Age of Conan

By being a failure, AoC was a successful reminder to us all that in the MMO industry we should all have a critical eye and cautious ears. It reminded us to not buy into hype, test a product carefully and be sure we don't get our expectations up too high.

Vanguard was similar to this, but with VG we all knew it was a sunken ship even before launch. With AoC marketing kept telling us that AoC was in perfect shape and still a wonderful game; we all learned our lesson.

Thanks Funcom for helping us keeping a sane mind when WAR releases. ^_^

Actually the problem with AoC is it turned most MMORPG gamers into people who won't believe a damn word no matter what you see. Pretty much AoC made gamers paranoid.

I got taken in with the hype too, sadly. Even when I had some real doubs from the first beta videos I watched. I am used to play games with a more dynamic game engine, meaning the game world is more free, open, fluid etc.. and I could actually see the limitations in the videos, yet I believed the hype and lived in hope.. ohh well i learned something from it.

I don't think the blame falls solidly on Age of Conan.

There has been a string of buggy and broken MMOs released over the past several years. AoC just happened to be the breaking point for most of us.

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Originally posted by Rebn77
I don't think the blame falls solidly on Age of Conan.
There has been a string of buggy and broken MMOs released over the past several years. AoC just happened to be the breaking point for most of us.
 

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Age of Conan was the most hyped as well. Yeah, Vanguard was pretty hyped but they were also pretty humble about the problems until Sony picked them up and improved the game.

Of course I think Dark and Light started the trend :p

I seriously doubt Funcom or their publishers consider AoC a failure.  With how many copies they sold they've more than paid for development of the game and they are still taking in millions a month for subscription fees.  I mean, it isn't a great success with WoW like numbers but 400,000 subscribers is still quite a bit and a lot of money a month.

Originally posted by scott21493

I seriously doubt Funcom or their publishers consider AoC a failure.  With how many copies they sold they've more than paid for development of the game and they are still taking in millions a month for subscription fees.  I mean, it isn't a great success with WoW like numbers but 400,000 subscribers is still quite a bit and a lot of money a month.

You do know they only got approx. 20% of box sales right?

About $8 million dollars for them. Add in 2 months of 415,000 people paying for subs, you're looking at $12.45 million.

If Age of Conan cost $50 million to develop than Funcom needs to earn approx. $30 million more to break even on the development of AoC.

Originally posted by Rebn77

Originally posted by scott21493

I seriously doubt Funcom or their publishers consider AoC a failure.  With how many copies they sold they've more than paid for development of the game and they are still taking in millions a month for subscription fees.  I mean, it isn't a great success with WoW like numbers but 400,000 subscribers is still quite a bit and a lot of money a month.

 

You do know they only got approx. 20% of box sales right?

About $8 million dollars for them. Add in 2 months of 415,000 people paying for subs, you're looking at $12.45 million.

If Age of Conan cost $50 million to develop than Funcom needs to earn approx. $30 million more to break even on the development of AoC.

Well, first of all they don't front all of the money for the game.  They have investors and the publisher probably put quite a bit of money into it as well.

Second, I said that Funcom and their publishers wouldn't consider it a failure.  I know the company that develops the game doesn't get the majority of the money but then again they don't put up the majority of the money to fund the game.

Third, I seriously doubt the game cost $50 million to develop.  If you can find something to prove me wrong I would gladly look at it, but that seems a little extreme for the game.

No matter how buggy and horrible the game is it isn't going away any time soon.  They'll more than make back all of the development costs plus some in that amount of time.  People seem to think for a game to be successful they need WoW like subscription numbers, but if a game even has 200,000 people playing it thats pretty much $3 million a month.  That isn't a small amount of money.

Originally posted by scott21493

Originally posted by Rebn77

Originally posted by scott21493

I seriously doubt Funcom or their publishers consider AoC a failure.  With how many copies they sold they've more than paid for development of the game and they are still taking in millions a month for subscription fees.  I mean, it isn't a great success with WoW like numbers but 400,000 subscribers is still quite a bit and a lot of money a month.

 

You do know they only got approx. 20% of box sales right?

About $8 million dollars for them. Add in 2 months of 415,000 people paying for subs, you're looking at $12.45 million.

If Age of Conan cost $50 million to develop than Funcom needs to earn approx. $30 million more to break even on the development of AoC.

 

Well, first of all they don't front all of the money for the game.  They have investors and the publisher probably put quite a bit of money into it as well.

Second, I said that Funcom and their publishers wouldn't consider it a failure.  I know the company that develops the game doesn't get the majority of the money but then again they don't put up the majority of the money to fund the game.

Third, I seriously doubt the game cost $50 million to develop.  If you can find something to prove me wrong I would gladly look at it, but that seems a little extreme for the game.

No matter how buggy and horrible the game is it isn't going away any time soon.  They'll more than make back all of the development costs plus some in that amount of time.  People seem to think for a game to be successful they need WoW like subscription numbers, but if a game even has 200,000 people playing it thats pretty much $3 million a month.  That isn't a small amount of money.

Considering the game took 5y to develop the $50 million is probably quite reasonable. Add that those who have analyzed the Q2 report saying that Funcom is not even making any money now but actually losing money every month, well then we have a big problem.
 

It feels like all the lies and deceit Funcom is pulling off is simply a desperate attempt of damage control. Make as much money as possible in as short a time as possible before WAR and WOTLK is out because they knew that their game would have zero chance. Question is if they will have made enough money to survive. Any sane investors would never give Funcom any money ever again.