Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Desperation part 2
Sabradin
Member Posts: 772
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?loadNews=11634
my opinion: he is clutching his hands together praying to whatever god can help him with his lies to try whatever it takes to make the interview go well and to show some sign of life
i think hez a dark templar
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
Comments
I realy liked the questions the interviewer asked this time compaired to the last ones
, but sadly, the answers are all the same, Erling always say he is listening to the players and what not and try to skip though 
such as shaddy company
Lawl, my favorite part is when he said Customer support is our #1 priority.
You are correct. I should really consider the words I use.
(oh god am i laughing hard on the inside)
Just when you think you have all the answers, I change the questions.
in my keyboard # is shift+3.. maybe it ment 31 instead of 1 ? must be..
Hysterical hehe
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Made me lol so much i had to quote it.
Funny how they mention 800K units sold and 400K subscribers at the Q2 report but won't talk about subscriber base now.
"...It's the same reason nobody else does it. You know it's because of market inplace, the competition scene or whatever you want to call it. That's pretty much the reason.
But I think Funcom did something unique the other day when we went out and said we had over four hundred thousand active players. Not too many companies do that. And I am glad we did. It's a very very solid number. We are really happy with it...."
Doesn't he contradict himself with this statement alone?
So if they are happy with 400K and losing 1/2 of the original purchasers, what is their active player base now? Because they won't release the numbers must mean they are no longer happy?
Edit: I don't know which is worse my spelling or my typing.
Waiting for the next thing
Guys a bit...out of touch.
He both confesses that Funcom has separate teams; admitting to the separate expansion and DX10 teams at the very least, and goes on to say that the game's Live team is larger and Age of Conan is top priority.
Ok I can buy that the two mentioned teams are smaller; but what of the Xbox 360 porters and The Secret World? Little difficult to believe they've done nothing the last 3 months except work on Age of Conan, I doubt production on those two games ceased.
I just think that's a terrible selling point to say they HAD to start getting information out about the expansion, and that it's industry standard for there to be separate development teams.
Does this guy not know of Blizzard? Burning Crusades' announcement and development came so late because Blizzard did nothing but work on World of Warcraft it's first year of so. To the point things like Starcraft: Ghost was delayed and later cancelled, and their next projects, Diablo III and Starcraft II didn't see the light of day until now.
I can't buy that Funcom is doing everything they can for Age of Conan and devoting every resource; if they were then there'd be ONE development team working on ONE game, Age of Conan live. Not it's 360 port, its DX10 version, its east European language versions, and god forbid definitely not an expansion and second MMO.
Erling has attempted to declare what acceptable industry practices are. It won't fly, because Blizzard aside, too many other companies went on to take care of their core game before embarking on all the extracurricular things Funcom's doing.
Whether or not he believes Funcom's doing too much, which I believe they are, they're definitely not doing all that they can do for Age of Conan.
I think he was saying that it was unique that Funcom went out and publicly lied about their subscriber base.
Hi Erling, how's it hanging?
I love sequels
A couple of questions
How do you design an expansion when the core game is sort of fubarred?
I particullary enjoy how he "admits" that the game is far from what they said it would be at release and then gives zero in terms of a timeline. I guess all of the fanboys who said they didnt lie about what would be in game, only to leave people disappoited, will be showing up to say "Hey I guess they did lie!!!"
No need to go back and find all of their hype PR videos and interviews now. We have him admitting it.
lol
"Customer service goes before anything!"
Fungerer som det skal
Really great questions from mmorpg.com , I just wish the interviewer could have followed up on the answers. At times it almost felt like they had talked about what was going to be asked so Erling could be ready with a general answer that doesn't get any feedback. That's not an interview, that's a pulpit.
My biggest ones:
1.) If they are focusing on polishing their minor features as much as possible why didn't the major features get the same treatment? They were released buggy and broken at launch. Their 2x a week patches had so many hidden changes and constantly broke aspects of the game that were working fine.
2.) Why hasn't developer communication improved?
3.) Do they feel their population numbers vs the number of servers they have is reasonable?
To add to your observation, it just kills me that calling on a GM took about 3 hours for them to respond on average and when they did show up, when I asked a question, it seemed like the GM was totally oblivious to the game and merely looking up an answer in a database for some generic "sorry, we can't help you but they're working on that and it should come out in a future patch" response.
Reminded me of making a call to some sort of generic call center and getting some sort of generic answer that is designed to quell my problem/concern and sweep it under the rug.
Yah, Customer Support is our #1 priority.
First thing I thought upon seeing that, and the first part was "Good grief... *again*?"
How many interviews is that with FC in the past few weeks alone... and always about the same general items?
It's like each time FC do an interview, they realize they botched some part of it. So they figure if they just keep trying and doing more interviews, eventually they're bound to get it right.
"Hmm... that didn't work? Okay how about this?... "No? Okay okay... wait... how about... this?!" "Still no good? Fine... okay.. how about..."
As I see it, bottom line is this..
If they are capable of getting themselves back on track, they'll likely manage to at least salvage the game enough to maintain a healthy enough population to keep it going.
Even if they have 100-200k subs, that's a healthy playerbase. No it's not 400k or 800k, but it's a healthy enough sub base to make a profit and keep the game going. It's not a "failure".
Eventually people will move on to other games and give up on AoC. A new group of people will come along who know nothing of what happened and, if the game is squared away enough, they'll play it.
Will it ever reach the potential it had? I highly, highly doubt it. They had that chance and they blew it.
Just look at history... what MMO has ever recovered from a troubled launch to regain its initial success? None that I know of. I'd say the situation with FC and AoC goes beyond merely a "poor launch'".
They're still trying to find their way out of the weeds at this point. With WAR coming, WoTLK coming and some other MMOs coming down the pike to get players' attention and money, FC will have missed that window.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops