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AoC Xfire Competition [Official]
AmazingAvery
Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
"XFire runs a big Age of Conan contest with lots of great prizes. In addition there will be a Live Dev Chat on 10th of April with Game Director Craig Morrison. Don't miss the chance to win one of dozens of prizes including Logitech G19 Keyboards, a lifetime subscription, several 90 days and 60 days subscriptions, various in-game items and tons of other great goodies.
To find out more about this contest check out the XFire website.
And make sure you also don't miss the XFire Live Dev Chat with Game Director Craig Morrison on 10th of April. Sign up and in addition you will get the chance to win one out of five 1 Year Subscriptions to Age of Conan"
Comments
Ouch,as much as I think AoC is an ok game,Doesnt this come across as some sort of huge advertisment for the game..i.e "look at the xfire numbers"
A poor attempt tbh and maybe a bit of a shame as the game is looking better without this sort of thing?
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
a lot of games have xfire competitions, WoW has had a lot of them. ofc its advertising, thats the whole point. is that a bad thing? only if you still dont like the game
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
a lot of games have xfire competitions, WoW has had a lot of them. ofc its advertising, thats the whole point. is that a bad thing? only if you still dont like the game
Yes tbh I think it is a bad thing when a week later ppl are posting "look at xfire numbers for last week for AoC"when indeed they are not true,it is called deception.
If someone had came up to me in 1980 when I was on my Atari 2600 and said we will be playing games with thousands of people at the same time.I guess my response would have been,"but I only have 2 joysticks"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/235780/page/8
Personally Xfire hasn't done anything for me, I guess FC are just following in the footsteps of Lotro and WAR with their comp's too.
Plus it gives the opportunity for a dev chat. There are those out there that use Xfire for chat and things. I think it is agreed that the numbers don't really do much for any game. It's been up, been down and up again and so on the cycle continues.
Some people swear by xfire, I don't really care for the numbers, hours played doesn't not equate to a successful game as it doesn't take into account casual players. Total number of players has been all over the place and has been steady for a long time. Who cares if they don't play the game as often or as much as others.
very bad... all aoc event i can't sub because i'm from Quebec ...
Personally Xfire hasn't done anything for me, I guess FC are just following in the footsteps of Lotro and WAR with their comp's too.
Plus it gives the opportunity for a dev chat. There are those out there that use Xfire for chat and things. I think it is agreed that the numbers don't really do much for any game. It's been up, been down and up again and so on the cycle continues.
Some people swear by xfire, I don't really care for the numbers, hours played doesn't not equate to a successful game as it doesn't take into account casual players. Total number of players has been all over the place and has been steady for a long time. Who cares if they don't play the game as often or as much as others.
Interesting. I'll have to check out as some of those items look pretty nice.
Incidently, and on the topic of Funcom and X-fire events, does this change your view regarding Funcom when you wrote:
1/26/09:
Good thing is that Funcom never staged any X-fire events just like Mythic with WAR and CCP with EVE have done to get people to Download xfire and support the games with it. Hosting dev chats there to promote it all.
Nice to see FC is above that.
I'd been under the same view as yourself on this topic; so I was more than surprised to see it posted here....by you.
Personally Xfire hasn't done anything for me, I guess FC are just following in the footsteps of Lotro and WAR with their comp's too.
Plus it gives the opportunity for a dev chat. There are those out there that use Xfire for chat and things. I think it is agreed that the numbers don't really do much for any game. It's been up, been down and up again and so on the cycle continues.
Some people swear by xfire, I don't really care for the numbers, hours played doesn't not equate to a successful game as it doesn't take into account casual players. Total number of players has been all over the place and has been steady for a long time. Who cares if they don't play the game as often or as much as others.
Interesting. I'll have to check out as some of those items look pretty nice.
Incidently, and on the topic of Funcom and X-fire events, does this change your view regarding Funcom when you wrote:
1/26/09:
Good thing is that Funcom never staged any X-fire events just like Mythic with WAR and CCP with EVE have done to get people to Download xfire and support the games with it. Hosting dev chats there to promote it all.
Nice to see FC is above that.
I'd been under the same view as yourself on this topic; so I was more than surprised to see it posted here....by you.
I was just as suprised. Only interest is posting the news for those that may not get it through other channels. Doesn't change my view and infact I do agree with Daylights sentiments. I think it is a good thing for those into Xfire but it is not just my cup 'o tea.
Thanks for the link Avery!
I signed up now just hope to get in on the dev chat.
.. .... .- - . - .-. --- .-.. .-.. ... .-- .... --- .-. . .--. --- .-. - .-.-.-
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
Erfff ..... between this and free-trials (but no 'welcome back' trial), smells like a lotta 'Hail Mary' desperation plays at once. Guessing there next quarterly report isn't gonna be pretty.
Funcom has now officially unleashed the Marketing Machine! After 10 months sleeping they are now confident enought to start promoting the game again. Lets see how they do. Last time the Marketing Machine was let loose they sold over 1 mill copies of an unfinished game. Now the game is excellent (according to Eurogamer and AA :-) ) Lets see how they do this time.
Good luck Funcom.
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Maybe they can get back on track with this needed "kick-in-pants".
THey have for sure unleashed the marketing campaign this week. I signed up for the contest on xfire, haven't used it in years, but hey a life time subscription I would not sya no too
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
Personally Xfire hasn't done anything for me, I guess FC are just following in the footsteps of Lotro and WAR with their comp's too.
Plus it gives the opportunity for a dev chat. There are those out there that use Xfire for chat and things. I think it is agreed that the numbers don't really do much for any game. It's been up, been down and up again and so on the cycle continues.
Some people swear by xfire, I don't really care for the numbers, hours played doesn't not equate to a successful game as it doesn't take into account casual players. Total number of players has been all over the place and has been steady for a long time. Who cares if they don't play the game as often or as much as others.
Interesting. I'll have to check out as some of those items look pretty nice.
Incidently, and on the topic of Funcom and X-fire events, does this change your view regarding Funcom when you wrote:
1/26/09:
Good thing is that Funcom never staged any X-fire events just like Mythic with WAR and CCP with EVE have done to get people to Download xfire and support the games with it. Hosting dev chats there to promote it all.
Nice to see FC is above that.
I'd been under the same view as yourself on this topic; so I was more than surprised to see it posted here....by you.
I was just as suprised. Only interest is posting the news for those that may not get it through other channels. Doesn't change my view and infact I do agree with Daylights sentiments. I think it is a good thing for those into Xfire but it is not just my cup 'o tea.
Yeah, basically you thought Funcom was too good to stoop to such lowlife tactics... but the fact is Funcom was just to slow (same with the free trial) to do it effectively. They just can't seem to do things right. Warhammer has had a nice resurgence in the past few months because of the free trial and their advertising.
Funcom has some great artists and good designers, but the people managing and promoting the game are terrible.
Seems that XFIRE is not picking up AoC's trial:
Just picked this from twitter messages:
# Hrms, Xfire not picking it up, but I'm playing AoC on the 7-day trial.41 minutes ago from TweetDeck
So what exactly do they wrong then? The free trials came late but that isn't necessary a bad things. there can be lots of reasons for that. seeing the amount of sites that offers free trials and also the xfire competition it seems to me that Funcom have been preparing one hell of a marketing campaign.
People have said funcom did the promoting of the game bad at launch seeing as it wasn't ready, so I do understand if they did spend some time to make sure things works as they should this time. WAR started their free trial very early compared to most other online games. AoC advertising died out around summer when everyone knew the situation the game was in. and that is understandable, you don't want to try and get loads of customers to a game that dissipoints people. They have spent a lot of time fixing a lot of issues and with the new marketing and free trial they are in a much better position to succeed.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
They aren't doing anything wrong. It was just that Avery made that post and sounded like Funcom was above such cheap marketing tricks as using Xfire. The truth is that Funcom isn't above Mythic, it's just that they aren't as productive as mythic when it comes to setting things up ( mergers, free trial, xfire promotions). Warhammer isn't as good as AOC, but Mythic has been much faster at dealing with issues (especially the mergers) that have kept their game in a much better position.
Hi Bryan, thanks for taking the time to reply. I think, well my perspective is that if your weighing up the two companies here in relation to marketing and game design, then in fairness we should consider the size of EA to Funcom. Mythic is not just Mythic anymore, it's EA with deeper pockets. It is not about one being above the other, rather a case of neccessity to begin with. Mythic needed server merges due to game design more than AoC did, promotional stuff is all down to company contacts and budget. If we look at the merges, WAR did need them more than AoC for reasons that didn't effect AoC down to the simple RvR mechanic. I hoped FC could of sorted out the server merges faster but they did give a few months notice and explained reasons why in depth at the time. Thing is you have a massive company like EA breathing down your Mythic's neck rather than FC being their own company. Both games developement time is different too, therefore in order to release a trial you would want to maximize it's effectiveness with what is going on in the game at that time. Turbine are bouncing off a decent xpac release, WAR with the two missing classes added and now AoC with DX10 about time it is here (nearly). It is only recently WAR started offering the proper trial it is, launching it with news of additional patches.
When it comes to Xfire, I felt that FC shouldn't have a need to go down that route and part of that reasoning from my perspective is that I have a dislike for Xfire for many reasons. You know there are concurrently about / on average over the past few months 1500 ish AoC players and 3200 ish WAR players, give or take a few hundred either way, either side. That doesn't speak massive impact to me, but at launch for both games was a different story so we know there are people out there.
Considerations include, marketing $$ amount budget, time of offer launches (content, patches, changes etc), scale / urgency of need to winback people or get new ppl into the game ( a larger company with the right finances would really want to see better results quicker)
Really it isn't about one company being above the other it is just am voicing personal opinion with dis-satisfaction with X-Fire in general. I am sure and know other ppl have different opinions and experiences. DX10 client for AoC and Lotro with Xfire doesn't even work!
In radio there is Arbitron and in TV, Neilsons. Both are dodgy at best, but the closest thing for an MMO is Xfire. So for investors and the like it at least gives some raw data....
I'm not trolling here but this was the funniest thing I have seen Funcom do to date, you know it's official when the 17th MMO is trying to boost the X fire numbers. Heck we were pretty suspect of players doing it, now this!
EDIT:
It seems pretty deceptive to me, that Funcom is doing this to get more players to use X fire, why don't they just fix the game and get more players in Age of Conan?
We use X fire to check the population (below 100k) to check the game amongst its peers (17th MMO) to see how it is doing over time (4th > 45th in rankings). This just seems silly and a scam to boost numbers, it is tampering if you will. This seems like an effort to hide the unsuccessful phase 1 free trial campaign.
What will Funcom do next? I just want to know, am so curious.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
There is nothing wrong with AOC using xfire.. LOTRO, Warhammer and EVE have all done exactly the same thing. There are also people who give a lot of credence to Xfire numbers. Even though I think AOC is less than half of LOTRO and Warhammer, it's not improper for AOC to want to boost the way their game looks.
It's also fairly cheap advertising.
I would agree. What really counts though is how the game holds up after the contest is over, and we see what may be left.
I personally think it will increase overall subs. And with some of the changes so far on Testlive and the 1.05 patch, this is really going to shake up the game...in a good way.
" *Bonus Items* apply to the 90 Day, 1 Year, and Lifetime Subscriptions: Bag of Holding, The Amazon Curved Bow, The War Mammoth, The Ring of Acheron, The Drinking Cape, The Killer Rhino, The Enruned Kosalan Ring. "
So, sub to the 90 day, 1 year or lifetime and you get all that stuff?
Not too bad if you were already on one of those sub plans.
I assume you are not aware that other games have done exactly the same thing? It's not uncommon for companies to host competitions on different sites, the reason is simple it's called marketing. Funcom can have all the advertising in the world but using MMORPG.com, Xfire and other sites to hold competition is the best way to reach their customers which are the players.
There is nothing fishy about, and people are free to join the competition. But people like you who seem to fail to understand how things like this are working will see it as fishy. Will funcom get a boost in users on xfire, quite possibly yes. a competition is a competition and it will attract people to both the site that holds the competition and to the game.
WAR, WOW, EVE and Lotro have afaik all had similar competitions on xfire, heck some of them actively promote the use of xfire to their players. This is marketing at it's best as you reach the customer, and of course if funcom wants more subscribers they will use any option they have. Imagine yourself running a company, selling a product. To make the most money wouldn't you use any possible way to make money as long as it is legit? Trust me on this when running a company nothing is mor eimportant then making money. Any company who says they don't care about making money is lying. Without money they won't survive on the market. It's obvious that funcom has unleashed a large marketing campaign with the competition and free trials in the scale they have done so far. Time will show how it pays off.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
XFIRE does pick up AoC's trial but it doesn't log the hours if you are playing AoC with DX10 on.
look at xfire numbers for last week for AoC
http://www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"