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.
wait....so 500 dollars for a pc that runs AOC pretty good is over priced now??
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.
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.
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
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.
These people are so out of excuses for the game and cannot dispute the facts that it is a huge failure they are now bashing people who tell the truth about the game. Wow really, you can try and discredit me all you want, but the truth remains.
At leaste I have constructive critism, and speak on the issues you on the other hand obsess over people and try and tear them down withouth actually adding ANYTHING usefull. Serisouly, what have you really ever added constructivly or positivly in any type of manner, nothing once again. You cannot deny the points that are made about the failures of the game, you are in love with it, and obsessed with me, and fail to see the reality in any of this
Your like some weird creepy stalker just go away or talk about the issues at hand creep
Pimpwars/Cripplesmash/Legend of the Red Dragon/TradeWars 2002/TrollMud/Usurper
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.
wait....so 500 dollars for a pc that runs AOC pretty good is over priced now??
oh snap im rich!!
Hey I bought a lambo for 500 bux. See... I can make numbers up too.
The expansion was both a fail and win for me. The solo content and fraction system was a big fail, but the group content and the AA system was a big win.
In delivery complete and utter fail. Fix the bugs and i'll return.
So essentially their back to square one. Age of conan became playable after 2 years of bugfixes.
I imagine rise of the godslayer will be playable after 2 years of bugfixes and tuning. Which is about how long it would take to get a full set of faction gear with the current prices and grind required.
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.
wait....so 500 dollars for a pc that runs AOC pretty good is over priced now??
oh snap im rich!!
Hey I bought a lambo for 500 bux. See... I can make numbers up too.
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.
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.
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
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.
These people are so out of excuses for the game and cannot dispute the facts that it is a huge failure they are now bashing people who tell the truth about the game. Wow really, you can try and discredit me all you want, but the truth remains.
At leaste I have constructive critism, and speak on the issues you on the other hand obsess over people and try and tear them down withouth actually adding ANYTHING usefull. Serisouly, what have you really ever added constructivly or positivly in any type of manner, nothing once again. You cannot deny the points that are made about the failures of the game, you are in love with it, and obsessed with me, and fail to see the reality in any of this
Your like some weird creepy stalker just go away or talk about the issues at hand creep
AoC isn't a huge failure. It is lacking in certain areas no one can deny that but it is still, albeit slowly going in the right direction (although I do feel for the PVP crowd) and will unfortunately never achieve what is could have.
You have proved time and time again, over and over that it is YOU who is obsessed with hammering a game you do not even play (or do you secretly)? I understand you certainly did at one point and feel genuinely agreeved because the game did not take the direction you wanted or live up to your expectations - but seriously move on. There must be a game that you like and play and enjoy?
Yet again I invite anyone to take a look at your posting history (here and on Massively) to make their minds up.
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In delivery complete and utter fail. Fix the bugs and i'll return.
So essentially their back to square one. Age of conan became playable after 2 years of bugfixes.
I imagine rise of the godslayer will be playable after 2 years of bugfixes and tuning. Which is about how long it would take to get a full set of faction gear with the current prices and grind required.
For me the failure to quickly respond to expliots by the dev team or FC Management, was the biggest duck up. In particular the gaining of Rare Trophies meaning that some players are runnin around with armour which required 396 HM Instances to be completed already.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
Excellent post Beanpuie with every issue covered. Absolutely nothing more I could add to the above.
I have one piece of information regarding population. On Thursday last at prime time Europe on Fury server there were 227 people online. That is across the entire level range 1-80. How do I know ? Simple, I counted using the search tool and appropriate filters. Yes it's only a single data point and must be treated as such.
Yet I cannot help but feel that 227 people online at prime time with the expansion pack still new is not healthy. Especially given the fact that Fury [EU] is the most populated server. Take what I say as you will. OR....listen to Erling Ellingsen lying like a bastard.
Excellent post Beanpuie with every issue covered. Absolutely nothing more I could add to the above.
I have one piece of information regarding population. On Thursday last at prime time Europe on Fury server there were 227 people online. That is across the entire level range 1-80. How do I know ? Simple, I counted using the search tool and appropriate filters. Yes it's only a single data point and must be treated as such.
Yet I cannot help but feel that 227 people online at prime time with the expansion pack still new is not healthy. Especially given the fact that Fury [EU] is the most populated server. Take what I say as you will. OR....listen to Erling Ellingsen lying like a bastard.
That is not healthy, and AoC is back to #50 today on the Xfire rankings, however much some Fanboi's hate Xfire it is a good tool to show current trends. The fact that AoC was #23 a week after ROTGS released and is back down to #50 shows a bad downward trend.
Originally posted by bluefunk Originally posted by SonikFlash expansion in concept was good. In delivery complete and utter fail. Fix the bugs and i'll return. So essentially their back to square one. Age of conan became playable after 2 years of bugfixes. I imagine rise of the godslayer will be playable after 2 years of bugfixes and tuning. Which is about how long it would take to get a full set of faction gear with the current prices and grind required.
For me the failure to quickly respond to exploits by the dev team or FC Management, was the biggest duck up. In particular the gaining of Rare Trophies meaning that some players are running around with armour which required 396 HM Instances to be completed already.
People exploited the repeatable corrupted animals quest. Entire pug raids farmed that for hours. But that was trivial compared to what was to come later. Den and Pagoda exploits made that small repeatable look insignificant.
Entire guilds exploited the black hell out of these instances. Resetting the bosses and farming the place ad nauseam. Twelve (YES 12) mastery AA's per 20 minutes. It was abused so much that the cheats maxed out their mastery AA's.
What happened ? Funcom step in and dish out cursory 7 day bans to a few cheats who they caught with no rollbacks. Now honest players are 1 year normal playtime behind the cheats. It would seem that they are so desperate to retain subscriptions that they are willing to tolerate exploiters.
I suspect however that they will continue to bleed players who simply are not willing to forever play catch-up to cheats with no chance of gaining an inch.
For me, the expansion is pretty much a fail in every regard due to one simple thing - the new highly-praised pve content is not accessible to a casual player at all, or rather to someone who can't be in 2 guilds in 2 mmos (like me). Sure, there are factions, but this concept of faction-grind revolving around 3 dumb quests has been an outdated approach in MMOs since vanilla WoW.
I am a pve freak, I enjoy endgame raiding in WoW immensely, I wanted to see these 6-man dungeons in RotGS for myself, but it appears you actually need a guild for that too. Everything is just way too guild-oriented. Sure, this has its bonuses, but I'm not sure this is healthy for a low-pop game such as AoC. Without a proper LFG tool (I guess it's foolish to expect that awesome WoW cross-realm dungeon finder here) and other stuff that makes WoW really accessible and casual-friendly, I can't even join a new 6-man dungeon without being in some "serious business" pve guild. Regarding pvp - same difference, you need to be in a super-zerg guild in order to benefit from Bori or minigames at all.
In other words, for a casual player who just wishes to see the endgame content RotGS is as friendly as TBC was. Sorry, I'll pass.
Excellent post Beanpuie with every issue covered. Absolutely nothing more I could add to the above.
I have one piece of information regarding population. On Thursday last at prime time Europe on Fury server there were 227 people online. That is across the entire level range 1-80. How do I know ? Simple, I counted using the search tool and appropriate filters. Yes it's only a single data point and must be treated as such.
Yet I cannot help but feel that 227 people online at prime time with the expansion pack still new is not healthy. Especially given the fact that Fury [EU] is the most populated server. Take what I say as you will. OR....listen to Erling Ellingsen lying like a bastard.
Majority of veterans have chosen not to be listed under this tool. This is because people started to use player list tool to recruit guild and in group/raid.
Le'ts see some other stats. Night corp had at the same time 40-60 players online, I would imagine futilez and nas having around the same or slightly higher number and that is only 3 guilds. Figli di troia, night watch, IBERVS ... your 227 is impossible
Well, if you are determining success or failure of ROTGS as being able to bring in, and retain tens of thousands new players, then I would say that ROTGS failed. Yes, ROTS was successful in initially bringing in more accounts, but those now look to be mostly short term accounts. Now, on the otherhand, if you are rating success of ROTGS as adding fun new content and extended playability to it's current playerbase, then I would rate ROTGS as a successful expansion.
As for Xfire, that should only be used for trending methods and not an actual account figures. If Xfire showed their position of 40 before the expansion then it increases to 12 during the first month of the expansion then yes, AOC had a significant population growth. If a few months later the Xfire placement drops back down to 40, then yes, the AOC population has gone down to, most likely, to its pre-ROTGS account figures.
Personally, I dont play AOC anymore but I did try ROTGS. I cancelled my account due to the game not being fun to play for myself. It is obviously fun to play for other people and i'm sure ROTGS was an extreme hit for those players.
As for Xfire, that should only be used for trending methods... *snip*
You can't even do that because Xfire is a trend itself that lots of people don't bother with. You have to look at it as the only people playing AoC that are listed on Xfire, are Xfire users that buy into that trend. It's well known that the majority of people using Xfire are FPS players, and nowadays WoW - and only to brag about their clocked 1000+ hours in-game. Xfire is pretty much cliquish.
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Originally posted by nihce Originally posted by Catriona85 Excellent post Beanpuie with every issue covered. Absolutely nothing more I could add to the above. I have one piece of information regarding population. On Thursday last at prime time Europe on Fury server there were 227 people online. That is across the entire level range 1-80. How do I know ? Simple, I counted using the search tool and appropriate filters. Yes it's only a single data point and must be treated as such. Yet I cannot help but feel that 227 people online at prime time with the expansion pack still new is not healthy. Especially given the fact that Fury [EU] is the most populated server. Take what I say as you will. OR....listen to Erling Ellingsen lying like a bastard.
Majority of veterans have chosen not to be listed under this tool. This is because people started to use player list tool to recruit guild and in group/raid. Le'ts see some other stats. Night corp had at the same time 40-60 players online, I would imagine futilez and nas having around the same or slightly higher number and that is only 3 guilds. Figli di troia, night watch, IBERVS ... your 227 is impossible
I did point out that this was a single data point and should be treated as such. Even if vets are hiding their status 227 non hidden people is an sad indictment of how the game is heading.
Incidentally you mention Night Corp and Night Watch. Last time I looked Night Corp was the merger of Ruscorp and Night Watch. Ruscorp being forced to disband after so many veterans quit. Leaving us with not even enough people to put up one full raid to defend our BK.
40-60 on XFire is still decent for an MMO on XFire. If AoC or Rise of the Godslayer was failing it'd be getting far, far worse numbers.
Despite being #50 on XFire, AoC is #15 for MMORPGs. It's ahead of Perfect World, Allods Online, DDO, Conquer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Global Agenda, FFXI, Star Trek Online, WAR, EQII, City of Heroes, and Second Life.
I don't see how people could objectively call AoC a "failure."
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.
This is very typical for MMOs that release expansions, they get an initial boost of numbers and then they fall off again to what they were before the release of the expansion. This is probably more to do with people having short attention spans or finishing all they want with the game in a month than due to the game "failing."
This type of thing even happens with single player games. I bought Bioshock 2 recently and I've finished the game in less than two weeks. Even if I play through a second time to get the second ending I'll be done with that game in less than a month.
Funcom has had their eye on this place for awhile, many big articles have been written since RotGS was announced, not one negative. They've been paying for good articles and you can bet your ass they have people posting propoganda concerning the game here, now.
40-60 on XFire is still decent for an MMO on XFire. If AoC or Rise of the Godslayer was failing it'd be getting far, far worse numbers. Despite being #50 on XFire, AoC is #15 for MMORPGs. It's ahead of Perfect World, Allods Online, DDO, Conquer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Global Agenda, FFXI, Star Trek Online, WAR, EQII, City of Heroes, and Second Life. I don't see how people could objectively call AoC a "failure."
comparing one game to another by XFire ranking is meaningless. Any of the games you mentioned could have a larger population than AoC but a demographic less prone to install XFire or AoC could have a larger pop than the games below it if AoC's demographics are less prone to install XFire. XFire is only useful in watching a games population trend over time. Fo example you could clearly see the population rise with the expansion and then fall back to pre expansion levels. Thats about all XFire can be used for. Judging how people react to patches and the game over time.
40-60 on XFire is still decent for an MMO on XFire. If AoC or Rise of the Godslayer was failing it'd be getting far, far worse numbers. Despite being #50 on XFire, AoC is #15 for MMORPGs. It's ahead of Perfect World, Allods Online, DDO, Conquer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Global Agenda, FFXI, Star Trek Online, WAR, EQII, City of Heroes, and Second Life. I don't see how people could objectively call AoC a "failure."
comparing one game to another by XFire ranking is meaningless. Any of the games you mentioned could have a larger population than AoC but a demographic less prone to install XFire or AoC could have a larger pop than the games below it if AoC's demographics are less prone to install XFire. XFire is only useful in watching a games population trend over time. Fo example you could clearly see the population rise with the expansion and then fall back to pre expansion levels. Thats about all XFire can be used for. Judging how people react to patches and the game over time.
Exactly! The population trend for AoC has fallen back to pre-expansion levels, Funcom blew their chance with the Expac, how many MMO gamers these days are going to give an MMO like AoC a third chance? Especially when you have other mmo's like FF and SWTOR coming out?
Also AoC has been a financial drag on Funcom, sure they will get a money boost from sales of the expac for one quarter maybe two, but the trend has been the game is losing money and that trend will continue once the small cash boost thanks to the Expac is done.
40-60 on XFire is still decent for an MMO on XFire. If AoC or Rise of the Godslayer was failing it'd be getting far, far worse numbers. Despite being #50 on XFire, AoC is #15 for MMORPGs. It's ahead of Perfect World, Allods Online, DDO, Conquer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Global Agenda, FFXI, Star Trek Online, WAR, EQII, City of Heroes, and Second Life. I don't see how people could objectively call AoC a "failure."
comparing one game to another by XFire ranking is meaningless. Any of the games you mentioned could have a larger population than AoC but a demographic less prone to install XFire or AoC could have a larger pop than the games below it if AoC's demographics are less prone to install XFire. XFire is only useful in watching a games population trend over time. Fo example you could clearly see the population rise with the expansion and then fall back to pre expansion levels. Thats about all XFire can be used for. Judging how people react to patches and the game over time.
Exactly! The population trend for AoC has fallen back to pre-expansion levels, Funcom blew their chance with the Expac, how many MMO gamers these days are going to give an MMO like AoC a third chance? Especially when you have other mmo's like FF and SWTOR coming out?
Also AoC has been a financial drag on Funcom, sure they will get a money boost from sales of the expac for one quarter maybe two, but the trend has been the game is losing money and that trend will continue once the small cash boost thanks to the Expac is done.
I think we will see more cash shop options in AoC soon to bolster cash flow. The demographic that tend to play it are older and around 30 years old and thus likely have more spare cash.
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Xfire? Who the hell uses Xfire in AoC? WHY would someone use Xfire for AoC? Personally I don't like these background monitoring programs such as Xfire and Steam.
As stated the 30-40 is very common age in AoC, VERY FEW 30-40 year old players use Xfire. Like me.
The server I am on is busy. The game is the best MMO out atm. The only MMO besides EVE that does NOT feel like a kids game.
You kids go enjoy your xfires and steams, and give all your info freely over. My friends know where to find me even without some corporate monitor.
Comments
wait....so 500 dollars for a pc that runs AOC pretty good is over priced now??
oh snap im rich!!
It failed.
The whole point of an MMO and the content that is created for it is to "Retain" Subscriptions.
Although ROTG God Slayer got thousands and thousands to return..It retained very little.
Server Pops already seem to be flattening out to where they were before ROTGS.
These people are so out of excuses for the game and cannot dispute the facts that it is a huge failure they are now bashing people who tell the truth about the game. Wow really, you can try and discredit me all you want, but the truth remains.
At leaste I have constructive critism, and speak on the issues you on the other hand obsess over people and try and tear them down withouth actually adding ANYTHING usefull. Serisouly, what have you really ever added constructivly or positivly in any type of manner, nothing once again. You cannot deny the points that are made about the failures of the game, you are in love with it, and obsessed with me, and fail to see the reality in any of this
Your like some weird creepy stalker just go away or talk about the issues at hand creep
Pimpwars/Cripplesmash/Legend of the Red Dragon/TradeWars 2002/TrollMud/Usurper
Present: Wurm , Fallen Earth
Hey I bought a lambo for 500 bux. See... I can make numbers up too.
The expansion was both a fail and win for me. The solo content and fraction system was a big fail, but the group content and the AA system was a big win.
expansion in concept was good.
In delivery complete and utter fail. Fix the bugs and i'll return.
So essentially their back to square one. Age of conan became playable after 2 years of bugfixes.
I imagine rise of the godslayer will be playable after 2 years of bugfixes and tuning. Which is about how long it would take to get a full set of faction gear with the current prices and grind required.
i bought mine for 250, with a 2yr warranty.
AoC isn't a huge failure. It is lacking in certain areas no one can deny that but it is still, albeit slowly going in the right direction (although I do feel for the PVP crowd) and will unfortunately never achieve what is could have.
You have proved time and time again, over and over that it is YOU who is obsessed with hammering a game you do not even play (or do you secretly)? I understand you certainly did at one point and feel genuinely agreeved because the game did not take the direction you wanted or live up to your expectations - but seriously move on. There must be a game that you like and play and enjoy?
Yet again I invite anyone to take a look at your posting history (here and on Massively) to make their minds up.
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For me the failure to quickly respond to expliots by the dev team or FC Management, was the biggest duck up. In particular the gaining of Rare Trophies meaning that some players are runnin around with armour which required 396 HM Instances to be completed already.
THE SECRET WORLD - PAY ONCE PLAY FOREVER - Give it a go!
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OR PM ME FOR A BUDDY KEY (need your email address).
Excellent post Beanpuie with every issue covered. Absolutely nothing more I could add to the above.
I have one piece of information regarding population. On Thursday last at prime time Europe on Fury server there were 227 people online. That is across the entire level range 1-80. How do I know ? Simple, I counted using the search tool and appropriate filters. Yes it's only a single data point and must be treated as such.
Yet I cannot help but feel that 227 people online at prime time with the expansion pack still new is not healthy. Especially given the fact that Fury [EU] is the most populated server. Take what I say as you will. OR....listen to Erling Ellingsen lying like a bastard.
Tranca [RUS corp]
That is not healthy, and AoC is back to #50 today on the Xfire rankings, however much some Fanboi's hate Xfire it is a good tool to show current trends. The fact that AoC was #23 a week after ROTGS released and is back down to #50 shows a bad downward trend.
People exploited the repeatable corrupted animals quest. Entire pug raids farmed that for hours. But that was trivial compared to what was to come later. Den and Pagoda exploits made that small repeatable look insignificant.
Entire guilds exploited the black hell out of these instances. Resetting the bosses and farming the place ad nauseam. Twelve (YES 12) mastery AA's per 20 minutes. It was abused so much that the cheats maxed out their mastery AA's.
What happened ? Funcom step in and dish out cursory 7 day bans to a few cheats who they caught with no rollbacks. Now honest players are 1 year normal playtime behind the cheats. It would seem that they are so desperate to retain subscriptions that they are willing to tolerate exploiters.
I suspect however that they will continue to bleed players who simply are not willing to forever play catch-up to cheats with no chance of gaining an inch.
Tranca [RUS corp]
For me, the expansion is pretty much a fail in every regard due to one simple thing - the new highly-praised pve content is not accessible to a casual player at all, or rather to someone who can't be in 2 guilds in 2 mmos (like me). Sure, there are factions, but this concept of faction-grind revolving around 3 dumb quests has been an outdated approach in MMOs since vanilla WoW.
I am a pve freak, I enjoy endgame raiding in WoW immensely, I wanted to see these 6-man dungeons in RotGS for myself, but it appears you actually need a guild for that too. Everything is just way too guild-oriented. Sure, this has its bonuses, but I'm not sure this is healthy for a low-pop game such as AoC. Without a proper LFG tool (I guess it's foolish to expect that awesome WoW cross-realm dungeon finder here) and other stuff that makes WoW really accessible and casual-friendly, I can't even join a new 6-man dungeon without being in some "serious business" pve guild. Regarding pvp - same difference, you need to be in a super-zerg guild in order to benefit from Bori or minigames at all.
In other words, for a casual player who just wishes to see the endgame content RotGS is as friendly as TBC was. Sorry, I'll pass.
Majority of veterans have chosen not to be listed under this tool. This is because people started to use player list tool to recruit guild and in group/raid.
Le'ts see some other stats. Night corp had at the same time 40-60 players online, I would imagine futilez and nas having around the same or slightly higher number and that is only 3 guilds. Figli di troia, night watch, IBERVS ... your 227 is impossible
Well, if you are determining success or failure of ROTGS as being able to bring in, and retain tens of thousands new players, then I would say that ROTGS failed. Yes, ROTS was successful in initially bringing in more accounts, but those now look to be mostly short term accounts.
Now, on the otherhand, if you are rating success of ROTGS as adding fun new content and extended playability to it's current playerbase, then I would rate ROTGS as a successful expansion.
As for Xfire, that should only be used for trending methods and not an actual account figures.
If Xfire showed their position of 40 before the expansion then it increases to 12 during the first month of the expansion then yes, AOC had a significant population growth. If a few months later the Xfire placement drops back down to 40, then yes, the AOC population has gone down to, most likely, to its pre-ROTGS account figures.
Personally, I dont play AOC anymore but I did try ROTGS. I cancelled my account due to the game not being fun to play for myself. It is obviously fun to play for other people and i'm sure ROTGS was an extreme hit for those players.
You can't even do that because Xfire is a trend itself that lots of people don't bother with. You have to look at it as the only people playing AoC that are listed on Xfire, are Xfire users that buy into that trend. It's well known that the majority of people using Xfire are FPS players, and nowadays WoW - and only to brag about their clocked 1000+ hours in-game. Xfire is pretty much cliquish.
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Le'ts see some other stats. Night corp had at the same time 40-60 players online, I would imagine futilez and nas having around the same or slightly higher number and that is only 3 guilds. Figli di troia, night watch, IBERVS ... your 227 is impossible
I did point out that this was a single data point and should be treated as such. Even if vets are hiding their status 227 non hidden people is an sad indictment of how the game is heading.
Incidentally you mention Night Corp and Night Watch. Last time I looked Night Corp was the merger of Ruscorp and Night Watch. Ruscorp being forced to disband after so many veterans quit. Leaving us with not even enough people to put up one full raid to defend our BK.
Tranca [RUS corp]
uber boring grind.
faction grind , tokken grind , mark of acclaim grind , aa grind ... could be an asian f2p mmo
failed for me , cause i cancled my sub
Retired : Daoc , Warhammer , WoW , Lotro , Tabula Rasa
, Everquest 2 , Aion, Eve , AoC , SW:Tor ( failwars ), Planetside 2
Waiting : Star Citizen
Playing : Star Citizen
FPS : Overwatch
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Despite being #50 on XFire, AoC is #15 for MMORPGs. It's ahead of Perfect World, Allods Online, DDO, Conquer Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Global Agenda, FFXI, Star Trek Online, WAR, EQII, City of Heroes, and Second Life.
I don't see how people could objectively call AoC a "failure."
This is very typical for MMOs that release expansions, they get an initial boost of numbers and then they fall off again to what they were before the release of the expansion. This is probably more to do with people having short attention spans or finishing all they want with the game in a month than due to the game "failing."
This type of thing even happens with single player games. I bought Bioshock 2 recently and I've finished the game in less than two weeks. Even if I play through a second time to get the second ending I'll be done with that game in less than a month.
Talking about this on this site is pointless.
Funcom has had their eye on this place for awhile, many big articles have been written since RotGS was announced, not one negative. They've been paying for good articles and you can bet your ass they have people posting propoganda concerning the game here, now.
comparing one game to another by XFire ranking is meaningless. Any of the games you mentioned could have a larger population than AoC but a demographic less prone to install XFire or AoC could have a larger pop than the games below it if AoC's demographics are less prone to install XFire. XFire is only useful in watching a games population trend over time. Fo example you could clearly see the population rise with the expansion and then fall back to pre expansion levels. Thats about all XFire can be used for. Judging how people react to patches and the game over time.
I miss DAoC
Exactly! The population trend for AoC has fallen back to pre-expansion levels, Funcom blew their chance with the Expac, how many MMO gamers these days are going to give an MMO like AoC a third chance? Especially when you have other mmo's like FF and SWTOR coming out?
Also AoC has been a financial drag on Funcom, sure they will get a money boost from sales of the expac for one quarter maybe two, but the trend has been the game is losing money and that trend will continue once the small cash boost thanks to the Expac is done.
I think we will see more cash shop options in AoC soon to bolster cash flow. The demographic that tend to play it are older and around 30 years old and thus likely have more spare cash.
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Xfire? Who the hell uses Xfire in AoC? WHY would someone use Xfire for AoC? Personally I don't like these background monitoring programs such as Xfire and Steam.
As stated the 30-40 is very common age in AoC, VERY FEW 30-40 year old players use Xfire. Like me.
The server I am on is busy. The game is the best MMO out atm. The only MMO besides EVE that does NOT feel like a kids game.
You kids go enjoy your xfires and steams, and give all your info freely over. My friends know where to find me even without some corporate monitor.