producer walked out.
However it could be a nice niche game if it went F2P and had only a few servers, then it might gain players.
"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
Finanticid You are the most persisten basher I have ever seen
Now, to answer your question. All time low was in desember with about 800 hours played and AoC at place 58th. So no AoC is very far from all time low on xfire.
The work they have been doing the last year has paid off both game wise and playerwise
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
so xfire keeps track of those that doesnt use it?cause if that is the case that means thers only 130 people playing everquest an their actualy is only 87,355 players for WoW not the millions (what is it 8 or 11 million now?)
or would that mean actual player use of xfire is only a % a small % of the playerbase.i like the idea of the program an such but never has any one said in any mmo i have played " jump on xfire for chat",they just use ventro,hell eq even has its own voice chat in game now.so basiclay as said many times before xfire numbers means not a lot over all.intresitng to look at but not a real snap shot of how the health of a game is.
aoc seems fairly active when i log on raids going on .seiges takeing place people asking to be in guilds ooc rolls text at a fairly rapid pace.or it could be call of duty 4 is just so good at number 2 on xfire it will be the wow killer!
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
You people and your xfire stats are borderline embarassing.
naw they are embarising cause just went to eq forums an oddly enuf their was 162 vistors 55 were registerd rest were guests,an xfire shows only 130 people ..again the idea behind xfire seems kinda cool but its not even close to a true look at the health of mmo games. if it is than call of duty 4 is shaping up to be THE wow killer.
"corect me where im wrong " um ok ... here we go.
1 by numbers gave before xfire is not a large % or a majority of any games player base.
2 big balance patchs always lose some people .but gain some as well.
3 xfire does not seem to show mmo players that well over all. as shown by their top games list at 7/9/09...
GAME MINUTES PLAYED
World of Warcraft 23,968,425
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer 15,397,823
Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer 8,948,290
Counter-Strike: Source 3,441,623
Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne 2,621,515
Battlefield 2 2,248,358
Guild Wars 1,496,367
Call of Duty: World at War Multiplayer 1,381,323
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory 1,281,748
Silkroad Online 1,176,993
only one pay to play mmo rest are free to play or not mmo's. best yet one person afk in any game can net 1440 minutes per day ..over all we learn xfire is not the be all of game stats..an would in fact make incorect veiw of aoc or any other game.
that or i just learned call of duty 4 is THE wow killer !eq has over 100% of its players vist its fourms, an theirs only 87,355 players for WoW !
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
In AoC's case I have the impression that a lot of the bashers are people who generally felt tricked when the game did not deliver what they expected, and especially because of the problems the game suffered in the weeks and months after release, so it has little to do with how the game is now.
Actually, I think the worst case scenario for the most bitter ones is if the game keeps improving like it has. If it went under, then at least they get a sense of revenge, and the old "I told you so".
Most bashers have long gone though. We only get to enjoy some of the more hard-core ones.
"nerf rock, paper is working as intended."
- Scissors.
Head Chop
The game did not deliver on what was ADVERTISED, the developer created those expectations. You can try to pretend that the fault lies with the players, but if that were true they would not have had to add several huge content patches over the last year and give away free time hoping the players they lost will maybe subscribe again.
I get that fans don't enjoy people slamming the game they like, but Age of Conan earned it's bad reputation. Trying to deny that makes you look foolish.
A country raised New Zealand girl can kill, bleed, gut, skin and butcher a sheep in about 40 minutes, the sheep are bigger than a large person ... so be careful about pissing off a NZ country girl.
Let me just throw this out there. I never liked AoC. Never bought into the hype, not a fan of Conan, and picked it up and played through the free month until I hit the well known level 20ish quest barrier and then left. It was somewhat enjoyable. About two months ago I decided "hey, it's been a while, maybe its kinda neat now." I didn't even play more than two days out of the month I paid for before dropping it again. There is absolutely nothing engaging about the game that I could find. I don't know what it is, but the game has no soul.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
Know what you mean. Some games simply do not trigger my buttons. No matter how much people scream and shout. I felt the same way about WAR as you felt about conan. I think I got to lvl 12 before I quit. Simply didnt catch. Also I never got into the lore.
However other smaller titles have kept me playing a lot more. POTBS and Tabula Rasa had me for a while eventhough I would argue that the games are not as good as WAR.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Well i dont know about you lot but i actively play the game in the EU on the Crom server and the server is far from empty, if anyhting it is growing, numerous areas require more than one zone to accomdate the number of players. And i have chars ranging from 40 to 75, all areas from low to high have decent amount of players.
"well known level 20ish quest barrier " Never ever heard of this so called "well known" quest barrier lol, maybe you are talking about when you leave Tortage, where there are 3 X times the number of quests required to lvl from 20 to 30, so i am at a complete dead loss as to why anyone would use the above phrase!!
servers were down basher. (http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=127528) also the all time low was 58.
next!
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
I think the truth is somewhere in between. The game is just hanging in there by the skin of it's teeth. As far as I can tell the growth is just flat and has been for the last three months. The servers are not packed, by any means but then they are not deserted by any means. Doing the vet retry thing right now so yeah I can look around. I just think the game has found it's level at around 50 - 75 K population and now it looks as if nothing will change that much one way or the other.
I miss DAoC
Based on the financial analysis i have seen in Norway the population at the moment is around 120K . It also corresponds to my general impression that it has grown since december where the population was below 90K.
50 - 75 K would not give the 1q financial result they presented in may, so I am afraid thats number is off.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Based on the financial analysis i have seen in Norway the population at the moment is around 120K . It also corresponds to my general impression that it has grown since december where the population was below 90K.
50 - 75 K would not give the 1q financial result they presented in may, so I am afraid thats number is off.
the game did indeed grow during January and February and during the first quarter it may have very well indeed topped 100 K with a possible high of around 120K for a couple of months due to server merges and free trials. However the population started another decline in late February or early March which has not really stopped.
As near as I can tell the free trials were pretty much a wash and and 1.05 seems to have triggered a fairly hefty drop in the vets which was not countered sufficiently by returns or new interest hence my estimate of sub 100K population. 50K may be a bit low but almost certainly 75 - 80 K would be the high. I think it has fallen to somewhere around the range it was early last December, although to vets it would not appear so because that population is contained on half as many servers as it was in December.
To me the vet trials is really the last hurrah until the expansion. Don't get me wrong I don't think the game is dying by any means but I don't foresee it ever topping 100K again. It is what it is and while I still don't think it is the game for me I am sure that many enjoy it. I am not the typical gamer anyway since I could not stand WoW or Guild Wars, and the good Lord only knows millions of people enjoy those games
I miss DAoC
Acutally 6500 PEAK is where it was at during most of Feb-March.
It's been slowing increasing since 1.04x was released from 7500 now to 8500.
The trials we should see 10k+ possibly.
honestly, the game did improve, i used my free 2 weeks last night. But the population is still an issue. I have 2 toons, a lvl 28 on wiccanna (population was ok there) but on cimmeria (where my main toon is) i ran into 3 people the 1.5 hours i was online, and cimmeria used to be packed
Wiccana seems ok to me, lots of people in Tortage at least. Probably returns like me who started a new toon because they have forgot how to play their old ones. Even at 9am EST I saw half a dozen players in and around Tortage.
I miss DAoC
Xfire... lol...
Anyhow...
As Jackdog said, Wicanna seems to have a nice population.
Plenty of people in Tortage, plenty of people around lvl 50-60 (I know, free characters.. blah blah..) and plenty around lvl 80 since there is a good amount of raiding / pvp going on.
The server seems a lot more lively than my LOTRO server (Gladden) and not so many people bashing that game.
Hey TSW Players http://www.unfair.co/ for Mission guides, Lore Locations and stuff....
I don't think I would go quite that far. I just logged into my LoTRO server ( Silverlode) for a quick look and there were over 40 people in the Bree area. 8 in the AH, and 10 in the crafting hall just for example.
Not quite apples to apples since Bree will have people levels from 5 or so up to 60 but still it gives more of a sense of larger community than the way AoC does it. I think the heavy instancing AoC really makes it seem more deserted than it really is.
I miss DAoC
I always see a lot of bashing on AoC. Probably from typical American gamers who are impatient and want everything there and now. Being a long time beta tester and MMO player I've played just about all of them. AoC had the rockiest start I have ever seen in a MMO. People tend o forget that the first 6 are spent finding the bugs and fixing them, which AoC did, to an extent.
Yes, when it released it was buggy, crashed, and didn't have some of the things it was supposed to. Unfortunatley that happens all to often in the gaming realm because it's not necessarily the developers fault but maybe the publishers were rushing them because they don't really see the game, they see dollar signs. Greed, it exists everywhere.
Another thing I noticed is a lot of bashers are the WoW hardcore who, ever time they hear the term "WoW-killer" they get all uppity and go play the game and try to find the worst things about and concentrate on those instead of what makes the game good. AoC has it's flaws but it has some innovations in it I thought made the game a lot of fun.
For starters the combat can't be beat. Chaining combos and strategically hitting your opponent was something I never saw in a MMO before and thoguht it was a blast for combat purposes and it fit in the realm and story of conan. Seriously, who here has actually read the books and not just watched the movies? They are violent and full of adventure. AoC also has entire guild cities. What other MMO has guild cities. And then you can lay siege to said cities...on teh back of a mammoth. AoC has mounted pvp/combat, woohoo.
I played at the beginning and was one of the ones who really had to trudge through the bugs to enjoy the game itself. Eventually I stopped because it was very taxing on my then-system setup. I picked it up again a couple months ago to see how it changed. It changed a lot from release but still had some issues. Now after being offered the 2 weeks to re-evaluate AoC I resub'd to teh game. They changed a lot and for the better.
http://aoc.warcry.com/articles/view/interviews/6246-Age-of-Conan-10-Reasons-to-Give-It-Another-Look
I read this article while downloading the game and when I logged, saw they were right. A lot of changes were made. They are still working on the end-game but they wanted to fix the broken and middle area (55-60 used to suck...bad). Also itemization was changed so it didn't feel like you were just picking up crap all the time. I read posts from all the basher and the haters but you know what, all tehy do is try to hinder a well designed game from achieving anything because you have all these gullible kids and gamers who want to try the game but are afraid to because of some over-opinionated player decided that they should make a post about how horrible the game.
I say come play the game, come see the changes or if you're new I welcome you to see how truly beautiful and lore deep this game is. I was an original player that felt the disappointment of launch. But I returned and saw a great MMO where once failure. The developers truly love their game and project and sacrificed a lot of time and effort to make it what it is today.
All the bashers should just go back to WoW. If you want to bash something, bash WoW instead for being the game to spoil people getting into the MMO community. WoW isn't hardcore by any means...just ask someone who has a few characters capped on Everquest...or the hardcore Ultima Online player who has played forever.
nothing engaging is good (discription)
personally i think the lack of engaging is because there is no auto attack
AA is the drum beat to combat in MMO.. otherwise you're just plucking a guitar
which can be fun for a while!
but you want to be in a band!
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
nothing engaging is good (discription)
personally i think the lack of engaging is because there is no auto attack
AA is the drum beat to combat in MMO.. otherwise you're just plucking a guitar
which can be fun for a while!
but you want to be in a band!
auto attack is kinda anoying at 1st that its not their . i log from eq to aoc an i have to rember theirs no auto attack, think man think.i dig the combat system as is now the pace with combos was slowed down so ya get chance to pop them .more stratagy than just hiitng one button an eating chips whlle watching you toon pluck away.
so the servers were down during that time an again the op is corected!
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
The one saving grace they did have was to port it on the 360 which literally has zero MMORPG competition but they dug their own grave with that one as I don't even think console players want to play it anymore with champions online arriving.
x-fire what? something new from creative.
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