Since launch Age of Conan subscriptions have gone from an estimated 800k to only 100k. That means there could be over half a million players that have tried AoC but didn't like it. Some players will never come back but some might, and Funcom needs them.

There was supposed to be a some kind of a win-back-program, but for some reason Funcom hasn't launched it yet. The question is: Is this win-back-program enough, or does Funcom need to do something else?

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I don't think a public admission for lying to the community is the right way to go about attracting subscribers.

Public apology will not come. They have made all the admissions they are willing to make. Read between the lines, they know they dissapointed people and are working on reedeming themselves. They are now looking forward.

As for your questions. The proof is in the gameplay. If its fun, like Craig Morrison focuses on, people will play. They will return, they will stay in game and pay ther monthly fee. Most players play for fun and dont feel personally insulted by Funcom, only a few very vocal players are still insulted.

How will you get them to play? Well thats down to marketing. And guess what, Funcom has one of the best marketing teams in the MMO world. They are working on the winback program and one way is simply to send a mail to all former players, give them free time and maybe a free ingame item. Make them feel important.

As for your numbers they are most likely wrong. AoC has probably sold more than a million copies by now and probably has around 200K paying subscribers (of which some are not active playing anymore). Before you ask, no I cant verify the figures, but then again neither can you.

The win-back campaign will come after patch 1.5 hits the live servers.

Craig Morisson's first interview, the first thing he did was a public appology about the state of the game. That was the very first thing he did, after Gaute left the company and he took his place.

The win-back campain has been discussed in great lenghts and is likely to come when Patch 1.05 has gone live.

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You could attract more people if you made the game significantly different to every other MMO out there...

I played AoC recently and I found it to be a visual wonder but lacking  the fun factor. The classes all seemed very bland to me and the world narrow and confined. Combat felt extra clicky and less on tactics than most game I hvae played.

I think they need a major class and combat overhall to have any real chance of getting folks to return. The bottom line is that if a game is not fun people wont play it, no matter how good it looks. I would glady give it another try someday if they made sweeping changes to the problem areas.

I resubbed a couple weeks ago because of all the hoopla people have been making about the state of the game.  I gave it a few days but didnt find it worth the monthly fee so cancelled shortly thereafter.  The game just lacks a fun-factor.

Isnt erling flicked enough of an apology?

Originally posted by grimal

I resubbed a couple weeks ago because of all the hoopla people have been making about the state of the game.  I gave it a few days but didnt find it worth the monthly fee so cancelled shortly thereafter.  The game just lacks a fun-factor.

Like all niche games, Age of Conan is not for everyone.

10% absolutely love it!
20% play it because there is nothing more interesting for them at the moment.
70% hate it with passion!

If you have tried Age of Conan before and didn't find it fun, there is no need to resubscribe. The game hasn't magically changed. It's still the same game and if you didn't like it before, than guess what? You won't like it today.

Originally posted by Shillz

Since launch Age of Conan subscriptions have gone from 800k to only 100k. That means there could be over half a million players that have tried AoC but didn't like it. Some players will never come back but some might, and Funcom needs them.

There was supposed to be a some kind of a win-back-program, but for some reason Funcom hasn't launched it yet. The question is: Is this win-back-program enough, or does Funcom need to do something else?

Personally I would like to see some kind of public apology for lying to the community.

I think they would have to address the reasons people quit before they offer any return incentives.  I can't speak for anyone else, but I left the game over the piss-poor itemization.  Screenshots show that the game hasn't improved at all in that department.  Every character still looks the same and brown.  I know this sounds like one little thing, but it's one of hundreds of common reasons people didn't like the game at launch, and I don't really think most of those concerns have been addressed.

Conan was such a train-wreck at launch, and so different from the game that was hyped, that I have lost all faith in Funcom.  No only will I not be going back to AOC, I also won't have anything to do with their new MMO.  All the time spend on that game should have been directed to the quickly failing MMO they already had on the market.

Funcom as a company is so poorly run, it doesn't suprise me that AoC is in the state its in. When Anarchy Online released, Funcom immediately got titled with worst MMO launch ever. They did rectify this by making a solid PvP / PvE game that turned out to be quite enjoyable. Instead of learning from their original mistakes, they repeated them almost as if they copied and pasted them right into AoC, literally. If anyone knows what I'm talking about ( resistances in AoC such as toxic and nano which are part of Anarchy Onlines programming ). I mean come on people, thats complete rookie mistakes.

The ongoing disappointments of promised game mechanics at launch which are just starting to be implemented in-game. Specifically DX10 and a stable and unbugged PvP / Siege system. Quests are still broken since launch and classes are still showing signs of poor design. In fact, I recently ran the catacombs dungeon to complete a quest with my guildmates which a couple of had the same quest. When we ran the dungeon twice just to make sure the quest was indeed broken, we petitioned a GM. Despite the fact we were standing on top of the boss mobs location which to most people would mean he was obviously killed. The GM, which by the way do have the power to complete broken quests, told us that he couldn't do so, because he didn't witness the event. I'm sorry, but if you answered your petitions in a more timely manner, maybe this would work. Instead, you force your customers to bypass broken content because you don't care. Yes, its that simple, Funcom does not care about their customers.

From flat out lying in interviews to broken promises, Funcom has proven time and time again that they are in fact nothing more than scrupulous at best. Granted they aren't as criminalistic as say Dark and Light or Mourning, they still have an extremely poor track record in terms of customer relations.

I still play AoC at the moment, but with current changes in WAR's scenario issues, I may once again jump ship back to Mythic Entertainment. I'd rather a company be honest with me and have a decent customer relation track record than run around in a game with my head cut off because Funcom decided they have the resources to make a brand new MMO instead of fixing a year old product of it's gazillion bugs.

The only thing they can to to bring me back is  paying me to play their game, because its just that damn borring.

Originally posted by cukimunga

The only thing they can to to bring me back is  paying me to play their game, because its just that damn borring.

Yeah that would do it. But I still couldn't do it full-time no matter what they paid me.

To the OP: Change the name of the game and the splash screen and it might work...for a little while.

The game apparently was optimized for nvidia but not ati, and they ignored the problem for the first month or so.  Basically my free month that came with the box purchase was wasted. 

Now if they want to give a free month trial, I might give the game another go.  Otherwise, they got their money but I feel ripped off because I met the system requirements but in cities outside of the starter area my fps dropped down to 5 or 8 fps.  Not really fun or playable, atleast for me.

Originally posted by cfurlin

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by Shillz

Originally posted by Aceundor

As for your numbers they are most likely wrong. AoC has probably sold more than a million copies by now and probably has around 200K paying subscribers (of which some are not active playing anymore). Before you ask, no I cant verify the figures, but then again neither can you.

 

Craig himself blurted out in an interview that Age of Conan currently has only 100k subscriptions. Geez.. how much more proof do you need?

 

No he didnt. This is a shameless lie. If this ever came out in an interveiw it would be all over the stock chat forums and it would have been reflected in the shareprice . Thats my proof. Can you disprove me?

So you're right because no one can prove you are wrong?

Of course they can.
 

1) Search chat forums that follow Funcom stock. See if you can find anyone referring to an interview with CM and him talking about 100K. (dated before today :-) ) There are none, i follow several norwegian forums.
 

2) Look into their share price and compare the date of the interview with the shareprice development.

To much spine and not enough substance is why I left the game and for me to even bother loading it on my machine it would have to be free. I alway pay to play my games but the damage done by Funcom is far to much this time to get me back with a short free period and a fancy items which most likely every man and his dog has the same, so sorry Concom you out of luck.

Next time they might just listen to their beta tester before panacing and rolling out another pile of Sh!t tbh, they never listened with their feed-back from AO and the same thing happened here with AoC too so the chances of anyone having an inpact on their mind set is very low. I will not even bother to beta test any other project they care to invest in either totally had enough BS from this company to last a lifetime.

Tilt game over for me.

Bandit.

Originally posted by Terranah

The game apparently was optimized for nvidia but not ati, and they ignored the problem for the first month or so.  Basically my free month that came with the box purchase was wasted. 

 

Now if they want to give a free month trial, I might give the game another go.  Otherwise, they got their money but I feel ripped off because I met the system requirements but in cities outside of the starter area my fps dropped down to 5 or 8 fps.  Not really fun or playable, atleast for me.

What was the video card you were using back then? Maybe it wasn't powerful enough and you had the game settings set to very high?

Let us know what was the model of the ATI card...

Only possible ways that I can forsee, for Funcom to get back those lost players, would either be if the majority of the people forgot about funcom, then found them again (unlikely). Or if they changed their name and released a good game for once.