Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Slythe

Originally posted by orzo

Originally posted by CobraSolidus 

LOL... I think the 400000 playing AoC disagree with you. I used to have your condition, then I went to WAR and I got cured. I am playing AoC right now.

 

Pretty sure that was a carefully trumped number released in Aug covering up to June 30.08.  A game with 400k subs isnt researching server merges. Or are you just kidding?

You don't have to be pretty sure, it's from their Q2 report which covers up to June. I think that most AoC fanboi's don't know how quarters work, by the way they love to throw around that 400k number. The game would be lucky to have half of that right now. Damn lucky.

 

Even if it did cover up to the 14th August rather than 30th June that was still 6 weeks ago and it was clearly a misleading number at the time including buddykeys and people who have canceled but still had a little time left. All of the people who paid upfront for 3 months but had stoped playing would have been included.

Their most certainly was not 415k people activly playing the game at that point and 100% guarenteed as you say there isn't that ammount of people activly playing now. I think it's closer to 25% of that number than 50% but they arn't going to annouce sub numbers in the financial report this time and that should speak volumes.

 

Well most Q report contain financial guiding on operating revenue. This stuff is posted in the AoC forum, and revenue guiding for Q3 is 16-20 Mill USD. This is with paying 400000 customers (I have no clue what that means in actively playing customers). If guiding for Q4 is higher, that is good news for pop numbers, if it lower we all know what that means.

 

Indeed and it will be lower, I'd bet my house that they won't meet their q3 revenue guide and that their q4 revenue guide will be massivly lower than their q3 one, time will tell of course though I assume that despite today(?) being the last day of the quarter it will be 6 weeks till we see the report because it takes a while to compile.

How long can it take to count the 15 fanbois still actively playing this game? 1 2 3... :-)
 

AoC and Funcom will be just fine.  They have tons of money coming in monthly on aoc, ao, and their single players game.  The most that can happen is they get delisted and go private again.

Also I'd guess that their population is still around 250-350k players.  The US for once was not the main market on this game.  Europe is the big customer on this game, their servers are still fairly active from what I can see with my FOA account.  For some reason Conan is way more popular overseas than here.  I believe they still plan on launching in Russia and a few other Locales too. Each of those will give a nice boost to their numbers and their revenue.

Gamewise it's making a comeback with the new head guy.  He seems to be the thing that was needed (why they didn't just let him be the guy from the beginning is mind boggling) for AoC.  Will it reach back up to the 800k it had?  Actually it's quite possible when you factor in the other country launches. Will it get back the players it lost?  I'm sure it will get some as players come and go on MMo's all the time, sometimes multiple times.

I cancelled my sub this morning. I hope it's not too late for the game, but I think it probably is. I haven't logged in since Friday and realized this morning I've been looking for reasons not to because -to me- the whole thing is just too boring.

For what I expect in a game there's just not enough character customization (at least not that makes sense) or development. I spent the better part of 2 years getting one doctor up to 220/23 (not to mention all those lost eden "levels") in AO and then kitted out. I really felt like I'd accomplished something, when I quit (because of the population crash) my wife couldn't believe I was just shelving my doc because the character had practically become part of our lives (right... I need to seek psychiatric help). There's none of that in AoC, not even a little bit.

On top of that for such a geographically small game it's a flat nightmare trying to get around if a team actually forms. And crafting is currently pointless, I didn't even bother with it on my second and third characters.

From where I'm sitting there are so many problems that if they fix them all they'll end up with a totally different game. I had very high hopes when Craig Morrison took over and no, I've not given him any time to really get to work because the boredom factor overwhelmed me. I'm not going away mad, I'm just going away... maybe AO will work on my new vid card someday...

Originally posted by arimer

AoC and Funcom will be just fine.  They have tons of money coming in monthly on aoc, ao, and their single players game.  The most that can happen is they get delisted and go private again.

Also I'd guess that their population is still around 250-350k players.  The US for once was not the main market on this game.  Europe is the big customer on this game, their servers are still fairly active from what I can see with my FOA account.  For some reason Conan is way more popular overseas than here.  I believe they still plan on launching in Russia and a few other Locales too. Each of those will give a nice boost to their numbers and their revenue.

Gamewise it's making a comeback with the new head guy.  He seems to be the thing that was needed (why they didn't just let him be the guy from the beginning is mind boggling) for AoC.  Will it reach back up to the 800k it had?  Actually it's quite possible when you factor in the other country launches. Will it get back the players it lost?  I'm sure it will get some as players come and go on MMo's all the time, sometimes multiple times.

Are you kidding me?  Let's look at their first quarter 08 report, shall we?   Funcom had total revenues (sales) of .9M ( 900k).  This covers the period right before AOC launched.  To say that they have 'tons' of money coming in from AO et al is a joke?  They are about $28M in debt, and their total  REVENUES besides AOC was less than a million.

Also, AOC is not more popular in Europe as it is in the USA.  The EU servers have even more need for mergers than US.  An indication of the lack of EU support is the cancellation of the Polish launch. (sorry, postponed.... for a long long time).

Funcom's total revenues for the 2nd quarter will be about 9M and their total expenses will be about 15M... they are also running out of time on that 28M in debt, which will have to be repayed soon.  There is a reason this stock is selling for next to nothing, because the company is worth next to nothing.

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

Originally posted by orzo

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Its too late game will die.

 

Are you really going spam every single thread, with this same reply? Your assumption isn't off base, though I can't say it's the only possibility. Are you simply trying to set  yourself up for the inevitable " I told you so" post?  Are you baiting arguments from those you know will disagree? Have you simply run out of anything else to say?

 

Surely you are not implying that people that post negative stuff here and in the AoC forums are going to be silenced by MMORPG or FUNCOM? The game is pretty dog-gone BAD dude. I mean come on...

 

Ohh yeah people are good to voice their negativity. The problem is that a lot of the time the people with negative comments stopped playing several months ago, so many of their comments are just right out wrong. When a current AoC gamer point out to you that you are wrong, you should perhaps step down and either check it out or just give it a brake. PvP is in the game ,so is Sieges and it works damn well to many (except for those on low pop servers). I play this game for now, and I have to admit that it is much better than what it was even a month ago.

While they have made some improvements, they still have a long, long, LONG way to go to make it a good MMO.  The game is far too thin as it is, and characters are far too limited in what they can do and how they can be developed.

It's the most linear and uninteresting MMO I've played in a long time.  I don't think the game will die, but I think they are going to stabilize at a much lower number than what they originally had.

There's no way they still have 400K subscribers, however.  Only the biggest, most blind fanboi in the world could actually believe that, as they announced yesterday that they are figuring out how they are going to merge the servers.

This is actually an interesting poll. It shows that more than 40% of the people who responded are only here to troll around.

Not liking a game or "thinking" it's too late for a game is fine. But how can one "hope" it is too late for a game? Pretty evident for me

Every game, good or bad, moves the mmorpg market and technology forward in its own way. They all are the foundation for the future of gaming, showing new ways, how to improve things or what mistakes not to repeat. More games also mean more choices for everyone and there are people who like even the worst games.

"Hoping" it is too late for a game is just plain immature idiocy.

OP was a smart man actually. LOL, kind of funny.

Anyway, what is going on further up in this thread, everybody just suddenly went financial analyst. Kind of off OP's topic.

 Technically it may be possible for Age of Conan to recovered, but Funcom is just such a fucked up disfunctional company that it's just never gonna happen.

Originally posted by BigMango

This is actually an interesting poll. It shows that more than 40% of the people who responded are only here to troll around.

Not liking a game or "thinking" it's too late for a game is fine. But how can one "hope" it is too late for a game? Pretty evident for me

Every game, good or bad, moves the mmorpg market and technology forward in its own way. They all are the foundation for the future of gaming, showing new ways, how to improve things or what mistakes not to repeat. More games also mean more choices for everyone and there are people who like even the worst games.

"Hoping" it is too late for a game is just plain immature idiocy.

 

I dont think anyone is hoping.  Look deep into your soul, you know this game is on its last leg. It wont survive, get over it, move on to something new.  You wont miss AoC, trust me.  Its going to require a total failure of FUNCOM and a new development team to start fresh on a new project to make any conan game a success.  Would you want to be the one that had to try to market this game now or even a new fresh version later, after the PR disaster this game turned out to be?

Originally posted by CobraSolidus

OP was a smart man actually. LOL, kind of funny.

Anyway, what is going on further up in this thread, everybody just suddenly went financial analyst. Kind of off OP's topic.

Why is that off topic? He asked would it survive, right? Yes we all know discussing financials has NOTHING to do with weather a game and the company that like uhm hosts it and uhm develops it has nothing to do with weather or not the game will make it.... LOL just like the bleed of accounts and the FUNCOM stock price are not related.  OF COURSE they are.... The game is on its way to the MMO graveyard and I cant say undeservedly so....

I honestly think that all other MMO companies should develop a list of rules, if they dont already have them, from the disaster this game has been. 

Chapter 1 : Reasons not to push a launch :  Our stock could plummet 90% in 4 months as FUNCOMS did.

That right there, if nothing else is taken away from this, is enough to hope the rest of the industry learns.

Bit of a negative twist to the original questions if you ask me.

I think and BELIEVE the game is doing just fine - it plays well, is stable on non cutting edge machines (like mine), and while I have no way of knowing what current subscription levels are (just like everyone else), I see new players arriving all the time.

With the recently added content and Pvp patch, and more to come soon, this game is now in great shape, and will I'm sure be around for a long time to come.

 I feel that AoC was a good game...despite the features that weren't included. I mean, the PvP system wasn't implimented when they boasted that AoC was a PvP game...

I'm still wondering if they'll salvage it. If so, I'm going to return, hopefully. If I can stand the community and the odd gimp/buff/gimp/buff pattern that the devs do when people complain about classes.

Hmm...

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

LOL... Ohhh my god so hillarious... Thanks

its a bit sad seeing people wanting Funcom to fail so badly, guess they're just little kids following the bandwagon.

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

Age of Conan is Tool... yea right. More like that other failure Norway produced, Lena Alexandra. Do a youtube search if you don't know who that is.

Re subbed to see the pvp patch, and it was barren and well dead. To me the game was boring at it s core anyways so no real suprise for me. Won t touch this game again,no matter what they patch in.

Its not too late, Mmos sometime need time to evolve into good games.

Looks at MMos like Eve and AO they had crappy releases and both games improved big time a year + after release.

Originally posted by Lieven

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

Age of Conan is Tool... yea right. More like that other failure Norway produced, Lena Alexandra. Do a youtube search if you don't know who that is.

 

I didn't say AoC was the mmo version of Tool. I was simply using Tool and Justin Timberlake as examples of complete different styles that neither would really identify with or appreciate the other, nor care to and that sometimes somethings are just not someone's cup of tea no matter or good or bad it may or may not be.
 

I think the key observations from the poll so far (135 votes) are...

• The ones hoping for it not being too late are in 5:3 majority (62% vs 38%)
• The one thinking it's too late are in 2:1 majority (67% vs 33%)
• The ones hoping for the game to fail (38%) are extremely certain that they are right (~90% of them also think it's too late)
• Of the ones hoping it's not too late (62%), a slight majority (54%) still thinks it actually is

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

I just wanna know how he is sure gay men dance around with glow sticks in their hands? I mean he seems pretty sure about this one!

Originally posted by mrdoublerr

its a bit sad seeing people wanting Funcom to fail so badly, guess they're just little kids following the bandwagon.

Funcom chose their course of action where their customers were concerned, now they have to sleep in the bed they so carefully and with malice made for themselves.

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

200-400k is a good number for a MMO, that I agree on. But what we have here is a MMO that costed alot and took a long time to develop and I think they got about 100k players now. Maybe slightly higher number if you count the subscribers who's accounts still havent run out. But no more than 100k active players. And that is not a success for such an expensive game, which is also why the stock is diving and Gaute left.

If it just had been a dissapointment, not having the amount of subscribers they were hoping for. Then Gaute would still be running the show. But it's such a failure compared to what they were both hoping and planning for. What I mostly wonder is if they can actually start making some money from this game or if all their loans and such are gonna eat up all the profit and it being a big reliability trying to fix this game and make it popular. I'm guessing the move they are gonna have to make is setup a ghost crew that runs the game and just get the money they can from the hardcore fans.

Originally posted by altair4

Originally posted by Toolfan

No it's not too late. There's plenty of people playing the game, unfortunetly they are spread over too many servers. People want to write this game off already and call it a failure just because it doesnt have 10 million subs. 200k-400k subscribers in the market is considered a success and to be honest that's all i expected from the game. Of course people left due to missing content but I knew half the people would leave after the first 30 days because of the immersion and lore. Comparing WoW and AoC on that regard is absurd. It would be like comparing Justin Timberlake to Tool. They both are great at expressing themselves in creative and original fashions, it's just not many followers from either end of the those spectrums would appreciate the others end.

I'm sure WoW and maybe Warhammer are good games, but it has no appeal to me what-so-ever. To me looking at my monitor at ridiculously glowing armor and weapons would be the equivelant of hanging out a gay night club with men dancing around with glow sticks in their hands.

 

200-400k is a good number for a MMO, that I agree on. But what we have here is a MMO that costed alot and took a long time to develop and I think they got about 100k players now. Maybe slightly higher number if you count the subscribers who's accounts still havent run out. But no more than 100k active players. And that is not a success for such an expensive game, which is also why the stock is diving and Gaute left.

If it just had been a dissapointment, not having the amount of subscribers they were hoping for. Then Gaute would still be running the show. But it's such a failure compared to what they were both hoping and planning for. What I mostly wonder is if they can actually start making some money from this game or if all their loans and such are gonna eat up all the profit and it being a big reliability trying to fix this game and make it popular. I'm guessing the move they are gonna have to make is setup a ghost crew that runs the game and just get the money they can from the hardcore fans.

I think WAR has 75000 paying customers... And EVE possible 35000... Hell since we just started this game I also think LotRO has 90000 players. Opinions are like assholes, everybody get one.

Originally posted by Dreamagram

WAR is out. WoW expansion coming in 6 weeks. AoC has a new man at the helm. He has given an update on what they're working on.

I see comments along the lines of both "this will turn it around" and "too little, too late". So I wanted to throw up a little poll to see whether people's thoughts and hopes are the same or differ a lot.

The question: is it too late for AoC to become a healthy game? Let us know both what you think (will they go down or manage well?) and what you hope for.

 

retarded poll .