Somehow I doubt they will merge the servers, but they may provide character transfer.

I think the Q2 report wont look as bad, and if the numbers are that bad they can always do something like sell of some assets for a financial boost or something similar.

As all companies do, they will probably throw numbers arround in all possible way untill they end up with something that looks good on paper.

As someone said earlier in this thread, it's not the Q2 report that will look bad, but the ones after. They've had strong box sales, and quite a lot of people have probably been paying at least one additional month after the retail free month was over, just to hang in there. ;) 

Q2 will have to have a statement about retention on at least the first months accounts.  This is the crux of the questions about AoC and Funcom.  I expect at least a 40% loss on the first renewal and the another 20% for the second.

Originally posted by Ghist

Q2 will have to have a statement about retention on at least the first months accounts.  This is the crux of the questions about AoC and Funcom.  I expect at least a 40% loss on the first renewal and the another 20% for the second.

Yeah.. a lot of people don't understand one important fact about earnings reports

Yes, the 'financial' numbers will only include information up to June 30 (which probably won't look terrible).

But companies also must give much more information about the current state of their products and give guidance on the Q3.   If this was a normal public company, I would think they would be giving subscription numbers up to August 1.

I would agree that funcom as a company is dead in the water.  They have heavily borrowed to make AoC and more than likely aren't even covering their own costs.  Their stock is at a 3 year low, so another stock offering is out of the question.  Who is going to buy new stock of Funcom considering they have now blown two games.

what will end up happening is one of the insiders will buy  AoC and AO for a small amount of money, and the game will be run on life support (ie, no dev team) and Funcom will go out of business.  Funcom as a company cannot continue to operate as a public company without any real products or income... it's stock will just wither away to 0.   It does not have any cash now, is in debt, and has no foreseeable ways to make money.

The dev and QA team is probably already long gone, which is why you see no real content in the patches and the patches so buggy.

Q2 won't be so bad ......... if all else fails start selling assets.

Jumbuck Entertainment Pty Ltd. (ASX: JMB) entered into an agreement to acquire 74.98% stake in Plutolife AS from Funcom N.V. (OB: FUNCOM) for $3.1 million on July 3, 2008. The acquisition is expected to be EPS accretive. Plutolife is currently generating annualized revenues of $3.3 million per annum.

Jumbuck Entertainment Pty Ltd.

Funcom N.V.

<LINK>

~Hairysun~

As has been mentioned many times before, Funcom can not merge servers. There are only 8 Battlekeeps per server (correct me if i am wrong), how do you merge? They can not merge active servers, they can only shut down abandoned servers. I doubt they will merge the few populated servers and tell everyone to start over building their Battlekeep

Another example of incompetence and bad design, not that i am surprised.

Originally posted by taus01

As has been mentioned many times before, Funcom can not merge servers. There are only 8 Battlekeeps per server (correct me if i am wrong), how do you merge? They can not merge active servers, they can only shut down abandoned servers. I doubt they will merge the few populated servers and tell everyone to start over building their Battlekeep

Another example of incompetence and bad design, not that i am surprised.

But how many of those battlekeeps actually have players supporting/defending them.   Most of the BKs are abandoned, but because seiging is so broken, nobody can take them over.   All they would have to do is a simple search and 'match' up servers based on how many have actual active battle keeps.   ie merge a server with 7 actives with one that has only 1 active.

But honestly.. I doubt funcom cares.  Once a server is 'up'.. there isn't a significant cost savings to shut it down.   They must already know that this game is heading for obscurity on Sept 18th.   If they do decide to close down servers, with their track record... do you really think they would think twice about just turning of  a server and telling players to reroll on a differetn server.  They probably won't even do character transfers let alone worry about battlekeeps.

when i read the title of this thread, i picture the seen from harold and kumar escape from GBay where the old lady on the plane pictures kumar as  terrorist, and he motions like a plane crashing.  ERrrrggghhh boom!