Why Age of Conan failed?

You are allowed to include no more than three reasons.

(please number your contributions (e.g. 1, 2 and 3) so that we can code and conduct qualitative research of the findings and submit them as part of an evaluation study)

1.

2.

3.

thank you for your contributions.

1. Gaute Gadger

2. Lack of clear game design .

3. Lack of funds.

1 Usless stats gear.

2 Unfinished (post lvl20)

3 the constant patching where they broke more than they fixed.

1. Wrong gameplay design - AOC was clearly designed by people that dont know much about gaming.

2. Horrible game client - Badly coded. Focus on high end graphic on cost of game world expansivnes

3. False advertising - Lying to customers. Selling features that are not actually in game.

Depends what you consider a failure. It's still going and probably will continue for many years to come. But as for why it isn't as popular as, perhaps, it should be:

1) lack of mid-high level content

2) extremely damaging mistakes made by GMs

3) lack of a complete PvP system (although the PvP itself is very good).

It's a shame - I really enjoyed Conan, it's definitely one of the better MMOs out there. It's just a shame it wasn't released a few months later with all of its promised features.

Why did it fail?

Same reason every other MMORPG has failed in the last few years.

It was released unfinished and poor technical quality.

1.) it was unfinished /broken

2.) there was well nothing after lvl 20 or so

and third and final one was

3.) lack of customer support when the game did frequently bug out (imean if you are going to release a bugged heap of crap at least hire enough GM's and techies and what to deal with it)

1. Inconsistencies between what was advertised and what was provided.

2. Poor performance of the game engine on recommended or higher systems.

3. Insufficient in game content at higher levels, which resulted in dramatic changes in the playing experience (from quest driven to pure grinding).

1.  Poor focus.  Never focus on glitter and gloss before completely the main core.  This game focused on graphics first and content last.

2.  Piss poor business practice.  Funcom printed features on the game box before the features were complete.  They had bad customer service.  They also lied a lot.

3.  Poor coding.  The game could not be patched properly to fix issues because the coding is porrly made.  Graphical performance was horrible , even on the best of PCs.

1.From start unstable servers

2.Bugs

3.Lack of content at high lvls

4.Extreme loading screens

5.Small liniair maps

6.Unbalance classes 1 class cold kill 20mobs while some could barely kill 1 mobs.

7.Boring grind quests

8.Wax museum most mob's/npc's wait to be slaughtered, poor AI.

9.limited players per map instance

10.Wrong sounds in wrong areas like tropical sounds in ice area's

and many more faults.

1: didn't know it had

2: thought it sold lots of copies?

3: though at last count it still had around 200k subs, which from what experts tell you is plenty to pay for the game and make a bucket load.

The game failed for me because it grows boring at high levels. But as far as buisness goe's it seems to be a succesful cash making project. or do you mean "why didn Age of Conan fail for you?" if so then hers my list.

1: Crafting was too limited and no skill involved.

2: high levels grow boring and with not enough content to keep you going the game soon goe's stale.

3: Theres no purpose in the game. It seems all i was doing was levelling for no other reason than just get the next number. I wasn't building faction so i could join a Rangers guild and help them protect the great forests. i couldnt work on faction to gain access to high tier quests that give great rewards for those who are willing to work for it.

In general i am  casual player but even for me, AoC just seemed tooooooo casual! i need lore and adventure, exploration, danger...that's it danger! thats what i miss in games! there is just no danger. early days of eq i walked into a dungeon at level 25 called "lair of Nagafen" and at the zone in were a group of 30+s. i asked them what was in this area and they told me dont go far there is  dragon in this zone that will kill you with a look! after hearing this i turned around and left the zone to fight elsewhere as it had taken me a long time to build up my equip and i didnt want to lose it all.

In many other games i could have just gone up to the dragon taken a screenshot, died and then summoned my body. god these days you can even do that in EQ. so when i eventually manged to join a raid and slay Naggy, i had something to show friends and be proud of.

Sorry for the sarcastic part at the beggining, just a reaction to the tiredness of it all :)

1. unfinished/full with bugs

2. I dont want to do an instance and suddenly a high level appear and kill the boss, and on the other hand, i dont  want to be 10lv above a boss and have full group and still find difficulties to kill it

3. No balance between group quest and lv of foes.

The biggest for me?

1) Unfinished systems integral to the game, the trader for one, crafting another.

2) A wacked economy because greens and blues were just ridiculously easy to get.

3) A terrible community, at least on the forums, and people read the forums unfortunately, largely brought about by Funcoms constant half truths, lies and PR  that everyone became fed up with, mainly regarding features not in the game as advertised, broken and delayed patches. I cant blame Funcom entirely for the community, AoC just seemed to bring out the worst in people for some reason.

-Instances.

-Meaningless PvP.

-Missing promised features.

 Isn't it a bit early to be decrying AoC as failed? It still has time to mature into a more endearing MMORPG in the longterm....

1. Combat designed for consoles.

2. See above.

3. See above.

1. Bad game design. Graphics > Gameplay never work in the long run

2. Wrong advertisement.. and or lying about features

3. too high system requirements

 AoC failed because of lack of content. The other things can be overlooked in the sake of a new title but the lack of content killed it for many

1. The revolutionary combat system sucked and just added more keys to spam or macro

2. Overall slow performance even on good rigs.

3.  The instanced starter town (didnt let people explore for the few that got to play it)

Originally posted by shukes33

1: didn't know it had

2: thought it sold lots of copies?

3: though at last count it still had around 200k subs, which from what experts tell you is plenty to pay for the game and make a bucket load.

Commercial isnt the kind of fail I think most mean when we talk about AoC.

Yes, it will make money. Lets accept that.

When most talk about AoC 'failing', they are I think talking from an artisitc PoV; that is in terms of good design, an obvious passion for delivering a imaginative and creative universe, and putting inspiration and love for what they were building over the all mighty dollar and the end profit.

So, my answers;

1. An obvious lack of content, especially in terms of group dungeons, tiny world, dull itemisation,  and the like. Thi
2. Ez mode no challange gaming, with GPS led questing taken to a new lvl of tardness and choosing no consequence for failiure. The kind of stuff people are convinced they dont want in a 'fun' game, but they actually really do.
3. An obvious plan to go for solo casual lite quest grind short term profit, rather then creating a quality game with community and longevity. To feast now on the goose, rather then have a lifetime of golden eggs.

I have more, but I will play the game :)

Agree :) AoC failed for me as a player. To be honest i didnt suffer from bugs slowdown etc just simply got bored of the game. i loved the first 40 levels as i took them slowly, but in retrospect i think i was really enjoying it because i was thinking that once i'm high level thats when the game will really start.....and it just never did.

can we enter 1 - 3 again in a different post lol?

1: NO DEATH PENALTY! seriously games need it for me.

2: secrets! hiiden area's, difficult area's to access. why arent there any?

3: what happened to RARE? Grimfeather was a rare mob and his rare drop was even rarer! in AoC rare mobs pop every 10 mins and theres a 50% chance they will drop thier best item. some items in EQ were god given it seemed! naggy runs where a haste cloak hd a chance to drop....at the start we did 6 runs and still no drop. and he only popped every 7 real time days!

You can't list just 3 reasons because there are far too many of them.

1. Linear game design makes it play like Dungeon Siege.  My poor character got a concussion from banging into so many invisible walls.

2. The promised PVP implementation is still not in game, I thought that they were advertising this as a PVP game?

3. Major client woes, they still have memory leaks in it, and it stresses even the high powered systems.

4. Major support problems, tickets going unanswered for weeks at a time.

5. Very little content at end game. 

6.  Sieges are broken and no eta on when they are getting fixed.

7.  Itemization in this game is the joke of the industry.  Little stats on items means it is difficult to know what the better item is.

8. Direct 10 sprinkled liberally on the box and again we have no eta on implementation of it.

There are more, I just got tired of typing.....

1: freedom

2: democracy

3: and wrangler jeans!

1) Lies

2) Bad process and mismanagement

3) arrogance

1. Levels

2. Repetitive content

3. Glitchy client