As someone who recently returned and started over a new character, I was rather surprised to see how many people were milling about in Tortage. It's a refreshingly different scenario from most MMOs that I have retried only to find the starter area extremely desolate.

Looking forward to getting past 20 and gettinginto the game world.

All MMOs suck so bad lately that I think you get two chances. Problem is, you need to have an AWESOME game with staying power during one of those two chances. Obviously AoC failed at launch, as has every MMO since WoW. AoC is about to get it's second chance when they release their next patch. They have the trial, they've supposedly addressed many of the issues people had with AoC at launch. The question is, does AoC have staying power yet? Can it keep my attention when I resub for longer than a month this time?

Originally posted by oronisi

All MMOs suck so bad lately that I think you get two chances. Problem is, you need to have an AWESOME game with staying power during one of those two chances. Obviously AoC failed at launch, as has every MMO since WoW. AoC is about to get it's second chance when they release their next patch. They have the trial, they've supposedly addressed many of the issues people had with AoC at launch. The question is, does AoC have staying power yet? Can it keep my attention when I resub for longer than a month this time?

 

Sure most MMO's fail at launch but no MMO in history has gone from 850k subs to 50k subs in a couple of months. If you only look at the drop in population, you can safely say that Age of Conan has been the biggest failure in MMO history.

You talk about a second chance. There are no second chances in the world of MMO's. Even if they made AoC a good game in the future, most players have moved on and are never coming back. It's not only about AoC, it's also about Funcom. I mean people made Failcom t-shirts, have you ever seen anything like that before?

I personally know at least 5 people who quit MMO's altogether because they were so disappointed what a zoned and instanced mess AoC was.

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Tjommis

This weekend during peak hours there were 7 instances of Tortage running on Eu Crom server. Thats more than twice as many as before trial, so there has been a huge influx.

 

Sure there are multiple instances in Tortage during peak hours and I'm sure Tortage has at least twice the people than what they had before trials, but I was just waiting for some huge influx of players. You know something we had at launch?

I guess most people have moved on to other games.

100% difference is a huge influx of players -.-

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by oronisi

All MMOs suck so bad lately that I think you get two chances. Problem is, you need to have an AWESOME game with staying power during one of those two chances. Obviously AoC failed at launch, as has every MMO since WoW. AoC is about to get it's second chance when they release their next patch. They have the trial, they've supposedly addressed many of the issues people had with AoC at launch. The question is, does AoC have staying power yet? Can it keep my attention when I resub for longer than a month this time?

 

 

Sure most MMO's fail at launch but no MMO in history has gone from 850k subs to 50k subs in a couple of months. If you only look at the drop in population, you can safely say that Age of Conan has been the biggest failure in MMO history.

You talk about a second chance. There are no second chances in the world of MMO's. Even if they made AoC a good game in the future, most players have moved on and are never coming back. It's not only about AoC, it's also about Funcom. I mean people made Failcom t-shirts, have you ever seen anything like that before?

I personally know at least 5 people who quit MMO's altogether because they were so disappointed what a zoned and instanced mess AoC was.

Age of Conan had a massive drop in subs the first months yes. But not from 850k to 50k as you try to put it.

It took over 8 months to get from 800k registered users (not subsribed) to roughly 100k subsribers right now.

Warhammer Online failed just as bad. It went from 750k registered users to only 350k subscribers in a month!

But there are MMO's out there that do recover and show a different trend.

EVE Online back then when it launched had a very very rough start too. It started with very low subscription numbers and has since then gone up all the way to over 250k subs.

Will Age of Conan get back up to their initial launch numbers? No. That won't happen anymore.

But can they get the number of subscriptions back to around 200k-250k on the longterm. Yes, that is perfectly possible if they manage to deliver with patch 1.05 and beyond.

Most likely Age of Conan can get a turnpoint when they launch the planned Expansion and they really deliver with that one.

A good expansion with decent marketing strategy can create a turnpoint to increase subscriptions.

LOTRO is a perfect example of that. Till Mines of Moria expansion lots of players had left that game, because they were bored with the game and had nothing left to do.

Mines of Moria was an excellent expansion and it resulted in a impressive surge of new players and returning players.

Same happened with EverQuest 2 as well. That game bombed hard too in the first year and it wasn't till the Kingdom of Sky expansion till subscription numbers recovered and went back up to around 250k-300k. (that was the second expansion by the way and 2 years after launch!)

Cheers

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by oronisi

 Obviously AoC failed at launch, as has every MMO since WoW.

 

I just wonder if people forget how WoW was at launch. Let me remind you. It was impossible to create account till very late evening hours (think i managed to actually get into game at 9pm and had the game at 2 pm). The game was full of annoying bugs (seal of command for eg, countless pet bugs, pathing bugs, instance bugs, exploits (1shot kazzak), etc), the end game was unplayable and it took long time before first guild managed to kill Ragnaros after several balance fixes. There was no pvp system, no battlegrounds, all you could do is mindlessly gank or zerg in tarren mill / southshore and itemisation was messed up..some of it even remined messed up till around WotLK release (str cloth for casters and so on). Wow became playable around 1.4-1.5 patches and even then still had loads of bugs that were fixed around the first expansion times.

So yeah..thats about "perfect mmo starts"

Now AoC sure had more issues in the early stage, still has tons of them and its far from perfect game, its medicore decent id say with chances of getting better, however id oubt the ammount of subs will ever reach its launch stage, it just doesnt happen since, ever since WoW release the MMO market started to live, back before WoW it was a niche genre and now its mainstream with new games popping out every month if you count all those F2Ps, korean productions and low budget ones, poeple rather wait for new promises than return to old game, exception being expansions, which WoW currently holds the crown of (not the number but sales). Its normal that people will want to see what changed with the xpac, to check out if the game they used to play improved or still is the same old thing they left.

In the end tho, difference between 100k-200k players and 11 million players is very small for avarage player, you usually dont play with even 5k constanlty at same time. You group with your friends, you do some pvp... you maybe meet 100-200 different people on regular basis, the staying power is in how the costs of upkeep calculate with the income from subscriptions and  thats possible to balance by reducing number of servers and team working on non crucial parts of game (customer support, tech support etc, allt he things thatw ont get flooded massively because of millions of players having some problems each day)

Originally posted by Orphes

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Tjommis

This weekend during peak hours there were 7 instances of Tortage running on Eu Crom server. Thats more than twice as many as before trial, so there has been a huge influx.

 

Sure there are multiple instances in Tortage during peak hours and I'm sure Tortage has at least twice the people than what they had before trials, but I was just waiting for some huge influx of players. You know something we had at launch?

I guess most people have moved on to other games.

 

100% difference is a huge influx of players -.-

So you are saying that if Tortage had 10 players before, and after trials there are 20 players (100% increase), that is a "huge influx"?

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by Guillermo197

It took over 8 months to get from 800k registered users (not subsribed) to roughly 100k subsribers right now.

Warhammer Online failed just as bad. It went from 750k registered users to only 350k subscribers in a month!

Yes, Age of Conan has 100k subs TODAY but low point was 50k a couple of months ago.

WAR did NOT fail as bad as AoC did. Just look at the numbers YOU wrote. From 800k to 100k (actual number is 50k) and from 750k to 350k is not the same thing. WAR lost about half of its subs while AoC lost about 90%. Also today WAR has almost 4 times the subs AoC has, so I think WAR is a much bigger success.

p.s. About those personal attacks.. please stop doing those. I want to discuss games without being attacked

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Guillermo197

It took over 8 months to get from 800k registered users (not subsribed) to roughly 100k subsribers right now.

Warhammer Online failed just as bad. It went from 750k registered users to only 350k subscribers in a month!

 

Yes, Age of Conan has 100k subs TODAY but low point was 50k a couple of months ago.

WAR did NOT fail as bad as AoC did. Just look at the numbers YOU wrote. From 800k to 100k (actual number is 50k) and from 750k to 350k is not the same thing. WAR lost about half of its subs while AoC lost about 90%. Also today WAR has almost 4 times the subs AoC has, so I think WAR is a much bigger success.

p.s. About those personal attacks.. please stop doing those. I want to discuss games without being attacked

[Mod Edit]

You are personally attacking people too. And appearently don't even notice it.

And you are tearing my statements way out of context!

WAR dropped from 750k to 350k subscribers within a month! That was even worse then Age of Conan.

No one knows the actual subscription numbers of Warhammer Online today, as EA still has to release their Q4 2008 report.

The only official information we have on WAR subs, is from the Q3 2008 report stating that after the first month of WAR launch, they only had 350k people actually subscribing to the game.

I have played WAR till half january this year and from European servers alone, I can pretty much tell you that they have far less then 350k subscribers left.

Phoenix Throne (US) and Karak Eight Peaks (EU) are basically the only real High Pop servers left. The rest of the servers are struggling with population from wich only a handful have Medium population, while most of the servers (even after migrations) are just downright empty! People are still crying for more mergers today!

I know, as I saw my own guild in WAR going from still 20+ average users online each day end october (that's the second month mind you) down to only 3 of us left in January this year. Me and 2 officers. All three of us threw the towel in the ring in January and gave up on Mythic in ever fixing that game.

Several guilds within our alliance went through the same of massive quits.

So again. You keep continue'ing to make stuff up, have nothing to back it up against and are just on a crusade to discredit Funcom.

WAR doesn't have 4 times the subscription numbers then Age of Conan. Those numbers are not known. But from personal knowledge of playing and experiencing the game, community and servers activity till half january this year..... I can tell you that WAR isn't doing that much better then Age of Conan right now.

Cheers

And oh..... I have  Norwegian girlfriend, that's why I moved from Holland to Oslo last year. I don't speak Norwegian nor understand it that well (yet), .... nor am I working for Funcom.

So nice try with that personal attack (see).

The trouble with AoC is that even if subscriptions jumped by 100% you wouldn't see it in game. Even if you had 100k new accounts it wouldn't make a difference to your gaming experience due to zones being instanced off when they hit a certain cap. AoC mechanics are no different than Guild Wars, if 1 million players were in town you wouldn't know the number by looking around as every instance of that town has a cap.

What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that if you play and enjoy AoC, don't worry about how many subscriptions it has or how many are playing on your server. Since wether it's 100 or 5000 on your server the difference to your playing experience is negligable, which is the whole point of instancing zones.

In my opinion this makes AoC a CORPG like Guild Wars, only Funcom are claiming it's an MMORPG so that they can charge a subscription fee!

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Smikis

if ur lvl 80, you hardly gona see new faces till they ding 80  , in month or two

 

Lol I'm not a total idiot. Of course I know trial people won't reach level 80 in a couple of days.

I didn't mention on my post that I started a new character, Bear Shaman, and was expecting to see tons of people in Tortage. But it was almost empty.

Honestly I saw no evidence that there was a trial which was very disappoiting.

Hi,

I tried the 7 day trial, and to be truthful, I rolled three characters and went into "night" Tortage each time. So I only seen live players for maybe a few minutes. That maybe the case, that a lot of new players were switched to the single player night time. I found a copy of the game cheap on Ebay, so I will give it a month. I'm a Conan fan, so I'll give it that long to see it hooks me or not.

Originally posted by DystopiaBoy

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Smikis

if ur lvl 80, you hardly gona see new faces till they ding 80  , in month or two

 

Lol I'm not a total idiot. Of course I know trial people won't reach level 80 in a couple of days.

I didn't mention on my post that I started a new character, Bear Shaman, and was expecting to see tons of people in Tortage. But it was almost empty.

Honestly I saw no evidence that there was a trial which was very disappoiting.

Hi,

I tried the 7 day trial, and to be truthful, I rolled three characters and went into "night" Tortage each time. So I only seen live players for maybe a few minutes. That maybe the case, that a lot of new players were switched to the single player night time. I found a copy of the game cheap on Ebay, so I will give it a month. I'm a Conan fan, so I'll give it that long to see it hooks me or not.

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by DystopiaBoy

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Smikis

if ur lvl 80, you hardly gona see new faces till they ding 80  , in month or two

 

Lol I'm not a total idiot. Of course I know trial people won't reach level 80 in a couple of days.

I didn't mention on my post that I started a new character, Bear Shaman, and was expecting to see tons of people in Tortage. But it was almost empty.

Honestly I saw no evidence that there was a trial which was very disappoiting.

Hi,

I tried the 7 day trial, and to be truthful, I rolled three characters and went into "night" Tortage each time. So I only seen live players for maybe a few minutes. That maybe the case, that a lot of new players were switched to the single player night time. I found a copy of the game cheap on Ebay, so I will give it a month. I'm a Conan fan, so I'll give it that long to see it hooks me or not.

 

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

This is not true. You can always join a guild and make friends there and several gaming possibilities open up from that point forward. Just like in any other game.

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by DystopiaBoy

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Smikis

if ur lvl 80, you hardly gona see new faces till they ding 80  , in month or two

 

Lol I'm not a total idiot. Of course I know trial people won't reach level 80 in a couple of days.

I didn't mention on my post that I started a new character, Bear Shaman, and was expecting to see tons of people in Tortage. But it was almost empty.

Honestly I saw no evidence that there was a trial which was very disappoiting.

Hi,

I tried the 7 day trial, and to be truthful, I rolled three characters and went into "night" Tortage each time. So I only seen live players for maybe a few minutes. That maybe the case, that a lot of new players were switched to the single player night time. I found a copy of the game cheap on Ebay, so I will give it a month. I'm a Conan fan, so I'll give it that long to see it hooks me or not.

 

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

I rerolled 2 weeks ago and have run into plenty of people and have been in PuG's whenever I or someone else was looking for one. And I even play on a EU RP-PVE server. Wich isn't exactly known for it's high population.

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by abal

Originally posted by Shillz

 

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

 

This is not true. You can always join a guild and make friends there and several gaming possibilities open up from that point forward. Just like in any other game.

Problem is that in Age of Conan it's usually faster to level by yourself. Even if you are in a guild, players prefer going solo since for most players the destination is more important than the journey.

More forced grouping would have been a good thing for this game.

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by abal

Originally posted by Shillz

 

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

 

This is not true. You can always join a guild and make friends there and several gaming possibilities open up from that point forward. Just like in any other game.

 

Problem is that in Age of Conan it's usually faster to level by yourself. Even if you are in a guild, players prefer going solo since for most players the destination is more important than the journey.

More forced grouping would have been a good thing for this game.

With the constant danger of being attacked by other players, nowadays I find much easier to level up in a group rather than solo.

I think I would agree with you back when the game was launched, but currently the pvp is so intense and you get attacked so often (tipically by other groups of players) that you actually have to increase your survival chances (and speed up your leveling) by playing in a group.

Leveling up in groups of 2-3 players is strongly advised IMO.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by DystopiaBoy

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Smikis

if ur lvl 80, you hardly gona see new faces till they ding 80  , in month or two

 

Lol I'm not a total idiot. Of course I know trial people won't reach level 80 in a couple of days.

I didn't mention on my post that I started a new character, Bear Shaman, and was expecting to see tons of people in Tortage. But it was almost empty.

Honestly I saw no evidence that there was a trial which was very disappoiting.

Hi,

I tried the 7 day trial, and to be truthful, I rolled three characters and went into "night" Tortage each time. So I only seen live players for maybe a few minutes. That maybe the case, that a lot of new players were switched to the single player night time. I found a copy of the game cheap on Ebay, so I will give it a month. I'm a Conan fan, so I'll give it that long to see it hooks me or not.

 

Age of Conan is a lonely persons game. Unless you play with RL friends, you are most likely doomed to playing solo. Sure you can find groups every now and then but it's difficult since the game is instanced and the zones are small with only a handful of players.

 

I rerolled 2 weeks ago and have run into plenty of people and have been in PuG's whenever I or someone else was looking for one. And I even play on a EU RP-PVE server. Wich isn't exactly known for it's high population.

 

[Mod Edit]

Don't worry. I was just commenting on his "with a trial = no new players" from the OP post. I was just simply suggesting that it might be the case that people were in the night tortage. It really seemed that the 7 day flew by really fast. I didn't get to see too much of the game world because I was trying to figure out which character class worked best for me. I still didn't figure it out either. And with 1.05 coming I'm still not certain.

And what's with all the "mod edits" now a days?

I strongly disagree with the statement that the game feels lonely and people are not playing. I've started out on Crom (EU General PVE) and there are lots of lots people, a bit too much for my taste, especially Tortage, that is just fully cramped. I have switched to Hyrkania (EU RP-PVE) and the server feels much better. People are much more friendly and it is much easier to group. Though I think AOC is a niche mmo, is not for everyone, you either like it or not. I still really enjoy the game.