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Did the expansion fail?
Vepgenus
Member Posts: 398
When Rise of the Godslayer first released the praises flowed like a rushing river, now that all the bugs and issues that the expansion has brought into the game are evident we can see a drop in population. For example on xfire just after ROTGS was released AoC peaked at #23, as the bugs, exploits, and broken Bori system wore on people AoC dropped to the mid 60's and is slightly up at the low 40's today. In essence the population has stablized to where it was before ROTGS launched.
Comments
I don't think it failed. I think it moved the game in a direction that more people wanted, less instanced. It also added features that some asked for. I think if it had failed you would see less people playing. As it stands, it retained its population and may have added a few. Not bad in my opinion.
From what I have seen alot of people are leaving the game, they've given up on any hope of a much needed revamp for PvP, as it stand AoC is a PvE game, and the population did increase when ROTGS first came out, but those new subs and vets that have left have brought the game back to pre-expac levels. The population for AoC is not healthy.
Depends on a persons definition of failure.
Personally it failed to me because my sub is now canceled and I doubt I will bother logging in even during my remaining time.
Other seem to enjoy it very much and are having a blast with it. So its not a failure to them.
Financially I dont think its a failure as it seems to have sold well. We will have to wait awhile to see how the retention of subs goes.
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Besides these few negative remarks the over all reception has been very positive. They expanded the game horizontally instead of vertically which was a very wise move. And for the people that are complaining about faction farming get real almost every game out there has this. A lot of people actually enjoy getting the rep and reaping the rewards from their efforts.
Best expansion I have seen for any MMO to date. Period. Anyone who thinks AoC is a failed game is a trolling fool. And if you are relying on xfire for numbers that in itself is pretty laughable because I know of over 100 guild members of my own in AoC do not use it.
AoC will be running for a long time. Pretty much all there is to it.
You say they won't be focusing in on pvp? Have you even bothered to check the news tab for AoC on this very site? Fail troll is Fail
ROTGS- FAILD!!!! Unfinnished expansion at all. To many exploits, cheaters, bugs ,shity rewards etc etc..Becouse im veteran in conan i'll give this game one more chance in the future.
hmm
That's a fail right there, losing subs of course is a huge blow to any MMO, and yes Funcom will have a boost financially for AoC from the Expac for maybe one or two quarters at most.
Yes and PvP did fail, how long have sieges been laggy and generally broken oh 2+ years now? Bori farming allowed those lucky enough to be in a huge guild to max out their AA and people with 54 kills and 300 deaths to have PvP 10 gear? Yeah big victory there!
No the expansion definately did not fail. You also can't use xfire as a definitive way to determine who's playing what. I don't use it and no one I play with in AoC or CoH uses it either, so we wouldn't be counted by any numbers xfire comes up with.
Safe to say the server populations have gone up. Many of the global chats usually revolve around someone who quit X months ago coming back and being pleased with the improvements.
The release was a bit bumpy but not overly so. Any expansion usually is going to have a few kinks to work out and this one was no exception. They were quick to get fixes up so Funcom wasn't sitting on their digital heels. Even squeezed out the Ranger Revamp this week too.
Bori wasn't part of RotGS, and even then, they changed Bori with the last patch which shows they haven't forgotten about PvP. Hell, they even plan to implement other PvP changes as the newsletter shows. They even went as far to ask the players which of thse changes they like Funcom to focus on first. Sounds good to me.
The RotGS expansion, some things could have been better, but the launch was stabler and smoother than the initial launch 2 years ago, the new areas are vast and wide, and beautiful looking, while at the same they introduced some new interesting mechanics with the dungeons. Besdies the horizontal leveling with the AA instead of the vertical leveling is a brilliant move, more game companies should learn a lesson from it.
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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."
I would not call it a fail, but I doubt that many would call it a success either. Long term retention did not happen and now all that is left is for the game to dwindle down to a few thousand hard core fans. A bad launch is hard as hell to overcome, and while I have to give FC credit for trying, it's never going to be the game it could have been.
Funcom has a great graphics engine, but the people designing and coding the game play just cannot seem to get it right no matter how hard they try. This game would have been much better off if five years ago they had concentrated on it either being hard core PvE or just a great PvE game. Trying to be everything to everyone was a major mistake and split the available development resources too much, just my opinion.
I miss DAoC
The game has failed in general. Dont let a few diehard outspoken fans try to convince you otherwise.
Need proof? Just go read AOC's own forums
Front page is full of *#*$ off people due to horrible lag, red line latency, crashes, retarded dev decisions, and new bugs appearing each and everyday it seems.
You know its bad when the Technical support/performance issues sub forum is your most active. It has the second highest activity of all time behind general discussion.
Funcom is even deleting negative posts, constructive negative posts mind you, about the state of the game and how it performs, to avoid further bad publicity. Its a shame really, on paper it sounds good, but in reality small instanced zoned world made for an xbox360 which never came about.
Dont take my word for it, go skim AoC's forums and see all the displeasure with direction of the game for yourself.
Pimpwars/Cripplesmash/Legend of the Red Dragon/TradeWars 2002/TrollMud/Usurper
Present: Wurm , Fallen Earth
You know it's funny, I visit the forums at leat every other day and the they have been largely positive since RotGS. There is a hardcore group that dedicates their time to merciliessly bashing mmorpgs, and they don't let the truth get in their way.
RotGS brought back a lot of players, and lured in some new players. While AoC will likely never be a huge success, they have stopped the bleeding and the game will be around for years to come.
IceIce i see you are STILL hanging around the AoC forums, even though you apparently hate the game. Weird.
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In my opinion, if the foundation for all playstyles is shaky at the start, then the devs are damned if they focus in one area at a time (because then they piss off the other playstyles) and damned if they spread the resources across all playstyles (because the playerbase sees not much progress in any direction).
However, with that said Funcoms issue is more to do with stubborness than anything else. They *believe* that they are doing things right, no matter how many times their playerbase tells them otherwise. There's a difference between talking to your playerbase, and actually *listening* to it. Silirrion does what a lot of devs DON'T do, he talks to the playerbase. But I don't think he listens half the time. And responding with "I appreciate what you're saying but we believe we're heading in the right direction." isn't actually listening. That's being dismissive.
AOC has some major inherent issues. Ones that shouldn't have been there at the start had they paid attention to their previous game Anarchy Online. The expansion addresses a few of those issues, but on it's own, the expansion just doesn't do enough. It didn't necessarily fail either, it all depends on what their goals were. If their goal was to inject some income into the company then it succeeded. But if the expansion was meant to dramatically increase subscriptions, then it possibly failed.
Funcoms main issue now is that the MMO playerbase has little confidence in both the company and the product. THAT is what they need to address.
Funcom need to act now if they have any hope of bringing players back into the game. There have been many good suggestions from the playerbase with regards to this. If they at least be seen to BEGIN to consider them then that is a start to improving the playerbases confidence in the product.
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what I was saying is that with Funcoms limited development resoutrces they should have concentrated on making AoC either a PvP or PvE game years ago instead of "splitting the difference". Nothing they can do now will ever make AoC a major player again, the expansion was the last hope for that and it did not work even though it was a pretty good effort.
I miss DAoC
If this is a certain Tark who used to fill the AoC forums with well thought and constructive posts such as the above one, hi this Callypiso and you are sorely missed!
if not 'hi' anyway.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
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If I cant be in the lvl 80 expansion zones for more than 2 minutes without crashing, it fails in my eyes.
Largely positive? Are you people really delusional? Go read the forums, half of them are nothing but complaints about how horrible the game still runs, lack of features, grind, and general displeasure with the direction of the game and how it still gets buggier and broken each update/patch.
Funcom has taken up to deleting alot of negative posts over there that do hit a little too close to home.
If the game was doing so great, and population was on the rise, how come servers are being cut and not added?
Sorry not trolling here, just trying to get some facts out as people do spend hard earned money and time on this stuff and a few of these devoted fanboys just want sombody to play the game with. All im saying is go read through their own forums and make your own decision, dont take mine on it.
And Bluefunk, Whats worse me still here defending the hard playing and cash paying mmo community against horrible buisness practices and rotten games, or you still not adding anything usefull ever and just trolling on me. I think your more obsessed with me than I am with AoC's failure. Get a life
Pimpwars/Cripplesmash/Legend of the Red Dragon/TradeWars 2002/TrollMud/Usurper
Present: Wurm , Fallen Earth
QFT
Its sad the help you usually get and hear is
'Get a better computer wow noob' Upgrade your graphics card, your memory, whatever
its always something. So not only are you dumping money on the game, but your being told to spend more money on stuff you dont need. Does your computer run everything BUT AoC correctly? Probably so. Same case scenario for most of us, guess where the problem lies.....
Well Ill tell you where the solution isnt, it isnt at Frys, or Bestbuy or Newegg purchasing hundreds of dollars of new equipement. Dont doubt yourself, listen to sound advice, Bad broken game for a million people = bad broken game. You are no exception.
The game just doesnt run correctly, its not you its THEM. it has been for years. nearly a million people have all been wrong but I guess the 3 or 4 people here are all right...according to them.
Pimpwars/Cripplesmash/Legend of the Red Dragon/TradeWars 2002/TrollMud/Usurper
Present: Wurm , Fallen Earth
the expansion is pure win. AoC is the single best game out there atm.
Even with the Expansion, AOC has perhaps ran its course.
Craig intentions were sound, but he used formulas that were familiar to most mmo players in todays market,
less instancing, grind and pve content.
such elements were welcomed believe it or not, yes including grind. when funcom made the choice way back last year on who to cater first, naturally it went to pve.
pve content stood a better chance to stopping the bleeding of players or to at least slow it down, and it did just that on a overall scale.
however, the pvp side waited, and wait, and whithered and always the case, cannibalized themselves down to a low population and a legion of disgruntled pvpers with chips on their shoulders.
Bori unfortunately was the final nail of trying to add some sort of pvp into the game. the ONLY thing bori did which it accomplished was move massive pvp influence away from kheshatta, thats it.
everything else was counter productive listed below:
1. widened the gap between pvpers from hardcore, to medium and to casual, further solidifying the arguement of Gear > Skill
2. pvpers segregating themselves towards super guilds for a greater chance of getting such pvp gear, alienating average and small guilds to a no win situation to compete.
3. the Grind, Those crazy enough to play Aion in CE, will maybe get to pvp 8 before the quarter of the year is over. everyone else who do not make it and their focus is pvp, give up and leave the game entirely, hence what many have done to this day.
4. next to none substantial ground for pvp leveling, they MUST go to CE as well as MUST have a competitive mini group (premades) to make a dent in their pvp progress, having neither one of those for a length of time ends ones longevity for pvping, unless their life long career is to gank new players at the start of the game.
5. long drought of pvp content, Bori being the only one, and in one area for this amount of time says alot where funcom's priorities are.
The expansion isnt a failure, but it was made to appease the pve side of the game, AOC as a pvp game is coming to an end, and majority of people that rather have fun instead of Grind rocks all day or join a super guild to put up with the douche bag mentality, are finding other games to play.
As for Grinding in general, my personal opinion is that it is a poor mans excuse for content, to stretch out content so they can have time to build more upon it at a later time. that is what they did with the pvp side with levels being 1-5 and then they added new armors and raised the level up to ridciulous levels from 5-10 plus tokens both conquerer and campaign to extend the grind further( that is where Bori comes in). Again, it works -- but the double edge sword with grinding is that the favors guilds that are already established and successful, to gather more players that want the chance to have the phat loot.
That is how it is of course, but that is also to show signs that the game AOC is concluding.
check out both servers of Tyranny and Cimmeria as far as the dominance which guild(s) holds the keys to their respective servers, then look to see how long they have been on top with other guilds either playing second fiddle or standing on the sidelines playing the "should of would of could of" game til they log off or unsub.
Iceice seriously you got a problem. I got a life and it includes a game I like, you devote alot of time to a game you hate. If I need to get a life, you have no life.
If anyone cares to look through his (or her's) history he continuely posts over and over in this forum about a game he appears to hate. Draw your own conclustions from that.
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I know a lot of people that like AoC like it because it puts their overpriced/overfunded machines to use. It kind of helps validate spending all that money on a PC. I've seen the game on a top end computer and it looks great, but the button mashing seems boring.