AoC isnt a poor game because it has fewer than 100k paying subs. It has fewer than 100k paying subs because it is a poor game.
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Ok at the time the game launched and shortly there after the stock price was about 55$/share.
At 800 units sold give or take a few either way, the stock was near 55$/share.
800,000 / 55 = 14545.454545454545454545454545455
Today the stock closed at 3.25$/share.
SO :
3.25 x 14545.454545454545454545454545455 = 47272.727
Add a few subs, even though we know the trend in AoC is a sub bleed not a base building one.
Simplistic? Sure, but there is more effort here than any of the other AOC HAS 200K + PEOPLE posts I've seen recently.
IF, as you would have us believe, FUNCOM is doing great and so is AOC, why doesnt Funcom just release this information and be done with it????
I'm not great with this stuff but with the global economics it would seem that everyone's stock is falling. I'd would venture a guess that you can't base subs purely from a viewpoint of the stocks. Obviously, stocks falling would most likely indicate a loss in subs but i doubt its a simple stock price * x to get sub numbers.
Its just a simple calc really. Its better than anything funcom is willing to provide and has some basis in comparison. Thats all. Does it mean that number is solid? Nope. But I would trust my calc more than I would that last report they issued. They pulled 6million and 2 million over from last quarter - out of the blue. Thats pretty shady. Again, why doesnt funcom just release numbers? Becuase they dont want to pour salt in the wounds of the already bleeding game would be my guess.
If you look at the Global slide versus funcoms, Funcoms started long before the world markets began their slide. As soon as investor heard about all the issues and the numbers leaving the game, they pulled up stakes and moved on. Then while funcom was busy trying to convince the world that the game was stable and the population was as well, the CEO sold 400K shares of stock.
None of this seems to be a positive indicator to me, esp for such a small company.
Within 6 months of AoC launch, the CFO left the company, the Head Developer left the company, their stock price is 1/3 of its original offering 7 years ago, a reorganization meeting of the Board of Directors scheduled, 70% of the US staff is being terminated.
Yup everything seems to be going swimmingly in FunCom land.
Within 6 months of AoC launch, the CFO left the company, the Head Developer left the company, their stock price is 1/3 of its original offering 7 years ago, a reorganization meeting of the Board of Directors scheduled, 70% of the US staff is being terminated. Yup everything seems to be going swimmingly in FunCom land.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
----------------------------- Originally posted by Frobner "Massive sieges" "mounted combat" and "spellweaving" are just few words that spring to mind when I hear the word AOC.... But the word FAILURE will always top the list.
Within 6 months of AoC launch, the CFO left the company, the Head Developer left the company, their stock price is 1/3 of its original offering 7 years ago, a reorganization meeting of the Board of Directors scheduled, 70% of the US staff is being terminated. Yup everything seems to be going swimmingly in FunCom land.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
Im sitting at my desk laughing. I actually LOL'D here.
Just as there is a small stream of people leaving the game as well.... The game is starting to reach its equilibrium - a few new people coming on board, while a few people leave to go elsewhere. Until they merge servers, I believe they are probably still losing more than they gain by at least a small amount. It's been a little amusing watching the faithful turn every "I've just resubscribed" post on the AoC forum into hundreds of thousands of people returning to the game in their minds. Just as one "I quit" thread doesn't mean that there are only 12 people left subscribing. AoC is becoming a game with a playerbase its design can attract. It's not a world beater - it's a niche game. Given the IP, number of servers, and the advertising, I think they planned on a much larger playerbase, but the game as designed just doesn't appeal to as many people as they would have liked. It's a poor MMORPG.
Going by what you are saying there are only WoW, Lineage 2 and a couple f2p mmorpgs and that's it. All of the other games - Loto, EQ2, EVE, VG, etc... - with their 100k to 300k players are all poor mmorpgs.
A big difference - none of those games ever came close to the 800K subscriptions claimed by FC (and I don't think I've ever seen any credible evidence that VG currently has anywhere near 100K subscribers). AoC has probably lost somewhere around 600-700K subscribers, which is quite significant.
It started out with all the subs because of the hype, the marketing, and the promises FC made about what the game would have - what it would play like. As it turns out, it's pretty much a weak WoW clone, and thus literally hundreds of thousands of people stopped playing the game. They simply didn't like the game.
Additionally, those titles are all 1.5+ years old, and have therefore stabilized. AoC is a little over 6 months old - many of the people still playing are running on the fumes of more FC promises. Many still think it has all that "potential". Strangely enough, many Vanguard players, if you read their forums, still think the same about their game, and I would imagine with their expansions, some EQ2 and LOTRO players might even think those games are "turning the corner", and will experience significant growth.
Do you think they will?
Why is it that AoC fanbois believe that everyone in the freakin' MMO playing world is waiting on pins and needles for the day that AoC will be great, and that on that day, players will swarm to AoC by the millions, as if it were the only alternative MMO available, should someone leave his or her current MMO? Vanguard, LOTRO, EQ2, and EVE players might take issue with that, because a lot of them think those people are similarly going to rush to THEIR game. FC still admits they have a lot of work to do on the game, and its players live on that hope. That's why I say it is a poor game - its broken and shallow, but is getting by on still being "under construction". Many AoC fanbois have an infinite amount of patience, and will make any excuse necessary to make their game look better (up to and including misleading other people).
Sorry, but I believe that AoC had its moment in the sun, and now occupies the lot in the MMO space that it will have until it eventually runs its course and dies several years down the road. It may have small gains and losses in player population over time, but probably won't substantively change from where it is now.
And, all of this is a moot point. If they merge the servers, the current playerbase will have a much larger pool of people to play with, which should enhance their experience. In short, current players will have more fun with the game they enjoy. That doesn't necessarily mean new players, though, since the game does not have that type of wide appeal, in my opinion. But if the current players are happy, and that game remains open, why should that matter?
Within 6 months of AoC launch, the CFO left the company, the Head Developer left the company, their stock price is 1/3 of its original offering 7 years ago, a reorganization meeting of the Board of Directors scheduled, 70% of the US staff is being terminated. Yup everything seems to be going swimmingly in FunCom land.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
This is one of the reasons why I believed in FC at launch. I saw many warning signs before the launch but I was just thinking to myself: "They failed with AO and they have learned. There is NO WAY they can fail again!".
Unfortunately I was wrong and AoC became the worst AAA MMO launch in the history. I still can't understand what happened.
Same here. But I had a lot of questions about Beta that were never answered until I saw first hand after I left Tortage. What a surprise.
My friend was in Beta and I kept asking him who was testing the 20-80 stuff. I mean, 20 levels isn't much, the other part is the important part, right? He said, don't worry, they have internal testing going on too. Hmmm
Tortage was about the most linear start to an MMO that I've ever seen. Considering that EVERY player in this game with every alt would have to re-experience Tortage. Still, I did see good things. There was PVP, there were a few class specific quests. The voice acting was decent. A few of the quests were different and the zone was good overall. I had a lot of fun, except for the gankers.
But for some reason, in my mind, I believed that each race would have it's own homeland separate from each other and you'd have to do quests or something to gain faction to the other areas or that you couldn't go there at all.
It would have been more realistic than what we got. No voice acting the second you left tortage, forced to quest through totally linear zones in all 3 lands, the run through 4-5 zones once you get to level 50 or so is just complete garbage, lol. And no exploring for good grind areas, which I don't mind. Most people hate grinding but if you are forced to do it at least give us somewhere to do it. I like exploring, but this game had 0. It was like riding on a train from point A to point B with nothing to see or do at either location other than the handful of quests available and I don't like doing just quests.
Wow, how exciting. Then I noticed the class imbalances. LOL. My Priest could easily solo 10+ mobs without even moving while other classes had a hard time with 1 mob. Once I got to level 70 it was just comedy pulling so many mobs at once and usually surviving. I think I maxxed out pulling 20-25 mobs and killing them all. There is no death penalty so I could just freely pull as many as I want near a respawn.
Yeah, they tested all this. That is why they broke out the Nerf Bat and swung it at everything. I can put up with a lot but nerfs suck because you get used to how you play and after doing this for hours and hours they decide to tell you that you have to change it now. It sucks and ruins the way you feel about your class. If they actually did the testing then nerfs should be very very minor and almost undetectable by most players. So rather than just making the game more fun and adding new stuff they spent months nerfing and breaking other stuff. So I said, screw it. Funcom Really really blew a pretty decent launch by not releasing a complete game and since it's so linear anyway I know that I'll never play it again even if they do fix things. It's just not the type of game I like.
This is one of the reasons why I believed in FC at launch. I saw many warning signs before the launch but I was just thinking to myself: "They failed with AO and they have learned. There is NO WAY they can fail again!".
Unfortunately I was wrong and AoC became the worst AAA MMO launch in the history. I still can't understand what happened.
Same here. But I had a lot of questions about Beta that were never answered until I saw first hand after I left Tortage. What a surprise.
My friend was in Beta and I kept asking him who was testing the 20-80 stuff. I mean, 20 levels isn't much, the other part is the important part, right? He said, don't worry, they have internal testing going on too. Hmmm
Tortage was about the most linear start to an MMO that I've ever seen. Considering that EVERY player in this game with every alt would have to re-experience Tortage. Still, I did see good things. There was PVP, there were a few class specific quests. The voice acting was decent. A few of the quests were different and the zone was good overall. I had a lot of fun, except for the gankers.
But for some reason, in my mind, I believed that each race would have it's own homeland separate from each other and you'd have to do quests or something to gain faction to the other areas or that you couldn't go there at all.
It would have been more realistic than what we got. No voice acting the second you left tortage, forced to quest through totally linear zones in all 3 lands, the run through 4-5 zones once you get to level 50 or so is just complete garbage, lol. And no exploring for good grind areas, which I don't mind. Most people hate grinding but if you are forced to do it at least give us somewhere to do it. I like exploring, but this game had 0. It was like riding on a train from point A to point B with nothing to see or do at either location other than the handful of quests available and I don't like doing just quests.
Wow, how exciting. Then I noticed the class imbalances. LOL. My Priest could easily solo 10+ mobs without even moving while other classes had a hard time with 1 mob. Once I got to level 70 it was just comedy pulling so many mobs at once and usually surviving. I think I maxxed out pulling 20-25 mobs and killing them all. There is no death penalty so I could just freely pull as many as I want near a respawn.
Yeah, they tested all this. That is why they broke out the Nerf Bat and swung it at everything. I can put up with a lot but nerfs suck because you get used to how you play and after doing this for hours and hours they decide to tell you that you have to change it now. It sucks and ruins the way you feel about your class. If they actually did the testing then nerfs should be very very minor and almost undetectable by most players. So rather than just making the game more fun and adding new stuff they spent months nerfing and breaking other stuff. So I said, screw it. Funcom Really really blew a pretty decent launch by not releasing a complete game and since it's so linear anyway I know that I'll never play it again even if they do fix things. It's just not the type of game I like.
*Yawn*, Still discussing this summers events? What did you think of Ymirs pass?
*Yawn*, Still discussing this summers events? What did you think of Ymirs pass?
I wouldn't know. I canceled after being lied to at release, lied to again and again over the following 2 months. My sub ran out on about 28 July and I haven't seen Ymir's Pass. Would have been nice if it had come with the original game.
A lot of things would have been nice but enjoy your dwindling population while playing a game more linear than anything Parker Brothers could dream up, while also being far more broken than anything Ion Storm could bestow upon us.
AoC isnt a poor game because it has fewer than 100k paying subs. It has fewer than 100k paying subs because it is a poor game.
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Just play the bloody thing from level one, you'll see the proof around you as you wander around like a little orphan looking for someone to play with...
AoC isnt a poor game because it has fewer than 100k paying subs. It has fewer than 100k paying subs because it is a poor game.
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Just play the bloody thing from level one, you'll see the proof around you as you wander around like a little orphan looking for someone to play with...
This is entirely server dependant. Quite a few servers are alive and kicking also at the lower levels, so it is just a matter of chosing the right server.
Comments
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Ok at the time the game launched and shortly there after the stock price was about 55$/share.
At 800 units sold give or take a few either way, the stock was near 55$/share.
800,000 / 55 = 14545.454545454545454545454545455
Today the stock closed at 3.25$/share.
SO :
3.25 x 14545.454545454545454545454545455 = 47272.727
Add a few subs, even though we know the trend in AoC is a sub bleed not a base building one.
Simplistic? Sure, but there is more effort here than any of the other AOC HAS 200K + PEOPLE posts I've seen recently.
IF, as you would have us believe, FUNCOM is doing great and so is AOC, why doesnt Funcom just release this information and be done with it????
I'm not great with this stuff but with the global economics it would seem that everyone's stock is falling. I'd would venture a guess that you can't base subs purely from a viewpoint of the stocks. Obviously, stocks falling would most likely indicate a loss in subs but i doubt its a simple stock price * x to get sub numbers.
Its just a simple calc really. Its better than anything funcom is willing to provide and has some basis in comparison. Thats all. Does it mean that number is solid? Nope. But I would trust my calc more than I would that last report they issued. They pulled 6million and 2 million over from last quarter - out of the blue. Thats pretty shady. Again, why doesnt funcom just release numbers? Becuase they dont want to pour salt in the wounds of the already bleeding game would be my guess.
If you look at the Global slide versus funcoms, Funcoms started long before the world markets began their slide. As soon as investor heard about all the issues and the numbers leaving the game, they pulled up stakes and moved on. Then while funcom was busy trying to convince the world that the game was stable and the population was as well, the CEO sold 400K shares of stock.
None of this seems to be a positive indicator to me, esp for such a small company.
Within 6 months of AoC launch, the CFO left the company, the Head Developer left the company, their stock price is 1/3 of its original offering 7 years ago, a reorganization meeting of the Board of Directors scheduled, 70% of the US staff is being terminated.
Yup everything seems to be going swimmingly in FunCom land.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
-----------------------------
Originally posted by Frobner
"Massive sieges" "mounted combat" and "spellweaving" are just few words that spring to mind when I hear the word AOC.... But the word FAILURE will always top the list.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
Im sitting at my desk laughing. I actually LOL'D here.
Going by what you are saying there are only WoW, Lineage 2 and a couple f2p mmorpgs and that's it. All of the other games - Loto, EQ2, EVE, VG, etc... - with their 100k to 300k players are all poor mmorpgs.
A big difference - none of those games ever came close to the 800K subscriptions claimed by FC (and I don't think I've ever seen any credible evidence that VG currently has anywhere near 100K subscribers). AoC has probably lost somewhere around 600-700K subscribers, which is quite significant.
It started out with all the subs because of the hype, the marketing, and the promises FC made about what the game would have - what it would play like. As it turns out, it's pretty much a weak WoW clone, and thus literally hundreds of thousands of people stopped playing the game. They simply didn't like the game.
Additionally, those titles are all 1.5+ years old, and have therefore stabilized. AoC is a little over 6 months old - many of the people still playing are running on the fumes of more FC promises. Many still think it has all that "potential". Strangely enough, many Vanguard players, if you read their forums, still think the same about their game, and I would imagine with their expansions, some EQ2 and LOTRO players might even think those games are "turning the corner", and will experience significant growth.
Do you think they will?
Why is it that AoC fanbois believe that everyone in the freakin' MMO playing world is waiting on pins and needles for the day that AoC will be great, and that on that day, players will swarm to AoC by the millions, as if it were the only alternative MMO available, should someone leave his or her current MMO? Vanguard, LOTRO, EQ2, and EVE players might take issue with that, because a lot of them think those people are similarly going to rush to THEIR game. FC still admits they have a lot of work to do on the game, and its players live on that hope. That's why I say it is a poor game - its broken and shallow, but is getting by on still being "under construction". Many AoC fanbois have an infinite amount of patience, and will make any excuse necessary to make their game look better (up to and including misleading other people).
Sorry, but I believe that AoC had its moment in the sun, and now occupies the lot in the MMO space that it will have until it eventually runs its course and dies several years down the road. It may have small gains and losses in player population over time, but probably won't substantively change from where it is now.
And, all of this is a moot point. If they merge the servers, the current playerbase will have a much larger pool of people to play with, which should enhance their experience. In short, current players will have more fun with the game they enjoy. That doesn't necessarily mean new players, though, since the game does not have that type of wide appeal, in my opinion. But if the current players are happy, and that game remains open, why should that matter?
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
CFO left the company - "What is CFO? Whatever, we don't need him!"
CEO sold his stock - "Maybe he just needed the money?"
Game Director was fired - "Great Gaute is out! He was evil! Now AoC will become awesome!"
Stock price dropped 94% - "This is because of global recession!"
Xfire shows 90% decline - "Lol Xfire doesn't mean anything because my guild doesn't use it!"
Reorganization meeting - "They are just hiring new people. This is a good thing!"
70% of US staff fired - "They just removed the middle man, which is a good thing!"
You see, all of these seemingly negative news have a perfectly good explanation. FC is doing great!
Brilliant post!
Yes, none of these things mean anything.
Yeah, right.....
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Same here. But I had a lot of questions about Beta that were never answered until I saw first hand after I left Tortage. What a surprise.
My friend was in Beta and I kept asking him who was testing the 20-80 stuff. I mean, 20 levels isn't much, the other part is the important part, right? He said, don't worry, they have internal testing going on too. Hmmm
Tortage was about the most linear start to an MMO that I've ever seen. Considering that EVERY player in this game with every alt would have to re-experience Tortage. Still, I did see good things. There was PVP, there were a few class specific quests. The voice acting was decent. A few of the quests were different and the zone was good overall. I had a lot of fun, except for the gankers.
But for some reason, in my mind, I believed that each race would have it's own homeland separate from each other and you'd have to do quests or something to gain faction to the other areas or that you couldn't go there at all.
It would have been more realistic than what we got. No voice acting the second you left tortage, forced to quest through totally linear zones in all 3 lands, the run through 4-5 zones once you get to level 50 or so is just complete garbage, lol. And no exploring for good grind areas, which I don't mind. Most people hate grinding but if you are forced to do it at least give us somewhere to do it. I like exploring, but this game had 0. It was like riding on a train from point A to point B with nothing to see or do at either location other than the handful of quests available and I don't like doing just quests.
Wow, how exciting. Then I noticed the class imbalances. LOL. My Priest could easily solo 10+ mobs without even moving while other classes had a hard time with 1 mob. Once I got to level 70 it was just comedy pulling so many mobs at once and usually surviving. I think I maxxed out pulling 20-25 mobs and killing them all. There is no death penalty so I could just freely pull as many as I want near a respawn.
Yeah, they tested all this. That is why they broke out the Nerf Bat and swung it at everything. I can put up with a lot but nerfs suck because you get used to how you play and after doing this for hours and hours they decide to tell you that you have to change it now. It sucks and ruins the way you feel about your class. If they actually did the testing then nerfs should be very very minor and almost undetectable by most players. So rather than just making the game more fun and adding new stuff they spent months nerfing and breaking other stuff. So I said, screw it. Funcom Really really blew a pretty decent launch by not releasing a complete game and since it's so linear anyway I know that I'll never play it again even if they do fix things. It's just not the type of game I like.
Same here. But I had a lot of questions about Beta that were never answered until I saw first hand after I left Tortage. What a surprise.
My friend was in Beta and I kept asking him who was testing the 20-80 stuff. I mean, 20 levels isn't much, the other part is the important part, right? He said, don't worry, they have internal testing going on too. Hmmm
Tortage was about the most linear start to an MMO that I've ever seen. Considering that EVERY player in this game with every alt would have to re-experience Tortage. Still, I did see good things. There was PVP, there were a few class specific quests. The voice acting was decent. A few of the quests were different and the zone was good overall. I had a lot of fun, except for the gankers.
But for some reason, in my mind, I believed that each race would have it's own homeland separate from each other and you'd have to do quests or something to gain faction to the other areas or that you couldn't go there at all.
It would have been more realistic than what we got. No voice acting the second you left tortage, forced to quest through totally linear zones in all 3 lands, the run through 4-5 zones once you get to level 50 or so is just complete garbage, lol. And no exploring for good grind areas, which I don't mind. Most people hate grinding but if you are forced to do it at least give us somewhere to do it. I like exploring, but this game had 0. It was like riding on a train from point A to point B with nothing to see or do at either location other than the handful of quests available and I don't like doing just quests.
Wow, how exciting. Then I noticed the class imbalances. LOL. My Priest could easily solo 10+ mobs without even moving while other classes had a hard time with 1 mob. Once I got to level 70 it was just comedy pulling so many mobs at once and usually surviving. I think I maxxed out pulling 20-25 mobs and killing them all. There is no death penalty so I could just freely pull as many as I want near a respawn.
Yeah, they tested all this. That is why they broke out the Nerf Bat and swung it at everything. I can put up with a lot but nerfs suck because you get used to how you play and after doing this for hours and hours they decide to tell you that you have to change it now. It sucks and ruins the way you feel about your class. If they actually did the testing then nerfs should be very very minor and almost undetectable by most players. So rather than just making the game more fun and adding new stuff they spent months nerfing and breaking other stuff. So I said, screw it. Funcom Really really blew a pretty decent launch by not releasing a complete game and since it's so linear anyway I know that I'll never play it again even if they do fix things. It's just not the type of game I like.
*Yawn*, Still discussing this summers events? What did you think of Ymirs pass?
I wouldn't know. I canceled after being lied to at release, lied to again and again over the following 2 months. My sub ran out on about 28 July and I haven't seen Ymir's Pass. Would have been nice if it had come with the original game.
A lot of things would have been nice but enjoy your dwindling population while playing a game more linear than anything Parker Brothers could dream up, while also being far more broken than anything Ion Storm could bestow upon us.
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Just play the bloody thing from level one, you'll see the proof around you as you wander around like a little orphan looking for someone to play with...
Post some proof of the less than 100k subs or stop trolling.
Just play the bloody thing from level one, you'll see the proof around you as you wander around like a little orphan looking for someone to play with...
This is entirely server dependant. Quite a few servers are alive and kicking also at the lower levels, so it is just a matter of chosing the right server.