Call of Duty for now as I play that on XBL I love the zombie maps on CoD 4, more people play CoD than WoW now because it is multi port. CoD MW 2 is coming out soon!
WoW won't go a way for a long time it has loads of people however AoC doesn't have that population. So if game X takes 5k and Game Y takes 8 k it is in trouble and there are plenty of MMOs and oher games comming to nickel and dime AoC.
CoD and WoW are both made by the same company now! Untill Blizz/Acti makes another MMO I don't see anything killing WoW. One thing WoW has that AoC doesn't is progression, you grind or raid or do stuff and deck out your toon and it means something. It means you can pawn noobs with your epix!
In AoC you usually just make another charecter and there isn't much sentimental value in your toon for most people as they wouldn't have left if there was.
finaticd i can agree with most what your saying in that post. but theirs a boiling point to mmos as they boil down to their core players ,those that do have fun in the game then it can build up. the would thing about 1st impressions in mmos an cant come back is bs imho. wow did not have a great launch.
might try cod some time. free games tho if ya notice or games with out a monthly .do much better on x fire by far.thats one of the resons its not a great water mark of mmos. eq 1 has been around for 10 years . an every week their is a trhead about how the games dieing an how it wil close down soon on their own forums.yet its stil around. people do come back tween new games ( my self included) an they have fun for a bit.
aoc with alternate invancment will have that sentimental attachment just like eq does for me if done similar.actualy i was looking at adding character slots in aoc.even went an bought the collecotrs editon tho i had the game before .im one of those return players who by your count left after i tried the game again.
an since yoru a big x fire suporter on how acurate it is ... then explain to me why i played aoc for 6 hours yesterday an got credit for 3 till almost midnight.thought it updated every 15 minutes. their will be drop now over all to as schools in.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Its really not worth talking about financial reports from Funcom. They are masters of PR.
But I have to say this tho. AOC is on minimum life support. The best proof of that is that they are charging ppl for their so called "expansion" that will probably start out with one working zone "hence 6 MAX lvl zones beeing announched" and then they PR their way with the fanboys for few more months before the game goes free to play.
Well - it could be even worse..... AOC could be making a WARlike cake to promote a failed game....
Its really not worth talking about financial reports from Funcom. They are masters of PR. But I have to say this tho. AOC is on minimum life support. The best proof of that is that they are charging ppl for their so called "expansion" that will probably start out with one working zone "hence 6 MAX lvl zones beeing announched" and then they PR their way with the fanboys for few more months before the game goes free to play. Well - it could be even worse..... AOC could be making a WARlike cake to promote a failed game.... EE would look good in cake form wouldn't he ?
This post makes no sense! "The best proof" is what? Some nonsense weird predictions on your part. FAIL!
Finaticd started nice and I was like "wow he got acc hacked" but than he proved that I don't quote him as comparison for nothing. Lets all state our personal thing he embarrased himself with The population is at best 70k subs, one thing to note is 100,000 downloaded the free trial and another X players downloaded the free trial or resubbed during the free trials and over 100% of them left the game, meaning they lost more than gained. That means the game is not worth playing today for a crazy number of people, it is 50th on Xfire today an all time low which means Xfire works 100% of the time. Don't you just love how self proclaimed analytic plays with totally fictional numbers? Dude that was embarassing!
Agreed!
I mainly agree with OP. Not great reading but could be worse. Based on the figures I guess about 110k subs (based on price of 3-month subs with 75% of revenue coming from AoC.) I wouldn't expect great growth before the expansion but it's good to see that there is a solid playerbase. Fingers crossed the expansion really comes up with the goods!
Maybe it's my crooked logic but to me minimum life support is regular food?
Minimum life support means:
-they are hiring Asian coders cause of cheap labor
- merging servers to reduce cost
- Charging for an "expansion" that all other MMOs today are offering as a content patch. Even free to play games are now offering more free - downloadable content patches than what AOC is offering.
In terms of minum life support in this case - this pretty much means.. salt water and dog poo - Only 75$ anyway...
I was just mocking your inability to make sense. (there is no such thing as minimum life support)
- Asian coders as cheap labor? I think there is nothing wrong with that move. Most of the biggest companies have Asian divisions : it simply is not worth hiring at home. Reducing costs is something that even biggest and wealthiest companies tend to do.
-merging servers to reduce cost? I havent' seen this one. The only merge was demanded by players and highly anticipated. If they reduce costs in the process that is just great
-why exactly is expansion small? It offers totally new advancement system, new zones, new story, factions, etc. Just because of level cap not increased? If you will browse forums a bit more you will see that no lvl cap increase was again players wish
Minimum life support would in term mean - a life support that is minimum. That is not salt water and dog poo (which is not life support btw) but steak and wine (just joking with EE here). Next time you try to mock in metaphors please think before you write.
With cake of death I always chose cake - and you my friend was just murdered.
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard.
AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time.
I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
Lol, dude that actually means "minimum life support", because game is stable enough to breed and eat by itself. They just deliver it some "food and water"
Anyways, Frobner who exactly is people like me? I am not playing game, I am probly never going to play game. I was dissapointed and left 6 months ago. (I just like to point at mistakes other people are doing)
You cannot meassure a game trend with Xfire (lets let asside that it is broken) because the number right now is beyond 1k and it is statistically impossible to have any certain results. Oh and not to mention that it is not random.
I lied, one more thing: Let's get rid of the spin and look at what the financial markets had to say about this Q2 report: 1. Volume is up 10x for the day (which indicates non-interest, release date trading volume should be 50-100x) 2. 13% loss in stock value In other words, the market has ignored the spin, recognizing that Funcom, compared to its IPO a few years back, is worth less than 50% of what it originally sold for (and again, the only reason why Funcom has any cash at all, they certainly have not earned that cash in the market)
Oh look. We got another created account purely to bash Funcom.
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
Lol, dude that actually means "minimum life support", because game is stable enough to breed and eat by itself. They just deliver it some "food and water"
Anyways, Frobner who exactly is people like me? I am not playing game, I am probly never going to play game. I was dissapointed and left 6 months ago. (I just like to point at mistakes other people are doing)
You cannot meassure a game trend with Xfire (lets let asside that it is broken) because the number right now is beyond 1k and it is statistically impossible to have any certain results. Oh and not to mention that it is not random.
PPL in Auschwitz were on minimum life support you know... That didn't mean they had a bright future ahead of them.
Xfire has time and time again shown that its pretty accurate on statistics regarding if a game is growing or loosing ppl. IF you dissagree then go back and review what was going on around the time that the comback campaign was ongoing.
If 1k ppl are signed up for AOC on Xfire but 100k for another game that means that the other game is played by more ppl... Get a clue...
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
You do know that Funcom is also working on another MMO using the exact same game engine... 120 ppl here and 100 ppl there doesn't nessiserily mean that they are not working on both...
There is now about one year since a statement was released to shareholders that the Kaupthing bank in Iceland was standing strong. That was on Friday - On monday (3 days later) the bank was declared bankrupt and sharehodlers lost everything. Get a clue on what financial reports are about...
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time. I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
You do know that Funcom is also working on another MMO using the exact same game engine... 120 ppl here and 100 ppl there doesn't nessiserily mean that they are not working on both...
There is now about one year since a statement was released to shareholders that the Kaupthing bank in Iceland was standing strong. That was on Friday - On monday (3 days later) the bank was declared bankrupt and sharehodlers lost everything. Get a clue on what financial reports are about...
They got over 300 employees. 100 they say are working on TSW, 120 they say are working on AOC, 22 they say are working on their Java MMO. This leaves around 60 for AO, the web MMO, the casual games stuff and whatever else they are doing. In your world of logic what are these people doing if they are not working on the games FC say they are working on?
I am not claiming it is impossible to come with false information. I am saying that there is no reason to believe that these numbers are false. Yes, FC has polished the numbers, but they've never been false. Why should we think they are giving their stock holders false information now?
You are just making up conspiracy theories without any basis in the truth. So why don't you try to come up with some facts instead?
This actually shows a lot.No matter how much effort AOC puts into their game,your not going to cause a relaunch attitude amongst gamers.This game could be number 1 for quality but it won't matter.
If you pay attention to gamers in general,.they are crowd followers.The hype and the media start talking WOW and they all want in on the action,everyone starts joining WOW.
I never thought it would happen again,i like to think gamers get smarter but it "IS"happening all over again.I Played AION and it is NOTHING close to great.It is barely average IMO,yet this constant hype the public is feeding off,makes the game sound 10x better than it really is.I am seeing players all joining it and they don't even have any clue about the game,they are asking others if the game is for them LMAO.So it is another long line of herders gathering their sheep,their flock.
Think about it,how does a game get so big ,when the majority have never played the game?you don't go from 100k betas to 2 million based on first hand knowledge lol.
Gaming in general has become a war of deceit and false images,tons of marketing and hype and best of all make the entire game SUPER easy,so the little kids can feed their egos and feel like they are l33t.This will get you the subs,don't let any of that other crap fool you,the majority want it easy and child proof.Then add in some cutesy stuff like mounts/pets/flying glowing weapons and best of all use l33t talk,name that gear as EPIC gear that way they feel special when attaining it.Do all of this and you got those kids hooked ,you got yourself some decent sub numbers.
Of course doing all of this now while the majority of players are in all of but a few games,is FUTILE,there is no players to grab,you would have to try and steal them from other games.So efforts are wasted if hoping for a large sustained subscription base.It will be interesting to see if Square can draw any numbers from an invisible player base for its upcoming FFXIV.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This actually shows a lot.No matter how much effort AOC puts into their game,your not going to cause a relaunch attitude amongst gamers.This game could be number 1 for quality but it won't matter. If you pay attention to gamers in general,.they are crowd followers.The hype and the media start talking WOW and they all want in on the action,everyone starts joining WOW. I never thought it would happen again,i like to think gamers get smarter but it "IS"happening all over again.I Played AION and it is NOTHING close to great.It is barely average IMO,yet this constant hype the public is feeding off,makes the game sound 10x better than it really is.I am seeing players all joining it and they don't even have any clue about the game,they are asking others if the game is for them LMAO.So it is another long line of herders gathering their sheep,their flock. Think about it,how does a game get so big ,when the majority have never played the game?you don't go from 100k betas to 2 million based on first hand knowledge lol. Gaming in general has become a war of deceit and false images,tons of marketing and hype and best of all make the entire game SUPER easy,so the little kids can feed their egos and feel like they are l33t.This will get you the subs,don't let any of that other crap fool you,the majority want it easy and child proof.Then add in some cutesy stuff like mounts/pets/flying glowing weapons and best of all use l33t talk,name that gear as EPIC gear that way they feel special when attaining it.Do all of this and you got those kids hooked ,you got yourself some decent sub numbers. Of course doing all of this now while the majority of players are in all of but a few games,is FUTILE,there is no players to grab,you would have to try and steal them from other games.So efforts are wasted if hoping for a large sustained subscription base.It will be interesting to see if Square can draw any numbers from an invisible player base for its upcoming FFXIV.
very good post agree QFT .its goten bad to horrible the forum trolling pr spin on games.i seen thnings posted about aoc that may have been true 6th months ago just dont ring true today.
then its the xfire bs, xfire wount reconginize my everquest install gota manualy detect it every time to get it to register.then theirs aoc rank whichs odd ( an it does not register hours corect on it ) www.xfire.com/games/ shows
took some screeen shots an it got me killed twice .drowned cause scroll lock S wouldnt disengage an i coudnt move .gona experiment with it a bit more but x fire is quicky looksing at geting unistalled on my system .an that wount mean i have quit aoc or eq .only nice thing have realy seen is can launch games ( mostly) from the x fire task tray icon .if you dont tho it wount register the hours ( an it rounds down ) it seems like lessits a full hour its not counted to.
an people forget wow did not launch an have 6 million subs all at once either.aoc is one of the games i did quit because of bugs. now its a much more enjoyable experiance thos theirs two bugs i hate cant guild invite from clicking a name or the icon flicker in invetory/storage when it opens .thats about it.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
This actually shows a lot.No matter how much effort AOC puts into their game,your not going to cause a relaunch attitude amongst gamers.This game could be number 1 for quality but it won't matter. If you pay attention to gamers in general,.they are crowd followers.The hype and the media start talking WOW and they all want in on the action,everyone starts joining WOW. I never thought it would happen again,i like to think gamers get smarter but it "IS"happening all over again.I Played AION and it is NOTHING close to great.It is barely average IMO,yet this constant hype the public is feeding off,makes the game sound 10x better than it really is.I am seeing players all joining it and they don't even have any clue about the game,they are asking others if the game is for them LMAO.So it is another long line of herders gathering their sheep,their flock. Think about it,how does a game get so big ,when the majority have never played the game?you don't go from 100k betas to 2 million based on first hand knowledge lol. Gaming in general has become a war of deceit and false images,tons of marketing and hype and best of all make the entire game SUPER easy,so the little kids can feed their egos and feel like they are l33t.This will get you the subs,don't let any of that other crap fool you,the majority want it easy and child proof.Then add in some cutesy stuff like mounts/pets/flying glowing weapons and best of all use l33t talk,name that gear as EPIC gear that way they feel special when attaining it.Do all of this and you got those kids hooked ,you got yourself some decent sub numbers. Of course doing all of this now while the majority of players are in all of but a few games,is FUTILE,there is no players to grab,you would have to try and steal them from other games.So efforts are wasted if hoping for a large sustained subscription base.It will be interesting to see if Square can draw any numbers from an invisible player base for its upcoming FFXIV.
Square will have no problems because they had another FF MMO that was very big esp in asia. Aion is the same way they have made a bunch of great MMOs. Funcom on the other hand does have to rely on hype. Your thesis is incorrect, people play good games and will try a game based on hype such as Age of Conan but won't stick with it. Warcraft had better game play , mechanics, and content at release than Age of Conan does today and that is why it is popular and AoC is not being played much. Take for instance leveling in warcraft you could do loads of quest but there were also a myriad of dungean crawls to group up for and people still can find groups to do old world instances today rather quickly. Then at endgame there were 6 or so end game dungeans to group up for and get blues and then moltant core and onxyxia. Plus it had a much better crafting system, engineering had crazy stuff to make.
About supper easy, Funcom dumbed down AoC's combat system 3 times now and it is probably the easiest combat system devised due to arrows plus a global cooldown and the active blocking/shilding/stuff was nurfed to pointlessness. I play street fighter 4 and blazblue a lot, there are combos in those games and they are hard to play so compared to street fighter 4:
difficulty to play well: Street fighter 8, Warcraft 4 (arenas and raiding), Age of Conan 2 (there is nothing challenging in AoC)
Anyway, if a game is good people will play it and the community will grow if it is bad people may fall into the hype but they will leave: So for single player games it matters not, but for multiplayer games an active community is needed, in MMOs an active community is needed above all else for grouping reasons and also to help finance the development of more content. TLOTR didn't have the biggest launch and it probably has grown since release.
Warcraft had better game play , mechanics, and content at release than Age of Conan does today and that is why it is popular and AoC is not being played much. Take for instance leveling in warcraft you could do loads of quest but there were also a myriad of dungean crawls to group up for and people still can find groups to do old world instances today rather quickly. Then at endgame there were 6 or so end game dungeans to group up for and get blues and then moltant core and onxyxia. Plus it had a much better crafting system, engineering had crazy stuff to make.
World of Warcraft had 6 or so end-game dungeons ? I hope you mean the tier 0.5 ones that were for level 56+. There's no group quests or dungeon content in AoC? I'm level 49 and I've done maybe 6 giant group chains and dungeons so far.. I see tons of challenging dungeon crawls.
Currently playing - FF14ARR Previous games - SWG, World of Warcraft, ShadowBane, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall, Planetside Asheron's Call, Everquest, Everquest 2, Too many.
I have only been playing the game for about 3 weeks and I see more people in-game than I expected to, inside Tortage and beyond. I think the game is excellent not counting a few issues I have had with hanging on loading screens which was only once, and an issue where I was stuck in a loop between the patch screen and the EULA screen. I contacted customer support and was helped within a day, so that being said, so far I am enjoying the piss out of this game.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Finaticd I am gonna let others take the cake on WoW at start (which was horid as I heard ... never played it though)
And as far as combat system goes. Granted it was nerfed but you guys are all the time making the same argumentative mistake. It goes for tigers, it goes for no level increase, it goes for combat system. This is not something Funcom is doing wrong if you than bring up WoW as example of great game. All 3 and many more features were demanded by WoW alike community, which is today prevaling and if you don't want another AO (which is awesome, complex game btw) you need to follow the voice of the crowd. Gaming became a pointless relaxation and in a way reminds me to american sitcoms where they played recorded laugh so you don't really need to laugh or to think what is funny. You just go along ...
Gaming is in a way the same. It is about casuals who have nor the time nor the will to do anything serious. They just login, chat a bit, get 1/29th of DING and logout relaxed because they were most of the time collecting flowers in beautiful landscape (for example LOTRO is perfect example and a real sign where things are headed ... and I hear that europe Aion is even easier than LOTRO). Games that are hardcore to the bone are done by small independent companies - just like Darkfall. They are niche. And Funcom cannot afford that, they paid to much for the development of this game, they invested to much work force ... they simply had to make game easier, or else even fewer would play it. In melee PVP even now there is handful of players that are able to coordinate their moves with dealing deathly blows. Even now most people in PVP are just trying ... not having nor the time nor the will to really learn. If you would have played some PVP games with the best you would have seen that ... most of the time people are just free PXP. (winning 30 to 0 versus premades was ... well boring!)
Yes, every single big title will be a copy of WoW. I mean lets just think about the king. I had some time to browse the forums and people there are complaining about game becomming even less complex with every patch they deploy. (and it is pointless to talk about hardcore never defeated dungeons - they are just artificialy making the game harder but in reality only this small fragment is hard, everything else is getting even easier)
In conclusion:
Complaining about how simple the most advanced combat system currently implemented in MMO's is fucking damn pointless, because the majority is not even wanting that - they want even easier game. Majority wants content that they can beat , in PVP everyone wants to shine (check BS whine thread : BS was in 1.04 not OPED - it was just hard to master and when mastered it was a beast. But to the majority it was not oped. ... majority though got their asses kicked by him. FIX? give everyone more health so fights last longer and you can make more mistakes ... easymode on). You know what type of game would have most subscriptions? the type that would feel everyone hardcore and yet be simple to the bone. People don't want hard games, but people hate to think of themselves as losers. WoW is winning mostly because it is doing exactly this. (and LOTRO would be if WoW players would try it) ... Conan will become less complex, it has to. Fallen earth might be the next hardcore thing. But it is a buggy mess ...
WoW lacked end game content at the beginning. But it made up for it in other ways: 1. Better itemization 2. Better PvP balance 3. Better crafting 4. More things to do (factions, meaningful marketplace trading, etc.) And then they started expanding the end game content. At a rate much faster than AoC is doing.
Comments
Call of Duty for now as I play that on XBL I love the zombie maps on CoD 4, more people play CoD than WoW now because it is multi port. CoD MW 2 is coming out soon!
WoW won't go a way for a long time it has loads of people however AoC doesn't have that population. So if game X takes 5k and Game Y takes 8 k it is in trouble and there are plenty of MMOs and oher games comming to nickel and dime AoC.
CoD and WoW are both made by the same company now! Untill Blizz/Acti makes another MMO I don't see anything killing WoW. One thing WoW has that AoC doesn't is progression, you grind or raid or do stuff and deck out your toon and it means something. It means you can pawn noobs with your epix!
In AoC you usually just make another charecter and there isn't much sentimental value in your toon for most people as they wouldn't have left if there was.
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
finaticd i can agree with most what your saying in that post. but theirs a boiling point to mmos as they boil down to their core players ,those that do have fun in the game then it can build up. the would thing about 1st impressions in mmos an cant come back is bs imho. wow did not have a great launch.
might try cod some time. free games tho if ya notice or games with out a monthly .do much better on x fire by far.thats one of the resons its not a great water mark of mmos. eq 1 has been around for 10 years . an every week their is a trhead about how the games dieing an how it wil close down soon on their own forums.yet its stil around. people do come back tween new games ( my self included) an they have fun for a bit.
aoc with alternate invancment will have that sentimental attachment just like eq does for me if done similar.actualy i was looking at adding character slots in aoc.even went an bought the collecotrs editon tho i had the game before .im one of those return players who by your count left after i tried the game again.
an since yoru a big x fire suporter on how acurate it is ... then explain to me why i played aoc for 6 hours yesterday an got credit for 3 till almost midnight.thought it updated every 15 minutes. their will be drop now over all to as schools in.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Its really not worth talking about financial reports from Funcom. They are masters of PR.
But I have to say this tho. AOC is on minimum life support. The best proof of that is that they are charging ppl for their so called "expansion" that will probably start out with one working zone "hence 6 MAX lvl zones beeing announched" and then they PR their way with the fanboys for few more months before the game goes free to play.
Well - it could be even worse..... AOC could be making a WARlike cake to promote a failed game....
EE would look good in cake form wouldn't he ?
This post makes no sense! "The best proof" is what? Some nonsense weird predictions on your part. FAIL!
--
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Maybe it's my crooked logic but to me minimum life support is regular food?
Agreed!
I mainly agree with OP. Not great reading but could be worse. Based on the figures I guess about 110k subs (based on price of 3-month subs with 75% of revenue coming from AoC.) I wouldn't expect great growth before the expansion but it's good to see that there is a solid playerbase. Fingers crossed the expansion really comes up with the goods!
Minimum life support means:
-they are hiring Asian coders cause of cheap labor
- merging servers to reduce cost
- Charging for an "expansion" that all other MMOs today are offering as a content patch. Even free to play games are now offering more free - downloadable content patches than what AOC is offering.
In terms of minum life support in this case - this pretty much means.. salt water and dog poo - Only 75$ anyway...
Want some cake ?
I was just mocking your inability to make sense. (there is no such thing as minimum life support)
- Asian coders as cheap labor? I think there is nothing wrong with that move. Most of the biggest companies have Asian divisions : it simply is not worth hiring at home. Reducing costs is something that even biggest and wealthiest companies tend to do.
-merging servers to reduce cost? I havent' seen this one. The only merge was demanded by players and highly anticipated. If they reduce costs in the process that is just great
-why exactly is expansion small? It offers totally new advancement system, new zones, new story, factions, etc. Just because of level cap not increased? If you will browse forums a bit more you will see that no lvl cap increase was again players wish
Minimum life support would in term mean - a life support that is minimum. That is not salt water and dog poo (which is not life support btw) but steak and wine (just joking with EE here). Next time you try to mock in metaphors please think before you write.
With cake of death I always chose cake - and you my friend was just murdered.
If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard.
AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time.
I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
Lol, dude that actually means "minimum life support", because game is stable enough to breed and eat by itself. They just deliver it some "food and water"
Anyways, Frobner who exactly is people like me? I am not playing game, I am probly never going to play game. I was dissapointed and left 6 months ago. (I just like to point at mistakes other people are doing)
You cannot meassure a game trend with Xfire (lets let asside that it is broken) because the number right now is beyond 1k and it is statistically impossible to have any certain results. Oh and not to mention that it is not random.
Oh look. We got another created account purely to bash Funcom.
How original.
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
Lol, dude that actually means "minimum life support", because game is stable enough to breed and eat by itself. They just deliver it some "food and water"
Anyways, Frobner who exactly is people like me? I am not playing game, I am probly never going to play game. I was dissapointed and left 6 months ago. (I just like to point at mistakes other people are doing)
You cannot meassure a game trend with Xfire (lets let asside that it is broken) because the number right now is beyond 1k and it is statistically impossible to have any certain results. Oh and not to mention that it is not random.
PPL in Auschwitz were on minimum life support you know... That didn't mean they had a bright future ahead of them.
Xfire has time and time again shown that its pretty accurate on statistics regarding if a game is growing or loosing ppl. IF you dissagree then go back and review what was going on around the time that the comback campaign was ongoing.
If 1k ppl are signed up for AOC on Xfire but 100k for another game that means that the other game is played by more ppl... Get a clue...
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
You do know that Funcom is also working on another MMO using the exact same game engine... 120 ppl here and 100 ppl there doesn't nessiserily mean that they are not working on both...
There is now about one year since a statement was released to shareholders that the Kaupthing bank in Iceland was standing strong. That was on Friday - On monday (3 days later) the bank was declared bankrupt and sharehodlers lost everything. Get a clue on what financial reports are about...
Funcom and the truth are very seldom on the same page.
Jihad works both ways
MAGA
So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?
And you still belive the PR....
It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.
You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?
You do know that Funcom is also working on another MMO using the exact same game engine... 120 ppl here and 100 ppl there doesn't nessiserily mean that they are not working on both...
There is now about one year since a statement was released to shareholders that the Kaupthing bank in Iceland was standing strong. That was on Friday - On monday (3 days later) the bank was declared bankrupt and sharehodlers lost everything. Get a clue on what financial reports are about...
They got over 300 employees. 100 they say are working on TSW, 120 they say are working on AOC, 22 they say are working on their Java MMO. This leaves around 60 for AO, the web MMO, the casual games stuff and whatever else they are doing. In your world of logic what are these people doing if they are not working on the games FC say they are working on?
I am not claiming it is impossible to come with false information. I am saying that there is no reason to believe that these numbers are false. Yes, FC has polished the numbers, but they've never been false. Why should we think they are giving their stock holders false information now?
You are just making up conspiracy theories without any basis in the truth. So why don't you try to come up with some facts instead?
This actually shows a lot.No matter how much effort AOC puts into their game,your not going to cause a relaunch attitude amongst gamers.This game could be number 1 for quality but it won't matter.
If you pay attention to gamers in general,.they are crowd followers.The hype and the media start talking WOW and they all want in on the action,everyone starts joining WOW.
I never thought it would happen again,i like to think gamers get smarter but it "IS"happening all over again.I Played AION and it is NOTHING close to great.It is barely average IMO,yet this constant hype the public is feeding off,makes the game sound 10x better than it really is.I am seeing players all joining it and they don't even have any clue about the game,they are asking others if the game is for them LMAO.So it is another long line of herders gathering their sheep,their flock.
Think about it,how does a game get so big ,when the majority have never played the game?you don't go from 100k betas to 2 million based on first hand knowledge lol.
Gaming in general has become a war of deceit and false images,tons of marketing and hype and best of all make the entire game SUPER easy,so the little kids can feed their egos and feel like they are l33t.This will get you the subs,don't let any of that other crap fool you,the majority want it easy and child proof.Then add in some cutesy stuff like mounts/pets/flying glowing weapons and best of all use l33t talk,name that gear as EPIC gear that way they feel special when attaining it.Do all of this and you got those kids hooked ,you got yourself some decent sub numbers.
Of course doing all of this now while the majority of players are in all of but a few games,is FUTILE,there is no players to grab,you would have to try and steal them from other games.So efforts are wasted if hoping for a large sustained subscription base.It will be interesting to see if Square can draw any numbers from an invisible player base for its upcoming FFXIV.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
very good post agree QFT .its goten bad to horrible the forum trolling pr spin on games.i seen thnings posted about aoc that may have been true 6th months ago just dont ring true today.
then its the xfire bs, xfire wount reconginize my everquest install gota manualy detect it every time to get it to register.then theirs aoc rank whichs odd ( an it does not register hours corect on it ) www.xfire.com/games/ shows
Adventures
4360 #44 Funcom
Eidos Interactive
ranked at 44 but when going to the aoc link it shows #50 no change for 2 days
Highest: #4 on 2008-06-01
took some screeen shots an it got me killed twice .drowned cause scroll lock S wouldnt disengage an i coudnt move .gona experiment with it a bit more but x fire is quicky looksing at geting unistalled on my system .an that wount mean i have quit aoc or eq .only nice thing have realy seen is can launch games ( mostly) from the x fire task tray icon .if you dont tho it wount register the hours ( an it rounds down ) it seems like lessits a full hour its not counted to.
an people forget wow did not launch an have 6 million subs all at once either.aoc is one of the games i did quit because of bugs. now its a much more enjoyable experiance thos theirs two bugs i hate cant guild invite from clicking a name or the icon flicker in invetory/storage when it opens .thats about it.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Square will have no problems because they had another FF MMO that was very big esp in asia. Aion is the same way they have made a bunch of great MMOs. Funcom on the other hand does have to rely on hype. Your thesis is incorrect, people play good games and will try a game based on hype such as Age of Conan but won't stick with it. Warcraft had better game play , mechanics, and content at release than Age of Conan does today and that is why it is popular and AoC is not being played much. Take for instance leveling in warcraft you could do loads of quest but there were also a myriad of dungean crawls to group up for and people still can find groups to do old world instances today rather quickly. Then at endgame there were 6 or so end game dungeans to group up for and get blues and then moltant core and onxyxia. Plus it had a much better crafting system, engineering had crazy stuff to make.
About supper easy, Funcom dumbed down AoC's combat system 3 times now and it is probably the easiest combat system devised due to arrows plus a global cooldown and the active blocking/shilding/stuff was nurfed to pointlessness. I play street fighter 4 and blazblue a lot, there are combos in those games and they are hard to play so compared to street fighter 4:
difficulty to play well: Street fighter 8, Warcraft 4 (arenas and raiding), Age of Conan 2 (there is nothing challenging in AoC)
Anyway, if a game is good people will play it and the community will grow if it is bad people may fall into the hype but they will leave: So for single player games it matters not, but for multiplayer games an active community is needed, in MMOs an active community is needed above all else for grouping reasons and also to help finance the development of more content. TLOTR didn't have the biggest launch and it probably has grown since release.
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
World of Warcraft had 6 or so end-game dungeons ? I hope you mean the tier 0.5 ones that were for level 56+. There's no group quests or dungeon content in AoC? I'm level 49 and I've done maybe 6 giant group chains and dungeons so far.. I see tons of challenging dungeon crawls.
Currently playing - FF14ARR
Previous games - SWG, World of Warcraft, ShadowBane, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall, Planetside Asheron's Call, Everquest, Everquest 2, Too many.
I have only been playing the game for about 3 weeks and I see more people in-game than I expected to, inside Tortage and beyond. I think the game is excellent not counting a few issues I have had with hanging on loading screens which was only once, and an issue where I was stuck in a loop between the patch screen and the EULA screen. I contacted customer support and was helped within a day, so that being said, so far I am enjoying the piss out of this game.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Finaticd I am gonna let others take the cake on WoW at start (which was horid as I heard ... never played it though)
And as far as combat system goes. Granted it was nerfed but you guys are all the time making the same argumentative mistake. It goes for tigers, it goes for no level increase, it goes for combat system. This is not something Funcom is doing wrong if you than bring up WoW as example of great game. All 3 and many more features were demanded by WoW alike community, which is today prevaling and if you don't want another AO (which is awesome, complex game btw) you need to follow the voice of the crowd. Gaming became a pointless relaxation and in a way reminds me to american sitcoms where they played recorded laugh so you don't really need to laugh or to think what is funny. You just go along ...
Gaming is in a way the same. It is about casuals who have nor the time nor the will to do anything serious. They just login, chat a bit, get 1/29th of DING and logout relaxed because they were most of the time collecting flowers in beautiful landscape (for example LOTRO is perfect example and a real sign where things are headed ... and I hear that europe Aion is even easier than LOTRO). Games that are hardcore to the bone are done by small independent companies - just like Darkfall. They are niche. And Funcom cannot afford that, they paid to much for the development of this game, they invested to much work force ... they simply had to make game easier, or else even fewer would play it. In melee PVP even now there is handful of players that are able to coordinate their moves with dealing deathly blows. Even now most people in PVP are just trying ... not having nor the time nor the will to really learn. If you would have played some PVP games with the best you would have seen that ... most of the time people are just free PXP. (winning 30 to 0 versus premades was ... well boring!)
Yes, every single big title will be a copy of WoW. I mean lets just think about the king. I had some time to browse the forums and people there are complaining about game becomming even less complex with every patch they deploy. (and it is pointless to talk about hardcore never defeated dungeons - they are just artificialy making the game harder but in reality only this small fragment is hard, everything else is getting even easier)
In conclusion:
Complaining about how simple the most advanced combat system currently implemented in MMO's is fucking damn pointless, because the majority is not even wanting that - they want even easier game. Majority wants content that they can beat , in PVP everyone wants to shine (check BS whine thread : BS was in 1.04 not OPED - it was just hard to master and when mastered it was a beast. But to the majority it was not oped. ... majority though got their asses kicked by him. FIX? give everyone more health so fights last longer and you can make more mistakes ... easymode on). You know what type of game would have most subscriptions? the type that would feel everyone hardcore and yet be simple to the bone. People don't want hard games, but people hate to think of themselves as losers. WoW is winning mostly because it is doing exactly this. (and LOTRO would be if WoW players would try it) ... Conan will become less complex, it has to. Fallen earth might be the next hardcore thing. But it is a buggy mess ...
Shamans would like to speak with you.