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Morrison gets called out
rat_bastard
Member Posts: 15
His response - "I'm not listening to you, you're mean". And then weilding the ban-stick.
Get the full story right here on the AoC official forum before it's deleted:
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=228783
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
It's certainly an interesting read.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Quite surprising that Craig Morrison actually took the time to respond to such a low blow.
It is easy to see that this 'Caiyn' is very dissappointed, but calling for a mans resignation based on decisions 'Caiyn' do not have the insigt to comprehend is just.... Low.
'Cayin' must either have some selective memory or just plain have forgotten what a wreck Craig Morrison took over: Most subs left before or around the time Craig Morrison stepped in. Quite a few made longterm subs when AoC launched. Most left because of Gautes false promises and lack of direction.
Yes, quite a few 'PvP'ers' have left while Craig Morrison have been GD, but the numbers are only a fraction of the people that left because of the former GD's actions.
Just look some 1000-1200 pages back on AoC general chat: Now look at what people were complaining about!
Craig Morrison managed to pickup the remainders of a desillusioned dev-team, remake (as wanted by a lot of players) itemization, put in a lot of content and retain a decent subscriber base. He did that with a heavily reduced dev-team, even while most of the ressources had to move from Norway to Canada.
I am not an AoC fanboy (my post history should confirm that) but IMO a call for the mans resignation is unwarranted. I wonder why the OP felt that post needed attention.
Edit: Corrected posters name and my own bad choice of words (pathetic).
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!!
(repeat ad infinitum)
The big Issue with AoC was the broken promisses, I'll admit it was a little better to play once the new guy took over but I just couldn't play it due to all the promisses I was expecting at launch that had been dropped from the game without it ever being mentioned on the forums or anywhere. I picked up the game day one and went, where is this, this, and this only to get told they cut that right before launch or it would be out in a month. The game will need something special to get people into the game now.
Amusing how Mr.PVE only responds when there's some insults. To get him to answer to 20+ pages long PvP threads is a lost cause. A lot of people have been very very very constructive in their suggestions over the years, but have been brutally ignored. It seems to me Morrison just likes to use this flaming as a scapegoat to say "plz give better feedback and we listen", as if that hadn't been done forever now.
Can't say I like Morrison much.
It is just sad how game directors ban those who try to criticize their game decisions...that is the same reason their game will not move any further than it is now
A True Master who Knows his own limit...
I would advice you get the copy the critical posts and craig's answer over here before it gets deleted, their modders seems to have gone on a serious rampage
A True Master who Knows his own limit...
In fact, with all the empty promises they made, i have given up on them to fix pvp balance long ago.
A True Master who Knows his own limit...
The Designers response lent credibility to the posters complaints. SHowing that maybe internally some of this talk also exists.
The OP was reasonable, til' he started demanding resignations.
Pretty much what Craig said in his response.
Demanding a guys resignation on a forum is just stupid with a half stack of dullard. Even if they should resign.
Complain about AoC and I'll likely be right there with ya, but it's STILL alot better game than it was in the first year.
@Halandir:
For a couple of reasons.
First, you say "low blow", I say "reasonable and well-argued request". It wasn't rude, it wasn't hateful, there were no insults. A bit further down the thread the poster Caiyn expresses a strong regard for Craig Morrison's work on Anarchy Online.
Subscriptions when Craig Morrison took over were somewhere around 350,000 worldwide. This was before the Russian and Korean launches. Please note that Age of Conan is F2P in Korea anyway.
Subscriptions across the EU and US servers are now around 41,000.
You call that a success? I wish I worked for you.
Well, let's think this through.
We've seen gear and grinding become the be-all and end-all of the game. It used to be easy to get into PvP inside a couple of weeks and there were plenty of people to fight for that reason. Now it takes AT MINIMUM 4 months of solid grind to be competitive.
Has PvE improved? Certainly. But the subscriptions show what that's done to the game as a whole. PvP servers used to outnumber PvE by 2-1. PvP subs used to outnumber PvE subs by 5-1.
Those subs have gone.
"alot better game", you say. The money disagrees.
Hmmm.
I was checking your post history to see if you explain where you get your numbers. Not only do you not explain where you get your numbers, you also have only posted 4 times.
I call BS.
I'm no fanboi of AoC, but 41k sounds a smidge low. While I argued with others claiming 100k+(I CERTAINLY call BS on your 374K claim-that number was gone within 3 months of launch), my money says they're somewhere around 70-ish and leaking.
AoC fails on most MMO variables. Pretty much any activity not involving burying a blade in someones' skull is "meh" in this game. THAT is why subs are failing. The market brought 2 more hardcore PvP games to the market, and AoC also lost subs to them.
And no, I'm not a fan of either.
The way forward was either to build on the niche that is FFA PvP, or seek out the PvE folks. Hard to say which was the better bet, but they certainly knew which is the least picky. I don't blame them for seeking out the PvE market for a second.
Had they gone the PvP route, I doubt they'd be any better off, right now. We can only speculate. They were losing subs by the truckload when they focused on PvP, and they're losing them, now.
Either way, no matter how nicely put everything seems to be, ending all that with "please resign" kills any point to holding his tongue for the entire post. That's like if I made a really good dissertation on what is wrong with SOE games, only to have the final line say "burn Smedley at the stake". It might as well smear all my good points made with poo.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Lets stop the baiting. Please make sure to read the Rules of Conduct before posting. This goes for new users, and especially our regulars. Thanks
.
for sdome strange reason, my responses seem to keep disappearing.
Here is some data for you.
http://aoc.yg.com/census
Divide through by the number of alts the average player has. If we assume that most players have 2 alts, that's 26K across all servers (EU and US) over the last month. There will be a few outliers that the YG bots never saw but only a few. And most players have way more than 2 characters.
If I were a Funcom shareholder, I'd want some answers. In fact, I'd want heads to roll.
While I actually agree on quite a few things in the post on the official forums, I still felt that the request for the mans resignation was uncalled for and that removed my focus from otherwise possible relevant points.
"Low blow" or "reasonable and well-argued" may be a cultural thing. But I still think it was unwarranted.
As for numbers... I don't have access to factual sub numbers for AoC but I am quite sure that I never called AoC's current subnumbers a success. (I am also quite sure that I can't make 500% fit with any of the numbers mentioned but thats a different story.)
BTW: Edited my first post. Bad choice of words on my part. Thanks for editing yours as well - Now I am not inclined to feel "insulted"
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!!
(repeat ad infinitum)
YG does not track every AoC Player, did you not know ?
Here is a direct reply from YG Admin, feel free to join the forums there and ask:
"Hey Avery,
The total number of players is the count of actual in-game
players our profilers have seen. It doesn't include anything related to actual
subscription accounts. It is basically the count of unique player name and
server combination. Total number of profiles is the count of each unique player
name, level, and server combination.
It is really hard to get true population/subscription information from our system because we do not have
profilers on every server, nor are able to profile every player due to a limited number of profilers.
Regards,
YG Admin"
Basically I think caiyn is upset being a PVP guy and doesn't like the game direction and wants FC to make his own game coupled with a historical lack of constructively posting which was also the reason why was banned before. Nice collection of motivational pictures though.
At least your data comes from SOMEWHERE, and I appreciate that. Most folks just pull stuff like that out of their butt.
But let's look at one thing:
From your site:
Total Characters: 796284
That's what your site has listed as the total number of CHARACTERS EVER MADE(?). Or perhaps that's just the number of active characters; doesn't really say. But I left the filter WIDE OPEN. I wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Assuming it's all characters ever made, EVER... for a game that sold over a million copies around launch, and has certainly sold more since, doesn't that seem like a mighty low number of CHARACTERS, to you? Did so many people buy boxes and never use them?
Don't think for a second that AoC has DELETED characters since launch. Even when they merged servers, those characters remain.
Sure, some people delete characters. AFTER they've filled up the 6 slots they were given.
My point is, that can really, only mean:
-The number of active characters, ie, the total number of characters for all active subscribers. This would mean 100k+ subscribers, at least. Neither of us, I think, really buy that.
-The number of characters that ever existed, which we probably agree, is insanely unlikely.
-The numbers are wrong, or based on incomplete information.
I vote for number 3.
oh Hi Avery.
Yep. Some players run the profiler as 3rd-party app - and thus collect data while in-motion - most of the data is collected by bots at tradehouses.
You COULD never see a bot, if you tried to avoid them. However, that would be unlikely since most players cherish their YG profiles. However, as a rough guide to active accounts, it is valuable since Funcom don't release that data.
You're on the inside, perhaps you could obtain (and post) more accurate statistics? It would be appreciated. In any case, we can only work with what we have. I've seen a drastically dwindling population since June last year, with a bump of maybe a month for the XPac, which then rapidly become nothing again.
[Mod Edit]
I do know you were Head Advocate for a while. In any case, it's fine to say that YG's stats aren't accurate. It's not so great to do so without some indicator of what the stats may more accurately be.
Otherwise, we're just into "he said/she said" which is hardly productive.
[Mod Edit]
AoC has certainly deleted characters. Every inactive character since 3 months which was below lvl20 for a start.
Yellow Gremlin only started collecting information during the 1.03 patch cycle; long after the initial rush of accounts. AoC is widely credited as having sold "over 750,000" boxes at launch. I've never seen a million quoted.
I'm not sure why you're so determined to discredit the source. Do you have a vested interest in doing so?
Heh, fun link. I don't know, the OP post of that link was worded politely but the request for Morrison to resign was uncalled for. I know if someone addressed me like that and asked for me to resign my job, I would be inclined to ignore whatever else he/she had to say. Even if I wouldn't show it in my responses, to hell with people insulting me or asking impossible requests would be my own personal thoughts.
Anyway, about the figures, hmm, there's always the question about how trustworthy they really are, I've seen sortlike measurements for WoW servers. As I've said about the Xfire figures, if you can't link it to other more dependable figures, the only value such figures might have is in observing trends.
I think there's no doubt that AoC population numbers have dropped significantly, 2 of the major reasons being the Bori implementation and the excessive faction grind. RotGS was a fun expansion and I liked what they did with the dungeons, but the faction grind was for many too disheartening and discouraging.
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."
Misinformation CAN be more destructive than NO information. This wisdom can't be much more valuable to folks than, say, the night before a political midterm.
But there are other things to scrutinize, that are better known to the public. AoC used to float around in the 50's on X-fire. Then the expansion came out, and they popped up into the 20's. Now they're in the 70's.
Vague trends can be found in instruments like this. It's fair to say that AoC is NOT sporting as many subs now, in Xfire's 70's, as it did when it was in Xfire's 20's, but that's about ALL you can get from that.
To try to drop "exact looking" numbers, particularly those as deceptively odd as 41k into the argument... just sayin...
I've never lost a character up to shortly after Khitai. I played a couple years back. Came back for a Khitai free week. ALL my characters, lvl 6 and up, were there.
I think I started playing during 1.04. Started about 6 months before the item revamp.
You're probably thinking of trial accounts. If Funcom has half a brain, REAL accounts are off limits, and my experience is evidence of that. (not of the half a brain bit... just that they don't delete chars)
That pretty much sums it up for me as well. It's like taking the time to spellcheck a well thought out review and critic of the game, printing it out on high quality paper and just before you hand it to me...you pull your other hand from behind your back and smear sh-t all over the top....ummmm yeah....there's no way in hell I'm readin that. Even if you cleaned it all off...your feedback reeks of crap.
But Mr. Morrison definately gets high marks in my book for taking the time to try to explain to a bunch of vultures why their suggestions won't be in the next patch....at least he did that...most mmo insiders wouldn't even bother. Period. But either way the vultures will keep on circling and won't make a move until Mr. Morrison's body drops to the floor so they can enjoy their meal in peace.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I can't find the thread at the moment but all characters of below level20 (or 20 and below, I don't remember exactly) which belonged to inactive accounts were purged within the last three months.
Perhaps Avery can give you more exact details.
In any case, why are you pursuing this blind alley? Do you want to deliberately derail? If so, why?