With the announcement of the new WoW expansion, Aion around the corner, and Star Wars......AoC in its current state will not survive.  I predict either the game will go F2P or the doors will be closed.

Guess I'll quit now then. Thanks for the heads up! 

Nah I think I'll stay. Having fun at the moment.

Age of Conan is doing fine. Now go bitch about a game that you've actually played.

Yeah, I guess I'll head off too - don't want to waste my time playing this game if Benjen says it's gonna fail - he seems to be a reliable source

Played the expansion at GamesCom, saw the Age of Conan booth and the hundreds of people crowding it, talked with the devs, ... definitely didn't look like a dieing game ;)

Originally posted by Tiurinn

Played the expansion at GamesCom, saw the Age of Conan booth and the hundreds of people crowding it, talked with the devs, ... definitely didn't look like a dieing game ;)

You're right, it's not a dieing game.
 

Most of the people who say it is haven't even played it before.

Originally posted by Benjen

 With the announcement of the new WoW expansion, Aion around the corner, and Star Wars......AoC in its current state will not survive.  I predict either the game will go F2P or the doors will be closed.

Oh please, not again. This is starting to sound like a broken record.

Damn OP stole my prediction from a different thread.

...but those aren't the only MMO's-(within the 2-3rd quarter of 2010) that will chip away at AoC's rather tiny population. Its almost hard to keep up with all the new releases and rumors during the next year.

Heck with the age group that inhabits most of AoC's servers . I'll bet this Tuesday's release of Batman: Arkham Asylum will cause droves to stop playing for a while. (the reviews have been extraordinary)

But, then again, im of the opinion (as are many) that players who settle for AoC are not exactly "discriminating" gamers...so maybe not

Bad game...me play

Good game..me avoid

kinda thing

Benjens predictions are both new and interesting.

Btw, the youth today are no good. Tought i'd share some more OC.

Originally posted by Blackwell99

Damn OP stole my prediction from a different thread.

 

...but those aren't the only MMO's-(within the 2-3rd quarter of 2010) that will chip away at AoC's rather tiny population. Its almost hard to keep up with all the new releases and rumors during the next year.

Heck with the age group that inhabits most of AoC's servers . I'll bet this Tuesday's release of Batman: Arkham Asylum will cause droves to stop playing for a while. (the reviews have been extraordinary)

 

But, then again, im of the opinion (as are many) that players who settle for AoC are not exactly "discriminating" gamers...so maybe not

 

 

Bad game...me play

Good game..me avoid

 

kinda thing

 

  You know, sometimes I sparea bit of time to have me a bit of fun and show just how wrong trolls on these boards are. However you, with your smug superior attitude and a penchant for making up 'facts', stole away my fun. There's simply no room for me to say anything if you make yourself look THIS much of an ignorant ass.

 Trolls have been saying AoC will fail at 6, and then at 12 months. They have been far off the mark every time, and there's no reason to think their wild fantasies will come to be realised anytime soon.

No game will survive!!!!! nothing will survive!!!!!!!!! you all will all DIE!!!!!!!! Its all over!!!!!!!!!! Dooooooooooooooom!!!!!!!

Wahahahahaha Muhahahahahaha Ohahahahahahhaha

Why do you feel the need to come here trolling these poor folks who enjoy AoC. i hate AoC with a feirce passion but some people actually like it. More power to them. So go play your cookie cutter WoW clones and leave your predictions there. In which players opinions are rarely ever right. Especially ones who act like they know what they are talking about.

If this is one of those games that can survive with a total of 10,000 players on 4 servers, 2 EU, 2 USA. 1 PvP one PvE and zero to none new content updates worth a darn.  Then it may survive, who knows Funcom didn't seem to care enough about its longevity to fix the game and add enough stuff within any reasonable time frame.

The major things is Funcom will run out of money after launching the Xpac and SW so after they fire everyone unless if one of those games makes money then don't expect jack in terms of development.   As I said before many RPG games seem to have more stuff to do than AoC, AoC is just so small with so little stuff.  The reason? it cost more money to make high poly graphics.

After trials it seems X fire is clocking AoC at an all time low.  So will MMO gamers be foolish enough to play another AoC game at launch after the bug ridden lame fest of AoC and AO?

 They should create a "crystal ball" section on the general forums so all those prophets with "this game will die", "this unreleased game that I didn't even download to play is another wow clone", "this game will kill WoW" would all stay there, without destroying the quality for the other sections, where people... this might be shocking... ENJOY their games.

Yea yea yea........... after SW ktor, Aion and ffxiv release these types of people will be in the SW forms, aions forums , ffxiv forums telling us how the next games will kill SW Aion and ffxiv.  This is a never ending cycle. AoC was going to kill wow, aoc was going to kill lotro. War was going to kill aoc. war was going to kill lotro. the new game are always going to kill the old games. You kidds need to get some maturity and stop worrying about what game will kill this/that game and start worrying about what game you want to play.  

And for crying out loud X-fire is not an accurate representation of the MMO community in a game. quotiung x-fire just shows your intellengence level.

It seamed pretty busy when  i was there last month . I had a good time in it but i m heading to Aion next month . Games dont have to have Warcraft popularity to survive . Theres a lot less popular games than AOC still alive and kicking . I think along with Warhammer , AoC may very well be one of the next games to change to the the mircopayment model .  

As long as the production debt isnt too cripling and subscriptions are bringing in enough cash to cover running costs there is no reason a game shouldnt survive. Even if the pre release production put the creator in debt they often manage to sell it on, or decide to keep it running until it makes a profit.

Recon you would need something like 400 subscribers per employee to break even on a game, once production costs are covered.

So if you have 10K subscribers worldwide, thats a good size business by many standards, even more so when you consider that a lot of the prouction cost has been covered by selling, I dunno. a milloin copies at launch.

Makes me think of a movie qoute...  Something to do with level of survival one is willing to accept.. Oh right that was from The Matrix Revolutions.

Some people run private servers for games. That just shows how little you actually need to run an mmo, if you dont offer much in the way of expansions. and if there are 10K or more subscribers there should even be room for some of that.

It actually seems to be a strategy for game companies nowadays to hype a game and mass market it, get their costs covered and then settle back and let some tens of thousands loyal customers give them a steady income.

That strategy leaves a lot of us here disappointed and a few (for each game) quite happy. But it works. Atleast once per company.

Originally posted by arthen999

It seamed pretty busy when  i was there last month . I had a good time in it but i m heading to Aion next month . Games dont have to have Warcraft popularity to survive . Theres a lot less popular games than AOC still alive and kicking . I think along with Warhammer , AoC may very well be one of the next games to change to the the mircopayment model .  

Dunno if anyone could clarify the point, but is WoW still growing or is it also "slowly dying"? Im sure a lot will return to it after this expansions Ive seen some talk about, though Im sure they will leave again eventually. But is it getting more new subs than it has subs ending?

Anyways it doesnt seem likely that there will be a game to topple WoW for the next few years. But then there isnt really any reason to try. Loads of money to be made from less popular games.

Just imagine what you could do if you got $1 million each month. That is just 100k subs more or less (wonder if these companies all pay taxes).  But could you even spend that on running a MMO?

That means that anyone with a good idea, a friendly bank (rare these days) and a bit of know-how could make an mmo.

Makes me wonder why there arent anymore MMOs out there, guess I'm missing another key component in my list above.

Originally posted by finaticd

After trials it seems X fire is clocking AoC at an all time low.  So will MMO gamers be foolish enough to play another AoC game at launch after the bug ridden lame fest of AoC and AO?

Well I can only speak for myself. I use and enjoy the services xfire offers, but the sudden change to earlier recorded AoC numbers on xfire reflects badly - Not on AoC but on Xfire. If there was something skewing the numbers... Fine! But in this case 1 month old numbers changed overnight without any explanation from the Xfire team. I do not care if this is a "greed here, and Erling did not pay up" thing - It makes xfire stats look really bad.

Will gamers be "foolish" enough to buy the next Funcom game? Probably. I bought the AoC CE on preorder and I never knew about AO until I saw the mess that AoC was at launch. I am however NOT going to preorder another Funcom game no matter what. Still I am sure a lot of other people will.

I recently resubbed to AoC. I would probably have subscribed for a few months if the game had been at its current stage at launch. Too bad I still remember all the talk about: "Mounted combat", "Mercenary system", "Sieges involving literally hundreds vs. hundreds fighting over battlekeeps", "Drunken brawling" and an "Involving and complex crafting system"... None of these promises have been delivered upon 1+ year in. (To all the: "They were not 'technically lying' people out there"... No, but these failed promises are STILL on the official webpage!)

Yeah - I am not a great Funcom fan, but a thread title with "AoC Will Not Survive" (Whats with the caps?) is more "fail" than AoC at launch. Yes AoC lost a lot of players for reasons stated above + all the technical issues, however even if some 80-90% of the original players left, AoC still have a decent amount of hardcore fans. They enjoy the game and the progress it makes.
Funcom have a history of keeping even a dead fish as AO afloat - No reason to think they would let AoC (with at least 5x the subs of AO) die.

 Edit: I fail at English :(

Originally posted by WW4BW

Makes me think of a movie qoute...  Something to do with level of survival one is willing to accept.. Oh right that was from The Matrix Revolutions.

Even though everything else was right on, your post fails because YOU QUOTED FROM MATRIX REVOLUTIONS!

The last two Matrix movies should never be cited to support an argument.  They immediately invalidate it.

Originally posted by BadMedicine

Originally posted by Blackwell99

Damn OP stole my prediction from a different thread.

 

...but those aren't the only MMO's-(within the 2-3rd quarter of 2010) that will chip away at AoC's rather tiny population. Its almost hard to keep up with all the new releases and rumors during the next year.

Heck with the age group that inhabits most of AoC's servers . I'll bet this Tuesday's release of Batman: Arkham Asylum will cause droves to stop playing for a while. (the reviews have been extraordinary)

 

But, then again, im of the opinion (as are many) that players who settle for AoC are not exactly "discriminating" gamers...so maybe not

 

 

Bad game...me play

Good game..me avoid

 

kinda thing

 

 

  You know, sometimes I sparea bit of time to have me a bit of fun and show just how wrong trolls on these boards are. However you, with your smug superior attitude and a penchant for making up 'facts', stole away my fun. There's simply no room for me to say anything if you make yourself look THIS much of an ignorant ass.

 

 Trolls have been saying AoC will fail at 6, and then at 12 months. They have been far off the mark every time, and there's no reason to think their wild fantasies will come to be realised anytime soon.

I think the funniest of the ignorant asses are those who believe themselves to be clever.

At first glance the post even seems to follow a pattern of logic reasoning, if you don't take away everything that is based on ASSumption that is.

Originally posted by BadMedicine

Originally posted by Blackwell99

Damn OP stole my prediction from a different thread.

 

...but those aren't the only MMO's-(within the 2-3rd quarter of 2010) that will chip away at AoC's rather tiny population. Its almost hard to keep up with all the new releases and rumors during the next year.

Heck with the age group that inhabits most of AoC's servers . I'll bet this Tuesday's release of Batman: Arkham Asylum will cause droves to stop playing for a while. (the reviews have been extraordinary)

 

But, then again, im of the opinion (as are many) that players who settle for AoC are not exactly "discriminating" gamers...so maybe not

 

 

Bad game...me play

Good game..me avoid

 

kinda thing

 

 

  You know, sometimes I sparea bit of time to have me a bit of fun and show just how wrong trolls on these boards are. However you, with your smug superior attitude and a penchant for making up 'facts', stole away my fun. There's simply no room for me to say anything if you make yourself look THIS much of an ignorant ass.

 

 Trolls have been saying AoC will fail at 6, and then at 12 months. They have been far off the mark every time, and there's no reason to think their wild fantasies will come to be realised anytime soon.

You all are just afraid because WoW is a steamrolling powerhouse of awesome rocketing down a track of legendary win with this new expansion.....

I don't why WoW fanbois can't just stay in their forums?  What is the compulsion that drives them to troll every other game forum there is.  I guess some people are so desparate to be right they will do anything to try to make it come true.  Pathetic.

Yup. Because the MMO players that wanted a low fantasy, M-rated, bloody, violent game are going to jump ship for WoW's cartoon wolfmen, Aion's high flying anime and Star Wars' Star-Warsyness.

 I recently started playing AoC and from what I can tell in the short time I have been logging in, there seems to be PLENTY of people playing. I play 12am on EST and never want for people to group and quest with.

i hope u have played this game before...don't talk about something u don't know . There are a lot of people who playing Aoc. Aoc Is rising especially with the new expansion . Aion's grind sucks.On the other hand, WoW is going down.