- Det er rundt 70.000 spillere igjen på Age of Conan, og basert på våre estimater, vil det være utfordrende å gå i pluss på driften.

(my translation:

-There is around 70.000 players left on Age of Conan, and based on our estimations, it will be challenging to for the company to go at plus.)

http://www.hegnar.no/bors/article354367.ece

More reality-checks for the Funcom-propaganda-machine.

Definetly not a good sign, i wouldnt be suprised to see the servers shut down soon. As i repeatedly said, this game had no legs and its now showing. In my opinion its still overvalued.

I'm hardly a fanboi, but this is just as much of a guess just like the "ZOMG the population's booming" delusional fanboi posts citing bogus xfire numbers.  Other critics have looked at the same numbers and said 120-140k subs.  That's a big descrepancy.

Funcom should just release their sub numbers.  EA did it with WAR and it was hardly bragging.  I hate EA almost as much as Funcom and I give them props for releasing figures showing they lost 60% of their subs.  I doubt we'll ever see that level of honesty from Funcom.

He did some trolling earlier too, a scary one:

«Vi mener den nåværende strategien er ugjennomførlig» (having estimated the playerbase at 80.000 earlier back in 2008 Q3.

(My translation) «We are in the belief that the current strategy is not doable» (pointing at the fact that Age of Conans cashflow simply can not support further development of big MMO-games.

http://n24.pocketnews.no/225/569360/563849.html

I never said he's a troll.  I have to assume he honestly believes his 70k estimate.  I just wonder how he comes up with 70k when other critics look at the financials and say 120k.  Obviously, if 70k is closer to reality than 120k, things are more grim than even haters believe.  Funcom doesn't have the guts to release the real sub numbers to prove anybody wrong, so everyone is just guessing.

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

I never said he's a troll.  I have to assume he honestly believes his 70k estimate.  I just wonder how he comes up with 70k when other critics look at the financials and say 120k.  Obviously, if 70k is closer to reality than 120k, things are more grim than even haters believe.  Funcom doesn't have the guts to release the real sub numbers to prove anybody wrong, so everyone is just guessing.

As for the "critics", it might be that some of them have not been "critical" enough, regarding objectivity and common-sense.

What we really have seen since launch is an entire community shout out the errors this game had (and still has). Fredrik Thoresen must have been one of the few that approached the numbers with a tiny bit of sound scepticism taking this into consideration. Not to mention he has been correct on all of his earlier predictions regarding Age of Conan.

To Funcom - with love

The C

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

There is no doubt that the Western US based audience is below average for AoC. But, as stated above, people have counted them out when we do not know how well the Polish or Russian communitites will do.

Right now, only a couple of big MMO's are in Russia...WoW, WAR, EQ2 and AoC. This audience alone is a major boon to Funcom. Especially since it has been noted multiple times that Conan properties are pretty big in Slavic nations. Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

But, I do agree that US audiences will get worse. Why? Because any doom and gloom always has a negative effect to the American psyche! A majority of people never touched the game due to reading the crap posted here for example. I do not expect it to get better...unless a trial or DX10 hits....and soon.

Ah well, gonna play til it dies, because really ...all other MMO's suck right now anyways.

Later

actually thats not too horrible , considering there are i think 6 servers (might be 8 i cant remember). So that does leave sort of a healthy population (as long as their sub numbers dont continue to decline). If they can maintain those 70k, the game would be in decent shape.

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

 

the Gameindustry.biz article refences an analysis that sites DnBNor as a reference.

If Funcom does intend to shut operations down, i hope someone like soe or similar will attempt to buy them out and operate under their umbrella.

The game is actually worth saving.

Part of the discrepency between ' trolls saying 120k and this guy saying 70k' is based on what you are actually talking about.  The 120k number is the average number of subscribers in the 4th quarter... the 75k is his estimation of players NOW.

Most of the 'financial people' on this site have done some basic math with the revenues that Funcom just released.  Those numbers support an 'average' subscriber base of AOC during the 4th quarter.   That is.. in October it has 120k, in Novermber it had 120k, in December it had 120k.   But that obviously isn't the way it works...  The average of 120k probably resulted from something like 160k in October, 120k in November and 80k in December.

As of December 31st.. the game, according to Funcom, has 'almost stabilized'.. which means it has lost only a small percentage of players.. ie.. from 80k down to 75k now.

Age of Conan miss the mark ny 86%

Is 70,000 players enough of a "critical mass" to sustain community growth and allow the game to maintain a playerbase as time goes on? Funcom initially estimated that they would need about 500,000 monthly subscriptions for a "break even" point to sustain the game

And yes, the player base is trending downward atm.

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

There is no doubt that the Western US based audience is below average for AoC. But, as stated above, people have counted them out when we do not know how well the Polish or Russian communitites will do.

Right now, only a couple of big MMO's are in Russia...WoW, WAR, EQ2 and AoC. This audience alone is a major boon to Funcom. Especially since it has been noted multiple times that Conan properties are pretty big in Slavic nations. Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

But, I do agree that US audiences will get worse. Why? Because any doom and gloom always has a negative effect to the American psyche! A majority of people never touched the game due to reading the crap posted here for example. I do not expect it to get better...unless a trial or DX10 hits....and soon.

Ah well, gonna play til it dies, because really ...all other MMO's suck right now anyways.

Later

I will shed tears of true happiness!

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

I never said he's a troll.  I have to assume he honestly believes his 70k estimate.  I just wonder how he comes up with 70k when other critics look at the financials and say 120k.  Obviously, if 70k is closer to reality than 120k, things are more grim than even haters believe.  Funcom doesn't have the guts to release the real sub numbers to prove anybody wrong, so everyone is just guessing.

He based his calculations on Xfire, and other sites which he didn't mention. It's old news and I do trust the financial report more then the the market analytic from DNB. So called trolls and haters have strugled to prove this guy right so many times already and OP is not bringin anything new except necroing some old information no one ever has been able to confirm to be true 100%.

If AOC really only has 70k in active subs then you can pretty much bet that this game will be going on Life Support until their new, upcoming MMO gets released. FC will strip the majority of their Devs from AoC and place them on the new project. AoC will continue to be a niche game but that is not bad. There are people who enjoy AoC and will continue to play it. It will be like Vanguard and have a skeleton crew of devs, coders, artists and QA and will do a few updates a year.

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

There is no doubt that the Western US based audience is below average for AoC. But, as stated above, people have counted them out when we do not know how well the Polish or Russian communitites will do.

Right now, only a couple of big MMO's are in Russia...WoW, WAR, EQ2 and AoC. This audience alone is a major boon to Funcom. Especially since it has been noted multiple times that Conan properties are pretty big in Slavic nations. Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

But, I do agree that US audiences will get worse. Why? Because any doom and gloom always has a negative effect to the American psyche! A majority of people never touched the game due to reading the crap posted here for example. I do not expect it to get better...unless a trial or DX10 hits....and soon.

Ah well, gonna play til it dies, because really ...all other MMO's suck right now anyways.

Later

How many of those former eastern Bloc countries have a significant number of households will have a PC beefy enough to run AoC on medium+ settings with good framerates?  I'm guessing not a lot.  Heck a good junk of NA and western Europe doesn't.

There's no way I would give AoC another shot until dx10 is added as a matter of principle, and the news of non consentual PvP now on PvE servers lowers the chance of me ever resubbing to zero.  I like PvP, but only when I feel like it, and not when some bored twinks decide.

Originally posted by croemar

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

There is no doubt that the Western US based audience is below average for AoC. But, as stated above, people have counted them out when we do not know how well the Polish or Russian communitites will do.

Right now, only a couple of big MMO's are in Russia...WoW, WAR, EQ2 and AoC. This audience alone is a major boon to Funcom. Especially since it has been noted multiple times that Conan properties are pretty big in Slavic nations. Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

But, I do agree that US audiences will get worse. Why? Because any doom and gloom always has a negative effect to the American psyche! A majority of people never touched the game due to reading the crap posted here for example. I do not expect it to get better...unless a trial or DX10 hits....and soon.

Ah well, gonna play til it dies, because really ...all other MMO's suck right now anyways.

Later

If "we" in any way, shape or form - have contributed to new players having second thoughts on buying from Funcom.....

I will shed tears of true happiness!

 

I cant get over all these new people who joined MMORPG in January 2009, and are suddenly experts on Age of Conan and it's financial situation,bugs,etc.

Where have they been since last year? Something going on here methinks.......will get back to you on this.

The debasing of the overprized AoC stock post-release, the first sound analizes of playerbase, the correct assumptions as to WHY the strategy of the game would fail, and the hurtful hindsigth that he was right all along...Mr. Thoresen, they laughed at you initially, then it was reduced to hints of misplaced smiles - all that is left from them now is their anger and disbelief.

Originally posted by Drednaught

Originally posted by croemar

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Paks

There is an estimate putting the game below 100k

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-reports-q4-USD23-3m-loss

But they just released in Russia and Poland so that number will rise.  They can only hope they've fixed enough to keep those new customers coming in.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/64513

There is no doubt that the Western US based audience is below average for AoC. But, as stated above, people have counted them out when we do not know how well the Polish or Russian communitites will do.

Right now, only a couple of big MMO's are in Russia...WoW, WAR, EQ2 and AoC. This audience alone is a major boon to Funcom. Especially since it has been noted multiple times that Conan properties are pretty big in Slavic nations. Should be interesting to see how this pans out.

But, I do agree that US audiences will get worse. Why? Because any doom and gloom always has a negative effect to the American psyche! A majority of people never touched the game due to reading the crap posted here for example. I do not expect it to get better...unless a trial or DX10 hits....and soon.

Ah well, gonna play til it dies, because really ...all other MMO's suck right now anyways.

Later

If "we" in any way, shape or form - have contributed to new players having second thoughts on buying from Funcom.....

I will shed tears of true happiness!

 

I cant get over all these new people who joined MMORPG in January 2009, and are suddenly experts on Age of Conan and it's financial situation,bugs,etc.

Where have they been since last year? Something going on here methinks.......will get back to you on this.

Scary.