Anarchy Online

Well, now that customer service has been basically removed from the game to work on AoC, billing is screwed, servers acting up, etc.; they've decided to remove yet more from AO, this time for The Secret World. The only real content designer and writer for AO, as a matter of fact.

www.tentonhammer.com/node/35207

So, what or whom do you think they'll reallocate from AO next?

The hamsters?

From what I've seen in AO the population is dwindling, so I expect them to continuously keep on shrinking the dev and support team for AO till they leave the game on life-support for a few months before finally pulling the plug.

As for the next thing to reallocate: I personally hope Metaing, there's an example of where less might actually mean more :) I really liked all the new quests and background stories, so it's sad to see a dev who worked on them leave, but Metaing I won't miss.

I absolutely hated how FC (probably mostly a combination of Sillirion and Metaing) utterly screwed up the tl7 game by simply bad game design.

When I left stat inflation had gotten to the point were 95% of the possible pve could be considered boringly easy (at the end I felt like I might just as well go play an Asian grinder instead), even for gimp profs.

Tl7 Notum Wars were destroyed by orbital strikes and the wonderful combination of omni-soli SB+OS, for which Sillirion claimed the ingenious players would find counters -> Yay for omni only towers.

And finally the last drop in the bucket for me: the incredible tl7 imbalances and the releases of one completely OP element after another without any kind of predecessor: crat stun procs, doctor -init procs, izgimmers triple, grand theft humidity, soldier backitem, doctors ring proc,... Instead of adressing core issues with profession design FC went rock-paper-scissors: even when traders can almost completely shut down doctors or NTs for 60s at a time with the use of a single nano, the rest of the trader toolset still lacks and so traders still suck.

Damn, it feels good to vent from time to time

That is so sad. A travesty.

Why, WHY do most MMO developers SUCK at making sound business decisions?? Someone explain that please.

Originally posted by Violette

That is so sad. A travesty.

Why, WHY do most MMO developers SUCK at making sound business decisions?? Someone explain that please.

The main problem as I see it right now is Gaute. Gaute was the one in charge from day one and the man responsible for AOs' horrid launch and subsequent problems, including the first 3 1/2 expansions ( Sil was responsible only for some of LE ). When he left AO as game director to work on AoC and Craig "Silirrion" Morrison took over, the game itself improved by leaps and bounds. Suddenly the subscribers were being listened to, bugs were being fixed, content was being added, new servers were implemented and even a new graphics engine was finally given a green light. The future looked great.

Unfortunately, Gaute has more clout as a "founding member of Funcom" than Sil does, therefore Gaute is able to demand things to be moved from AO for AoC, such as making the AO customer support people responsible for, and focus on, AoC instead of hiring a seperate cs team. And you can bet he's the moron who made the decision to combine the AO and AoC billing, resulting in major screw ups of players acccounts.

And things like pre-paid cards being made unavailable to AO players but making sure that pre-paid cards are available and just fine for AoC. In fact people who bought pre-paid cards just before the decision to remove them from AO found themselves frozen out of their accounts, having paid for the game and then unable to play it. The forums are full of threads of customers unable to access their accounts, or players needing support logging into the game and staying logged in for DAYS at a time with their /petition que never moving or moving but then being continually pushed back.

It's just a bloody mess all over, and it does sicken me. This (AO) was the first and only game that I could even consider myself a "fanboi" of. I played from beta up until roughly a month ago, when I had customer service problems myself and could not get a response through /petition or e-mail for over 30 damn days of constant trying.

I really hope they get their heads out of their asses, because AO is paying a heavy price due to the current mismanagement ( I aim that as Gaute mainly ) and from what I've seen on the AoC boards, Gaute may indeed be killing two damn games with one incompetant swipe.

And the funny thing is, Gaute'll be the one in charge of The Secret World, also. Of course, that's assuming TSW even gets out of the gate, 'cause if AO and AoC fall due to Gaute ( and it does indeed seem possible at this point in time ), I sure don't see TSW suddenly saving Funcoms' bacon.

Real sad to see this happen.  AO is 100 times better than that crap they just relased called AOC.   With all the whinning i'm seing and how little peoples will remains playing AOC past the free month  i'm afraid Funcom future looks bleak, they put all their eggs in the AOC basket....

I'm proud to have been part of this game when it was succesful, played it from 2002 to 2005.

Well my opinion, and a kind of a deep way of looking at things.

It's about money people, nothing more, nothing less.    As soon as you realize the players are just a source of income to these companies, the better you'll be able to get over these kinds of choices that game companies make.   They do what they need to do in order to hopefully surivive as a company.....everyone aren't great businessmen or women....otherwise no business would fail....Nothing except time is forever....AO won't stay around forever and unless players start showing AO some love instead of whine about how FC is abandoning it, they nor anyone else will give a crap about what you think.

The bottom line people have to understand, it's about masses of people not a small majority....no one is playing AO because they are to stuck on graphics issues or what a game isn't doing right rather than playing the game, helping fund the game and give developers more incentive to fix what you don't like.   It takes money to give you all those nice things you want in a game.....graphics, new content, nice new gear, more quest, less grinding, new and inventive ways of doing things.....but if  no one is playing because of all these superficial things, then the company has no choice but to attempt to make money in other ways.

Really, I think what happens in anything in life is that as kids we value what's fun, we dream of being and doing things that are fun, will make us happy and keep us entertained....then one day a dark cloud settles over your house and his name is called "MONEY".    Money rains down on you and says to you that unless you have me, you cannot ever, ever, ever be happy and do what you want.   Money says, You are nothing without me.   Money says, if your not getting me, then what are you good for.  Money says, others won't care anything about you unless you have me.

See the problem, money is a disease but the world don't see that....majority of the time all the worlds problems somehow, somewhere revolves around money....greed, selfishness and ignorance are close cousin's to money...but money still is the biggest of them all....I mean we put value on life....can't be born safely without money....can't die and be buried properly and given respect that loved ones should recieve without money....can't eat, breath, grow, learn without money.   When you do end up doing things without money, people disregard you as if you aren't on their level.....for instance, it takes thousands of dollars to go to medical school.....but the human mind is resiliant enough to learn the same things without going to shcool for it, yet the world says you aren't good enough to be a doctor because you didn't spend the money to go buy yourself a degree....so if you do try and put your talent to use, then we will throw you in jail until you go pay for a legal degree and liscense.

Since we are all programmed to value money above all else, is it really surpising that FC would start taking devs off of AO (a dying game) in favor of one they hope will be good enough to compete with the other top tier MMO's and make them what?  

MONEY.....

Now look at yourself and say what do I mean to FC?   Am I a paycheck?  Am I a inspiration to the development of their game?   Am I that which drives them to even make games in the first place?   Do they even know who I am?  

Hmm, I wonder how often they think of me when sitting at their desk thinking up things to create, build, alter or change....Uhm reality check people, 99% of the time when a human being is in a creative mode, it's all about whats in their head.....ideas are selfish in nature as no one makes things for other people (not ever).....instead they make things for themselves based on their own minds, desires and imagination....as a result, the afterthought is "I hope other people think like me and will like it".

So that's why devs have problems with giving players what they want in games because now they listen to us and try to take our visions and make them a reality...but if they could easily do that, then they would have thought of it themselves.    In turn, that usually ends up breaking something, or creating bugs for which if it's severe enough can cause the downfall of the game or even the company.

Look at SOE for an example, they tried too much to give the players what they want and you know the rest...

I'll just finish by saying, shut up, pull out your wallet, play the game, enjoy what it does (not what you want it to do) and move on to the next game when the one your playing cease to amuse you.    

think about this, when you first started playing monopoly (the board game, not talking computer ones), it was exciting and fun for what it is, but you don't whine about what it isn't....that's because you play monopoly for what it actually is......then there are other board games you can play when you want something else that monopoly isn't.....stop trying to make video games into something it isn't and gamers and developers will be much happier.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Violette

That is so sad. A travesty.

Why, WHY do most MMO developers SUCK at making sound business decisions?? Someone explain that please.

 

The main problem as I see it right now is Gaute. Gaute was the one in charge from day one and the man responsible for AOs' horrid launch and subsequent problems, including the first 3 1/2 expansions ( Sil was responsible only for some of LE ). When he left AO as game director to work on AoC and Craig "Silirrion" Morrison took over, the game itself improved by leaps and bounds. Suddenly the subscribers were being listened to, bugs were being fixed, content was being added, new servers were implemented and even a new graphics engine was finally given a green light. The future looked great.

Unfortunately, Gaute has more clout as a "founding member of Funcom" than Sil does, therefore Gaute is able to demand things to be moved from AO for AoC, such as making the AO customer support people responsible for, and focus on, AoC instead of hiring a seperate cs team. And you can bet he's the moron who made the decision to combine the AO and AoC billing, resulting in major screw ups of players acccounts.

And things like pre-paid cards being made unavailable to AO players but making sure that pre-paid cards are available and just fine for AoC. In fact people who bought pre-paid cards just before the decision to remove them from AO found themselves frozen out of their accounts, having paid for the game and then unable to play it. The forums are full of threads of customers unable to access their accounts, or players needing support logging into the game and staying logged in for DAYS at a time with their /petition que never moving or moving but then being continually pushed back.

It's just a bloody mess all over, and it does sicken me. This (AO) was the first and only game that I could even consider myself a "fanboi" of. I played from beta up until roughly a month ago, when I had customer service problems myself and could not get a response through /petition or e-mail for over 30 damn days of constant trying.

I really hope they get their heads out of their asses, because AO is paying a heavy price due to the current mismanagement ( I aim that as Gaute mainly ) and from what I've seen on the AoC boards, Gaute may indeed be killing two damn games with one incompetant swipe.

And the funny thing is, Gaute'll be the one in charge of The Secret World, also. Of course, that's assuming TSW even gets out of the gate, 'cause if AO and AoC fall due to Gaute ( and it does indeed seem possible at this point in time ), I sure don't see TSW suddenly saving Funcoms' bacon.

So I am assuming that new graphics engine is not going to happen?

Funcom is a horribly run company, thats never ever been any secret. Thats why I was surprised so many went over to Conan like it was the lords second comming. Its the same people, they aren't going to run that one any better.

Originally posted by Torak

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by Violette

That is so sad. A travesty.

Why, WHY do most MMO developers SUCK at making sound business decisions?? Someone explain that please.

 

The main problem as I see it right now is Gaute. Gaute was the one in charge from day one and the man responsible for AOs' horrid launch and subsequent problems, including the first 3 1/2 expansions ( Sil was responsible only for some of LE ). When he left AO as game director to work on AoC and Craig "Silirrion" Morrison took over, the game itself improved by leaps and bounds. Suddenly the subscribers were being listened to, bugs were being fixed, content was being added, new s