It all depends on where they are in development. Good read too btw, it makes sense to me at least. I played for 2 months and left for various reasons. With failure after failure I am concerned MMOs will never see good support from investors anymore. With how complicated these games are and the time/money crunch put on them it is definately a high risk investment.
The development cycle is indeed important, and it's hard to imagine that Funcom has had many resources to devote to XBOX development with all the high-profile problems with the PC client/servers. The rushed nature of the whole launch, along with the overly optimistic reports we've heard from Funcom in the press, lead me to speculate that XBOX development is not far along, if it has begun at all.
You are right on target when you say the MMO is a tough sell to investors, and titles like this are not helping the situation. A vast majority of video games (even if they are not MMOs) turn out to be disappointing sellers, and the gigantic upfront cost of MMO development should scare people away from any studio that does not have an absolutely rock-solid track record for "best in class" success (such as Blizzard).
Ugh and now with Fury dropping out of the race completely things look grim!!! I wonder how this compares to other markets though. One company makes it big, a plethora of smaller companies tries to get in on this huge market. Many fail, some succeed and some break even.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
The quarterly report is up in like a week. Once they release the financial info it should be interesting..
Funcom delayed the release of their quarterly report until August 24th. It was supposed to come out today.
My guess is that they wanted to be able to use the 'buddy passes' as a way to prop up their numbers. " AoC reaches 800,000 accounts activated" or some such garbage.
They have to be much more careful when posting information to investors though. They can't flat out lie. My guess is that we will see
1.1 million boxes shipped to retailers
800k accounts activated
500k concurent active subscribers at peak ( They will probably fail to mention that it was the first week of June).
The real juice will be during the conference call. All we need is one analyst to ask " how many current subscribers do you have". Funcom will be forced to either tell the truth, or they will say " we don't have that information at the current time". Basically they will make themselves idiots.. for the week leading up to the conference call, anyone who will be on the conference call will stop looking at the 'data'.. so when asked, they can honestly say they don't know.
Originally posted by Azrile Funcom delayed the release of their quarterly report until August 24th. It was supposed to come out today. My guess is that they wanted to be able to use the 'buddy passes' as a way to prop up their numbers. " AoC reaches 800,000 accounts activated" or some such garbage. They have to be much more careful when posting information to investors though. They can't flat out lie. My guess is that we will see 1.1 million boxes shipped to retailers
800k accounts activated
500k concurent active subscribers at peak ( They will probably fail to mention that it was the first week of June). The real juice will be during the conference call. All we need is one analyst to ask " how many current subscribers do you have". Funcom will be forced to either tell the truth, or they will say " we don't have that information at the current time". Basically they will make themselves idiots.. for the week leading up to the conference call, anyone who will be on the conference call will stop looking at the 'data'.. so when asked, they can honestly say they don't know.
Those numbers sound reasonable to me, I am looking forward to the actual published figures. If someone were to ask about subscriptions, couldn't Funcom just repeat the usual line of, "We are pleased with the current rate of subscriber retention," much like in the quarter-end preview?
Anyway, the last release I read from Funcom indicated earnings would be released on August 15; was this revised again to the 24th?
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
I bought shares ahead of the release date at $6.85 and sold at $10.50 about 2 weeks after release. It’s now hanging at $4.45 as of today. I figured I could make a nice quick flip in a down market and came out ok but it is a pig stock now. The 52 week high was $10.95 and that did not last long.
It takes more then just players to keep a company going and it is now sitting well below its market price prior to release so no one is buying. They missed their window to excel and it is going to take some serious bucks to fix it and even more damage control to get them back out of this hole no matter how many subscribers they report.
Honestly, I don't know how actively traded their stock is and if they have any real analysts following the stock. Any analyst would certainly have their eye on the official forums and know that things are in melt-down and will ask about it. The question is, does Funcom have any institutional investors following the stock. I honestly don't know.
Funcom absolutely cannot get away with saying "we are happy with retention rates'. Funcom is a very simple company to analyze (not many products). The huge drop in subscription fees will be noticable ( 700k down to 150k?).
Remember, a lot of the decietful comments from Funcom were also aimed at their investors. Making 700k sound like it was their subscribers and overexaggerating the #1 sales numbers. While neither of them were direct lies... they certainly make non-gaming investors think the company is going to report that the game is a huge finanical success.
One of the problems of course was WOW. WOWs subscriptions doubled every 3 months for the first 12 months, and continued to grow quickly after that until it's current 10.9 million. Funcom has said nothing to investors except " We outsold WOW with our great launch" and then they continue to do interviews that hide the reality. Even if subsciptions are 250k (which I think is high).... based on Funcom's annoucements, that will be a huge shock to investors. The only guidance they have gotten from Funcom has been bragging about those 6 weeks of good box sales.
I agree, Azrile, it seems like they are content to mislead as much as possible via press releases. Certainly I can understand that marketing is a big part of game sales, but I think they have gone a bit too far here. I can only hope one or more of the major investors sees a doom and gloom piece online and asks questions about it at the earnings call.
I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert.
His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!)
But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece.
Originally posted by openedge1 I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert. His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!) But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece. Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Originally posted by openedge1 I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert. His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!) But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece. Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Originally posted by openedge1 Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible. If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this. The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence. And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it. Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Well, GameRiot is indeed just a blogging site, it is not any kind of official media outlet. Regardless, I felt my discussion of Funcom's published Risk Factors stuck pretty close to well-referenced materials.
Regardless of your suspicions about the motivation behind negative discussion of Age of Conan, you must at least recognize that these sentiments only take hold and become (relatively) widespread because they resonate with the experiences of many Age of Conan players. An article based on a completely unrealistic premise does not catch on, because it's [b]obviously[/b] wrong. An article which may be somewhat hyperbolic, but hits in a sore spot, can become very believable.
Originally posted by openedge1 Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible. If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this. The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence. And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it. Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Well, GameRiot is indeed just a blogging site, it is not any kind of official media outlet. Regardless, I felt my discussion of Funcom's published Risk Factors stuck pretty close to well-referenced materials.
Regardless of your suspicions about the motivation behind negative discussion of Age of Conan, you must at least recognize that these sentiments only take hold and become (relatively) widespread because they resonate with the experiences of many Age of Conan players. An article based on a completely unrealistic premise does not catch on, because it's [b]obviously[/b] wrong. An article which may be somewhat hyperbolic, but hits in a sore spot, can become very believable.
Fair enough.
May I ask?
What level did you get to before you saw the issues? What made you say "This game is at risk of failure?"
My articles are merely tracking the reception of the game by players. I had a pretty good idea of how lackluster Age of Conan was going to be based on the pre-release media materials and the descriptions of the game from the developers. The missing features and bugs uncovered at launch by the community served to solidify my beliefs that this was a poorly executed title.
Originally posted by openedge1 I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert. His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!) But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece. Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
If you are a FORMER employee of Vivendi are you pro-Vivendi or anti-Vivendi?
I'm asking a serious question because I can't see how you can possibly know what his bias is sans a clear statement for is reason for leaving or dismissal ....
Originally posted by openedge1 I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert. His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!) But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece. Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Conversely, would I believe Funcom?
Even if the information is untrue, it is far more encompassing than anything Funcom has released about AoC or its future.
You say he's not believable -- but who's more believable between the two? Some guy, who maybe made some stuff up? Or, a company with a motive, who seemingly makes EVERYTHING up?
I fail to see how Funcom's "evidence" is any more credible than this guy's. Yet, what he says at least makes some sense, where Funcom makes no sense.
Doesn't matter to me either way. But passively defending Funcom by attacking the credibility of the review isn't exactly logical, since what could be said about one could be said about the other.
Even if the information is untrue, it is far more encompassing than anything Funcom has released about AoC or its future.
You say he's not believable -- but who's more believable between the two? Some guy, who maybe made some stuff up? Or, a company with a motive, who seemingly makes EVERYTHING up?
I fail to see how Funcom's "evidence" is any more credible than this guy's. Yet, what he says at least makes some sense, where Funcom makes no sense.
Doesn't matter to me either way. But passively defending Funcom by attacking the credibility of the review isn't exactly logical, since what could be said about one could be said about the other.
Exactly
People have given up on Funcom, yet the reporting capabilities of this person is suspect as well. This is the same author who took pictures of girl gamers and made them objects to rate like a video game with graphics, would I "play them" again, etc.
I have no issue with someone blogging about their dislike of a game (as I have many times) or what information they find. But, when an author has already been noted as a "unproven" source, I would not then be having a conversation with that same person discussing with them like they have real facts.
He has the same facts as you or I, but has glorified it to the point that it is beyond the bad Funcom can do on their own with their PR.
He has gone beyond this to create his own facts.
Example : "As shown in the data graphed above from xfire.com," Displayed with a graph NOT from Xfire. This could be true or not, but Xfire has no way to go back as far as he has the chart, then blatantly lies where the data came from. I would prefer "hard proof"
So, it boils down to...I would prefer to NOT give clicks for the advertising of such a source is all.
. This is the same author who took pictures of girl gamers and made them objects to rate like a video game with graphics, would I "play them" again, etc. <...> Example : "As shown in the data graphed above from xfire.com," Displayed with a graph NOT from Xfire. This could be true or not, but Xfire has no way to go back as far as he has the chart, then blatantly lies where the data came from. I would prefer "hard proof"
That's pretty damning.
___________________ Sadly, I see storm clouds on the horizon. A faint stench of Vanguard is in the air.-Kien
Example : "As shown in the data graphed above from xfire.com," Displayed with a graph NOT from Xfire. This could be true or not, but Xfire has no way to go back as far as he has the chart, then blatantly lies where the data came from. I would prefer "hard proof"
That's pretty damning.
The data does indeed come from xfire.com -- the problem is that they only display data for the last month. I have been recording the data points since June 1, even as they scroll off the visible dataset on the xfire website.
I have to make my own graph because the xfire.com display has a constantly changing scale, and the aforementioned month-long limit. While I could show a direct screenshot image of the last 30 days (which I did for some of my previous blog posts), I think the "bigger picture" of trends since the launch date are important to see, and making my own graph using their data is the best way to show it.
Originally posted by openedge1 I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert. His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!) But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece. Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
... about as credible as you back on the LoTRO forums with your large EQ2 sig banner, posting any kind of information you could find on the 'net - be it other forums, articles, etc - which you would then spin to try and show how poorly that game was doing. Then doing the whole duplicity thing, trying to come across as "even headed" on the LotRO forums, while bashing the game or Turbine to pieces elsewhere.
C'mon, Open. A bit like pot and kettle don't you think? Not like your posting history is completely unknown to some of us here.
I have no problem with people calling into question a post/blog/article by someone based on their obvious allegiance to a rival game (well.. "rival" in huge sarcasm quotes - WoW has no serious rival... but I digress). However, a post like that, coming from you, is incredibly ironic.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
One thing that gets me about people saying that theyre xfire numbers and nobody uses xfire is this:
Unless all the people that are showing a decline in hours on the xfire game list on Age of Conan stopped using Xfire, then the graph on their site shows a decline in in people playing Age Of Conan in at least the Xfire community. I know that xfire is not a major portion of the gaming population but going from #4 on the hour list to #20 in 2 months is a pretty drastic change.
One thing that gets me about people saying that theyre xfire numbers and nobody uses xfire is this: Unless all the people that are showing a decline in hours on the xfire game list on Age of Conan stopped using Xfire, then the graph on their site shows a decline in in people playing Age Of Conan in at least the Xfire community. I know that xfire is not a major portion of the gaming population but going from #4 on the hour list to #20 in 2 months is a pretty drastic change.
The only other games to have such a drastic drop like that was LOTRO, EQ2 and Vanguard...with Vanguard showing the largest drop of all games to have at least been near the top of the chart.
LOTRO has evened off, EQ2 has bottomed out, and Vanguard...well...ouch
Comments
So true
Well its easy to bash released game while everyone is telling about the unreleased ones how great they are.
It was some with AoC before it was released it had unbelievable hype like some other games have now.
Just wait for release and then judge. ( well the only thing I believe it will be polished is Wotlk and too bad I dont like that game at all )
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
The development cycle is indeed important, and it's hard to imagine that Funcom has had many resources to devote to XBOX development with all the high-profile problems with the PC client/servers. The rushed nature of the whole launch, along with the overly optimistic reports we've heard from Funcom in the press, lead me to speculate that XBOX development is not far along, if it has begun at all.
You are right on target when you say the MMO is a tough sell to investors, and titles like this are not helping the situation. A vast majority of video games (even if they are not MMOs) turn out to be disappointing sellers, and the gigantic upfront cost of MMO development should scare people away from any studio that does not have an absolutely rock-solid track record for "best in class" success (such as Blizzard).
Ugh and now with Fury dropping out of the race completely things look grim!!! I wonder how this compares to other markets though. One company makes it big, a plethora of smaller companies tries to get in on this huge market. Many fail, some succeed and some break even.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Funcom delayed the release of their quarterly report until August 24th. It was supposed to come out today.
My guess is that they wanted to be able to use the 'buddy passes' as a way to prop up their numbers. " AoC reaches 800,000 accounts activated" or some such garbage.
They have to be much more careful when posting information to investors though. They can't flat out lie. My guess is that we will see
1.1 million boxes shipped to retailers
800k accounts activated
500k concurent active subscribers at peak ( They will probably fail to mention that it was the first week of June).
The real juice will be during the conference call. All we need is one analyst to ask " how many current subscribers do you have". Funcom will be forced to either tell the truth, or they will say " we don't have that information at the current time". Basically they will make themselves idiots.. for the week leading up to the conference call, anyone who will be on the conference call will stop looking at the 'data'.. so when asked, they can honestly say they don't know.
Those numbers sound reasonable to me, I am looking forward to the actual published figures. If someone were to ask about subscriptions, couldn't Funcom just repeat the usual line of, "We are pleased with the current rate of subscriber retention," much like in the quarter-end preview?
Anyway, the last release I read from Funcom indicated earnings would be released on August 15; was this revised again to the 24th?
Are you people daft?
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I bought shares ahead of the release date at $6.85 and sold at $10.50 about 2 weeks after release. It’s now hanging at $4.45 as of today. I figured I could make a nice quick flip in a down market and came out ok but it is a pig stock now. The 52 week high was $10.95 and that did not last long.
It takes more then just players to keep a company going and it is now sitting well below its market price prior to release so no one is buying. They missed their window to excel and it is going to take some serious bucks to fix it and even more damage control to get them back out of this hole no matter how many subscribers they report.
stop quoting facts!
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
Honestly, I don't know how actively traded their stock is and if they have any real analysts following the stock. Any analyst would certainly have their eye on the official forums and know that things are in melt-down and will ask about it. The question is, does Funcom have any institutional investors following the stock. I honestly don't know.
Funcom absolutely cannot get away with saying "we are happy with retention rates'. Funcom is a very simple company to analyze (not many products). The huge drop in subscription fees will be noticable ( 700k down to 150k?).
Remember, a lot of the decietful comments from Funcom were also aimed at their investors. Making 700k sound like it was their subscribers and overexaggerating the #1 sales numbers. While neither of them were direct lies... they certainly make non-gaming investors think the company is going to report that the game is a huge finanical success.
One of the problems of course was WOW. WOWs subscriptions doubled every 3 months for the first 12 months, and continued to grow quickly after that until it's current 10.9 million. Funcom has said nothing to investors except " We outsold WOW with our great launch" and then they continue to do interviews that hide the reality. Even if subsciptions are 250k (which I think is high).... based on Funcom's annoucements, that will be a huge shock to investors. The only guidance they have gotten from Funcom has been bragging about those 6 weeks of good box sales.
I agree, Azrile, it seems like they are content to mislead as much as possible via press releases. Certainly I can understand that marketing is a big part of game sales, but I think they have gone a bit too far here. I can only hope one or more of the major investors sees a doom and gloom piece online and asks questions about it at the earnings call.
I do find it amusing how everyone here is having a conversation with this guy like he is an expert.
His original name on WoW riot was Briyan Anonymous (lol), then after he had to retract a hate post about AoC, he changed it to his real name (I would look it up, but do not wish to garner any further traffic to a website with an agenda!)
But, I bet the traffic numbers look real good about now for "WoW" riot with the AoC fluff piece.
Zzzzz
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Well, GameRiot is indeed just a blogging site, it is not any kind of official media outlet. Regardless, I felt my discussion of Funcom's published Risk Factors stuck pretty close to well-referenced materials.
Regardless of your suspicions about the motivation behind negative discussion of Age of Conan, you must at least recognize that these sentiments only take hold and become (relatively) widespread because they resonate with the experiences of many Age of Conan players. An article based on a completely unrealistic premise does not catch on, because it's [b]obviously[/b] wrong. An article which may be somewhat hyperbolic, but hits in a sore spot, can become very believable.
Well, GameRiot is indeed just a blogging site, it is not any kind of official media outlet. Regardless, I felt my discussion of Funcom's published Risk Factors stuck pretty close to well-referenced materials.
Regardless of your suspicions about the motivation behind negative discussion of Age of Conan, you must at least recognize that these sentiments only take hold and become (relatively) widespread because they resonate with the experiences of many Age of Conan players. An article based on a completely unrealistic premise does not catch on, because it's [b]obviously[/b] wrong. An article which may be somewhat hyperbolic, but hits in a sore spot, can become very believable.
Fair enough.
May I ask?
What level did you get to before you saw the issues? What made you say "This game is at risk of failure?"
Did you do any beta testing?
What previous games have you played religiously?
thank you
openedge1, I still have not played the game.
My articles are merely tracking the reception of the game by players. I had a pretty good idea of how lackluster Age of Conan was going to be based on the pre-release media materials and the descriptions of the game from the developers. The missing features and bugs uncovered at launch by the community served to solidify my beliefs that this was a poorly executed title.
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
If you are a FORMER employee of Vivendi are you pro-Vivendi or anti-Vivendi?
I'm asking a serious question because I can't see how you can possibly know what his bias is sans a clear statement for is reason for leaving or dismissal ....
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
Conversely, would I believe Funcom?
Even if the information is untrue, it is far more encompassing than anything Funcom has released about AoC or its future.
You say he's not believable -- but who's more believable between the two? Some guy, who maybe made some stuff up? Or, a company with a motive, who seemingly makes EVERYTHING up?
I fail to see how Funcom's "evidence" is any more credible than this guy's. Yet, what he says at least makes some sense, where Funcom makes no sense.
Doesn't matter to me either way. But passively defending Funcom by attacking the credibility of the review isn't exactly logical, since what could be said about one could be said about the other.
Conversely, would I believe Funcom?
Even if the information is untrue, it is far more encompassing than anything Funcom has released about AoC or its future.
You say he's not believable -- but who's more believable between the two? Some guy, who maybe made some stuff up? Or, a company with a motive, who seemingly makes EVERYTHING up?
I fail to see how Funcom's "evidence" is any more credible than this guy's. Yet, what he says at least makes some sense, where Funcom makes no sense.
Doesn't matter to me either way. But passively defending Funcom by attacking the credibility of the review isn't exactly logical, since what could be said about one could be said about the other.
Exactly
People have given up on Funcom, yet the reporting capabilities of this person is suspect as well. This is the same author who took pictures of girl gamers and made them objects to rate like a video game with graphics, would I "play them" again, etc.
I have no issue with someone blogging about their dislike of a game (as I have many times) or what information they find. But, when an author has already been noted as a "unproven" source, I would not then be having a conversation with that same person discussing with them like they have real facts.
He has the same facts as you or I, but has glorified it to the point that it is beyond the bad Funcom can do on their own with their PR.
He has gone beyond this to create his own facts.
Example : "As shown in the data graphed above from xfire.com," Displayed with a graph NOT from Xfire. This could be true or not, but Xfire has no way to go back as far as he has the chart, then blatantly lies where the data came from. I would prefer "hard proof"
So, it boils down to...I would prefer to NOT give clicks for the advertising of such a source is all.
I can find better solutions for data is all.
___________________
Sadly, I see storm clouds on the horizon. A faint stench of Vanguard is in the air.-Kien
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/13/
The data does indeed come from xfire.com -- the problem is that they only display data for the last month. I have been recording the data points since June 1, even as they scroll off the visible dataset on the xfire website.
I have to make my own graph because the xfire.com display has a constantly changing scale, and the aforementioned month-long limit. While I could show a direct screenshot image of the last 30 days (which I did for some of my previous blog posts), I think the "bigger picture" of trends since the launch date are important to see, and making my own graph using their data is the best way to show it.
I don't claim to be any kind of expert. I'm just a gamer trying to uncover the truth about Age of Conan. We get a lot of misleading and bad information from Funcom (the developers), so I'm trying to dig for facts where I can.
Hopefully you are not disputing that the community at large seems quite unsatisfied with the product overall?
Absolutely not, but that you as the delivery agent is not credible.
If this would have been on a personal blog or other news agency (like Massively, etc.) then I would have been more willing to read about this.
The fact that you had to retract one post of made up stuff proved to be sad. People kept asking you for your source and you provided no hard evidence.
And the fact the site you post on (besides the name) has one of the Co-Owners as a previous employee of Vivendi, just has agenda all over it.
Sorry, but you or the site as a "news" reporter is not the believable part.
... about as credible as you back on the LoTRO forums with your large EQ2 sig banner, posting any kind of information you could find on the 'net - be it other forums, articles, etc - which you would then spin to try and show how poorly that game was doing. Then doing the whole duplicity thing, trying to come across as "even headed" on the LotRO forums, while bashing the game or Turbine to pieces elsewhere.
C'mon, Open. A bit like pot and kettle don't you think? Not like your posting history is completely unknown to some of us here.
I have no problem with people calling into question a post/blog/article by someone based on their obvious allegiance to a rival game (well.. "rival" in huge sarcasm quotes - WoW has no serious rival... but I digress). However, a post like that, coming from you, is incredibly ironic.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Please stay on topic.
Vitanda est improba siren desidia - One must avoid that wicked temptress, Laziness. - Horace
One thing that gets me about people saying that theyre xfire numbers and nobody uses xfire is this:
Unless all the people that are showing a decline in hours on the xfire game list on Age of Conan stopped using Xfire, then the graph on their site shows a decline in in people playing Age Of Conan in at least the Xfire community. I know that xfire is not a major portion of the gaming population but going from #4 on the hour list to #20 in 2 months is a pretty drastic change.
The only other games to have such a drastic drop like that was LOTRO, EQ2 and Vanguard...with Vanguard showing the largest drop of all games to have at least been near the top of the chart.
LOTRO has evened off, EQ2 has bottomed out, and Vanguard...well...ouch
I believe we know which direction AoC is headed.