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Why would anyone buy another game from FUNCOM?
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Now I am a bit lost, you are saying there is separation between Funcom the company and the games they produce? How is that? Do they sub-contract the work out to another company, are they are distributor and not the developer? As far as I understood Funcom developed AOC, they use their own proprietary game engine - how can you not blame 'Funcom' the company for the state of AOC? How can you not be cautious about buying another game produced by the same company if you have been burned on AOC? Or are we going back to blaming everybody but Funcom? Like the people that left, Eidos, amongst a whole host of other disconnected entities.
I tend for the most part to judge the game and not the company. A company can release a bad game and rebound with their next title. But I think we have a cardinal sin in AOC, we have a reasonably good game that has been 'handled' badly - much worse to my mind than releasing just a bad game. Which is the main reason 'Funcom' as a company are not held in high regard by people such as me. Now perhaps if they did focus on just the development and got into bed with another distributor that could supply the proper infrastructure/support they could turn things around. But at the moment Funcom produce the game and they do everything else. It's the everything else they are not good at, promotion, marketing, support, canvassing user opinion, customer satisfaction etc etc. Nor do there appear to be any signs of future changes.
Overall I would target a vote of 'no confidence' in Funcom the company at this moment in time. I also think the lack of confidence in Funcom the company may be the undoing of 'The Secret World' regardless of how good it possibly is overall. Funcom have burned people badly and there is a venom in the rhetoric of people that have been burned (like me). Because Funcom never learn by their mistakes and never even try to change.
Well put.
MAGA
On addition, also the TSW dev team is different than the AoC one.
One could miss out on a potentially great MMO just because of former grievances.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Heralding a current game company for past success is like giving a current football team credit for past glories. The dynamics change, what was a great team that delivered a few years ago is no longer the same team now. While the current team may be able to live off past glories, and there may be a few veteran players still knocking about, you can only judge the current team on what is happening now.
The Secret World (TSW) may be a great game but do you really have faith in Funcom to promote it in the right way? To get the user community interested, to plough resource and time into making the game active/vibrant. They failed to create any sort of buzz around the AOC expansion, blink and you miss it. That was the perfect opportunity to 'reboot' AOC but no big fuss was made.
The markets of today are also not the same as a few years ago, who would of thought APB would bite the dust so quickly. Single player/on-line multi-player games are extending their lifespan with lots of DLC. With the right sort of thinking now you can keep a game ticking along until you are ready to launch your next big title, DLC also increases the revenues from that title. So Funcom are up against big competition and they need to move with the times. So far with TSW I have seen the same old Funcom, release 'reveal' trailers that show you nothing. Hope in a way the game will somehow sell itself. Keep everything vague and everybody in the dark. At one time that might have worked, but considering a lot of people now think Funcom fail to deliver I would say it's a bad tactic. My experience of Funcom is frustration not huge enjoyment. I hope they turn things around for TSW but I doubt it.
31 pages about a company that wants but cant. end of story.
Alias Warin
Ao is an exellent game, it's dev-team is small, but superb... I didn't realy enjoy AoC with caster, but I will give TSW a change. I admit there were and is issues with AoC, but I hope they got bit better dev and leader for TSW, which seem to matter a lot at FC.
Actually, no it isn't. After the years of hyping large game companies like Bioware and ANet did that exact thing, keeping things vague and everybody in the dark until they were ready to talk about stuff, and only about the features that they're sure of that will be in the game.
Besides, if any MMO fits the air of secrecy and mystery then it is TSW, with its theme and setting of dark secrets, secret societies and such: I mean, the ARG's that unveiled little pieces of info via fake sites and mysterious mails and posts was enthusiastially received and appreciated.
Well, the leader for the TSW project is Ragnar Tornquist, so I think regarding the puzzles, mysterious secrets, story and atmosphere they couldn't have chosen a better one. He made the hugely entertaining The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, and he has mentioned several times that from all these games he was most enthusiastic about TSW.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
good point, let's have a look at the "team"
IGN: If someone were only familiar with Age of Conan, how will the overall structure of the game and the gameplay differ in The Secret World in comparison?
Ragnar Tornquist: The team has been working on The Secret World for quite awhile, long before Age of Conan was released, and while there's obviously interaction and sharing of ideas between teams, our approach and philosophy has been a bit different. I don't think you'll necessary see much similarity in structure and gameplay, but we get to enjoy all the benefits of a mature engine and tool set. Age of Conan looks beautiful and The Secret World will look even better, and there's a huge advantage in being able to use many of their tools and technologies in order to get The Secret World up and running a lot quicker. We're at a point now where we're testing and tweaking the gameplay, and being able to so at this stage gives us a lot of confidence in being able to create a fun, exciting and long-lasting game.
More specifically, our combat and role-playing systems are completely different from those in Conan, as is our mission system and PvP. We're slowly revealing our feature set, and we believe people will be excited about the choices we've made and how The Secret World is taking shape.
Read more: http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1072842p1.html#ixzz10TDHcoP1
...
Yes, The Secret World equals The World Online equals Next Big Thing equals Cabal equals a project I’ve been tinkering with on-and-off since ‘97.
We started proper preproduction on the project in 2002, before moving the whole team over to Dreamfall in mid-2003. We even had a playable demo of Cabal ready for E3 ‘03, using a completely different engine from what we’re using today. We started the project back up last spring, right after Dreamfall shipped, and the core team has a lot of ex-Dreamfallers, including the art director and audio director, several artists and animators, and a couple of the designers, so it feels like a family thing - which is great.
for god's sake folks, reality is a quick google away.
The original OP needs to upgrade his PC, AoC works just fine for 99% of us.
The problem with AoC is that the "Tyranny" server (PvP), known since day as the "A$$hat Server" where parents would jump on and cuss out players because their precious little baby didnt get loot, got killed in PvP or was not dominating in each and every way...all started transferring to "Cimmeria" Server (PvP RP).
Guilds used to fight like they hated each other to the core, yet in RL many were friends, and the roleplaying just added flavor to the PvP and Sieges.
Thus, Cimmeria server went from a server of intense PvP between guilds, with RP thrown in whenever people felt the urge to a server of JERKS.
Now, with the Tyranny players and guild coming over to Cimmeria, they brought with them the predatory attitudes, infantile and immature behavior, that gave Tyranny server its infamous reputation. The player community went to hell....gone were the helpful players, gone was the great community...in its place was a large player segment who's only vocabulary consisted of saying "your Mom" in response to everything, calling people racist names, engaging in potty talk because mommy and daddy dont allow it anywhere else...while us mature adults rolled our eyes at jokes and statements as old and over used as Fonzie in a Happy Days episode.
Zones were locked out by griefing guilds, lowbies arriving from Tortage ganked by level players 20 to 40 levels higher than them...the criminal and murder system did not even faze them. Mini games were ruined as these guilds flooded the mini games with pre-made groups, all while making sure they had one or two guildies in the PUG to just stand there and sabotage the opposing PUG.
Funcom screwed up with Bori and somehow feels banging rocks is worth paying $15 a month for.
RP is dead on the RP server, and most of the large RP guilds have left for LOTRO.
I would rather play WoW and pay to get my 2 Frost emblems a day and grind the same dungeons over and over again woth fail PUGS and guilds while reading mindless drones in Trade Chat than ever play in Age of Conan again.
Based on my past experience with Funcom, I will never buy a game from them again. EVER!
TSW may be pretty, but pretty doesn't make a good game. AOC looked really good, but that hasn't saved it from the the death it's slowing going through.
Funcom will never see another dollar from me.
When a game introduces farming rocks and trees as a form of PVP, you know there is something terribly wrong with their heads. (Bori)
Don't fool yourselves TSW fanboys and girls. Some of the senior devs from AOC are working on TSW as we speak.
Just look at these forums, does it seem like the company you're about to purchase from has their customers best interest at heart. There are a lot of pissed off people and they have a right to be pissed. Look past the pretty graphics and you may not like what lies beneath.
There are a lot of pissed off people everywhere, it doesn't mean they're the majority or correct for that matter. Case in point, Tea Party.
All i'm stating is that people that have an opinion on this topic have a right to tell future customers. You don't have to agree with them, but their opinions are valid non the less. You can't tell people their feelings are "incorrect".
Almost 1million people purchased AOC and have left within 2 years. The pop is down to around 100k worldwide.
You telling me that 90% of people leaving a game doesn't constitute a large majority of players? Not all of them may have been pissed, but something is very wrong with that.
And everyone knows that old saying about what opinions are like.
Really? I find it funny how liberals ignore the evidence directly in their faces, and then expect you to believe it too...LOL
Tell me then how the Tea Party has managed to vote in several of their members if they have no power or majority, or anything in common with Americans today? Even the incumbants are getting the boot....
Anyway, this is what forums are for, to speak your mind, and I agree with the OP, I'm done with Funcom.
You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. I'm not at all a funcom fanboy (quit AO before they fixed it, never played AoC more than a trial account, conan mythos was never really my style, etc.) but I am a reality/truth fanboy, so when people say things that just plain aren't true, I usually show up with a righteous quote from some easily accessible corner of the internet to let people know that they are misinformed. They rarely care. Anyway, the team that is developing TSW, as I've stated before, is the same exact team responsible for Dreamfall. The Conan team was working on AoC while the TSW team was working on Dreamfall, and then after the release of Dreamfall, they swiped the engine the Conan team had developed and began toying with it for their own project.
To return to the football analogy, because it makes the most sense, it's like betting on the giants in the superbowl and losing all your money, then getting so pissed off that you swear to never watch another jets game. cause they're both from new york, right? they're practically the same. except that they're not.
Nope no opinion is right or wrong it is an opinion. Always based on your own preferences. People do have the right to dispute other peoples opinions though and then it´s up to the reader to decide where the reality lies. I´m sure YOU believe AoC was rubbish since you´ve stated as much but personally I have another opinion. I stayed in AoC for 12 months and didn´t have the massive issues with it many seems to have had. Probably because my computer wasn´t great and I never had the settings on max. Gameplay wise AoC was a good game. PvP was so and so but since i´m not a very hardcore PvP´er that was fine by me. The game had serious issues at launch for many people and I would never dispute that (eventhough my experiences differed as stated before) but it was handled quite rapidly with only the "out of memory" bug staying in around 1 month.
I believe TSW will be buggy at release, that´s just the way it is these days, I also know that Funcom will do everything in their power to fix things, this they have shown before. I´m looking forward to TSW and hopefully it will be a game to stick with for another 12 months or so. More then that I do not ask for an mmo eventhough it would be welcome.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
I didn't say they had no power. They obviously do have massive quantities of power within the ranks of the republican party. That does not make them the majority of Americans, however, just a vocal part of the conservative party. What I said is that being angry does not make you right; no matter how pissed off I am, cutting taxes will not balance the budget.
I get the feeling you'll buy this game no matter what "facts" you see. The facts can be found through Funcoms quarterly reports, they are not made up.
You are entitled to spend your money wherever you see fit. You also haven't experienced the same crap that others have been through with Funcom, so of course your opinion will be different. I wish you all the best in the Secret World.
The facts that would make me not buy this game would be the fact that another modern day horror MMO is released before it
I have a high threshold for bad launches. I would never let a bad launch prevent me from playing a good game. I also know that everything Ragnar Tornquist has touched so far (even casper back in the day) was a massive success, if not financially than certainly critically and artistically. Dont forget that games are art, yo~
Actually, it's looking to be likely that the tea party is going to end up allowing Democrats that would otherwise have stood no chance to get in instead of Republicans.
And they haven't voted ANYONE in yet. But the Republicans are systematically taking over the tea party. If I were part of the Tea Party, I'd be far more afraid that Rebublicans sweep in and distort what it was the Tea Party meant to stand for in the first place.
And I like Anarchy Online back in the day. That's why I'd buy from Funcom.
polished and badly launched are not really the same thing. WoW had a bad launch but was very well polished; AoC, from what i hear, had a fairly good launch, but the lack of polish is what angered everyone, i.e. it was an incomplete game as opposed to simply a buggy game. I will take a bad launch over an unfinished game anyday. Other unfinished games would be pretty much anything touched by cryptic heh.
I'll be honest, the real reason I have faith in this game doing well has nothing to do with funcom's history or who is making the game or anything like that. I have faith because I took the time to start thinking like a businessman. If this game does well, it is the first of its genre and fills a much needed niche. If it fails, funcom WILL go bankrupt. they're pouring all of their money into it, and they know full well that it is their last chance to win over the crowd. They've already taken over ten years on its plot and universe, and nearly 8 on actual development. This will either be their magnum opus, of the most fantastic failure in the history of the genre. Personally, I wouldn't want to miss either :P
I too bought the collector's edition and while ultimately the game didn't hold any lasting appeal for me I didn't see it and don't see it as a complete disaster either at launch or now. The game does work and the beginning part of the game is very well crafted and enjoyable to play through. Funcom tried a number of innovations with AoC that just didn't win over many converts but the risk of trying something is at the risk of failing and there is a difference between a failure because of effort and one for lack of effort and Funcom put in some serious effort I feel.
Ultimately, I pick or choose what I want to play based only partially on the company and the concepts behind the product but also partly on the hope that it will be something awesome so I don't see that people trying another game from Funcom is anything foolish at all.
Please go back to sleep.
Thank you.
I will be playing the TSW based on the fact that 1) I like the concept and ideas of it and what I have seen so far.
2) AoC had a rocky start but Funcom has done a good job of fixing that and making it into a enjoyable game no matter what the subjective opinions of some who post here are over a 2 year old grievance. And 3) it is a totally different development team.To do any different would be like saying I wont play GW2 because I have a grudge against Aion.
I will buy from Funcom because its just a GAME ffs. They don't sell drugs to under aged so i have no reason to boycott them. jeez some of you people take things way too seriously. Also, IMO AOC and Anarchy Online (my first MMO) both are awesome games.