Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Like I said, interacting team skills and combos aren't seen that often in most MMO's, very rarely actually.

 

 

Yeah lots of games have them, EQ2 had chains for team synergy, WoW has buff/debuff synergy with many spells...if I see a mage or lock cast this I will cast this and if he casts that i will cast that.  So yeah buff and debuff and vulnerability has been done since EQ1.  In WoW mages would cast stuff to stack a DoT and in a raid whenever it got to 5 they would compete to blow up the stacked dots for damage, locks would do the same. 

It's not the same as it'll be used in TSW, where additional effects are added based upon the effects that other skills have. What you're describing is just teamwork where a debuff just means you can hit the mob harder with your attacks, not spells whose effects interact with eachother in all kinds of ways. I haven't encountered in another MMO that if you nuke a mob and left it in a burning state, that another teammember can cause an AoE knockdown based purely on the result your skill own skill had.

 

GW was developed by ANet, NCSoft is merely the publisher, and this is ANet's first true AAA title. GW and TSW are different games, besides you're not making sense, you might as well say, 'why would a player play another themepark MMO if they can just play WoW for that?' or 'why would a player want to play an MMO for faction pvp if they can play EVE that does it so much better?'

Apparently a lot of players do like to play different games that may have some of the same game mechanics. It's called variety and choice in MMO's.

EDIT: I resent you comparing TSW to vampire mascarade as vampire was a pretty good RPG and this seems to be just another faction grind MMO, it just isn't free to play.  Actually, if consider the billion FTP MMOs faction grind in fantasy lite setting has been done many times. Some of the FTP MMOs even tried to things like Vampire but being low budget like TSW cuts into development.

NCsoft owns ANet so they are the same and NCsoft has a major impact on development much like bungie and MSoft used to.  Once again Edios is publishing a Funcom title so it will be much the same releationship.

  
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Heroic_Opportunities

are group synergy skills...but i mention buffing and debuffing because it is important in all other MMOs and most have a class role that specializes in it, but AoC was pretty much the only MMO ever to neglect it.  But the same crew who couldn't figure out teamwork healing or buffing/debuffing skills is unlikely to revolutionize group synergy.

Secondly, variation is very important but the only game play variation AoC had was the combo/shielding/stamina system and that system was developed very poorly.  First it was overhauled just prior to release to make it simplified, then active blocking was removed entirly to balance casters who relied on mana, then it was simplified once again but it is easy to see that the combo system was not fleshed out and three years later resembles an alpha build.  Examples: 3 second combos when most combos from a class will end in one direction so shielding is easy to do and players can't tell what shields the other player has up.  combos can be skipped which is a bug. male and female combo skiping is diffrent giving advantage to male PCs.  The system relies on chugging consumables or pots of stamina and health regen which is available in the Funcom store for the real life low price of $9.99 USD. And many others.  Guild wars and Aion are very popular because their combat systems work well do to being developed well, and those systems don't contradics gameplay like the AoC combo system.

Also, I saw that a developer stated they learned from AoC's lack of content at release....three years later AoC has less content than most day 1 MMOs, in order to resolve that they added grinding faction quests and called it end game. So since they seem to have issue creating raid bosses, will the bulk of the "content" be solo maybe a little group faction grinds?  All MMOs have them but none aside from FTP base the entire end-game experience on them.  We also know Funcom's idea of PvP is tradeskill gathering from rocks and trees so that isn't variation that players like.

Oh well, the lead developer is diffrent but the guys under him are all from AoC and the engine is the same as AoC, if it was a fighter game like tekken, street fighter, or dead or alive series one guy could make a difrence but in an MMO there is to much going on and AoC had two diffrent developers leading the same crew working on TSW in two diffrent directions and the quality of gameplay remained constant at an all time low in the MMO genre.

@mastersomrat, it may have a crafting system but that is about it because crafting takes a lot of work to develop the gathering and producing and then balancing it with other items, Funcom will likely put in a watereddown crafting system just to say that it is in the game like warhammer, and age of conan did, which interestingly also kills the ingame ecconomy.

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Like I said, interacting team skills and combos aren't seen that often in most MMO's, very rarely actually.

 

 

Yeah lots of games have them, EQ2 had chains for team synergy, WoW has buff/debuff synergy with many spells...if I see a mage or lock cast this I will cast this and if he casts that i will cast that.  So yeah buff and debuff and vulnerability has been done since EQ1.  In WoW mages would cast stuff to stack a DoT and in a raid whenever it got to 5 they would compete to blow up the stacked dots for damage, locks would do the same. 

IDK, AoC didn't have any buffs or debuffs or anything on par with AAA mmos so hard to tell what it will be like.  However, I can say with certainty that since there are no levels if any character can get anyskills that want, then PvP will be 100% broken as guildwars had class templates and let you pick two and then the major restriction was skill slots and all PvP toon could start at lvl 20 and gear is non enhancing...but the system was well done do to recharge time, up keep, and it was devised by NCSOFT a company that makes AAA titles.  The biggest draw of guildwars is the arenas and there are frequent balance updates to make skills balanced, used, and not overpowered.  Funcom is an AA producer now, but even if they do the right thing and copy and paste guildwar's model...1) why wouldn't a player just play guildwars for PvP then and 2) it is doubtful even if there are balance updates it wont actually balance anything...AoC was stated to be a PvP game and the only balance changes over 3 years were: melees dominated - gem nerf - casters dominated - stamina nerf - melees dominated - random ranger buff - 70 % of players on PvP server have been playing rangers for a while.

and PvE will be 100% generic and watered down because the people who min max and get all broken skills will always find PvE to easy, but they have to make it very middle of the road do to not having well defined classes otherwise the mobs will do to much damage and groups will be without a healer or there will be to many adds and groups without crowed control or they will hit to hard and the group wont have a tank. Most MMO group content does all three but it is balanced on classes and gear.  In DDO you can cross class but unless you are a healer, more than 3 levels will gimp you because the content is hard. 

Originally posted by eyelolled

I have more faith in Funcom being able to deliver then I do for there actually being enough gamers that are interested in conspiracy stuff.  I am starting to beleive that the majority of mmo gamers just don't have the mental acuity for figuring out complex puzzles. Sure there may very well be a few, but not enough to support a title. 

Since Funcom has yet to deliver on anything MMO related in 10 years, that is saying a lot.  However, MMO players tackle puzzles all the time, what do you think end-game raid bosses are?  Even the tank and spank bosses in a well developed game require, coordination of healers, tanks, dps, positioning, gimick stuff...is why most guilds struggle. 

Now if you are talking puzzles, like what? Funcom wouldn't put in complex puzzles to a game, they are working to apeal to as broad an audience as possible after losing 45 million from producing AoC and ROTGS and those games were generic enough to apeal to a broad audience. 

Puzzles are in a lot of RPGs though and those get played way more than TSW will, Deamon souls had some, lots of Final fantasys have side puzzles, pretty much anything from square equnix will have them as side missions. Fall out 3 had a bunch as side missions, and many more.   Actually, now that I think about it, EQ I had http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=1291 and WoW had http://www.wowwiki.com/Gates_of_Ahn%27Qiraj those quests where popular, required a lot of figuring stuff out, Aion and EQ 2 had stuff like that too.  AoC didn't have anything involved aside from the lineage quests that was easy and every few levels a pop up would tell you where to go. 

I hope the OP enjoys the game, just don't expect much quality or quantity from Funcom as AoC has zero of the original crew working on that game...it only has a few guys in canada now, so most likely the ones that didn't get let go got transfered to this AND the game has the same engine so development of content is just slow compared to all other MMOs.

[Mod Edit]

Expansion released with two buggy bosses so the last raiding update is aproaching two years with no new raids on the horizon so how many guilds and players would stick around to kill the same bosses for two years? Expansion released almost a year ago and so many players left since do to utter bordom. so yeah the quality is lacking. The graphics are OK, kind of bland and generic and lacking diversity compared to single player games or aion but the poly count is high, the game engine that drives those graphics is horrible and causes rigid animations and issues when player numbers were high, hence instancing so graphics are good, game play is horrible is a PvE issue.

From launch until the expansion pretty much all resources where tied up in the expansion, T2, and the 3 of 4 zones released in between where done pre release and polished after. And the expansion was obviously lacking a lot for many players. After the expansion  the development team gets pulled soyeah if they add 3 developers in Canada they might be able to patch out most the bugs by the year 3000 but not much in terms of content.

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Amazing Avery gl, but it is not profitable, just positive cashflow...they actually wrote off 3m for this game in the last quarterly and said it was do to players leaving. Yeah it will make more than lose monthly because residual subscribers after expansion, 6 mos 1 year subs waiting to expire AND they are running aoc w/o developers But if current trends continue it wont be for long. but AoC lost at least 40million for the company sofar....positive cash flow for AoC is a bad thing for players as it means much much less new content development compared to the non existant content development outside the expansion in 3 years and it isnt like a new expansion will be developed likely ever. I know AO had one after failing so often but the costs back then compared to today are diffrent, Positive cash flow from AoC does not mean the company can stay in business as AoC isn't covering the development of TSW and if TSW loses 40 million like AoC, it will close down, as Funcom doesn't have a printing press....but the bad thing is TSW uses the same game engine.

 you are probably right about the AoC tie in, and it might move some boxes but I doubt that type of movie will, it isn't based a real epic series like star wars, heck even star trek MMO has more players now so maybe it will. However, those players will buy the two dollar age of conan box and get thefree month and then what? Also since the population is going down rapidly it seems the bump probably wont bring them up to near todays numbers, less free trial and we both saw how there is a two week spike then it goes below where it was.

It's been fun but I'm out, the development cycle moves way to slowly for me to care about this title, After AO, Conan, Godslayer failures, maybe Funcom will learn and do well with TSW...but is based on the same game engine as the others. If you like the game, that is fine, but when compared to other MMOs it is lacking on core things like fun stuff to do to advance your character, imo.

Funcom seems to have abandoned AoC the day after the expansion launched and since there hasn't been anything released aside from a TSW ported engine in almost a year and that was most likely for a stress test and to keep the game engine designers on staff unti TSW launch as engine designers don't make content.  The company stated AoC is doing so poorly that quoting the first content page of the latest quarterly, see my sig, can get an infraction do to negative information.  PvE games don't add only 2 broken raid bosses in almost 2 years and the one PvPer still playing,  is still waiting for that promised PvP focus, from almost two years ago and delayed till after the expansion, rerolling to a release server ruleset is not PvP focus.

In summary, after 3 years, End game raids are about two years old, PvP is all about farming rocks and trees solo in empty zones for gear,  Crafting is very poorly concieved, there is no ecconomy, do to free levels and characters and low populations a new player would have to solo grind 80 levels.  The only end game is faction grinding, which is so boring and drawn out, this game isn't doing well as free to play in Korea....the country known for its love of grinding.  Servers need another round of mergers but once again Funcom takes its time. Customer service and GMs can take days to reply. Classes are utterly unbalanced which will be highlighted if the PvP server comes out that doesn't have guards all over and mob loot from players....tracking and invis and borken rangers anyone?

The good news? Conan has a positive cash flow! The bad news? that can easily be produced by removing all the developers. Cash flow is revenue from AoC vs cost for AoC per three month period, so it considers that 40 million USD and the recent 4 million a sunk costs and ignores it.

Anyways, what a year it has been from: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2925894&postcount=12

------------------------------------------

May 11, 2010 brought us the Xpac.

May 12 - Nov 30 brought another 14 patches that dealt with bug fixes and other minor fixes to game. Absolutely no new content was delivered to the game during this period other than horse racing, freeze tag and that other "worthless" guild stuff hardly no one uses. So basically no content that any "reasonable" player would consider an improvement to the game.

December 14th brought us the CoJS 12v12 mini game and the PuG que but also took away the ability to PVP with friends in an MMO (removal of premade que).

December 20 - January 18, 2011 brought no new content and just bug and class fixes.

The Dreamworld patch finally made it in on March 8, 2011.



So from May 12th 2010 till March 7, 2011, all that was added to the game content wise was a single mini map, horse racing, freeze tag and an insult contest. 10 months delivered a single mini map and worthless guild stuff that any intern could of coded in for free.

Now we are 2 months away from the 3rd anniversary of this games launch and what new content is ready to be released? What has the last 10 months of paying FUNCOM a monthly subscription fee that is supposed to go towards adding content to AoC done for AoC?

Was holding all content development for 10 months other than a single mini map a good plan on the scheme of things? Wouldn't you folks rather of received some actual content added to the game instead of better lighting, textures and graphics (with jagged edges because they couldn't even get AA to work in 2011)?

T4 raiding was released 10 months ago and the whopping 2 bosses included with it are still impossible to kill. The Khati grind was known back in Beta testing to be insane an in need of drastic repair but 10 months has past and almost nothing has been done to fix it. The ranger revamp was released on June 30th, 2010 and the class has yet to be balanced (Rangers make up about 33% to 50% of the level 80 PVP population on both Tyranny and Cimmeria- mini games-). Ironic: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/306150/Current-ranger-combat-is-how-combat-should-have-been-from-launch.html

A major PVP update was promised by the Game Director (Craig) after the Xpac and all we received was a single mini map. 10 months since the Xpac that contained absolutely zero PVP additions to the game.

A few more months will pass and we will be on the games 3rd anniversary and instead of actually fixing PVP, they are just going to add in a new ruleset server that takes AoC back to how it was at release, no Bori, No Guards (release had a few green guards that you could just ignore), no Criminal system.


But yes, the Dreamworld update was a great idea. taking 10 months off from production so FUNCOM could test out TSW's new game engine on a Live client (AoC) was defiantly a great move for increasing the amount of players in AoC. I have never seen the game more dead.

I also cant wait for that next "major" PVP content update. I bet it makes it in during 2012 as I dont see this fail dev team being able to pull anything together over the next 8 months with them having to fix all of the Deamworld blunders.

Originally posted by chopstix906

The US servers are similar. If you're looking for a PvE server, like Wicanna, then you're in luck. It's thriving. If you're a pvp person, then I'm sorry to say you're out of luck. Cimmeria has a decent population but Tyranny (my server =/) is a ghost town. PvP for the game in general is not that great because the game Director insists on ignoring their pvp player base. I wouldn't completely ignore the game, though, because it is very promising.

The PvE servers are also having population issues.  The expansion released two buggy bosses and called it tier 4 and nothing since, so PvE players have been leaving en mass since the expansion, PvPers already left but i do miss those monthly posts by craig saying that pvp is going to get addressed and farming rocks and trees for honor points and PvP gear was working well.    Dang it has been a long wait for pvp stuff.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2920605&postcount=4

Wicanna is like a ghost town now. Population has been halved in the last month.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2920608&postcount=5

Set is the same way. Prolly a bit worse off than Wiccana.

Originally posted by Thillian

 

 WoW is an open world? Now, that's a novel opinion.

 

In the new expansion, a new tradeskill was added, archeology... I have been leveling it up and I just did levels 1-85 in the last month but  I have been leveling archeology exclusively on the eastern kingdom, which is just half of the day 1 release content.   Archeology tradskill makes me ride my 320% speed flying mount all over that continent  and I never see load screens.   That area is bigger than all of AoC release + whatever was added + expansion + group and raid  instances....then WoW had another continent + TBC continent + TWOTLK continent + the new expansion areas.

 It is measured some place so look it up and compare but is easy to see that you have never played warcraft as you would know better.

Having said that, AoC is not a PvP game at all, you can roll on a PvP server but all the PvPers left dbecause they are not going to mine/farm rocks and trees, which should be a tradeskill, for 100s of hours for the best PvP gear.  And AoC's pretty much ignored tradeskills.

Originally posted by nihce

Originally posted by Johnsavant

Originally posted by nihce

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by TheMinn

Both AoC and Aion have come such a long ways. Both MMOs are above "good" and are a ton of fun. The issue at hand is both MMOs really burned players at launch, whether it be the company or just the game in itself. Because of that, and this is my opinion, players just don't want to return and would much rather continue to speak negative of the game(s) when they do not play it in its current state. I play Aion. I like AoC but Aion suits me more. There will always be trolls in life, no matter what.  Both MMOs are still safe and secure (especially Aion due to its popularity in Asia) and I don't see them going anywhere anytime soon. Don't worry about what people think because WoW has 12+ million and is always trash talked. You cannot convince a person to stop hating something, it is up to them. I have been tempted to go back to AoC but I like to stick to one MMO.

Aion has always done very well and always had a solid playerbase.  Warhammer is a lot like AoC, warhammer didn't add anything much since launch and today it has a similar pop to AoC.

The OP loves doing 1 instance over and over with his guild, which is fine..but wow's heroics and raid instances are much harder and better scripted than AoC's so boss mechanics and class mechanics are challenge apeal to more people than, well I don't get your childish critisism as I played AoC and it is no where near mature. I'm not sure but I would imagine there is or will be more raid content in cataclysm then AoC will ever have as every wow expansion has done that so far.

IDK why there would be haters, but a lot of people have been leaving AoC RECENTLY so maybe 1 in 3 or 4  still play that bought the expansion.   Though critisisms are prpetty easy, like you are raving about T3 but that has been out around a year and T4 is bugged and not much to it, with nothing new coming down the pipeline so slow development bores players.

Most of the end game revolves around repeatable quests or doing tradeskill gathering for the best PvP gear, which are both boring and very long compared to other grinds in other games.

I am leveling from 1- 85, 84 now in wow and they revamped 1-60 but wow has always had and cataclysm is no diffrent: way more places to level and quests to do per level.  way more grouping and with dungean finder it is easy to find groups from 15- 85 anywhere. Way more end game content, way more pvp content.  Beter rewards, more challengine content with Heroic instances and a reason to do them for better loot....are like 10 or so now. Faster development so there is already more stuff coming up, beter game mechanics.

Graphics are OK, but the real question is why would anyone play AoC with LOTRO, AION, GW1, GW2, and WoW, and KOTOR Online all soon to be on the market. Those are the games MMO players are playing so why not AoC if the T3 raid instance is good enough to keep a few people subscribed?

Finatic did you even play the expansion? Dude, practically everything you posted is wrong. 

a.) graphics are superior to anything in MMO market. Period. Don't believe me? Here are the awards the game won. 

b.)expansion introduced some very hard dungeons, practically on par with WoW ones. Admitabbly the development is slow, but within max few months new dungeons are being introduced. Even Levi crafting was reasonably hard (T2). 

T4 is not bugged anymore. Bosses are down. Might be it never was bugged, it could be that due to AoC being known as easy mode ... most of the best MMO players hasn't tried it since release and believe me now it is hard. 

(same goes for khitai dungeons on HM)

c.)Lotro is F2P, GW1 is free, and wow, well WoW is a religion. Good answer for you? AoC is hurting by its reputation from first year but that is about it. Sure, PVPers left, but they were not a large portion of playerbase since start (PVP has been neglected since start, mainly due to mass exodus of PVP players because of broken content while PVE players had T1 and later on T2 and T3 to play with)

Any proof tier 4 are not bugged anymore and people are clearing them? So far, I only found one German raiding guild beating tier 4 who have had extensive access to these TWO bosses in beta for months, so that's as elitist as it can be. On the Crom server forum the list for guilds that have downed tier 4 (ALL 2 bosses, yay) is still empty, but more and more are getting through tier 3. Even when it comes to PvE AoC is just way too slow to be taken seriously, it takes forever for the developers to release new raid bosses and another eternity to fix the bosses.

 

Ahh, Age of Conan, I'll most likely remember the folly that is this game even on my deathbed ... Haha, no more PvPing in White Sands Isle *kneeling over from laughter

Hey man. 

Well that was exactly what I was talking about. Khitai was supposed to be  challenge for the veterans. But truth be told AoC only shortly after release had elite players playing but they left because game was unfinished. It could be that current content is a bit to hard for average plyers. If I am not mistaken WoW to has bosses that are downed only by a few guilds for months. I mean, finatic  was talking about easy mode that AoC is - in fact, it has probably content tht is harder to beat than WoW one. If this is good or bad ... i don't know.

That sounds like it is bugged and just not made right,  I played the bugged T1 encounters at release and back then AoC had more developers and it took over a year of retuning to make them work properly but most the T1 bosses where Xploited in AoC.  The diffrence is WoW/EQ would  release dungeans with 12 + bosses and havemultiple raid instances and the last boss and maybe one other won't work right but those are usually blocked anyway.  The only one I remember in WoW was the last AQ boss and the day he was patched everyone downed it but the head developer said he was a progression block.

WoW or any other raiding game wouldn't last if they released an endgame expansion with only 2 bosses that were so bugged no one could down them without exploits .  They release tons of raid zones with tons of bosses if 1 or 2 are over tuned or just bugged is much diffrent.  Also, the reason it takes so long to down bsses is do to progression....guilds will kill boss A, then they need to learn and kill boss B, then move on to Boss C.  When there are 20-30 bosses it is much LONGER progression than 2 bosses.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

No one knows everything is just a guess. IMO it has a bit more than WAR.

Some people might look at Xfire for trending.

They are pretty similar atm but I don't remember seeing War add anything after that first zone and I read some of the newsleters they send me.

Per Xfire trending,  AoC had about 80-120k subscribers when it had 1000 users per day just before and after the expansion, now that AoC is in the 300s it probably has close to 20-40k subscribers/players.  Warhammer should be around that figure as well.

Originally posted by TheMinn

Both AoC and Aion have come such a long ways. Both MMOs are above "good" and are a ton of fun. The issue at hand is both MMOs really burned players at launch, whether it be the company or just the game in itself. Because of that, and this is my opinion, players just don't want to return and would much rather continue to speak negative of the game(s) when they do not play it in its current state. I play Aion. I like AoC but Aion suits me more. There will always be trolls in life, no matter what.  Both MMOs are still safe and secure (especially Aion due to its popularity in Asia) and I don't see them going anywhere anytime soon. Don't worry about what people think because WoW has 12+ million and is always trash talked. You cannot convince a person to stop hating something, it is up to them. I have been tempted to go back to AoC but I like to stick to one MMO.

Aion has always done very well and always had a solid playerbase.  Warhammer is a lot like AoC, warhammer didn't add anything much since launch and today it has a similar pop to AoC.

The OP loves doing 1 instance over and over with his guild, which is fine..but wow's heroics and raid instances are much harder and better scripted than AoC's so boss mechanics and class mechanics are challenge apeal to more people than, well I don't get your childish critisism as I played AoC and it is no where near mature. I'm not sure but I would imagine there is or will be more raid content in cataclysm then AoC will ever have as every wow expansion has done that so far.

IDK why there would be haters, but a lot of people have been leaving AoC RECENTLY so maybe 1 in 3 or 4  still play that bought the expansion.   Though critisisms are prpetty easy, like you are raving about T3 but that has been out around a year and T4 is bugged and not much to it, with nothing new coming down the pipeline so slow development bores players.

Most of the end game revolves around repeatable quests or doing tradeskill gathering for the best PvP gear, which are both boring and very long compared to other grinds in other games.

I am leveling from 1- 85, 84 now in wow and they revamped 1-60 but wow has always had and cataclysm is no diffrent: way more places to level and quests to do per level.  way more grouping and with dungean finder it is easy to find groups from 15- 85 anywhere. Way more end game content, way more pvp content.  Beter rewards, more challengine content with Heroic instances and a reason to do them for better loot....are like 10 or so now. Faster development so there is already more stuff coming up, beter game mechanics.

Graphics are OK, but the real question is why would anyone play AoC with LOTRO, AION, GW1, GW2, and WoW, and KOTOR Online all soon to be on the market. Those are the games MMO players are playing so why not AoC if the T3 raid instance is good enough to keep a few people subscribed?

Originally posted by Commanderelk

Hello Guys and Gals long time lurker here, Im a bit bad with posting my thoughts onto... well anything so please bare with me.So I have been looking for a new MMO to play for a while now and Age of Conan has cought my intrest  But I have a few questions and i hope some of ya can answer them

1. What kind of end game PvE is there? i have always perfered small group sized PvE (4-6man) and never really got along with large groups of people

They have a lot of small grp stuff for repeatable quest as end game is a huge faction grind atm.  But don't expect them to add much more as they don't add much and have developed slowly.

2.Is PvP relatively balanced?

PvP is mad neglected in this game, you get PvP gear from mining rocks without fighting anyone for hour and hours on end. The game director likes grinding rocks and trees but most PvPers don't.

5.What is your personal opinion of the game?

 

In case anyone was wondering what games i have played in the past heres a short list.

WoW(3years)

PoftBS (1year)

EvE (5months)

Aion(3Months)

EQ2 (2months)

and meny more for less then a month or just trials.

Thanks in advance for any replys.

You may love it but I played all those titles and you didn't like Aion or EQ2 and those games both have way more stuff to do and well I started EQ 2 after it was out a few years but it was more polished than AoC's expansion trial then.  Go ahead and play, but i doubt you will stay long do to your game history and a lot of people have been bailing on AoC ever since the expansion came out do to being bored of faction grind and no PvP stuff. But heck maybe you will play it for 5 years if it is up that long, who knows.

Originally posted by cyphers

This discussion is getting tiresome and sidetracking, and considering former debates you threw offtrack to vent your rants that often had nothing to do with the OP, maybe it's done by purpose. So I'm going to repeat it once again, slowly step by step, and then I leave it at that. If this time we still talk on two different tracks, then no further posts about the subject will make it any better. I for one don't feel inclined to move a thread further into derailment for people to go off on their personal rants and campaigns.

 

As said before, this is what it  was really about, your former comment:

for a 60m game you need to sell 5 million of copies on multiple platforms to do well and then sell map packs every few months to make a profit'

 

Now, taking it in slow steps:

- you are referring here to MMO games in general, not AoC specifically, but any MMO using that kind of budget

- basically you're saying that any such game need to sell 5 million on multiple platforms and sell map packs to do better than just break even

- I and others said that that statement was ludicrous, and flawed.

- There have been more MMO games that had a budget of 50+ million.

- None of these big budget AAA titles except WoW sold 5 milliion (or your 2nd figure 3.75 million) copies, and certainly not on multiple platforms.

- The Trion developers of Rift, that has a 50-100 million dollar budget mentioned that they would be profitable with a few 100k subs, they're certainly not aiming at selling 3.5 million+ copies.

- SWTOR developer Bioware, that uses a bigger budget than 60 million, is stated to need only 1 million subs and less to break even. None of these MMO companies, of current and upcoming ones, ever aimed at selling 3.75-5 million copies to do better than merely covering the costs.

- according to your statement, every single MMO company of a big budget AAA title would be liars when they said that they were profitable in the past, since according to your calculations every single one of them was suffering huge losses, since none of those big budget AAA MMO's except WoW reached that goal of 5 million copies.

- Heck, the companies of  upcoming MMO's with larger budgets than 60 million already stated that they need less to surpass break even point.

 

That's what I mentioned before in shorter posts. If you still want to maintain that statement of 50-60+ million budget MMO's needing to sell 5 million copies despite the evidence available in the MMO market, well, go ahead. I say that statement is ridiculous because of the reasons mentioned above. But I can't prevent people believing in the impossible, so feel free to do so.

I just brought up regular games to disprove that AoC made a ton of money on box sales which people mention over and over as fact when the opposite is true. Like how the OP assumtion that AoC made money by selling a lot when it reported heavy losses for the last two years and the four years before that so 6 total years even though it sold a million copies.

We know AoC didn't have enough sales and or subs to make any money, as they reported 6 years of heavy losses to the stockholders which own the company and that is bad news. It would be like telling a hypothetical boss instead of making 50 widgets, I broke 80 widgets. So as a fan you likely thought AoC retained about 100,000 subs for over two years and that was just enough money to declare 30m in losses and for the CFO to resign after year 1 so Rift shouldn't do what they did.

Yeah MMOs charge subs and how many you need to break-even is variable, with a 60,000,000 budget though, 100,000 subs will never do it.  You can calcualate it by using this easy formula and remember monthly operating costs and adjust      for inflation with the time-value-of money. 

Most MMOs don't do well, the number for an MMO is probablyaround 70,000 - 100,000 subs per 10million spent to break-even AND continue reasonable development.  So WoW, Aion, LOTRO, Runescape, EQ1, Eve, Guildwars is FTP but it had 5m sales and a much lower budget http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/15886-Guild_Wars_sales_reach_five_million maplestory and all those other games seem to be brought up by Funcom a lot so they likely do well too. At the end of the day most games lose money so MMOs are no exception, it is an investment risk. The diffrence is most games you can play and are done in a week but with MMOs you play a lot to build your toon and want the company to fix and make stuff which they can't if it doesn't make money. Heck a lot of games I played the developers went out of business afterwards, like titan quest's immortal throne.

Inconclusion,  AoC didn't have a combination of high enough sales and did not keep enough subscribers to make back the money it spent in development or after release so it lost money and that is why development is slow.   Warhammer, had a similar budget and 1m sales and always had similar population numbers and decided to do pretty much zero post release development do to development being a waste of money and a loss.

EDIT: where is this 100,000 subscribers for a 1m game quote? cause I'm pretty sure the board of directors would fire him the next day after a simple break-even calculation as that would never break even ever, unless they decide to sell all end game weapons and armor and levels for $50 a pop.

Originally posted by cyphers

Eh, dude, I don't know what you're replying upon, seems to me you're purposely avoiding the point. The point being that you said that 'for a 60m game you need to sell 5 million of copies on multiple platforms to do well and then sell map packs every few months to make a profit', a calculation that is so offbase and wrong that it becomes ridiculous, as everyone else would agree to.

 

To make a profit or break even it is simple math and correct, but I did some research and it is likely closer to 3 million to break-even if you develop and publish your own game that costs 60 m to develop (most games are no where near 60m and most of the time the publisher takes half of the developer's cut)...Before AoC went to bargin bin it was selling for $50 dollars like most games,  Xbox and PS3 games would sell for $50 but MS and Sony take $10 per box to make up for losing money on selling consoles and add it to retail price. 

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs

50 dollars point of sale price for a video game box.

"Wholesalers typically pay around $30 per game and with the costs of getting the goods to the wholesalers, any co-op advertising or marketing, and return of good contingencies being roughly $14 per game, the publisher is going to typically get $16 for every unit sold."

http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=1141&table=CONTENT

"SCi/Eidos is to publish the boxed product of ‘Age of Conan’ while Funcom retains digital distribution rights."

Remember AoC launched as retail only and remained that way for a long time so Eidos probably did pretty well and Funcom was expecting to have a ton of subscription revenue which didn't happen after the exodus. However, publishing is very risky and most lose money. So the $16 per box is split between the developer and publisher.

-----------------------

So if a developer self publishes, (Funcom got a publisher for release) and makes 100% of the publisher cut that is $16 per game and if they spent 60,000,000 developing a game, which is a figure that would exclude advertising but lets imagine all costs are 60,000,000 and development was $50,000,000

60,000,000/ $16 = 3,750,000 box sales to break even meaning no profit at all, which is bad.

---------

Now a few points: 

Most games are no where near 60m development costs, only AAA games that people know will do well or MMOs.

Companies can lose money or break even on an original title and make money by selling cheap map packs or a cheap expansion (that is why many sequals are bad as they spend a lot to introduce a game to market and then spend a fraction to cash in).

MMOs like age of conan have huge operating costs to keep servers running and keep customer support like GMs around that most games don't and they need to keep developing, like post release patches but they also have subscriptions. 

Map packs and subscriptions and digital downloads raise the revenue per customer by a lot, Funcom digitaly released the expansion and there is no figure on its development costs but it was 2 years time and 30 million out of 60 million was for upgrading the game engine so maybe 15m costs and in fantasy land they would get the full 30 per download, ignoring conan license and bandwith costs, but remember they asked for $3 dollars to cover the trial download price.

15,000,000 investment / $30 price = 500,000 sales to break even in fantasy land where you get  100% of price.

In fantasy land let's say they sold 100,000 expansions at $30

3,000,000 income and now they need subscription revenue from those 100,000 players, it didn't happen but imagine if the population was 100% stable after launch and didn't go down and people all pay the max 1 month reoccuring sub of 15 USD.

15,000,000 development costs - 3,000,000 income from 100,000 sales = 12m

12m / ($15 per month * 100,000 players) = 8 months

So they could break even in 8 months from a 15m expansion if opperating costs where zero after release which they are not and seem closer to 1m a month and if AoC does zero development and loses 100% of staff.  But those are as optomistic and positive as numbers can get and show why 100,000 is not enough for a 60m game, and earlier I showed why 1 million unit sales is not enough for a 60m game as companies never get 100% of sales.

Originally posted by cyphers

 

That doesn't make any sense at all, a good number of the AAA titles are 50 to 60 million dollars in development and despite them not selling 1 million+ boxes they've still been doing great financially. Heck, Rift is stated to have a 50-100 million dollar budget and they're on the record saying that a few 100k subs they'd already be satisfied with, while in your flawed calculations that'd mean they would already have huge financial losses. In your calculations all the AAA titles except World of Warcraft would be huge financial losses.

Still on your crusade, eh, even after what, 2 years now? Heh, funny. Ah well, everybody needs a hobby, I guess.

It is reality though, Funcom sold about a million boxes total and 900,000 of those where the first week. It would have been better if they direct downloaded the release but they didn't so there was no huge lumpsome payments, they made 8 million profit that following http://www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/Funcom_Q308_report_2912.pdfquarter but it wasn't some crazy figure that would cover the four straight years of heavy losses from developing AoC and in future quarters the revenues from subscriptions didn't cover quarterly operating or development of TSW and the expansion so they took losses while the population and revenue from AoC kept declining.  The profits from the expansion made the last two quarters profitable but it doesn't cover the losses from the last two and a half years. Not sure what you are implying but I doubt Funcom would be making up numbers for the financial reports as that is illegal. 

I can't imagine anyone saying 100,000 subs is good as it won't break-even and won't allow for future development. EQ1 had about 100,000 subs and had much less of a budget and charged the same subscription price as MMOs do today.  Warhammer got prety much all development pulled after going below 100,000 subs and even though warhammer has done nothing it has a similar population to AoC.

  300,000 steady subs plus racking out expansions would be fine as that worked well for LOTRO even before going FTP.  Aion has about 1,000,000 subs and does pretty well and got an expansion out pretty quick. 

Originally posted by pupurun

-WHY on Earth would Funcom strip AOC from it's developers?Wasn't this title making them a shitload of money at beginning?Over a 1.000.000 copies of the game sold at first 3 months .Do the math.Did the game develpment cost more than 40.000.000$. I doubt it....

 

The answer is easy, your statement is false about Funcom making a lot of money, it has always been the opposite, they lost a truckload of money....They lost well over 40 million so far according to their financial statements.

They spent around 60 million,and 4 years of development before release.  Box sales where good but Edios and retailers got most of that and for a 60m game you need to sell 5 million of copies on multiple platforms to do well and then sell map packs every few months to make a profit.  MMOs break-even and then make a profit based on subscribers so yeah if a few hundred thousand players stayed subscribed then it may have broke even.

I think it is strange that they pumped so many resources into an expansion instead of content updates, the expansion was good for marketing but it drove off many players, if those resources where frequent content updates then there would likely be way more players so way more development. Heck most people got the expansion for real cheap or free with a year sub, so they just wanted to keep people subscribed and frequent updates would do that.

if you ever played another MMO, remember farming rocks and trees to get tradeskill items, like mining gold mines in WoW?   In AoC you have to do that for well over 1000 hours to get the best PvP gear AND PvP rank, there is no PvP going on in those zons at all though.

BTW that is what Funcom considers guild PvP.

Originally posted by gordiflu

I am mainly a PVE-raider. I know AOC has a decent amount of raiding content, but I don't want to endure 18 more levels of super-boring questing just to find out that what's up there at high-end is equally boring.

Is the raiding content in this game good? And I mean really good, not just decent, becouse the rest of the stuff sucks quite a lot, tbh. Or should I cancel already?

IDK you may find it awesome and totaly worth it but you are already doing the end game.  AoC develops content slowly do to not much revenue from AoC so to prolong the game they added an expansion with repeatable PvE quests for the best gear, which will help the korean market, and also 2 bugged out raid bosses, but all raid content was released very buggy so they spend a lot of time to fix it. 

Not sure what raiding games you have played, but AoC does not have a decent amount of raiding content and they develop so slow it never will. The game is close to three years old. T1-T2 is pretty much from release, T3 is about a year old, T4 was from the expansion and not sure if they added anything but it was 2 bosses and is still buggy whatever. Basically, in most raiding games they would be releasing the volume of content today every 3 months.

 However, AoC's new end game might apeal to you as you enjoy pve and you get better gear than raiding.  Pretty much all the end game content added in the expansion is solo quest or instance runs for faction points and after crazy amount of hours, like well over 100 you get a top end piece of gear. If you want pvp gear you can go mine rocks for 1000s of hours for great PvP gear.

GL hitting level 80, like Jackd said, you don't even have to play the game, just buy a sub and you get a lot of free levels and will get more for christmas. If you don't like your class you get a free level 50 so You don't even have to play just free level boost your main or another class. Is win/win.

Originally posted by Lateris

2010-

1.) AoC is currently in the middle of upgrading the game engine which should be going to the test server soon. 

2.) AoC recently updated their Dev tools for creating new content and opened an office for AoC in Montreal, Canada.  

3.) 12 man pvp is on the test server. 

 

No word on a new EXP. NO word on future content.  

1 and 2)

Where already developed and added a while ago for The Secrete World per some financial report, as both games use the same game engine and now they are just porting it.  I would imagine most of the core staff will be working on TSW after AoC's expansion.  If TSW does resonably well maybe they can kick in some money for further development but it doesn't look like many at all are playing this anymore, which means much less money to do anything. Call me negative or whatever but the numbers today are way lower than I would have ever predicted.

3) IDk about 12 man pvp but since the game is 2 1/2 years old with no new pvp mini maps and or expansion pvp, then shrines of bori, and now 12 man, it seems as if only 1 part-time employee is working on PvP development a couple hours per week, but least he is employed.

Originally posted by Barteaux

The self proclaimed prophets cronic warnings of AoC's imminent collapse have been part of the mmorpg.com entertainment.

The coming of this doom and gloom never really came of anything.

 

That said, AoC is, one of the best mmo's I've ever played, but I have to admit that the botched launch and first 8 months after that was a bitter pill to swallow.

 

When it comes to numbers I believe that MMO Data is fairly close with it's 120k subs (excluding Korea), and the guy behind the site is even a self-proclaimed AoC-hater.

MMO Data  site looks reasonably correct.   pre expansion it was 75 k then around the expansion, which is the last data point it shot up to 120k.  However, the expansion brought the population to an all time low for some reason. so logically it must be way below 75,000 which if you like the game is great and hope you do enjoy it, but low numbers really slow down the pace and quality development and from now on there shouldn't be much to get hyped about aside from free to play, which would be a bad model for AoC, imo.

My best estimate going by that website is 30-50k total, because it must be lower than it's pre expansion all time low and there are many dead servers and most the rest are half-dead.  It doesn't do well in the USA but it does better in British and German servers all the other russia, france, polish servers are empty.  IDk bout Korea.

I know it was a hot fix and nothing special, and no idea what will be in the next patch...all I'm saying is Funcom and AoC need something pretty amazing pretty quick to keep people satisfied and happily busy for BOTH PvE players and even more so PvP players.

I played a bit but not following AoC so much anymore as not much is happening with it lately and is summer.