To all those who re-sub thinking now things will be different. Don't be a sucker! Granted things may indeed be different but has FC earned that trust? Wait until the game is proven to have been improved before you give FC more money for another marketing ploy.
Don't forget the power of free play to lure people into giving another shot down the line. EQ1, DAoC, and even the stillborn AutoAssault rolled out free play by activating all unpaid/suspended accounts in order to give disgruntled or otherwise lapsed subscribers a chance to come back in and see the changes at no cost.
Once new guy comes in and makes some serious changes, FunCom would be stupid not to do this, considering all the players like me who let their subscriptions lapse. Few may pony up $15 to check out the changes down the line, but a week or two of play at no financial risk to the player could bring back many more..
I'm thinking of all those level 80 toons in limbo who would suddenly have something to do in the game...
To all those who re-sub thinking now things will be different. Don't be a sucker! Granted things may indeed be different but has FC earned that trust? Wait until the game is proven to have been improved before you give FC more money for another marketing ploy.
Don't forget the power of free play to lure people into giving another shot down the line. EQ1, DAoC, and even the stillborn AutoAssault rolled out free play by activating all unpaid/suspended accounts in order to give disgruntled or otherwise lapsed subscribers a chance to come back in and see the changes at no cost.
Once new guy comes in and makes some serious changes, FunCom would be stupid not to do this, considering all the players like me who let their subscriptions lapse. Few may pony up $15 to check out the changes down the line, but a week or two of play at no financial risk to the player could bring back many more..
I'm thinking of all those level 80 toons in limbo who would suddenly have something to do in the game...
Trying Free-play after many changes would be sensible. Re-subbing within a month of this announcement would be foolish.
Mr. Gaute Godager should have never been in front of AOC after the mess he did with Shadowlands, what the hell was FC thinking. At least now thing might get fixed.
Resigned? lol, sorry that word has another interpretation in business speak for executives, to us ordinary folk the word is FIRED!
And rightly so!
The problem with that is, it does not solve the connumdrum that the rest of the development staff is faced with, how to save this game with so many of his goofy ideas heavily embedded in the game.
PR and others can try to spin this in a postitive light all they want but it doesn't change that this is what you see in response to a poor product. Successes don't have this kind of thing happen. This guy was one of the reasons I stopped following AoC in spite of all the cool-sounded features they hyped. The interviews and videos of the developers inspired no confidence in me that they could pull off what they claimed. I was less familiar with the other devs but they didn't convince they could either. If this new person has proven themselves on other games, then that might be what AoC needs. It is true this can only help AoC but none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. The signs of this were clear enough during the game's development if you listened to the dev interviews.
Well stated, you never know, they can turn this game around if they actually try. Hell, even SWG at launch (worse launch than AoC) eventually turned it around.
SWG eventually turned what around? The game bled subs because it was broken and missing important game systems at release. The first game revamp caused a jump in cancellations because it didn't fix and complete the game, it replaced it with a broken attempt to copy WoW. The second game revamp apparently caused the cancellation servers to crash as more than 100 000 people are said to have quit when the game lost most of its professions, much of its content, and all player progress, as SOE attempted to completely redo the game in 3 months, to copy features from both WoW and Battlefront.
One of the hottest topics currently about this game is what to do with all of the empty servers. SWG has gone from bad to worse, and from bleeding subs to mass exodus. I can't imagine what you mean by saying the game has turned around.
Actually AGE OF CONAN has about 500,000 subscribers that is not a failure and Gaute left for his own reasons and he may have not been the best for the game but he certainly was not the worst so you can pretend AoC is going to die but how can it be dead when it has 50 servers and 500,000 customers???
Where do you get the 500k from? Funcom won't tell us how many subscribers they have. How would you know?
i m guessing it was proberbly what he heard from someone in game . every smaller mmo i ve ever played is full of people who think its the best game ever . most actually do have something to offer though i would say to be fair to them .
The fact is that FunCom, at Leipzig announced their sales and subscription figures. Age of Conan sold over 800,000 boxes worldwide and, as of the end of the second quarter (that's 30 June 2008) more than 415,000 paid subscriptions were still active.
Third quarter subscription numbers should be available around 10-15 October 2008. Whether FunCom decides to release those or not, time will tell. However, knowledgeable, informed sources estimate third quarter AoC subscriptions to dip well below the quarter million mark (250,000).
PR and others can try to spin this in a postitive light all they want but it doesn't change that this is what you see in response to a poor product. Successes don't have this kind of thing happen. This guy was one of the reasons I stopped following AoC in spite of all the cool-sounded features they hyped. The interviews and videos of the developers inspired no confidence in me that they could pull off what they claimed. I was less familiar with the other devs but they didn't convince they could either. If this new person has proven themselves on other games, then that might be what AoC needs. It is true this can only help AoC but none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. The signs of this were clear enough during the game's development if you listened to the dev interviews.
Well stated, you never know, they can turn this game around if they actually try. Hell, even SWG at launch (worse launch than AoC) eventually turned it around.
SWG eventually turned what around? The game bled subs because it was broken and missing important game systems at release. The first game revamp caused a jump in cancellations because it didn't fix and complete the game, it replaced it with a broken attempt to copy WoW. The second game revamp apparently caused the cancellation servers to crash as more than 100 000 people are said to have quit when the game lost most of its professions, much of its content, and all player progress, as SOE attempted to completely redo the game in 3 months, to copy features from both WoW and Battlefront.
One of the hottest topics currently about this game is what to do with all of the empty servers. SWG has gone from bad to worse, and from bleeding subs to mass exodus. I can't imagine what you mean by saying the game has turned around.
I'll bring it down to the ground for you, Angel.
What you can't imagine is quite simple, really. He's talking about the bumpy launch SWG had when it originally launched. (And the game did turn around nicely a bit after it went live). *You're* talking about NGE, which happened years later.
I sincerely hope Godager will not find job at Blizzard or Mythic to ruin things also there.
That's the beauty of it. He not only got run out of FunCom, he got run out of the entire industry. Read his "resignation" again.
Edit:
Gaute Godager--
“I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig. I have had a fantastic time these last 16 years, and I am very proud of the many things Funcom has achieved. Funcom and Conan will always be a big part of me, but as I now look to new ventures outside the gaming industry I am certain Age of Conan’s future is in the best of hands.”
Craig should have been the first person on the scene, not the guy who's name sounds like a flesh-eating fungus.
I'm actually happy I fought the urge to sell my AoC account and get my money back. I'm going to keep an eye on it now and see if it improves; the game always had major potential but up until now that's all it had. Now it might actually have promise, too.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
LOL can anyone say VANGUARD! It dont matter what you say when the lead guy walks its not looking good. For AOC he is not the LAST or 1st one to make all the decisions. I'm just saying lets not go la la and blam ALL the problems AoC had on ONE guy .
These devs just don't get it, they always over promise and under deliver. When will MMO developers learn that the majority of MMO players don't have the patience to play un-finished and buggy games.
Because they had a decade of tradition that convinced them that they COULD shove unfinished buggy games and people would pay for them. That lovely tradition started with UO and became the 'standard' of the industry for years. Or don't people remember all those launches?
There were a couple of companies that didn't follow that path but they were the minority. Blizzard set a new bar with WoW. Remember when it was released? In spite of the server problems it was considered one of the most 'polished' MMORPGs ever. Which simply meant it had a stable engine that could actually be played by most people. For MMORPGs that was a breakthrough.
Now things have changed and with MMORPGs entering the mainstream market the over-hype and lack of results that MMORPGs developers dished out for so many year just won't work anymore. Just another example of the evolution the genre so desperately needed.
To be honest, the software industry as a whole is not famous by having high commercial standards and honesty. Just look at Windows every time Microsoft is launching a new version. They have to repair it by launching an SP1, SP2, SP3 etc. And Microsoft IS a serious company compared to industry standards...but now just imagine Ford or GM trying to sell a new car with such problems...they would be instantly out of business and a milion of lawyers would knock at their doors...
I'm wondering if this guy doomed all of Funcom first.
I saw him take down AO miserably with disaster after disaster directly attributable to him. When he thoroughly trashed the game and moved to start on a new MMO I knew to stay 10,000 feet away from whatever it was.
The guy is a master of spin and always tries to sell you garbage in his games on a solid gold platter.
Maybe Funcom can manage to turn itself around now. I'd love to see Ragnar Tornquist do a sequel to AO the way it should have been done before Gaute tried to make it EPIC EQ1!!!
Its a small wonder why Gaute Godager has resigned after the numerous failures and the inability of Age of Conan to deliver its overly hyped game features.
I admit, the game does have good potential (at least what was advertised) but sadly they have a poor project management team in my humble opinion; no one with enough sense or balls to steer the game development in the right direction. Instead they blindly trudged on with blinds over their eyes not paying attention to what the users were crying out for, which was (most importantly) fixes for the game's technical problems.
No one wants to sit and look at beautiful graphics forever, you can always take a walk in nature for that. Customers pay money for the ability to play a game. End of Story. So if they can't get that, what do you expect?
I don't know what effects that his resignation will have for the future of the game, only time will tell. But for me, its still too little too late. I am not going to waste any more money on Failcom, not for a very loooog while.
I agree, it may be too little too late. I put alot of faith in AoC. I WANTED it to be the only game I played for the next 5+ years. Then it got here. Tortage was amazing, and I thought "wow, the hype was all true. I'm home!" and then ....... it only took two short months for the pendulum to swing all the way from loyal to disgruntled.
I have nothing but best wishes for AoC, but barring some sort of cosmic event, I won't be going back. I've already moved on. I suspect that a good chunk of the people that have already ended their subs feel exactly the same way, and no matter how great a game AoC someday becomes, most of those day one people who cancelled won't be back. Even if it becomes the "perfect" game, by then, they'll already be hip deep in something else.
As someone already stated, you only get one launch. AoC will never be the game we all wanted it to be. It might grow enough to sustain itself for awhile, maybe even turn a profit, but it'll never be the big dog again.
Best case scenario here is, FC can improve AoC enough to salvage some reputation so that maybe they receive more than a lukewarm welcome on any new games. Of course in order for even this to work, Craig will have to be as good as they say he is, and he better be at the stick when round 3 comes.
Sil, in his day, ran the largest fansite for AO, was an active member of the AOVault, an active player in a circle of folks that included the then community manager, Daigalean, and a few devs from other games as well.
He later became Community Manager and people found that they were being heard finally.
The list of accolades goes from there...
Gaute has conceptualized two incredibly unique games who were both hurt in product launch by poor balance, bugs, rushed delivery, and a lack of dynamic content.
Anyone who was at launch for AO will tell you the same.
It's one thing to have a great game idea, and another to make it appeal to the masses.
Silrillion has already shown an ability to make that happen, and Gaute has not.
That is no disrespect to Gaute Godager as he (with a good design and development team) will make other games in the future, and they will also prove to be unique in the MMO genre.
Nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, just try and make it informed
Im suprised nobody has made the vanguard comparison. SUPER crappy luanch, horrible game for about a year, and now Vanguard is starting to rebound a bit, and will moreso with its "relaunch" coming up shortly. This loks like a very similar circumstance to me, thou im not really willing to wait a year to play a good, working AoC, theres to much good stuff comeing out in between that time lol
"Well let me just quote the late-great Colonel Sanders, who said…’I’m too drunk to taste this chicken." - Ricky Bobby
Funcom is definitely coming back to Earth...I wonder how many shares GG will sell when he is allowed to at the start of Q4? Probably a lot...making Funcom's stock situation look even worse. Even now it is the ugliest chart Ive seen minus maybe Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
I agree with the above poster, have to wait and see how (or if) WAR affects AoC at all. Hopefully a new guy in charge can keep things going in a positive direction.
Part of the complaints about AoC are probably due to people's standards not living up to the hype surrounding the game. I enjoy it, servers were stable at launch and steady updates and bug fixes.
Comments
Don't forget the power of free play to lure people into giving another shot down the line. EQ1, DAoC, and even the stillborn AutoAssault rolled out free play by activating all unpaid/suspended accounts in order to give disgruntled or otherwise lapsed subscribers a chance to come back in and see the changes at no cost.
Once new guy comes in and makes some serious changes, FunCom would be stupid not to do this, considering all the players like me who let their subscriptions lapse. Few may pony up $15 to check out the changes down the line, but a week or two of play at no financial risk to the player could bring back many more..
I'm thinking of all those level 80 toons in limbo who would suddenly have something to do in the game...
Don't forget the power of free play to lure people into giving another shot down the line. EQ1, DAoC, and even the stillborn AutoAssault rolled out free play by activating all unpaid/suspended accounts in order to give disgruntled or otherwise lapsed subscribers a chance to come back in and see the changes at no cost.
Once new guy comes in and makes some serious changes, FunCom would be stupid not to do this, considering all the players like me who let their subscriptions lapse. Few may pony up $15 to check out the changes down the line, but a week or two of play at no financial risk to the player could bring back many more..
I'm thinking of all those level 80 toons in limbo who would suddenly have something to do in the game...
Trying Free-play after many changes would be sensible. Re-subbing within a month of this announcement would be foolish.
Mr. Gaute Godager should have never been in front of AOC after the mess he did with Shadowlands, what the hell was FC thinking. At least now thing might get fixed.
Resigned? lol, sorry that word has another interpretation in business speak for executives, to us ordinary folk the word is FIRED!
And rightly so!
The problem with that is, it does not solve the connumdrum that the rest of the development staff is faced with, how to save this game with so many of his goofy ideas heavily embedded in the game.
Well stated, you never know, they can turn this game around if they actually try. Hell, even SWG at launch (worse launch than AoC) eventually turned it around.
SWG eventually turned what around? The game bled subs because it was broken and missing important game systems at release. The first game revamp caused a jump in cancellations because it didn't fix and complete the game, it replaced it with a broken attempt to copy WoW. The second game revamp apparently caused the cancellation servers to crash as more than 100 000 people are said to have quit when the game lost most of its professions, much of its content, and all player progress, as SOE attempted to completely redo the game in 3 months, to copy features from both WoW and Battlefront.
One of the hottest topics currently about this game is what to do with all of the empty servers. SWG has gone from bad to worse, and from bleeding subs to mass exodus. I can't imagine what you mean by saying the game has turned around.
The dutch are real stubborn people. Glad to see he's gone and it will make the game better.
Where do you get the 500k from? Funcom won't tell us how many subscribers they have. How would you know?
i m guessing it was proberbly what he heard from someone in game . every smaller mmo i ve ever played is full of people who think its the best game ever . most actually do have something to offer though i would say to be fair to them .
Third quarter subscription numbers should be available around 10-15 October 2008. Whether FunCom decides to release those or not, time will tell. However, knowledgeable, informed sources estimate third quarter AoC subscriptions to dip well below the quarter million mark (250,000).
Well stated, you never know, they can turn this game around if they actually try. Hell, even SWG at launch (worse launch than AoC) eventually turned it around.
SWG eventually turned what around? The game bled subs because it was broken and missing important game systems at release. The first game revamp caused a jump in cancellations because it didn't fix and complete the game, it replaced it with a broken attempt to copy WoW. The second game revamp apparently caused the cancellation servers to crash as more than 100 000 people are said to have quit when the game lost most of its professions, much of its content, and all player progress, as SOE attempted to completely redo the game in 3 months, to copy features from both WoW and Battlefront.
One of the hottest topics currently about this game is what to do with all of the empty servers. SWG has gone from bad to worse, and from bleeding subs to mass exodus. I can't imagine what you mean by saying the game has turned around.
I'll bring it down to the ground for you, Angel.
What you can't imagine is quite simple, really. He's talking about the bumpy launch SWG had when it originally launched. (And the game did turn around nicely a bit after it went live). *You're* talking about NGE, which happened years later.
All clear? Good
I sincerely hope Godager will not find job at Blizzard or Mythic to ruin things also there.
That's the beauty of it. He not only got run out of FunCom, he got run out of the entire industry. Read his "resignation" again.
Edit:
Gaute Godager--
“I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig. I have had a fantastic time these last 16 years, and I am very proud of the many things Funcom has achieved. Funcom and Conan will always be a big part of me, but as I now look to new ventures outside the gaming industry I am certain Age of Conan’s future is in the best of hands.”
Craig should have been the first person on the scene, not the guy who's name sounds like a flesh-eating fungus.
I'm actually happy I fought the urge to sell my AoC account and get my money back. I'm going to keep an eye on it now and see if it improves; the game always had major potential but up until now that's all it had. Now it might actually have promise, too.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
LOL can anyone say VANGUARD! It dont matter what you say when the lead guy walks its not looking good. For AOC he is not the LAST or 1st one to make all the decisions. I'm just saying lets not go la la and blam ALL the problems AoC had on ONE guy .
Because they had a decade of tradition that convinced them that they COULD shove unfinished buggy games and people would pay for them. That lovely tradition started with UO and became the 'standard' of the industry for years. Or don't people remember all those launches?
There were a couple of companies that didn't follow that path but they were the minority. Blizzard set a new bar with WoW. Remember when it was released? In spite of the server problems it was considered one of the most 'polished' MMORPGs ever. Which simply meant it had a stable engine that could actually be played by most people. For MMORPGs that was a breakthrough.
Now things have changed and with MMORPGs entering the mainstream market the over-hype and lack of results that MMORPGs developers dished out for so many year just won't work anymore. Just another example of the evolution the genre so desperately needed.
To be honest, the software industry as a whole is not famous by having high commercial standards and honesty. Just look at Windows every time Microsoft is launching a new version. They have to repair it by launching an SP1, SP2, SP3 etc. And Microsoft IS a serious company compared to industry standards...but now just imagine Ford or GM trying to sell a new car with such problems...they would be instantly out of business and a milion of lawyers would knock at their doors...
I'm wondering if this guy doomed all of Funcom first.
I saw him take down AO miserably with disaster after disaster directly attributable to him. When he thoroughly trashed the game and moved to start on a new MMO I knew to stay 10,000 feet away from whatever it was.
The guy is a master of spin and always tries to sell you garbage in his games on a solid gold platter.
Maybe Funcom can manage to turn itself around now. I'd love to see Ragnar Tornquist do a sequel to AO the way it should have been done before Gaute tried to make it EPIC EQ1!!!
Its a small wonder why Gaute Godager has resigned after the numerous failures and the inability of Age of Conan to deliver its overly hyped game features.
I admit, the game does have good potential (at least what was advertised) but sadly they have a poor project management team in my humble opinion; no one with enough sense or balls to steer the game development in the right direction. Instead they blindly trudged on with blinds over their eyes not paying attention to what the users were crying out for, which was (most importantly) fixes for the game's technical problems.
No one wants to sit and look at beautiful graphics forever, you can always take a walk in nature for that. Customers pay money for the ability to play a game. End of Story. So if they can't get that, what do you expect?
I don't know what effects that his resignation will have for the future of the game, only time will tell. But for me, its still too little too late. I am not going to waste any more money on Failcom, not for a very loooog while.
I agree, it may be too little too late. I put alot of faith in AoC. I WANTED it to be the only game I played for the next 5+ years. Then it got here. Tortage was amazing, and I thought "wow, the hype was all true. I'm home!" and then ....... it only took two short months for the pendulum to swing all the way from loyal to disgruntled.
I have nothing but best wishes for AoC, but barring some sort of cosmic event, I won't be going back. I've already moved on. I suspect that a good chunk of the people that have already ended their subs feel exactly the same way, and no matter how great a game AoC someday becomes, most of those day one people who cancelled won't be back. Even if it becomes the "perfect" game, by then, they'll already be hip deep in something else.
As someone already stated, you only get one launch. AoC will never be the game we all wanted it to be. It might grow enough to sustain itself for awhile, maybe even turn a profit, but it'll never be the big dog again.
Best case scenario here is, FC can improve AoC enough to salvage some reputation so that maybe they receive more than a lukewarm welcome on any new games. Of course in order for even this to work, Craig will have to be as good as they say he is, and he better be at the stick when round 3 comes.
Good news, good news.
Is there even anyone that feels sorry for this guy? Hahaha......
Sil, in his day, ran the largest fansite for AO, was an active member of the AOVault, an active player in a circle of folks that included the then community manager, Daigalean, and a few devs from other games as well.
He later became Community Manager and people found that they were being heard finally.
The list of accolades goes from there...
Gaute has conceptualized two incredibly unique games who were both hurt in product launch by poor balance, bugs, rushed delivery, and a lack of dynamic content.
Anyone who was at launch for AO will tell you the same.
It's one thing to have a great game idea, and another to make it appeal to the masses.
Silrillion has already shown an ability to make that happen, and Gaute has not.
That is no disrespect to Gaute Godager as he (with a good design and development team) will make other games in the future, and they will also prove to be unique in the MMO genre.
Nothing wrong with healthy skepticism, just try and make it informed
Im suprised nobody has made the vanguard comparison. SUPER crappy luanch, horrible game for about a year, and now Vanguard is starting to rebound a bit, and will moreso with its "relaunch" coming up shortly. This loks like a very similar circumstance to me, thou im not really willing to wait a year to play a good, working AoC, theres to much good stuff comeing out in between that time lol
Funcom is definitely coming back to Earth...I wonder how many shares GG will sell when he is allowed to at the start of Q4? Probably a lot...making Funcom's stock situation look even worse. Even now it is the ugliest chart Ive seen minus maybe Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
Guess his prime steak is not so good anymore
I'm not a no life that sits in front of his computer all day long, I'm an intern that sits in front of his computer all day long.
Actually they are still doing pretty well. Have to wait until next month to see how damaging War has been to them.
I agree with the above poster, have to wait and see how (or if) WAR affects AoC at all. Hopefully a new guy in charge can keep things going in a positive direction.
Part of the complaints about AoC are probably due to people's standards not living up to the hype surrounding the game. I enjoy it, servers were stable at launch and steady updates and bug fixes.
It has been a bit silent around AoC for a while, anyone know how they are doing?