I don't see a closed-knit community as a bad thing, not matter the size of the population.

The problem I see is how to acieve it? Someone mentioned FFXI. Just because it forced you into grouping didn't make that more enjoyable to be in because it was easier for you to be with like-minded people.

Every mmo dev out there wishes for their game's community to be friendly, tight, and care-free.

I'd also like to win the lottery...

Even way back in EQ1 days, you found all sorts of players, those liked, hated, easily forgotten. Because you hung around those you liked and remembered does not indicate the % of those you disliked being there also, and they were.

You can't expect a game to  change a community, and a community can only change if the participants actively partake in that change. Small can be better, and if a company is willing to sacrifice income from a lower population server, then it had better make sure the game is enjoyable and accessible for all lvls to play.

-my two cents  

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by finaticd

Funcom is once again spining the truth but I don't think Funcom knows  what to do next.

 

 have a hard time believing that Funcom knows how bad their game is as they probably never played it but I know for sure Funcom knows how bad the game is doing so they should know better than to spin that stuff.  ALso, Funcom for reasons unknown to mankind, can't  the quality of AoC, but they can fix other stuff like merge servers. If people are on dead servers in a dying game they are likely to quit and since 3 of 4 players stoped playing in the lastfew months and servers were already empty 3 months ago.....can they really aford for anyone to quit?

 

The lack of care is great,,,,after the expansion fails don't bet on server mergers bet on server closures ;p

 

 

 

 

That made me laugh thanks. Comes across like a 5 yr old telling his teacher the "other kid did this and did this and did that and so I am righ nur nur"

Make believe...

The only parts that makes sense in my eyes, I'll reply to. That is if people are on a dead server then either they will re-roll or quit so either way just like the majority of mmo's out there. 2nd part is - for the last 14 months you have been saying fail and the game is still here.

If the only rebuttle  you can make is a personal attack then I Thank you for supporting my statement.  DX 10 on box,  free lvl 50 for trying again, with no fine print,  The 4 PvP promises that did not make it in game, Funcom released a beta version of a game and used many methods to push sales.

As the  "age of conan advocate" you post all this positive information about AoC and month after month the population has went down and patches have disappointed the playerbase by being slow and lacing substance and after a year of these supposed miracle patches a lot of people are convinced to retry the game and that laugh all the way to the cancelation screen ;p

So the good news is I have been correct much more often then Funcom and I don't intentionaly try to mislead new players, I don't have to...this game drives away people for being poorly designed and boring.  The server populations and financial reports, which we now to be a low number and always a shrinking number back me up every time.

With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

Funcom should just turn this game into a F2P game with a cash shop and be done with it. The game will never attract enough people to have the MMORPG feeling.

What it has is pretty gfx and thats it. So dump the subscription model and turn it into a multiplayer game, rather than a massively multiplayer game, and be done with it. The heavy instancing and fragmented world, probably due to their heavy GFX engine not suitable for an MMORPG, already has that effect on the game anyway.

AoC is a failure. Admit defeat and move one, best thing Funcom can do.

Originally posted by Xerith

Originally posted by ste2000

This smell bullshit.

AoC has been built to be the WoW killer, not to have a tight smaller community.
So lets not change the rules now.
The reason why AoC is not a WoW killer is mainly because Funcom doesn't give a shit about the comunity.

Funcom released a game half done (until lvl 20), with no PvP rules, sieges not working, no PvE after lvl 20, client crushing every half an hour or so, just to mention few issues.
But worse of all, you lied to your customers (unforgiveable)
All the community in Beta said you should have waited few more months before releasing that lump of pixels............but what do we know.

Famine........can you tell your friends at Funcom that AoC should have been like the Tortage bit (all of it), not just the first 20 lvl.
After 2 years they still don't get it.
You had an original idea but didn't take advantage (the storyline thingy).......now Bioware stole it from you and they gonna get the rewards.
Shame.

You are still in time though, that is if the developers finally wake up and pull their heads off their arse.
Without the storyline element throughout the whole game, AoC will always be an average game, no matter how much crap you add to it.

If I had the same experience of Tortage throughout the whole game, I would come back to AoC.
Until then it is just a waste of time whatever you do, I am afraid.

 

 

I actually feel the opposite about this, and if I may be so bold, so does a large portion of the community that is playing. A huge complaint on the AoC boards and a request that has been asked for time and again is the ability to completely skip Tortage on your alts and have a level 20 character from the onset.

I respect your view...............but you are one of those few who like the game as it is.
I was talking about the other 70% who left already.

I understand that repeating the same storyline in tortage can be annoying if you reroll often, but my theory was that the whole game should have been like Tortage............end game included, where new stories were addedd to keep the player entertained, so you didn't have to reroll 20 times because you get bored with the end game.

The point of MMORPGs is not to reroll a new character.........the more you reroll the more a MMORPG suxx, because it means the end game is kinda boring, and it shouldn't

Bioware SWTOR will show Funcom what AoC could have been if they actually finished the game with the same standards as the Tortage bit.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Originally posted by SirPaco

how can you not agree?

 

lol seriously, it's not like there is much room for debate.

 

A MMORPG needs to be populated, end of story. Otherwise, it's not a MMORPG.

 

I think the actual quote was has been floating around a while now. I remember reading it the first time and it was brought up here in 2007. Basically people kinda understood that they were trying to say that a close knit community is what they want to accomplish - I think it is worded wrong but I do "get" what is trying to be put across.

lol please, if you are getting what they are trying to put across, shed some light on my immature, impolite and ignorant soul :)

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

It's just damage control because they are losing subscriptions. They just lost mine because I went to Fallen Earth (btw Funcom go see how crafting is done in Fallen Earth and take notes).

Everyone knows it's high subscription numbers that keep MMO's alive and fun. This "close knit community" might sound good on theory but in reality it sucks because you can't find groups and have to solo all the content.

Yeah when AOC has has a downward slope since release and a year later 3 of 4 people stop playing within a couple of months...they need some damage control.

Tyranny is  the most populated and those on that server point out there are not enough players. so after the low quality game drove many away I can see the low populations driving the last few fans off.

Also, when it comes to the expansion....I wouldn't expect many players new or old to start playing AoC do to the state of this game atm.  People have to buy a box from Funcom and people remember the last time that happened, 20% of what is stated will likely make it into the game but there is no substance to this expansion anyway.

the thing is, even if people DO come back for the pvp patch for instance, or the expansion, do they actually have the hardware to handle it?

Recent patch made many people come online, guess what happened? Zones crashing and huge lags...

---

Originally posted by Agricola1
With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

---

Originally posted by Agricola1

With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

You and Yamota both hit the nail on the head about this game.  The design is not a desirable one on too many levels for as many people as they hoped to like this game.  And add to that the features that have not and may never get fixed and you have a sure recipe for a F2P game.

It's no coincidence folks that the last mmo this company put out went that way.  I just wonder when people will realize that to this point this company does not have a handle on making good mmo's atleast out of the gate.

Right now the thing I think that hurt this game the most is marketing.  It's just incompetent to have the huge amount of marketing for a game as broke and unentertaining as they put out.  And from that there are going to be either intelligent or paranoid people (depending on your point of view) out there who will learn not to trust your word.

I tend to think those people are intelligent because if you can spend ten million on al the hype we saw I'd think common sense tells you it's better to spend that entire ten million to make sure your game is fun and stable from the start since that is the only thing that can make you money.

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

It seems pretty ridiculous to me that Funcom was bragging about high sub numbers at launch, then went silent when sub numbers started to drop, and now that sub numbers are very low they say: "This is what we wanted all along".

I mean does anyone here actually believe that statement?

When did they recently say "this is what we wanted all along?" if your talking about the FAQ which was wrote pre-release then you are mistaken.

here yo go mister amazing

I think that more accurate to say we want a tight community rather than low population, I personally enjoy seeing players I know or have played with while I am on. In the end having a "smaller" server lets players feel a little more connected and gives each server its own identity.

check OP

Originally posted by SirPaco

here yo go mister amazing

 I think that more accurate to say we want a tight community rather than low population, I personally enjoy seeing players I know or have played with while I am on. In the end having a "smaller" server lets players feel a little more connected and gives each server its own identity.

 check OP

Here you go SirPaco, read the paragraph a little more closely in your own quote.  A TIGHT community is different from LOW population.

 "I think that more accurate to say we want a tight community rather than low population"

Here we have the OP stating plainly that he prefers to see people he knows and has played with before, and this quote is being taken out of context.  A TIGHT community could mean a small group of players that know each other or a large group that works together in epic scale.  It is a bit of a stretch, but so is saying that a game developer is happier with only a few players on their server, which is ludicrous at best.  Probably the most accurate message to read between the lines is that the OP suffers from a very bad case of "FOOT IN MOUTH DISEASE" and will, from this point forward, not post when he is tired and read his posts several times before hitting the SEND button.