Originally posted by DerekGordon

Alright everyone! I have cleaned up this thread quite a bit. Please stay on topic and AVOID name calling. Any form of name calling is considered flaming. This thread has some good back and forth discussions going on, so I am going to leave it open for now, but be careful with how you reply.

Thanks!

So when I referred to Loke as a moron earlier that was name calling. I apologize Loke you are a moron but I won't call you that anymore. Thanks to Eric Cartman from police squad for coming in here and patrolling a useless thread instead of closing it down lol.

Yes Thanks,

LB 

2nd quarter report will be out on Aug 26th. Guess that will show how much of a effect the server merges and free trials had.  The third quarters report in November will reflect the veteran campaign.

Anyway Open you used to swear by Xfire when you used to quote it to show how LoTRO was dieing, what a change of heart you have had.

Just looked at the forums, yesterday only 15 threads were replied to on the US general forums...sad

The 2nd quarter report should show 3 things for sure.

-Subscriptions are stable, because pretty much everybody who played in Nov 08 thru Jun 09 played with stable server pops made up of some new players and die hards who like the game and dont care about the Dev

-Hours per player should be up because server patches are months and months apart

There was about a 50% increase in activity on servers and 30% increase in buzz on the forums from the free trials. But they won't be bothering to tell you the "Trial to Subscription Conversion" Numbers because that who should nothing positive.

This will in all likelyhood be one of the last quarters of AOC.

Originally posted by LordBonezy2

The 2nd quarter report should show 3 things for sure.

-Subscriptions are stable, because pretty much everybody who played in Nov 08 thru Jun 09 played with stable server pops made up of some new players and die hards who like the game and dont care about the Dev

-Hours per player should be up because server patches are months and months apart

There was about a 50% increase in activity on servers and 30% increase in buzz on the forums from the free trials. But they won't be bothering to tell you the "Trial to Subscription Conversion" Numbers because that who should nothing positive.

This will in all likelyhood be one of the last quarters of AOC.

please explain why this is one of the last quarters with AoC when the game is making money?

Sure.

The game collapsed after launch because it was an empty broken shell of a product compared to what it was advertised to be.

Today it has DX10 and stable performance. As far as critical improvements and implements that is it. It has a few new areas, a few new balances, and a few bug fixes, is it revolutionary or a radical improvement from what it was? No and no.

In order to stay afloat they needed to bring additional subscribers to stave off the attrition which will occur during the next 6-12 months as new bigger better actually complete and feature rich and fun MMOs come online. They also needed to redeem themselves for their failure at launch with the free trials.

AOC did not have a successful free trial.

What happens on servers in AOC as evidenced by the decline in 2008 in august september and october, is that they reach a point of no return where they hit a certain population level where grouping is impossible and global chat is quiet for a long time and then it feels like a single player game and people quit.

AOC is on that path and there is nothing being done by the developer to remedy the broken things, only to add new things instead of fixing what is already in existence.

Last quarters of AOC are being played as we speak.

The one thing we learned is 2 people will pull X fire from thier computers to try to convince the world AoC is doing well, yet it is not it has been failing hard since release.

AoC is down, what are they going to do about all the people leaving without people to replace them now that thier free trial card has been used?

Look Funcom had all the time in the world to fix stuff they realeased very little in the last year and the people have spoken by leaving once again en mass. Alll that is left is people who could care less about how bad the game is just fans hoping Funcom fixes this broken game, which will never happen.

 Xfire results are fail. I play AoC and don't use Xfire. We have this cool thing called Ventrilo.....

Finantcid and LordBonzey2 obiously disagrees with me and I am fine with that.

My claims are these.

1) AoC as a game works very well. Technical performance, content and gameplay is up to par or above. This can be proven by slow increase in playerbase since december. There has been ups and dows, and yes numbers have been falling since june, but they were the highest in june since september last year. Current level of players is way above what it was in december/ january. Player retention rate has increased. If you like AoC or not is now a matter of taste, not of technicalities or lack of content.

2) AoC had one of the worst launches in history. They delivered an unfinished product to the market who hated them for it. (this negativity still lingers around in these forums)

3) Funcom started to fix the game about a year ago when they fired Gaute Godager (old GD). This work is more or less completed now. See 1)

4) Funcom says stuff all the time and as a company you cannot trust them. They have lied too much. However they make great games. "love the game, hate the company". This can be proven by TLJ and AO who have been played by millions and are still good games. I would have appreciated if the negative posters here could se the difference between the game and the company, but that i am afraid is asking for too much.

Originally posted by Aceundor

Finantcid and LordBonzey2 obiously disagrees with me and I am fine with that.

My claims are these.

1) AoC as a game works very well. Technical performance, content and gameplay is up to par or above. This can be proven by slow increase in playerbase since december. There has been ups and dows, and yes numbers have been falling since june, but they were the highest in june since september last year. Current level of players is way above what it was in december/ january. Player retention rate has increased. If you like AoC or not is now a matter of taste, not of technicalities or lack of content.

2) AoC had one of the worst launches in history. They delivered an unfinished product to the market who hated them for it. (this negativity still lingers around in these forums)

3) Funcom started to fix the game about a year ago when they fired Gaute Godager (old GD). This work is more or less completed now. See 1)

4) Funcom says stuff all the time and as a company you cannot trust them. They have lied too much. However they make great games. "love the game, hate the company". This can be proven by TLJ and AO who have been played by millions and are still good games. I would have appreciated if the negative posters here could se the difference between the game and the company, but that i am afraid is asking for too much.

The game has stable performance in most areas in the DX9 client. DX10 cuts your performance in half and for most players will probably be unacceptable. If it was only 15-25% I could see the reason for it but its just not up to par. Sieges are still prone to crashing. Raids, well still laggy. Grouping is still poor grouping.

AOC did have one of the best launches, it was what happned after launch, their marketing and their actual reality of implementation were two different dimensions. Firing Godager really did little to improve the game, sure it had to be done, but don't tell me Craig has been the 2nd coming of Christ for AOC cause it is not true. He has born more responsibility than Godager for the state of the game and has done less than Godager probably did over his tenure to improve it.

Funcom is a lying pile of shit company and AOC is their product, they also have not redeemed themselves whatsoever. AOC needs another year in development and under the direction of a project manager that is interested in holding his team to account on what the community wants for features and what direction the community wants the game to go in, not what they think will be good. AOC has missed the ball at every opporunity and Funcom manages to fuck up just about everything they do with it from billing, customers service, to the prioritization of what to fix, when and how to do it. Vetern rewards are another issue which remains unresolved. I just don't want to hear anybody talking about how AOC is competitive or there is some magic return of players staring in December because that's bull cocky.

Originally posted by LordBonezy2

Originally posted by Aceundor

Finantcid and LordBonzey2 obiously disagrees with me and I am fine with that.

My claims are these.

1) AoC as a game works very well. Technical performance, content and gameplay is up to par or above. This can be proven by slow increase in playerbase since december. There has been ups and dows, and yes numbers have been falling since june, but they were the highest in june since september last year. Current level of players is way above what it was in december/ january. Player retention rate has increased. If you like AoC or not is now a matter of taste, not of technicalities or lack of content.

2) AoC had one of the worst launches in history. They delivered an unfinished product to the market who hated them for it. (this negativity still lingers around in these forums)

3) Funcom started to fix the game about a year ago when they fired Gaute Godager (old GD). This work is more or less completed now. See 1)

4) Funcom says stuff all the time and as a company you cannot trust them. They have lied too much. However they make great games. "love the game, hate the company". This can be proven by TLJ and AO who have been played by millions and are still good games. I would have appreciated if the negative posters here could se the difference between the game and the company, but that i am afraid is asking for too much.

The game has stable performance in most areas in the DX9 client. DX10 cuts your performance in half and for most players will probably be unacceptable. If it was only 15-25% I could see the reason for it but its just not up to par. Sieges are still prone to crashing. Raids, well still laggy. Grouping is still poor grouping.

AOC did have one of the best launches, it was what happned after launch, their marketing and their actual reality of implementation were two different dimensions. Firing Godager really did little to improve the game, sure it had to be done, but don't tell me Craig has been the 2nd coming of Christ for AOC cause it is not true. He has born more responsibility than Godager for the state of the game and has done less than Godager probably did over his tenure to improve it.

Funcom is a lying pile of shit company and AOC is their product, they also have not redeemed themselves whatsoever. AOC needs another year in development and under the direction of a project manager that is interested in holding his team to account on what the community wants for features and what direction the community wants the game to go in, not what they think will be good. AOC has missed the ball at every opporunity and Funcom manages to fuck up just about everything they do with it from billing, customers service, to the prioritization of what to fix, when and how to do it. Vetern rewards are another issue which remains unresolved. I just don't want to hear anybody talking about how AOC is competitive or there is some magic return of players staring in December because that's bull cocky.

Thank you for confirming my points even if you put it in other words than I do

1) Game works fine. Current known problems. DX10, Raiding and Sieging. (Two last will probably be fixed in 1.06).

2) I will correct myself and agree that they had a great launch but a terrible time immediately after. No disagreement

3) Funcom lies through their teeth. No disagreement there. 

4) There is no magical growth of playerbase, no disagreement. You also do not deny that they have had a pretty slow, but steady growth theese last 6+ months.  This is ofcourse due to item no 1) - bringing us back to "Game works fine"

Originally posted by Aceundor

4) There is no magical growth of playerbase, no disagreement. You also do not deny that they have had a pretty slow, but steady growth theese last 6+ months.  This is ofcourse due to item no 1) - bringing us back to "Game works fine"

I wouldn't say there has been slow and steady growth, there has been 4 (well more than that probably, 6 perhaps) months of a similar ammount of people joining to leaving, then a large increase in people perhaps as much as 30% over a short period of a couple of weeks and now slowly they have been losing more than have joined since then. Shortly I'd expect them to be back to parity again of losing a similar ammount to they are bringing in. Then in a months time they will start to lose people to Aion etc.

All of this was predictable without x-fire though I belive xfire shows something very similar to what I've described.

Funcom certainly did well to stop the rot and the win back programme went pretty well I think, but the current population is as high as it's ever going to get (unless the expansion is amazing)

I would expect that the win back programme was expensive though and I've been seeing AoC advertising everywhere which must cost alot, while it's been good for the games population I'm not sure how much of it will translate to the bottom line.

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Aceundor

4) There is no magical growth of playerbase, no disagreement. You also do not deny that they have had a pretty slow, but steady growth theese last 6+ months.  This is ofcourse due to item no 1) - bringing us back to "Game works fine"

 

I wouldn't say there has been slow and steady growth, there has been 4 (well more than that probably, 6 perhaps) months of a similar ammount of people joining to leaving, then a large increase in people perhaps as much as 30% over a short period of a couple of weeks and now slowly they have been losing more than have joined since then. Shortly I'd expect them to be back to parity again of losing a similar ammount to they are bringing in. Then in a months time they will start to lose people to Aion etc.

All of this was predictable without x-fire though I belive xfire shows something very similar to what I've described.

Funcom certainly did well to stop the rot and the win back programme went pretty well I think, but the current population is as high as it's ever going to get (unless the expansion is amazing)

I would expect that the win back programme was expensive though and I've been seeing AoC advertising everywhere which must cost alot, while it's been good for the games population I'm not sure how much of it will translate to the bottom line.

 

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback)
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.)
 

What does the number of xfire players in those same time periods show? 

I'd asume with an increase in hours would mean an increase in number of xfire players, but that isn't a given truth.   That is to say hours played can increase for a variety of reason with population growth being one possibility, but not the only explanation.

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Aceundor

4) There is no magical growth of playerbase, no disagreement. You also do not deny that they have had a pretty slow, but steady growth theese last 6+ months.  This is ofcourse due to item no 1) - bringing us back to "Game works fine"

 

I wouldn't say there has been slow and steady growth, there has been 4 (well more than that probably, 6 perhaps) months of a similar ammount of people joining to leaving, then a large increase in people perhaps as much as 30% over a short period of a couple of weeks and now slowly they have been losing more than have joined since then. Shortly I'd expect them to be back to parity again of losing a similar ammount to they are bringing in. Then in a months time they will start to lose people to Aion etc.

All of this was predictable without x-fire though I belive xfire shows something very similar to what I've described.

Funcom certainly did well to stop the rot and the win back programme went pretty well I think, but the current population is as high as it's ever going to get (unless the expansion is amazing)

I would expect that the win back programme was expensive though and I've been seeing AoC advertising everywhere which must cost alot, while it's been good for the games population I'm not sure how much of it will translate to the bottom line.

 

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback)
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.)
 

 

That might show growth but the fact you have missed out march, april, may and 95% of june suggests someone being economical with the truth and trying to spin the numbers. your june is during free trials.

Originally posted by Aceundor

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback) correction 9430
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.) correction 6426
 

 

dunno where you got those numbers but the ones for july 9th and 09August that you quoted are way off  according to the numbers I get on the XFire site

Anyway was there a patch or something yesterday because it was down to #49

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Aceundor

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback) correction 9430
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.) correction 6426
 

 

dunno where you got those numbers but the ones for july 9th and 09August that you quoted are way off  according to the numbers I get on the XFire site

Anyway was there a patch or something yesterday because it was down to #49

The xfire numbers suddunly changed dramatically, I've no idea what that means, they have corrected the graph and taken a few thousand off each day for the last few weeks. Is it bugged now? or was it bugged before? something dodgy has happened to the numbers.
 

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Aceundor

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback) correction 9430
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.) correction 6426
 

 

dunno where you got those numbers but the ones for july 9th and 09August that you quoted are way off  according to the numbers I get on the XFire site

Anyway was there a patch or something yesterday because it was down to #49

The xfire numbers suddunly changed dramatically, I've no idea what that means, they have corrected the graph and taken a few thousand off each day for the last few weeks. Is it bugged now? or was it bugged before? something dodgy has happened to the numbers.
 

That is correct Noggy, the xfire figures suddenly changed for all the games I am following. WAR, WOW and AoC. There is a thread on xfire about it, but no answer from their staff as far as I can seen

http://www.xfire.com/xf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=238015

This actually makes it even harder to use xfire as a tool for measurement since you cannot know whether the figures will change suddenly, by accident, or any other reason..

Alexa.com ftw

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Aceundor

These are xfire figures, hours played on sundays since last year december, you tell me if it shows growth or not. :) However as OP has pointend out xfire figures may not be worth sh...t.  Last year when it showed decline all us fanbois were telling how it dindt work, while the haters were using it to prove decline though. 

X-fire for AoC (sundays):
07. des 08: 4819
04. jan 09: 5768
25. jan 09: 6853
22. feb 09: 7691
28. jun 09: 8359
19. jul 09:11227 (middle of winback) correction 9430
09. aug 09: 9225 (winback over.) correction 6426
 

 

dunno where you got those numbers but the ones for july 9th and 09August that you quoted are way off  according to the numbers I get on the XFire site

Anyway was there a patch or something yesterday because it was down to #49

The xfire numbers suddunly changed dramatically, I've no idea what that means, they have corrected the graph and taken a few thousand off each day for the last few weeks. Is it bugged now? or was it bugged before? something dodgy has happened to the numbers.
 

 

That is correct Noggy, the xfire figures suddenly changed for all the games I am following. WAR, WOW and AoC. There is a thread on xfire about it, but no answer from their staff as far as I can seen

http://www.xfire.com/xf/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=238015

This actually makes it even harder to use xfire as a tool for measurement since you cannot know whether the figures will change suddenly, by accident, or any other reason..

Alexa.com ftw

Nah the thing that sucks about the graph is it is calculated by hours, the daily number is calculated by minutes. However, the IMPORTANT number is really X fire users per day for that you need to just check the site. Another imprtant thing on Xfire is the ranking which does calculate the hours and AoC is usually pretty steady in the 40s when they are not giving away free time.

AoC.com doesn't require a subscription to goto but that site is way way down on traffic as well.