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anyone notice
miket121
Member Posts: 7
In all the interviews it seems that they've still only had 700k people register, and 1 million copies sold. This happened like two weeks after launch, and they still haven't even gotten 100k more?
Comments
Anybody playing the game knows that the population took a nose dive after the first month.
It's rapidly descended since then, there is no surprise there.
It's still got a die hard base, but word spreads fast amongst gamers anymore.
I returned and am playing it, but I will say that it is absolutely losing subs and quickly.
When entire guilds are cut from 50 active players to 3 or 4... and it's as widespread as it is, that's an easy to follow and clear to see decline.
FC could pull back some (not all) of their lost subs by starting a direct and forward moving progression as far as patches go. 3 or 4 weeks of decent patches that don;t break twice as much as they fix, and the fence sitters would likely return. There's lots of them.
one more patch like what we've seen in the past (minus this last small one) and I would think the final curtain call has been made as far as upward climbing subs for this game...
i think what they are doing is they are talking about their highlights and their peak and that's about it. It is sorta like when Sigil talked about Vanguard and their 250K. They always bragged about it....even during the same month when it dropped from 250K to 25K.
Its just shadey marketing principles. Unfortunately, many companies do it....mostly to impress their shareholders.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Honestly they fked up and screwed themselves over. They are already dead. There is little faith in funcoms ability to create proper patches and alot of people are close to the edge with this game, when the next WoW expansion and Warhammer both come out, this game will fall down to hang with vanguard.
I think a large problem is also the fact that these major companies don't seem to have any integrity anymore.
Companies like Sigil, and Funcom, and SOE... they just routinely lie to their customers. In all of the years of playing MMORPG's, a lot of games have made mistakes, be it an early release, over-hyping, missing content, etc etc.
But the one thing that I would actually just love to hear, just one time from a company is so simple.
"I'm sorry. We messed up" or "I'm sorry, we took on more than we could handle, but we're doing everything we can to fix the problems." or even "I'm sorry that the customer service you pay for hasn't been delivered, and as such, we're going to give you a free month of play time."
Honestly, I just want to see some humanity on the scene, some honesty.
If Gaute came out in a press statement and said "Guys, I'm sorry we didn't deliver the content we promised. We don't have the money, the manpower, or the managerial abilities to fix everything at once right now. Our game is a work in progress, and we're doing everything we can to get things corrected", I'd probably never say a negative thing about the company again. However, it's the arrogance that just pushes me over the line. It's the same arrogance we saw with SOE and the NGE for SWG, the same arrogance we saw with McQuaid and his "vision", and personally, I'm just getting tired of it.
Stop rubbing your remarkable sales figures in our faces, and take some responsibility for the customers you HAVE, not the ones you want to have. Because every time I hear someone like McQuaid, or Godager, or Smedley open their mouth... a little part of me dies on the inside. Not even because they're bad speakers (they're not), but because I know, that from start to finish, every word that comes out of their mouth is a lie/play on words, misleading, and deceitful... and I think it's pretty damn sad that it's gotten to that level.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
MMOs have become politics! Oh no!!!!
This is why, flop or fly, Mythic has gotten alot of respect for announcing the cuts while you can still cancel your pre-order. I agree with you 100%.
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A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
Which is exactly why I love blizzard and valve, both are honest companies that try to please their players, and what's the result? Well they don't make 'new' games, but they completely revolutionize their genres. No one thinks the early RTS games when you say RTS, they think starcraft or warcraft. WoW saved the MMORPG genre by brining in millions of new players. And valve... orange box (need I say more?) Funcom has done nothing to show they are a capable company.
It is shocking that they don't get it. Its such a simple business concept.
Fungerer som det skal
Great post.. All suits for game companies should be forced to read this post before starting their day... everyday...
Well, Sigil did that if I remember correctly ... did it help? I would say no ...
I generally agree however. Communication is always better then silence.
If I'm not mistaken, Sigil only apologized after they went under.
From what I remember, McQuaid was busy flapping his lip about how revolutionary and novel his game was, and his "vision" for the future. But, as I also recall it, the guy who was so terribly heartbroken couldn't even show up to fire his employees. According to the interview on f13.net, they just got shuffled to a parking lot by mid-level management, and were told goodbye and good luck.
I think that kind of act sort of undermines the whole humanity of McQuaid and co.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Did you even read the interview, they said Brad was there when they all got fired. Doesnt change how shitty the situation is but, true info is better than false info.
AOC did not have 700k 2 weeks after launch, that was not announced until 6 weeks after launch
May 26th: 400k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
June 2nd: 500k
www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/080602_Funcom%20Update.pdf
June 30th: 700k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
EQ2 fan sites
AOC did not have 700k 2 weeks after launch, that was not announced until 6 weeks after launch
May 26th: 400k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
June 2nd: 500k
www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/080602_Funcom%20Update.pdf
June 30th: 700k
www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi
Those arnt even active subscribers. Only 500k active accounts were reported on June 2nd. They shipped out 1 million keys and only 700k were registered even if not used. Funcom is about at 250ish active subs now. Everyone left.
Active accounts have never been reported. Activated accounts on the otherhand have been fairly well documented. The difference in activated account and active account is Activated means someone has registered their code at the Funcom website. Active account is an account that can play the game.
My account is Activated but because I cancelled during the free month, my account is not active.
Funcom has never released active account numbers. Anyone who says there any number of subscriptions is guessing. Most polls that I have seen estimate that 50% or slightly more of people that bought AoC have cancelled. Funcom should be releasing a 2nd quarter profit statement during the first week of August. That will have some sort of statement about retention of accounts.
Waiting for the next thing
Spot on Ghist.
We have to add in all the potential from buddy key now. Got a feeling things wont be clear for a while.
Did you even read the interview, they said Brad was there when they all got fired. Doesnt change how shitty the situation is but, true info is better than false info.
If you where making a MMO and you had to fire half your employees would you do it well they where sitting at thier computers or still had access to them ?. Ya i didnt think so
Funcom has only released info on registered accounts
my post with links was to correct the Ops statement
of Funcom having 700k registered accounts withn the 1st 2 weeks -- which is wrong
EQ2 fan sites
Did you even read the interview, they said Brad was there when they all got fired. Doesnt change how shitty the situation is but, true info is better than false info.
If you where making a MMO and you had to fire half your employees would you do it well they where sitting at thier computers or still had access to them ?. Ya i didnt think so
No, no I wouldn't. I'd have the class, respect, and decency to summon them to my office, 1 at a time, and explain to them, face-to-face, that we failed to achieve our goals, and as a result, were being forced to downsize.
I'd give something called "courtesy" to people who gave my 5 years of their life, and I'd end it with a personal confrontation, and hopefully, a handshake.
What I *wouldn't* do is just deny their keycards from working, and then cattle-call them all outside to publicly humiliate them all.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...