Fee for the 'Open Beta' Fee for the Early Access Fee to DL the Client to use a 'Buddy Key'
FunCom aren't fools, they are trying to squeeze out every cent they can out of each customer, they know they won't be getting many long term subscribers. The only upside could be that Gaute Godager never helms another MMO development.
Agreed. One thing I can give to Brad McQuaid is that in the end he was apologetic for the outcome of VG. Guatte's smugness about his awesome launch and the 700,000 boxes sold, while the player base screams bloody murder on the forums really pisses me off.
Brad had very low budget for VG in compare to AoC. VG was suddently cut off from money, which is obviously a different reason why it was released early. In addition Funcom pretends everything is fine with AoC.
If Im not very much mistaken, the VG budget was into 30 milion US, which is anything but low.
S
30$ mil yes which is very low for a large mmorpg. It was supposed to be more, so they planned to add even more features, but was cut off from more money. Just to compare. Blizzard spent 40$ mil for adv before WoW release and another 80$ mil for development. AoC numbers were not released yet, but won't be too lower than this.
Ie been playing about 1 week now total and i counted 14 in the noob area. I wrote them down so i can send them to funcom. This game has alot of potential and i can see why ppl dislike alot of aspects of it.
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR. Playing EVE Online and AOC. Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
My guild is gone as well. We had about 80 active players who have traveled from game to game together. A few weeks ago in AoC they just stopped logging in. Stealth nerfs, broken content, rampant exploiting, just to name a few of the reasons. I made a guild announcement that Inquisition would be suspending its activity in Age of Conan and all my members started showing up again telling me they were thankful I made that decision. We were on the Tyranny Server, and I know of at least 3 other guilds of good size that had the same thing happen to them.
Age of Conan has the potential to be an amazing game, but Funcom really botched it. We can't play a game on potential, we play it for what it is. There are both better PvE and PvP MMO's out there. My guild has decided to go back to playing older MMO's. Some are in DaoC waiting for the origins server, some are in FFXI remembering what it is like to feel a challenge and a sense of accomplishment in an MMO.
Maybe down the road it will be a good game. Right now it is not. As a responsible guild leader, I can not ask or expect my members to pay money to be kicked in the balls every patch by Funcom with undocumented patch notes that cripple their ability to play. They are patching Tortage quests while Yakhmar, a tier 1 raid boss, remains unbeatable due to bugs for going on the 4th week. They are banning people for PvPing to close to a rez pad, but letting people go when it comes to exploiting the raid content, and cascading the lockout timer.
It's decisions like these that cast a serious doubt over their ability to implement promised features which are still missing. The game director reminds me of the Iraq Information minister, and they are working on an expansion when their game's current content is broken and people are exploiting left and right. We vote with our money, and my guild has decided with their wallets.
So whats a better PVP MMORPG(Besides EVE), or DAoC(no playerbase)?
Daoc no playerbase? No, smaller yes. Better pvp well go on the classic servers or soon to be origins server and it will be far superior pvp then this mess of a game. AOCs pvp is a joke and a real shame honestly. I wanted to like this game and was hoping for "EPIC SIEGES", but it fell short bigtime. I m one of those ex AOC players that not only was disgusted by the way the game is handled but found it one boring game as well. Not much they could do t bring me back, oh well WAR and Aion are on the horizon and well this game will be in more trouble when that happens.
Originally posted by Thillian 30$ mil yes which is very low for a large mmorpg. It was supposed to be more, so they planned to add even more features, but was cut off from more money. Just to compare. Blizzard spent 40$ mil for adv before WoW release and another 80$ mil for development. AoC numbers were not released yet, but won't be too lower than this.
I am going to have to call you a straight up liar since this is about the tenth time you have posted these numbers, never give a link to support your claims and seem to be the only person with this information.
Blizzard in no way spent $40 million dollars advertising World of Warcraft and I even doubt your $80 million dollar budget for initial development. You honestly want people to believe that Blizzard spent 120 million dollars to launch the game and then were overwhelmed by the initial response the game got? That is the budget for a big hollywood movie and would be similar to them only releasing the movie to 50 theaters.
If I am wrong I will apologize, but I do not think I am.
Only way it cost Blizzard that much at the start is if you count all the R&D time before they settled on making the next warcraft an MMO.
But that doesn't matter since blizzard is spending big money every day on a studio that does all kinds of different things, and you couldn't just attribute its running cost to any one of their titles when they have to much going on.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius." -Oscar Wilde
Well, I'm in small, no-name guilds on several servers, and while just a few weeks ago we might have 10-12 people logged in during prime time, and so far the past week we're averaging... 2-3.
Leaders haven't logged in for a week, and just a few of us diehards around.
But more importantly, I went to a lowbie area (20-30) last night to kill some critters for leather (hate that gathering quest) and to my surprise, no one was there. Where I normally had to run through the place quickly to avoid a gank, there wasn't a sole around. That was a big change for me.
I saw players later one, but the initial emptiness of that quest town startled me, and got me to questioning my long term goals for the game.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Well, I'm in small, no-name guilds on several servers, and while just a few weeks ago we might have 10-12 people logged in during prime time, and so far the past week we're averaging... 2-3. Leaders haven't logged in for a week, and just a few of us diehards around. But more importantly, I went to a lowbie area (20-30) last night to kill some critters for leather (hate that gathering quest) and to my surprise, no one was there. Where I normally had to run through the place quickly to avoid a gank, there wasn't a sole around. That was a big change for me. I saw players later one, but the initial emptiness of that quest town startled me, and got me to questioning my long term goals for the game. I think I'm on the way back to EVE.
Good choice, at least with your sub price there you have a working game.
WOW [World of Warcraft] experts estimate that the company put in around $50 million over a five-year period. Most insiders say that 50 percent of development is to market. And if you don't get a good hit at launch, it's a problem."
Warhammer online a virtual world aimed at the powergamer set, was aborted this week. An analysis suggests that the graphics were not good enough, but also that the cost to finish, even after two years of development, was still $30 million. The financial bar seems to be rising.
I call bullshit on Ultima Online costing 30 millions to make. The game was released in 1996 and back then it only took a team of 10-20 programmers to make a game. Unless it includes publicity etc. it's impossible that it cost 30 mil to make
I know my guild is also waiting for the DAoC Origins server to open up. The majority of the guild will be playing together there, in hopes of remembering what real PvP was about.
I heard a rumor today as well that the Sinister Guild will also be retiring AoC (unconfirmed). That means, of the original elite guilds on Deathwhisper, only Clan PfB, Lords of the Dead, PRX-CQ, and the Regulators are left.
To jump back a few posts, I don't think McQuaid deserves any sympathy for his failure. If you haven't read the interview on F-13, it's truly sad. He didn't even have the fortitude to fire his employees when the company went under, rather, their keycards got shut off, and they were told by mid-level management that they'd get resume assistance. McQuaid is no saint, neither is Gaute. I think it's very important to blame the right people for the failure of a game, and the ones who are calling the shots (like McQuaid and Gaute) deserve the blame. They set the pace of the game, direct it's development cycle, manage the resources, etc. I have zero sympathy for people who have millions of dollars and several years, and can't provide a moderately functional product. I think in the case of AoC, the problem lies with terrible mismanagement, and potentially inferior coders; a downright horrible combination.
And to jump waaaay back in the topic, regarding the content. I agree; it's impossible to cater to the hardcore audience. However, the key to keeping the hardcores around isn't necessarily 20,000 hours of content, it's in creating multiple entertaining fronts to keep them occupied. Things such as an arena, raid-zones, crafting, or just more useless, amusing antics (fishing, gambling, etc) can keep a player's interest for a long time.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I call bullshit on Ultima Online costing 30 millions to make. The game was released in 1996 and back then it only took a team of 10-20 programmers to make a game. Unless it includes publicity etc. it's impossible that it cost 30 mil to make
I'm with you there. If I recall right, EQ was originally budgeted 2 million and ended up costing 5 million to make. Similar timeframe to UO.
Still nothing firm on the $30 million for UO, just a lot of guessing, but I will find that reference. Here is another game for the fire
The most interesting part of the entire article for me was the speculation by unnamed "industry insiders" estimating that TSO cost $25 million to develop. If that is true, then the game was over twice as expensive to develop as it's next nearest competitor. The only way I can see the game costing that much is if the expenses for marketing, making the retail packages and shipping them to distributors and chains, customer service (player relations, community relations, phones, billing and accounts, et al), Network Operations personnel, servers, bandwidth and everything else one can think of is tossed into the pot. Even then, I'm having a hard time reaching $25 million, unless the development costs for the aborted SimCity Online are tossed in, too. Then again, I don't know how many people are involved or their salaries, which is always a huge chunk of the expenses, so what do I know? TSO = The Sims Online.
My guild was in Derketo server, before I quit AoC there were almost 100 players in the guild, most of them quit and went back to play LoTR/WoW, others are waiting for WAR. The people that stayed playing are just casuals soloing the game for the most part.
I have a friend that just started in another server and told me he is not able to group and pretty much is soloing the game. Not many players around either. We started a new character to see the load status of other servers and ALL of them are in "Medium". This doesn't make sense.
Originally posted by Thillian 30$ mil yes which is very low for a large mmorpg. It was supposed to be more, so they planned to add even more features, but was cut off from more money. Just to compare. Blizzard spent 40$ mil for adv before WoW release and another 80$ mil for development. AoC numbers were not released yet, but won't be too lower than this.
I am going to have to call you a straight up liar since this is about the tenth time you have posted these numbers, never give a link to support your claims and seem to be the only person with this information.
Blizzard in no way spent $40 million dollars advertising World of Warcraft and I even doubt your $80 million dollar budget for initial development. You honestly want people to believe that Blizzard spent 120 million dollars to launch the game and then were overwhelmed by the initial response the game got? That is the budget for a big hollywood movie and would be similar to them only releasing the movie to 50 theaters.
If I am wrong I will apologize, but I do not think I am.
They might.
The9, the Chinese company, paid up front around 100 million USD to release WoW in China. Roughly 35 million USD for the lisense, about 70 million USD for initial equipments and data center cost because Blizzard require all top of the line servers.
Even after paying 100 millions USD at once, remember, they have to pay this in very short amount of time, not over 4 - 5 years, they sill making money hand over fist with WoW China.
I believe they recover their investment in the first year of releasing WoW China.
Within three years, the small San Diego skunk works grew into a team of 56 developers and one of Sony's most expensive game projects, with a development budget approaching $5 million.
they have had 700k play the game. even if 200k leave they are still in good shape. hell they are in good shape at 300k. they arent sweating it. We all knew this game wasnt going to have big numbers like others thought. thsi game is not for everyone.
They might. The9, the Chinese company, paid up front around 100 million USD to release WoW in China. Roughly 35 million USD for the lisense, about 70 million USD for initial equipments and data center cost because Blizzard require all top of the line servers. Even after paying 100 millions USD at once, remember, they have to pay this in very short amount of time, not over 4 - 5 years, they sill making money hand over fist with WoW China. I believe they recover their investment in the first year of releasing WoW China.
WoW didn't launch in China until sometime in mid 2005. The game was already a success by then and long after the $120 million dollars that Thillian claims Blizzard spent to launch the game.
I have been thinking about subscribing to another MMO as well, I thought about LoTR because I LOVE the books/movies but I heard that at low levels there is no players hardly and that the end-game is pretty boring. I am wanting a PVP game if LoTR is not worth it, anyone have some input?
Comments
The day AOC was released,there were 8 of us at the store,waiting for the carton of to be opened.
As of today,all 8 subs have been canceled.
Agreed. One thing I can give to Brad McQuaid is that in the end he was apologetic for the outcome of VG. Guatte's smugness about his awesome launch and the 700,000 boxes sold, while the player base screams bloody murder on the forums really pisses me off.
Brad had very low budget for VG in compare to AoC. VG was suddently cut off from money, which is obviously a different reason why it was released early. In addition Funcom pretends everything is fine with AoC.
If Im not very much mistaken, the VG budget was into 30 milion US, which is anything but low.
S
30$ mil yes which is very low for a large mmorpg. It was supposed to be more, so they planned to add even more features, but was cut off from more money. Just to compare. Blizzard spent 40$ mil for adv before WoW release and another 80$ mil for development. AoC numbers were not released yet, but won't be too lower than this.
REALITY CHECK
Funcom needs to get going and fix the glitches!
Ie been playing about 1 week now total and i counted 14 in the noob area. I wrote them down so i can send them to funcom. This game has alot of potential and i can see why ppl dislike alot of aspects of it.
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR.
Playing EVE Online and AOC.
Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
My guild is gone as well. We had about 80 active players who have traveled from game to game together. A few weeks ago in AoC they just stopped logging in. Stealth nerfs, broken content, rampant exploiting, just to name a few of the reasons. I made a guild announcement that Inquisition would be suspending its activity in Age of Conan and all my members started showing up again telling me they were thankful I made that decision. We were on the Tyranny Server, and I know of at least 3 other guilds of good size that had the same thing happen to them.
Age of Conan has the potential to be an amazing game, but Funcom really botched it. We can't play a game on potential, we play it for what it is. There are both better PvE and PvP MMO's out there. My guild has decided to go back to playing older MMO's. Some are in DaoC waiting for the origins server, some are in FFXI remembering what it is like to feel a challenge and a sense of accomplishment in an MMO.
Maybe down the road it will be a good game. Right now it is not. As a responsible guild leader, I can not ask or expect my members to pay money to be kicked in the balls every patch by Funcom with undocumented patch notes that cripple their ability to play. They are patching Tortage quests while Yakhmar, a tier 1 raid boss, remains unbeatable due to bugs for going on the 4th week. They are banning people for PvPing to close to a rez pad, but letting people go when it comes to exploiting the raid content, and cascading the lockout timer.
It's decisions like these that cast a serious doubt over their ability to implement promised features which are still missing. The game director reminds me of the Iraq Information minister, and they are working on an expansion when their game's current content is broken and people are exploiting left and right. We vote with our money, and my guild has decided with their wallets.
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
So whats a better PVP MMORPG(Besides EVE), or DAoC(no playerbase)?
--------------------
-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.
WoW, GW, nearly anything.
WoW, GW, nearly anything.
Nearly anything BUT WoW....wow is as boring as they come.
Daoc no playerbase? No, smaller yes. Better pvp well go on the classic servers or soon to be origins server and it will be far superior pvp then this mess of a game. AOCs pvp is a joke and a real shame honestly. I wanted to like this game and was hoping for "EPIC SIEGES", but it fell short bigtime. I m one of those ex AOC players that not only was disgusted by the way the game is handled but found it one boring game as well. Not much they could do t bring me back, oh well WAR and Aion are on the horizon and well this game will be in more trouble when that happens.
Ya, i recently went back to DAoC in anticipation for Origins, and classics servers are jamming. Lots of action.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
-Oscar Wilde
Guild Wars GVG, Balanced, Strategic, No grind, No monthly.
I am going to have to call you a straight up liar since this is about the tenth time you have posted these numbers, never give a link to support your claims and seem to be the only person with this information.
Blizzard in no way spent $40 million dollars advertising World of Warcraft and I even doubt your $80 million dollar budget for initial development. You honestly want people to believe that Blizzard spent 120 million dollars to launch the game and then were overwhelmed by the initial response the game got? That is the budget for a big hollywood movie and would be similar to them only releasing the movie to 50 theaters.
If I am wrong I will apologize, but I do not think I am.
Only way it cost Blizzard that much at the start is if you count all the R&D time before they settled on making the next warcraft an MMO.
But that doesn't matter since blizzard is spending big money every day on a studio that does all kinds of different things, and you couldn't just attribute its running cost to any one of their titles when they have to much going on.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
-Oscar Wilde
Well, I'm in small, no-name guilds on several servers, and while just a few weeks ago we might have 10-12 people logged in during prime time, and so far the past week we're averaging... 2-3.
Leaders haven't logged in for a week, and just a few of us diehards around.
But more importantly, I went to a lowbie area (20-30) last night to kill some critters for leather (hate that gathering quest) and to my surprise, no one was there. Where I normally had to run through the place quickly to avoid a gank, there wasn't a sole around. That was a big change for me.
I saw players later one, but the initial emptiness of that quest town startled me, and got me to questioning my long term goals for the game.
I think I'm on the way back to EVE.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Good choice, at least with your sub price there you have a working game.
WOW [World of Warcraft] experts estimate that the company put in around $50 million over a five-year period. Most insiders say that 50 percent of development is to market. And if you don't get a good hit at launch, it's a problem."
Taken from http://www.gamespot.com/news/6160429.html
Warhammer online a virtual world aimed at the powergamer set, was aborted this week. An analysis suggests that the graphics were not good enough, but also that the cost to finish, even after two years of development, was still $30 million. The financial bar seems to be rising.
Meanwhile, recognition seems to be setting in that the boom era of MMORPGs is over. Thanks MMORPGDot for these links.
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/06/warhammer_onlin.html
Ultima Online approx $ 30 million.
I call bullshit on Ultima Online costing 30 millions to make. The game was released in 1996 and back then it only took a team of 10-20 programmers to make a game. Unless it includes publicity etc. it's impossible that it cost 30 mil to make
I know my guild is also waiting for the DAoC Origins server to open up. The majority of the guild will be playing together there, in hopes of remembering what real PvP was about.
I heard a rumor today as well that the Sinister Guild will also be retiring AoC (unconfirmed). That means, of the original elite guilds on Deathwhisper, only Clan PfB, Lords of the Dead, PRX-CQ, and the Regulators are left.
To jump back a few posts, I don't think McQuaid deserves any sympathy for his failure. If you haven't read the interview on F-13, it's truly sad. He didn't even have the fortitude to fire his employees when the company went under, rather, their keycards got shut off, and they were told by mid-level management that they'd get resume assistance. McQuaid is no saint, neither is Gaute. I think it's very important to blame the right people for the failure of a game, and the ones who are calling the shots (like McQuaid and Gaute) deserve the blame. They set the pace of the game, direct it's development cycle, manage the resources, etc. I have zero sympathy for people who have millions of dollars and several years, and can't provide a moderately functional product. I think in the case of AoC, the problem lies with terrible mismanagement, and potentially inferior coders; a downright horrible combination.
And to jump waaaay back in the topic, regarding the content. I agree; it's impossible to cater to the hardcore audience. However, the key to keeping the hardcores around isn't necessarily 20,000 hours of content, it's in creating multiple entertaining fronts to keep them occupied. Things such as an arena, raid-zones, crafting, or just more useless, amusing antics (fishing, gambling, etc) can keep a player's interest for a long time.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I'm with you there. If I recall right, EQ was originally budgeted 2 million and ended up costing 5 million to make. Similar timeframe to UO.
Ok,
Still nothing firm on the $30 million for UO, just a lot of guessing, but I will find that reference. Here is another game for the fire
The most interesting part of the entire article for me was the speculation by unnamed "industry insiders" estimating that TSO cost $25 million to develop. If that is true, then the game was over twice as expensive to develop as it's next nearest competitor. The only way I can see the game costing that much is if the expenses for marketing, making the retail packages and shipping them to distributors and chains, customer service (player relations, community relations, phones, billing and accounts, et al), Network Operations personnel, servers, bandwidth and everything else one can think of is tossed into the pot. Even then, I'm having a hard time reaching $25 million, unless the development costs for the aborted SimCity Online are tossed in, too. Then again, I don't know how many people are involved or their salaries, which is always a huge chunk of the expenses, so what do I know? TSO = The Sims Online.
My guild was in Derketo server, before I quit AoC there were almost 100 players in the guild, most of them quit and went back to play LoTR/WoW, others are waiting for WAR. The people that stayed playing are just casuals soloing the game for the most part.
I have a friend that just started in another server and told me he is not able to group and pretty much is soloing the game. Not many players around either. We started a new character to see the load status of other servers and ALL of them are in "Medium". This doesn't make sense.
I am going to have to call you a straight up liar since this is about the tenth time you have posted these numbers, never give a link to support your claims and seem to be the only person with this information.
Blizzard in no way spent $40 million dollars advertising World of Warcraft and I even doubt your $80 million dollar budget for initial development. You honestly want people to believe that Blizzard spent 120 million dollars to launch the game and then were overwhelmed by the initial response the game got? That is the budget for a big hollywood movie and would be similar to them only releasing the movie to 50 theaters.
If I am wrong I will apologize, but I do not think I am.
They might.
The9, the Chinese company, paid up front around 100 million USD to release WoW in China. Roughly 35 million USD for the lisense, about 70 million USD for initial equipments and data center cost because Blizzard require all top of the line servers.
Even after paying 100 millions USD at once, remember, they have to pay this in very short amount of time, not over 4 - 5 years, they sill making money hand over fist with WoW China.
I believe they recover their investment in the first year of releasing WoW China.
according to this 2002 article - Everquest was 5 million
www.gamegirladvance.com/mmog/archives/2002_08.html
Within three years, the small San Diego skunk works grew into a team of 56 developers and one of Sony's most expensive game projects, with a development budget approaching $5 million.
EQ2 fan sites
they have had 700k play the game. even if 200k leave they are still in good shape. hell they are in good shape at 300k. they arent sweating it. We all knew this game wasnt going to have big numbers like others thought. thsi game is not for everyone.
WoW didn't launch in China until sometime in mid 2005. The game was already a success by then and long after the $120 million dollars that Thillian claims Blizzard spent to launch the game.
I have been thinking about subscribing to another MMO as well, I thought about LoTR because I LOVE the books/movies but I heard that at low levels there is no players hardly and that the end-game is pretty boring. I am wanting a PVP game if LoTR is not worth it, anyone have some input?
--------------------
-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.