Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Guillermo197

 

Every MMO at the moment is losing subs. Even the GIANT of MMO's World of Warcraft is losing subs lately.

People are getting bored with the genre. There hasn't really been any inovation or really something new these last couple years.

Just the same ol' same ol' rehash of gameplay and mechanics we have for years already. Just in a different setting.

Not to mention that the quality of the latest MMO's the past couple years have been all that outstanding either.

All those people jumping from new MMO to new MMO to new MMO. Is already a clear sign that people are graving for something new.

Now AION has passed and people discovered it's a bot / RMT infested Asian grind game, all eyes are now fixed on STO and SW:TOR.

Wich probably won't bring anything new to the table either.  But we will see.

Cheers

It is not because Xfire stats show a loss in ALL games, that all those games loose subs...
 

BTW the loss is also showing in NON MMO's being played.

It just means that the Xfire samples are measured on another sample base. It could just be Xfire is used less in our world.

As long as the supposed references and ratios between ALL games (even non mmo's) stay the same, it shows the sampling mechanic changed, NOT always the absolute figures...

The ratio between the games didn't change, so that means nothing for the real number of subs behind it.

Only Aion stays an incredible manipulated game on Xfire (1.4 M supposed players at launch and still 700K now). All playing in half full ... 14NA/18EU servers. So horrible to see a rather valid sample being  manipulated by those Korean money (gold) grabbers. In reality Aion has around 200K subs (at the most) with a 65% loss in player activity over 7 weeks time.

So the answer is: ALL PC games are being played less OR Xfire is less used on ALL PC games and so show a lesser sample.

 That doesn't distract from you core message - which is simply true - The MORE mediocre launched products we will have, the MORE players will jump ship and simply STOP playing PC games. That is indeed a possibility I ALL warned you about.

In particular mmorpg.com with their unseen hype for even a Korean money grabber.

You can say all you want about AoC, at least they TRIED to have something original (known Lore, realistic graphs, non high fantasy, owned cities etc).

Problem - like always - was TIME and MONEY. See my post above ....

 

I absolutely agree on your views on xfire (i really dont beleive the PC gaming industry is falling). Xfire as a tool is no longer valid for estimations. The changes in players and hours played for all games I have followed is simply too appaling. For instance hours played in WOW has dropped from around 600k hours on a sunday to about 300K. I really dont beleive that WOW has lost 50% of its playerbase in the western world.. Xfire is flawed now more than ever. 

For my views on trends I now only see alexa.com as a sensible alternative. 

Originally posted by noggy1980

Originally posted by Aceundor

Good job Avery.

This isnt as bleak as I feard, after last quarter and Aion I thought it would be worse. 

Whats good is that the alternative sources of income, casual mmo, Korea and expansion are probably going to happen before summer. This, including the 35 mill in cash, means that AoC will live for a looong time and so will Funcom. 

This report tells us what I have said for a long time. AoC has stabelized its not growing and not really bleeding subs. There is a decline in income, but this does not mean a propotional reduction in subs. Reducing the price of the product will reduce the income, while maintaining a stable playerbases. 

 

 

It's not a good job he is wrong, and your it's stabilised is wrong too

funcom q209 report http://www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/Funcom_Q2_2009_report.pdf - Revenue 6,190

funcom q309 report http://www.funcom.com/funcom/frontend/files/CONTENT/Funcom_Q3_2009_report.pdf - Revenue 5,690

funcom q409 ??? - revenue predicted to be 4,000-5,000 both ends of that are a bigger drop in percentage and raw numbers than the Q2-Q3 drop.

In previous reports they suggested stabilisation despite the numbers suggesting otherwise, this time they havn't even tried to spin it and come out and said subscriber numbers fell. The fact they reduced the future value they belive they will get from aoc by 10 million says it all.

 

two reasons for stabilization that you ignore.

1) Trond Aas has stated that there will be absolutely no income from box sales in the next qyarter. Thereby reducing income. Explains the reduction in guidance you have talked about above as box sales and delayed income from box sales are in the figures above. 

2) Reduction in subscription fee  - also explains reduction in guidance above

Neither of these means reductions in number of Subscriptions. Numbers MAY be falling, but not as fast as you try to make people beleive. 

I was planning to play DF but after seeing the horrible cheating on the front page of MMORPG and reading that this is commonplace in the game I decided to save my money and more importantly, time. 

This who have started this should know that it ruins their game. Nobody likes a cheater.  

Good job Avery.

This isnt as bleak as I feard, after last quarter and Aion I thought it would be worse. 

Whats good is that the alternative sources of income, casual mmo, Korea and expansion are probably going to happen before summer. This, including the 35 mill in cash, means that AoC will live for a looong time and so will Funcom. 

This report tells us what I have said for a long time. AoC has stabelized its not growing and not really bleeding subs. There is a decline in income, but this does not mean a propotional reduction in subs. Reducing the price of the product will reduce the income, while maintaining a stable playerbases. 

 I was going to write something regarding how childish and foolish the OP has been, but so many others have done this before me. 

Its interresting to see how he got the opposite of what he expected. Will he learn from it? guess not, expect he will have to leave DF due to all the people hunting him down, also he wont be posting his oppinion for some time. 

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Jackdog

kind of weird that if the game is half as wonderful as the OP makes it out to be that the game is still steadily losing customers every week. Each to their own I guess, even the ugliest person can find a mate as they say so it stands to reason that even the most flawed game can find a fan or two.

Weird I know, people liking different things and all. However I do not think I would call aoc the most flawed game on the market. That would be SWG IMO, which has far more flaws in the first 10 minutes of game-play than AOC has from the ground up. Believe me there are worse games out there than AOC.

well generally people vote with their wallets and AoC has had free trials, veteran comeback trials some major changes in the last 4 months and yet the population is still decreasing steadily. I think that people have decided AoC has major issues still subjective, objective, whatever. Whether other games suck worse or not, this game was probably the biggest failure in the history of MMOs just by where it started population wise and where it is now.

 

It all depends on how you define the word "failure".

Age of Conan has lost more subscribers in the least time than any other MMO before or after. In this sense it has clearly been the biggest failure in MMO history.

But servers are still open so in that sense it's not the biggest failure.

Well - thats always up for debate, I think AoC did bad but its not the worst. Here are two other examples.

Tabula Rasa - Although it didnt sell as much it was hyped by one of the fathers of MMO Richard Gareth (forgive spelling, if wrong). Also it was produced by the same company that gave you Aion and GuildWars (NCSoft). Despite of this the game is now closed. 

WAR - Sold more copies than AoC and according to WAR forums here (i know, flawed source of info) There are still serious issues with the game that wont be fixed. The RvR dosent work with only two realms, etc. Basic design issue means that it will continue to loose subs? 

As far as I can understand, compared to these two AoC isnt doing half bad... :) AoC at least has a potential future. 

 Very interresting thread here. So-called "trolls and fanbois" seem to agree. Funcom should take notice. I hope Famine has passed this on internally. 

Originally posted by FC-Famine

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

Originally posted by arenasb

Way to take their quotes out of context.

 

It's a question and answer...nothing is out of context.  Not only that, the COMMUNITY MANAGER basically stands behind the statement in that very thread.

What a joke.  Those people at Funcom really don't have a clue, do they?  No wonder they think server pops are fine, despite players telling them there is a problem.  Tight knit communities are what guilds and friends lists are for.  Oh well, they got their wish on the low pops.

 

Since when did "tight" mean just small? I would rather think the opposite if I was bringing things to that extreme. Maybe like "Oh man, they want to jam as much people in the server as they possibly can so no one can move and the server racks EXPLODE into millions of pieces!"

 

It's good to want a tight community where the chances of knowing the people you run by or interact with on the forums are people you know. That has nothing to do with wanting the population to reduce or wishing a less massively MMO. I think it's the opposite with wanting a massively feel coupled with a greater community feel in the sense people actually bond together more than other games.

Nonethless, that's me! 

The thing is Famine, you cannot have a TIGHT community that is also LARGE. If you want a large community to be tight you need to make it fragmented. There is a danger here that each fragment reaches below a critical mass of polulation and then dissapears. 

A tight community is a nice ambition and it sounds good on paper, however it does limit your population. Or limit it to many groups. You should think outside the box Funcom has made for itself here and read the responses in this thread. Tight is NOT good. 

Tight does not mean small -  but its the most likely alternative. Move away from the "thight" ambition and you will make it easier to grow a larger community and consecuently a larger playerbase. 

 Based on what I have read on various forums I think there are 3 major reasons for people dislinking AoC as it is today

1) Combat system. Its a taste thing, some people simply dont like it. 

2) Instancing. Funcom overdid it in AoC and you have to accept the load screens. Its the price you have to pay for the amazing graphics

3) FFA PVP - Some people simply cant take it. "Roll on a PVE" everybody says, but by then the experienced is ruind for many people and they refer to the "childish" community, all the ganking, class balance, age of casters, etc. It boils down to that they loose in competition with other players, this agrevates them and they leave. 

Then there is a ton of people who didnt like the launch and are still bitter about it, also there are lots of people who simply prefer high fantasy universes. Just look at all the people joining Aion lately, I cant really understand it, thats not for me, nevermind content or gameplay. Cant take the pink glossy setting. I beleive some have the same reaction to AoC, and its dark gritty low fantasy setting. . 

 Yeah, Funcom is dead wrong here. Just compare it to the real world. Walking down the street in a busy city  you see tons of strangers and once in a while you meet someone you know and its a nice experience.

Living in the countryside you constantly meet people you know and there are't that many strangers.

However ask yourselves, where do most people want to live? In the city or in the middle of no-where? I am guessing most of you here in this forum live in some sort of city. 

Funcom should change their ambitions here. 

/shakes his head sadly.

 I think its still beeing manipulated by some fanboi or worse, by darkfall staff. 

Just look at the difference between Darkfall and Aion and you know there is something fishy

{mod edit}

I dont really read Averys posts because the are incredibly biased, but he is truthful and you can trust the facts in his info. Although he might omit negative facts, the positive facts are always true. Also he has a vast knowledge of the game so I take his word over others in this forum any day.

Originally posted by Methos12

Many people say that you should definitely resubb, that it's awesome now and way better than it used to be, but I say that it depends on how much you liked the game originally. And I'm refering to gameplay and concepts used, only thing that's better now is performance and less bugs, core gameplay is still there.

I absolutely agree with Methos that the core gameplay is what it has always been. However you have to keep  class balance, itemization, content and PVP rewards out of your definition of "core gameplay" since this has changed a lot since release. 

Here is how Funcom presents their changes to the game

http://www.ageofconan.com/updates/?utm_id=419

Originally posted by tensspotting

 For the past few days DF was number 2 with about 19k hits/day right behind Aion, but it seems today it's number 1.

 

I would of thought 1 month after Aion launch, Fallen Earth and Champions they would have the top spots, but coming up almost 1 year after launch DF still has everyone's panties in a bunch?

 

 

Is Tasos hacking the website or are we that popular 4 real?

I beleive its some bot, that keeps hitting darkfall forum or images to get a higher score. The statistics on MMORPG appear to be easy to manipulate. No way Darkfall is more popular than Aion at the moment. Also it hat dissapeard off the list when suddenly it started to receive 3-4 times more hits than other games. 

Another thing is that the number of threads in this forum hasnt grown much lately

All in all - someone is manipulating the figures in order to make Darkfall appear more popular than it is. 

Originally posted by Sabradin

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Sabradin

  Will their recent 20% faculty cut be enough to save the company?  We'll see.

 

The third quarter report will be out on Nov 12

 

It'll tell us its present state, but we've gotta know wheres its going :)

Maybe they could tell us?

They usually predict what their income will be for the next quarter. Its called Guidance. Lets see.

soome really nice vids here.

Nice reading some serious posts on this game after all the trolling lately.

Originally posted by maakaatuu

I was planning on to try AoC once again but after reading some of the posts here I think I'll pass.

Of course I could try the trial but unfortunately I threw out my install disc and that AoC client is huge.

I got a 15-day Fallen Earth trial key which I guess will be next on my to-do-list since it only requires 4GB download.

For anyone who takes this guy serious look at his posting history and sign on date. A very important tool every time you want to read peoples oppinons on these forums is to look at those two thing.s

Halandir, wether you like the ad or not is completely irrelevant from a marketeers perspective. The only relevance is if it gives their product more attention and if it increases sales. 

If this ad, which of course has some messages that are debateable, works very well because it captures the attention of the target. Wether it increases sales or not remains to bee seen. 

Since we are debating this ad right now and we can safely say that it has caught our attention, you should know that other companies with similar product will now start to use similar messages (ie debateable) in the near future. Funcom has led the way, like it or not.

1)  wall of text. Just skimmed through. Where is your comments regarding, korea launch and also the 2 casual mmos Funcom aare woriking on? Thats money coming in. 

2) Here is "proof" that sub numbers is the same as in may this year.  Look at the 6 months graph. Doesnt look that bad now that Aion has crashed. 

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ageofconan.com

3) And before you start throwing xfire figures at me, please go into WOW; LOTRO, WAR, and AION (yes Aion). They have all crashed according to xfire. 

4) Why dont you head over to the WAR forums and troll there? That game sold more than AoC and is now doing worse? Move along!