Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why would anyone buy another game from FUNCOM?
This discussion has been closed.
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
They released a shitty game, then turned it around and now it's a damn good game. That's why I'd buy another game from Funcom, because they accept the idea of fucking up, and actually work to improve the game and fix their mistakes.
I'm free on Friday.
Funcom do resort to some very underhanded tactics to stifle opinion. In reality even though they have forums and the like, they don't want the users opinion. They never listen to it, so I think things are there just because it's expected.
As for Funcom innovating, they haven't innovated for some considerable time The AOC expansion was a load of ideas ripped from other games like Guild Wars (a 5 year old game). They stopped innovating just around the time Gaute left, fair enough I heard he promised th earth and didn't deliver but I think he was possibly the visionary.
Whether they can innovate or not with The Secret World waits to be seen, but then it doesn't look/sound very innovative. Not compared to say Guild Wars 2 and their ideas for things like Dynamic Events etc. As per usual with Funcom info is very sketchy to say the least and they do this on purpose, they are vague for a reason. Don't also believe everything you see or hear. Just because you see something in a trailer or see it mentioned, it doesn't mean it will make it into the game. Funcom are very good at making a game sound better than it is, and also promising a lot of things on which they never deliver. In most industries you would call it 'false advertising'. Take sieges in AOC for example a selling point via marketing that has never worked properly since launch.
Well i had fun with Anarchy Online ( my first mmo) ... i had fun with AoC.... So why shouldnt i try TSW ? 8)
i think its the other way around, like, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. just wanted to point it out.
oh on topic, Funcom is a lying, unethical, immoral excuse of a company. If you turn your back to it, it will stab; if you close your eyes, it will empty your pockets. Never, ever trust them, believe their promises.
That being said, it is devoted to games it makes, can have interesting, fun gameplay ideas.
Moral of the story, taste before you pay. The meat they are selling isnt bad itself but its not the thing listed on broshure either. (also there is no fly in the soup, its just your server)
ps. AoC launch was almost flawless, problems started after 1-2 months when majority reached where no content existed/worked.
I need more vespene gas.
Gaute was a visionary without a doubt, he was just not a great deliverer. He had not a good grasp of what was realistic and achievable within the boundaries of the timescales and his resources (finances, manpower), but he's not the only one with that problem in the MMO business.
It's very easy to talk and spout grand ideas - I think that lot of people among us that have been playing MMO's for the last 5-10 years can spout a lot of ideas that sound really great and an improvement or even revolution of the MMO genre. But then you have to go develop those grand ideas into a valid working system with the limited resources available to you.
If it'd be so easy to implement all those great innovations and improvements upon the MMO genre, more MMO companies would be doing it in a blink.
It's easy to give in to the lure of hype or hyping and the ongoing pressure for more information from outside, and start talking grand ideas. That's why I have more respect for companies like Bioware and ANet than for people like Gaute: the Bioware and ANet people only start talking about features of their games when those have made it in a workable manner into the game, because they realise that not all the grand ideas they might have will work out or make it into the game.
Fallenlords, criticism and freedom of speech is a good thing, but the way you've been acting and behaving on the AoC forums is like a spoilt, 6 years old kid that couldn't stop whining and crying about everything just because it got bored with its toys. If you'd been a roommate in the college dorm I stayed and you behaved like you did on those forums, I would've already moved out or you'd have gotten the nickname 'Grumpy Old Man' or 'Mr Naggit' throughout the dorm in a blink: the constant whining and nagging is as constructive as a constantly buzzing mosquito in your house.
For future reference, if you really want people to pay attention to what you say or take you seriously, you might want to lower the grumpiness/nagging factor of your posting as you kept doing on AoC forums.
About the AoC expansion: let's be reasonable, shall we. No other MMO shows the innovation level we see with GW2, but we still have to see it in action and play. I have no doubt at all that as soon as the beta is there and the game has launched there will be persistent whiners, flamers and naggers that will find many a (presumed) fault with GW2 too. Besides, WoW is the best example of a MMO that ripped off the ideas of other games and was successful by polishing them to a high degree. The AoC expansion was more innovative than the expansions of some other MMO's: it didn't raise the level cap as is common with MMO expansions but introduced lateral leveling, and the dungeons it introduced are some of the best and most ingenious of all the ones I've encountered throughout the MMO's I played.
Regarding TSW: we have to see how it'll be, though I find the theme and setting, along with the combat mechanics, the no-classes no-levels thing and the large underworld warzone sound pretty innovative, or at least a break from the current standards.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Oh I can be like a petulant child on times, but let's face it here we have a game in AOC that everybody admits is fundamentally a good game. But then on the other hand you have a company that does next to nothing to promote the game or engage the users. What's happening in AOC this week/month? Probably nothing, or if it is it's probably being run by the users without any backing from Funcom. On top of that they don't address important issues. In essence Funcom is letting the game down, which is more frustrating than the game just being rubbish. If it was just rubbish, bin it and move on.
I am not so sure about The Secret World (TSW), perhaps if they were releasing now fine. But as far as I know it's nowhere near and by which time new things will be out. I mean the no-class stuff is already there in Fallen Earth - they have kept levels but they are virtually superfluous. So again innovation wise, I am not seeing it. From what I can tell the combat in TSW is going to third person perspective - not good for firing guns (whether there will be an FPS mode I don't know). It appears to be full of magic and crap (from what I have seen) which is part of what spoils AOC and I think people are getting bored of that stuff. Innovation of the secret societies comes straight out of a Dan Brown novel - Zombies (popularity of killing them) comes from the success of things like Left 4 Dead they even have the Left 4 Dead boat down to a tee in one trailer I saw. The only thing they may innovate on is the graphics, but if the go overboard on that it will probably mean only super-rigs will be able to run the game.
Personally I wish somebody would buy Funcom and take them over (perhaps if they don't make a profit this year it might happen). Under different hands I am sure they could meet every bodies expectations, I think even AOC could do really well in the right hands.
AoC Collector's edition boxes make good doorstops.../sigh
Funcom made Aoc and it is successful and they made AO and i hear that is not bad either. So there is no reason why TSW will be any different.
You have taken your hate campaign against Funcom from AoC to TSW, what exactly have they done to you, as it seems you have a personal grudge against the company.
When will you let it go and move on? It is not healthy man! You do your self damage with all this hate. There must be something tht makes you keep doing it, perhaps you are ex-employee, disgruntled at being sacked perhaps?
I am a disgruntled customer no doubt about it. When AOC started to crash with 'shadow errors' I asked for a refund. Now what would you sooner have a disgruntled customer, free to voice opinion on everything to do with Funcom. Or an appeased customer provided with a refund who would feel less to no animosity towards the company. I would of thought the latter.
The refund I continued to pursue when AOC started to crash with 'out of memory errors'. In essence to my mind they contravened UK Trading Standards, any goods or services have to be 'fit for purpose'. Their game was crashing, from diagnostics sent my PC was not causing the game to crash. Yet they still refused to refund me - offering me free game time for a game I can't play. Of course with them being based in Europe it's all different laws, lots of red tape and you have to go to the European Consumer Council etc etc. Now if they had any sense in their tiny little brains, they would of given me a refund. Then I would of just gone away, parted company with Fun com having being treated fairly. I am a reasonable person at heart but when people screw me over, even if it's for a small amount of money it makes me mad. They decided not to refund me, fine they pay the price and the consequences of their actions. Which means I will warn people off dealing with this company. Or at the very least make them think twice about their dealings.
Often you don't see the true face of a company until you have a problem, then you start to see the realities of it all.
I agree with you that they do not do anything to promote it. If they spent some time promoting the game I do believe you would see a increase in the player base, and that is really what AoC needs the most is more players.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Because I LOVED AoC's first 20 levels.
However, I will wait for reviews before getting this game...
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Really? How could you get over how mind numbingly simple and linear it was? You're dumped into a JUNGLE and there's only ever ONE path through it. You could fall asleep and still win every fight you encounter. The quests afterward just marked the objectives on your map and if you somehow missed that, they sparkled too!
Not to mention all the missing features and broken promises. The first 20 levels were a long boring tutorial. But that's just my opinion.
Age of Conan was a financial disaster. They layed off tons of developers and two of their partner companies went bankrupt. They had to merge servers almost immediately.
AO has been virtually dead for 7 years now. Funcom doesn't have a good track record.
The thing about AO is kind of funny in my opinion. Think about games that have failed. They are not around. That AO is still around kind of goes against that, no? It shows somewhat of a commitment to a game that companies like EA, SOE, etc do not show... I would thus be far more likely to buy a game from Funcom than I would the "major" players that kill games off left and right.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
The Longest Journey is a great game. Age of Conan is a very good game that I cannot afford to play at the moment. Anarchy Online is a game that isn't for me but I can see how others would enjoy it.
The advertising campaign for The Secret World has me intrigued and interested in the game. Whether I play it when it comes out is a matter of wait and see. As with any game from any developer.
So yes, I am willing to play more games made by FunCom in the future.
It's a shame, because AoC had so much potential, but they rushed to release before it was near ready (needed 6mo to a year more), so it was buggy and didnt have a lot of the features it was promised. The graphics are great (maybe too good, as it limited those able to play it on their pc's) and I enjoyed the combat and setting a lot. The class specific solo adventure was probably the most fun, but once out into the world the bugged missions, lack of the promised pvp and guild features ruined it. I got up to about 53 before getting bored, if there had been any point to pvp at the time and the group/siege combat had been in the game as promised, me and many others would've stayed and it would have a respectable sub count, but once you let your fanbase down with their shady practices, you'll never get most of them back. I will never try another of Funcoms games until after the launch, so I can be guarranteed that their promises are met and not a rushed bug fest (hate yeecky bugs).
i did find it a waste that Tabula Rasa was shut down that quickly, yes. It was certainly not so bad that it warranted just closing down the whole game so soon.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I have 2 great reasons to wait for The Secret World:
TLJ and Dreamfall are the best games I ever played.
No DII ,WCIII, w/e can beat it IMO.
I loved Anarchy Online and played it for almost 7 years straight..
Love Age of conan, still plays it, on and off. nothing serious..
----------------------
I love how the things work, when designed by funcom,
and the general engine setup/design is great.
Thats why im 99% sure will buy The secret world, when i can preorder sometime in 2011..
------
Playing MMO's since my first which was Ultima online, then Anarchy online. and so on..
Now a days im very critical before i ewen bother downloading a Free to play mmo.
I've seen a few comments asking "why the Funcom hate?". My answer is AoC. And not because it was released too early, and not because of the gamebreaking bugs, and not because of the absurd balance issues, even three months into it. The reason for the hate is not due to the sloppy launch, but because they failed to acknowledge that any problems existed at all with their game.
I'm pretty forgiving of bugs and technical issues in the days and weeks that follow any game launch. I expect there to be problems so it doesn't put me off. What does get to me is reading developer blogs and interviews going on and on about how glorious the game is, how everything is going according to plan and how satisfied they are with their new digital spawn, while not a word to mollify those who perhaps outright can't even play the game. Nor any word concerning when fixes might be making it down the pipeline, let alone that *anything* might be needing fixing in the first place.
Basically, then impression I got of Funcom at that time (it also being my first impression since it was the first product of theirs I'd played) was that of the Captain of the Titanic, blithely yattering on about the how unsinkable the vessel was, while standing knee deep in sea water. That impression has stayed with me to this day, which is why I have neither respect nor forgiveness for this company.
If they'd done nothing more than simply agreed that there were problems and slowly worked towards addressing them, I could have forgiven any amount of technical ineptitude. But blowing off your customer's concerns is simply no way to keep them as customers.
And yet they just spent boatloads of money on a huge expansion, which they wouldn't do if they didn't have plenty of customers generating income. Sure there are some loud butt-hurt anti-Funcom people on these boards, but what else is new. Clearly a lot of people would buy another game from Funcom, else they wouldn't be funding it, to answer the OP.
Because some people don't care about the company that makes the game and other various ethical reasons.
In short, it all depends about the game itself IMO.
Erm, u gotta really be into Funcom to say that they delivered good MMOs...
AO set a milestone with the buggiest release ever (back then we had AC1, EQ1, UO and DAOC, all ran smoothly), after that date people started to mess around with crappy releases. Not to mention that AO was one of the very few games that got hacked and where people spawned armors here and there. Nevertheless it was a fun game as the setup was sci-fi (for once), but daymn, it was far from AAA (erm like combat zones with the msg "oh sorry u can't enter cuz the server cannot handle that many people in that limited space"). Good thing i played a fixer and got my MKIV tho, thx Storms.
AoC, i couldn't say much, played the beta, found it empty and ridiculously unbalanced in terms of classes (i wonder why i played a ranger and priest of seth), i got the release from my bro who gave up any hope on it (and we're talking bout a man who mastered Potbs and who stayed till after NGE, kinda die hard); i must say i didn't play much, maybe up to lvl 20 then dumped it. I was thinking bout coming back with expansion but FFXIV is around the corner and should deliver, if they manage to have more than 20 diff monsters of which the majority are bats, worms and rats.
So, yeah, perfect world has a nice setup, Funcom is quite an unskilled company but with good ideas, maybe they'll get some decent devs for that game but i wouldn't bet too much on it; can always hope tho, can't blame em for trying something different at least.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
Pretty spot on. They also wiped all the negative (but valid) customer concerns off the forums the same way they did with AO. Like you I could accept some issues as the underlying game was good, but the way they basically treated their customers as liars turned a lot of people off and they will not be coming back.
I *really* hope the TSW people are watching and never go down this path again. I've been dying for a Cthulhu-mythos style MMO and want the game to succeed. Anything else may be the last act for this company and since their concepts are always interesting, it would be a shame.
I want to buy AoC next month, either that I am going with FF 14 , but since it is really just a pve game, not sure about that one now.