Age of Conan

Originally posted by quaiky

I am sure AoC will survive, the big question is how big the playerbase will be. I am guessing on PC they will reach 300-500k subs at start, the multiple million subs market they won't reach probably because the game doesn't run good on older computers or computers without good gfx cards.

there are so many computers around with just 8400s on which it will just run as a slideshow, even 8600s will probably just run the game on low settings with probably not great frame rates which means nearly all laptop gamers will have troubles running AoC too.  And those people using notebooks with intel integrated graphics  should not even think about starting that game.

The big factor will be how many players teh game can attract on xbox, if the get multiple millions there then i have the fear that the future developement of that game will shift more and more in the xbox direction and pc gamers might leave slowly with time.

Originally posted by Lufanga

Originally posted by quaiky

I am sure AoC will survive, the big question is how big the playerbase will be. I am guessing on PC they will reach 300-500k subs at start, the multiple million subs market they won't reach probably because the game doesn't run good on older computers or computers without good gfx cards.

there are so many computers around with just 8400s on which it will just run as a slideshow, even 8600s will probably just run the game on low settings with probably not great frame rates which means nearly all laptop gamers will have troubles running AoC too.  And those people using notebooks with intel integrated graphics  should not even think about starting that game.

The big factor will be how many players teh game can attract on xbox, if the get multiple millions there then i have the fear that the future developement of that game will shift more and more in the xbox direction and pc gamers might leave slowly with time.

well m8 its 21 century time to move on 8600 on low? did you played AoC? i played AoC on low settings on my old 6800GS (P4 3GHz) with good fps but i was lack of 1GB 2GB must have lots of my buddies from my guild plays on 8600 and they run game on High Details so please stop talk bullshit on my 8800gt i have now 60-70 fps in high with bloom

and thats really understandable too if you look at the details of nvidias geforce 8 series:

a 8600 GT has a theoretical shader processing power of 114.2 Gflops, while a 8800GT like you have has a shader processing power of 504.0 Gflops. that means the 8800 gt has more than 4 times the shader power of a 8600. same rate is also true for billions of bilinear filtered pixels...

When nvidia released 8600 they were very much critisised that the step between 8600 and 8800 is that big.

Games (as with everything) come and go. Think of the rise and the fall of the dinosaurs, the roman empire, the Soviet Union, the George Bush...over time all good (and not so good) things come to an end. WoW is the big game to take away from now. In 3/4/5 years? Maybe not so much so. They can add content but they won't ever re-vamp the code to reflect the changes in technologies.

You can't accurately compare games like Aoc and WoW. They are market competitors but work on different cross sections of the market user base. People seem to think that (using 10million and .5million as WoW/AoC numbers respectively)  companies say 'Well I made more money over time than you'll ever make...' Sure WoW has made a lot of money but if AoC's (and all the other 'name' titles) remain constant, WoW's market share will go down. It isn't about making the same amount of money as WoW (though that would be nice for any MMO) but about taking in whatever their baseline profit margin needs are and about taking away from the front runner, currently WoW. Even if AoC, WAR, AION etc remain stable at X number of users for next couple years, over time WoWs sub base will go down and that helps any MMO competitors. Wow may go down slowly perhaps but it will go down.

Who cares? The fanbois, the haters and the bean counters (and shareholders if a company has them).

Rather than fighting incessantly, just find your game of choice and play it, enjoy it for as long as you can then then move on. Standing on sopaboxes here really serves no purpose. Look at it that way and you'll realize that the gaming companies don't care if you are ranting against them or rooting for them. Spend time wisely where you can make a differnce. If we all did that the world would be a nicer place.

Originally posted by quaiky

I am sure AoC will survive, the big question is how big the playerbase will be. I am guessing on PC they will reach 300-500k subs at start, the multiple million subs market they won't reach probably because the game doesn't run good on older computers or computers without good gfx cards.

there are so many computers around with just 8400s on which it will just run as a slideshow, even 8600s will probably just run the game on low settings with probably not great frame rates which means nearly all laptop gamers will have troubles running AoC too.  And those people using notebooks with intel integrated graphics  should not even think about starting that game.

The big factor will be how many players teh game can attract on xbox, if the get multiple millions there then i have the fear that the future developement of that game will shift more and more in the xbox direction and pc gamers might leave slowly with time.

I doubt it  would have more subscriptions than LOTRO though (high point of 1.3% meaning 350.000 subs).

Bottleneck is indeed the spechs. My new laptop I bought was a 17 inch 3GByte 400 GByte 7200 RPM HD with 8600GT card, coming in (ok extended garanty period) at 1400 Euro. About 95% of the portables offered these days have lesser specs. Got to 5 fps in PvP at resolutions of 1440*900.

The hi end game portables with 8800GT cards are a whopping 2800-3000 Euro. But these have mostly slower 5400 HD, because other game styles don't need HD that fast (MMO's DO need 7200 RPM at the very least).

It will be interesting to see what the subscriptions will be in Oct/Nov. My guess (ok only guessing) about 1.0% worldwide, meaning 250.000 subs, which is a real succes considering the hardware needed. And IF the game will be stable that is !

Originally posted by Digna

Games (as with everything) come and go. Think of the rise and the fall of the dinosaurs, the roman empire, the Soviet Union, the George Bush...over time all good (and not so good) things come to an end. WoW is the big game to take away from now. In 3/4/5 years? Maybe not so much so. They can add content but they won't ever re-vamp the code to reflect the changes in technologies.

You can't accurately compare games like Aoc and WoW. They are market competitors but work on different cross sections of the market user base. People seem to think that (using 10million and .5million as WoW/AoC numbers respectively)  companies say 'Well I made more money over time than you'll ever make...' Sure WoW has made a lot of money but if AoC's (and all the other 'name' titles) remain constant, WoW's market share will go down. It isn't about making the same amount of money as WoW (though that would be nice for any MMO) but about taking in whatever their baseline profit margin needs are and about taking away from the front runner, currently WoW. Even if AoC, WAR, AION etc remain stable at X number of users for next couple years, over time WoWs sub base will go down and that helps any MMO competitors. Wow may go down slowly perhaps but it will go down.

Who cares? The fanbois, the haters and the bean counters (and shareholders if a company has them).

 

Rather than fighting incessantly, just find your game of choice and play it, enjoy it for as long as you can then then move on. Standing on sopaboxes here really serves no purpose. Look at it that way and you'll realize that the gaming companies don't care if you are ranting against them or rooting for them. Spend time wisely where you can make a differnce. If we all did that the world would be a nicer place.

And I thought that gameplay sold games. Never saw pixels selling games ...

All I can really say is to each their own. I played the entire open beta and only ran into minor flaws that i am sure every MMo that has come out has ran into. I can also say I enjoyed playing AoC and it ran pretty smooth on my pc. I have already pre-ordered AoC and hope that come the 17th I have just as much fun as I had in beta.

people need to step back from wow's market share when they make expectatiosn how many subs a new mmo will get. will there be another mmo that reaches multiple millions subs? yes i am sure but i don't think it will happen yet, there are still too many people in wow that don't want to move to another game yet.  and getting that amount of new players into MMO gaming like Blizzard did will most likely never happen again. New games will attrackt new MO players but i don't think another MMO will pull in 8million and more players that never played a mmo before.

lets look at it from the lower end 100k subs seems to be the magic number for running a mmo over a long time. none of the games that ever reached 100k has been canceled yet (some are running on heavy life support now).

200k means its running as good as EVE, EQ2 and some other high rated games are running now.

reaching 300k-500k subs would get the game in the area of the launch populations of LOTRO, SWG and the peak level of EQ. Reaching this means a big success for any MMO company, cause the sales of boxes will definitely let them cut even and they get a wide enough playerbase to support a good developement team.

anything above 500k is the area of wishes, no company (maybe except blizzard) can plan for more than that, and on wow originally i guess they also did not plan for more than that

Flame all you want, but you know it's the truth.

People just so desperately want a new MMO so they don't have to go back to WoW or wait for Warhammer. I'm not even going to be playing Warhammer. That game is just another WoW. Though, those of you calling AOC something new and innovative are truly delusional. There's nothing new or innovative here at all.

Within 3 weeks when everyone is 80, you'll have everyone in the minigames instead of world pvp, and there you go, just another instanced pvp treadmill with no excitement, just like WoW.

How fun.

Originally posted by nubs

I think people are over estimating a 800k subscriber base. The minimum requirements are too high, the loading is quite annoying and the game offers nothing substantial over games that are already released. However, the game does have the Conan IP and that alone might garner a good amount of subs. I am guessing they will peak at about 500k active subs.

Firstly, from past history, beta signups are an unreliable indicator on how many subscribers a game will actually attain.

Secondly, even LOTRO hasn't gotten 500k subs with it's more popular IP.

Thirdly, the maturity rating and the system specs guarantee the game will be niche aside from any of the other factors.

Finally, I have beta'd the game and being a casual player, I don't see this game having mass appeal to casuals in general, automatically excluding it from having a largish subscriber base.