Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Actually the main focus is AoC right now. I am sure TSW will be at some point in the future. AoC is their bread and butter until TSW release. This is why from previous recent job cuts AoC was minimal if at all effected and Godslayer too. The job cuts effected TSW. Godslayer is already been in the making for a year.

Work on Godslayer might have started at some point last year (mostly with concept art and highlevel designs), but the main focus for the last year was fixing and updating the game after launch. Greg actually stated this previously. That is why the expansion is not going to launch until next year and will be relatively small in size compared to other MMOs expansions.

The cuts did not only affect TSW by the way and neither will the move to Canada.

Originally posted by TheNinjaboy

Star Trek Online is the only "big" MMO being launched in the next few months so there isn't really a lot to worry in regards to something taking steam from their Expansion launch.

Funcom will definitely see their population increase with the Expansion.

Many players are waiting to come back when that is launched.

 

Well in the next month or 2 you will have patch 3.3. for WoW go live as well, which is almost as big as the entire AoC expansion (and free at that) - so quite a few people who currently have their WoW accounts dormant will be switching back to that to play it.

The AoC expansion is set to hit next year, no release date has been given yet, which would lead me to believe it'll be Q2 2010 at the earliest. At that point it might well compete with the Cataclysm expansion of WoW as well (and if not i'd guess that Cataclysm won't be too far behind God Slayer).

Considering that Godslayer will not have any new levels or classes and only 1 new race with no new starter area, i'd imagine people will blow through that expansion relatively quickly and move on to other things coming out at the end of next year already. But of course that's just speculation.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/funcom-revenues-fall-69-percent

It's not just a drop in quarter on quarter, but also a drop of 69% year on year.

What i find interesting about the article on gamesindustry is this bit:

"Revenues for the fourth quarter are expected to be between USD 4-5 million - lower than Q3, despite a strong marketing push and free trial scheme being implemented."

This is a very true statement. Funcom currently has another Free trial on the go, coupled with guaranteed beta access to The Secret World, free play time and a free copy of Godslayer if people sign up for subscriptions. Despite this massive marketing push they are still expecting to loose people in the current quarter.

Yes the press release about Montreal said that Funcom was planning to hire up to 150 people in the canadian studio. However they are also trying to get a lot of people from the Oslo office to relocate to Canada - and i think that might well be included in that number.

But even if not, 18 months is a long time, and plans are just that - plans, not guarantees. In the meantime however Funcom is aiming to reduce costs - significantly. And that includes redundancies.

It does not mean the company is going under at all, and i did not post the news to gloat or fan the flames - it's just a piece of news regarding the developer of an active MMO and one that's in production and highly anticipated.

We can only wait and see what impact this will truely have on TSW and also if Funcom really hire 150 new people in Montreal.

http://e24.no/boers-og-finans/article3293731.ece

In Norwegian but says roughly:

- 20% of workforce to be cut to reduce costs, the norwegian office will be affected mostly

- delay in the release of The Secret World

I suppose this goes hand in hand with opening a studio in Montreal and moving a lot of personal from Oslo to Canada, also to reduce the cost.

Originally posted by drbaltazar

 in montreal ubisoft is a god lol ,made some of most popular game

Yes Ubisoft has made some fantastic games as well as published some great games made by other studios - no doubt about that.

But Bioware (as well as Blizzard) as development houses are pretty much without competition. Anyway - enough of the sidetracking of the thread :)

I just found Avery's post amusing.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Would of been nice to have the studio in Edmonton, no provincial taxes, and Bioware for competition.

Seriously - Bioware has no competition. In terms of development houses, Bioware and Blizzard are in leagues of their own, with queuing up for miles to work for them :)

Originally posted by Akiiras

It's funny how some people think this is good news for Funcom and they are somehow expanding. Unfortunately that is not the case. Funcom is trying to save money so they are moving to a place with more tax benefits and more government funds. Companies do this all the time when they are in financial trouble.

Well yes and no Akiiras. Not all companies that move to cheaper areas are in financial troubles. I would not think that EA or Ubisoft are in financial troubles and they have massive operations in Canada. Consider all the development houses that have studios in Easter Europe, Malaysia and China - most of these companies simply make that move to save money: running costs of offices as well as salary costs. It's to increase their profit, rather than help ease financial troubles (it still costs quite a lot to initially set up a new studio).

Funcom most certainly is doing this to save money, but that does not necessarily mean they are in big financial troubles.

Tax incentives, salaries partially covered by the Government (for the initial periods of new employees), those are the main reason why Montreal has established itself as such a powerhouse of game development. It's not just Ubisoft - there are plenty of others as well (including Eidos and EA). Quebec is definately on the right track there (just look at tax incentives movie companies get all over the world - it's great to see at least some governments realising that games fall into the same entertainment category).

It remains to be seen if Funcom will actually hire a lot of new staff to man this office, or if they will simply move personal from their Norway office initially (similar to what Eidos has done). Oslo is rather expensive, compared to Montreal, so i would not be surprised if they shift numbers across, rather than grow an entirely new studio.

If both studios (Montreal and Oslo) work on TSW and AoC that can be an advantage and disadvantage. The good side is that development can be almost 24 hours a day (China, then Oslo, then Montreal) - so you have someone working on the game at all hours, which could be fantastic if a deadline process is followed. The negative thing is obviously communication due to time difference. There are only a few hours on each end of the day where office hours will overlap and effective communication is possible. The problem is, when 2 offices so far apart work on the same project, you can't just walk down the corridor to, say, a tools programmer, and ask for help with an issue. That tools programmer might be sitting 3000 miles away and could be sleeping at the time you have a problem.

It would make more sense to have Montreal work on one title (best bet: TSW as it's still in production) and keep Oslo as a smaller studio and company HQ working on released titles, expansions and casual games (AO, AoC and the Free to play MMOs), with China continuing to offer art support.

Originally posted by nihce

You cannot meassure a game trend with Xfire (lets let asside that it is broken) because the number right now is beyond 1k and it is statistically impossible to have any certain results. Oh and not to mention that it is not random. 

Actually you CAN measure a trend with XFire. You can't measure accurate numbers, but trends you can.

Just look at AoC the last few weeks. It was around 4 to 6k, then the free trial period hit and it spiked up considerably, and now, with the trial period over, it's gone steadily down again and it's currently 4k hours per day. Is that all the people who play AoC? No not at all, but it certainly shows that the free trial was a big deal (effectively doubling player hours measured) and it also shows that few (if any) of the people who had the trial (and used xfire) stayed on after the free period ended.

That is what's called a trend.

Speaking specifically to the level cap, Ellingsen said virtually the same thing; that the company was looking to expand on what was there to begin with, giving player an opportunity to take the characters that they currently have and build on them rather than simply stacking a few new levels on top

That's really interesting. Considering that AoC will have been out close to 2 years by the time the expansion will launch (if the expansion would come out before Q1 2010, it would have been given a date already), it's nothing short of stunning to believe that people still want to remain the same level and get new content for that level.

Sure there will be new high level areas and also new spells and skills as well as alternative abilities, but after 2 years of playing the same classes at level 80, people might want to actually progress their character upwards again.

I don't know about other people, but i don't necessarily care about loot. I like exploring (a lot) but that does not make me run a dungeon more than twice (to make sure i have seen everything in it) - i like running through dungeons in groups to get experience, level my character and advance my character. At least when a new expansion comes out.

I have played both WoW expansions and all too soon was the leveling over and then the grinding started again - one of the reasons i stopped playing WoW shortly after i hit level 80.

It was the same in EQ with expansions. Those that raised the level cap are remembered very strongly and favourably.

In the end it's Funcom's choice of course, but after close to 2 years of playing the same game, it would have been nice to see characters gaining levels again.

And the excuse that they "Want to add more content to the level range" is really quite lame - with an exisiting engine, an existing tool and 120 people working on the game, i would certainly hope that you can create quite a bit of content in 2 years since launch.

"I don't think you need a new class and a rasied level cap in order to call it an expansion," he began. "We are adding an alternative advancement system that I think is going to be quite similar to actually getting higher levels. You will actually be expanding a character that you already have and for us that just felt more natural with the current condition of Conan. We wanted to add more diverse high level content to the game"

No you certainly don't need a new class and a raised level cap to call it an expansion. But players certainly have come to expect it from expansions that were fully priced (hence the reason the question was asked in the first place). EQ, EQ2, WoW, Lord of the Rings etc. all have done just that - with a full priced expansion they introduced new classes, new races and raised level caps. On top of massive amounts of content and system updates. EQ introduced Alternate Advancement points with Shadows of Luclin, which also introduced a raise in level cap and about a 30% increase in gameplay area (can't remember if there was a new race or not).

Pure content and system upgrades (which is what 90% of the AoC expansion is all about) are usually done for free from other companies. Turbine releases free chapters to their Lord of the Rings game, Blizzard ususally has a large content patch within a year after an expansion, free as well. EQ2 had downloadable optional content - for a small price - which added considerable amount of content.

No, i think what Rise of the Godslayer really is (and that is my personal opinion), is a way of launching the game big in Asia (china in particular) - hence the China theme, hence the no level raise (so Chinese people don't feel like they are behind and have to catch up - a mistake Blizzard made IMO) and hence the full price.

A proper expansion would have concentrated on closing the gaps in the map between existing content (and remove the need for travel NPCs that whisk a player away over thousands of miles), expand on the exisiting lore of the current content, raise the level cap and maybe create a new class. A Kithai expansion should have come further down the line.

So, why the decision not to add another starting area to the game? Some players feel as though Tortage is simply played out.

The long story short here is essentially that the focus of the content for this expansion was meant to be for players above 20th level, meaning for players and characters that had already played through the Tortage experience.

"We adding a little bit of low and mid level content, but mostly this is a high level expansion. That's been our goal from the beginning."
 

So we get a new race wohoo! but you will have to do Tortage again. How many alts will you have before the expansion hits? 2? 3? 4? so you'll have done Tortage multiple times already. And no new class. So the destiny quests will be the same as well. And still there is no way of skipping tortage and going straight to level 19/20. And with not a lot of new mid and low level content why would anyone actually WANT to level up to 80 again? only to be stuck at that level?

There is a reason why Blizzard has increased xp gain from quests and monsters below level 60 - people are tired of going through the same content over and over when leveling up a new character.

But hey - at least there will be new mounts! If WoW has shown us one thing: people are crazy for mounts! It's as if Funcom is looking at WoW (and other MMOs) to see why they are successfull and then picks the most random things to copy, instead of understanding why people want to play MMOs.
 

I have been waiting for this announcement for a while now, as i was quite curious.

I think it's a bit dissapointing really. It looks to me like a major patch rather than a full scale, fully priced, expansion.

No new level cap and no new classes is probably the biggest weakness of this expansion. Considering the ease of leveling in Conan and the limited content at launch, a lot of the hardcore fans (those who played from the start) will have played most (if not all) of the 3 starting races and quite a few of the classes already.

Starting from scratch with a new race only, but no new class, might not be as interesting anymore.

If the expansion follows in the original games footsteps in terms of content, then the Kithai starting area won't nearly be enough to level up either (similar to players having to use Stygian, Aquilonian and Cimmerian areas of the original games to level up or face a long grind if they only stayed in their races respective areas) - and the question is: do you really want to do all the content yet again to level up?

A few new high level areas, 1 confirmed dungeon (probably there will be at least 1 more group and 1 raid dungeon - or at least i'd hope so), and some large outdoor areas (Dessert type and lush meadows - both seen already) and probably another PvP zone - not necessarily worth a boxed/priced expansion tag in my opinion. This sounds about equivalent to Blizzards Call of the Crusade update for WoW (which was free of charge).

Alternate advancement points, not spells and combos are nice, but without new levels, how long can it be fun to teach an old pony new tricks? I quite enjoyed AA points in Everquest (so the idea is certainly not a new one), but back then getting AAs was something you'd do between raids and other end game content (PvP etc.) - it sounds to me that the AoC expansion is not going to feature a lot of raiding content at all and the PvP (faction aside)  does not mention any new areas or features at all. So gaining alternate advancement points might well be the main purpose for playing the game.

Originally posted by itpaladin

I lady walks around occasionally sighing. Just out of the blue I decided to ask her, "What is wrong".

BOOM! I triggered and found a quest.

Yeah those were some fantastic moments! Stuff like this would still work now, but developers are simply too scared to implement them. It's not "user friendly" enough and will not cater to a mass market.

i really quite enjoyed talking to NPCs by actually typing and having to find the right words and phrases to keep a conversation going. I am not a massive Roleplayer (i.e. i will not interact with other players via roleplay), but actually talking to NPCs really immersed me into the game.

Originally posted by kinido

Omg; everything that you stated in this post, is what has ruined most MMORPGS' and the true actual fact of having to " earn " or learn to play a game. EQ was fine without each and every one of those things, because it was a challenge, and you had to actually go out and look for things, and explore, not just right click something and bam, its there. And btw, there were links, There were hotbards, there were names in chat windows, but yeah, the fact that you state a mmorpg has to have those, just shows us how carebear and easy people want games now, and its sad that you never got to play eq and experience a true mmorpg, not all this crap we have now. 

I completely agree with you Kinido, but don't put the new MMOs down. Interests change and people prefer different things. I believe that anyone who played, and enjoyed, EQ will always think back on it with positive views and will always miss the challenges in new MMOs. I agree - i think the wide variety of add ons and helpers in MMOs these days have made them a lot easier and it's not always down to player skill anymore, but rather player knowledge about add ons available.

But at the same time it also means that a lot more people play MMOs and stick with them - because they are fairly easy these days and because people can buy gold online and don't have to put any effort into the games anymore. So the communities are bigger, which means more options in the game (communicty quality is another matter of course). It's very easy to get a group in WoW or even join a raiding guild. Short and easy raid content means you can get through a dungeon in a few hours. A somewhat decent raiding guild can get through the entire raiding content of the current expansion in 3 days - unlike a 6 day raiding window in EQ.

There is pros and cons for both sides. The sad thing is that few (if any) new MMOs are going back to the EQ formula. Because fast and easy access can potentially equal WoW numbers (though so far nobody has succeeded). EQ style games are niche - there is not many people out there who are prepared to put some effort into an MMO these days. Look at Vanguard. Ignore the abysmal start. It's a very strong game now with good content and is very very EQ style - but the number of people playing is a fraction of what EQ had in it's best days.

Everquest will always be the best MMO out there for those who played it within the first few years.

EQ did not have a lot of other games to draw from or copy, there was no pressure in terms of subscription numbers and revenue. The game was developed by a few fans of RPGs for fans of RPGs in the hopes of moving past Ultima Online

And it did it surprisingly well. The game was harder then most MMOs these days - death meant something, it took a long time to level up, items did not drop like candy and so where a lot more worth. Quests actually were quests - not fed ex and kill 20xyz variety thingies to level up.

It took up to 72 people (and more in the earlier days) to work together as a team (in times of 28k and 56k modems) to fight end bosses.

I remember raids into Temple of Veeshan, which took 2 evenings. People camping out in the middle of the dungeon, in a safe spot, and logging back in the next day.

There was competition between guilds on the same server - simply because nothing was instanced. Spawns where on different timers and most servers operated on a first come first serve basis. Some servers developed a real community with a reservation list for specific areas (planes of air and fear for example or Sleepers Tomb) - show me one other western MMO that has such a great community these days.

It's probably because it was the first proper MMO i ever played, but nothing has come close to it for me.

I see screenshots of the Avatar of War and the Dwarf King and i remember strategies, pulling methods and loot items (my Barbaria Shaman had the 1HB from the Dwarf King!) - i remember pulling the AoW all the way to the wakening land exit once and training an entire other raid that was waiting for my guild to fail. Nothing in WoW or any other MMO i played since has come close.

That's of course possible. In that case the reduced revenue forecast would be based on Funcom's expectation that subscription numbers would drop again slightly in the next Quarter. Which, combined with their statement of increased Marketing, does not make them sound too positive.

Yeah not bad numbers and it looks like the change of game director and recent big patches and updates have helped to stabilize the player levels, mostly.

Lower forecast for next quarter does not necessarily mean lower subscription numbers either - it could just be adjusted for a lower box sale expectation (not many boxes are gonna sell now, a year after launch and boxes that do sell will be considerably cheaper). So subscription levels could remain steady for the current quarter.

Funcom needs to hold on to the current subscribers though. WIth the expansion due to release in November, it'll be a long stretch without any major content update (a few dungeons and instances don't really count in such a long period). If Funcom can hold on to the majority of current subscribers until the expansion launches they should be fine.

It is very simple why WoW has such high subscription levels and is considered such a big success.

- WoW, like any other Blizzard game, received a massive amount of polish before it got launched. The content that was there at launch was polished and fun. The launch itself was not perfect, but nobody expected the amount of people who wanted to play - it was unprecedented.

- WoW has a very high Gameplay density. There is a LOT to do in the game world. Even at launch, there was plenty to do, with quests, lots of instances and a well thought out PvP system. Crafting, while simple, was varied and rich on recipies. There literally was something for everyone. In WoW players do not have to go far to do something fun (sometimes only as far as outside the city walls for duels).

- WoW has a high Gameplay variety. There are enough different things to do in the game. From Crafting to soloing, to grouping, to resource gathering, raiding and the various forms of PvP. You can do something else every day.

It is these factors that keep players subscribing to WoW. Even though there is months between content updates and years between actual expansion packs, players don't stop subscribing. Some might get bored and try other things, but other things fail on several key points, and so players migrate back to WoW after a while.

WoW did nothing new really. But what Blizzard did, was look at the best parts of other games, take them, and make them more accessible.

Why do games like WAR and AoC not do as well as World of Warcraft? Because they look at WoW (some more, some less), try to decipher what parts are successfull and then innovate on them - but in the process they loose sight of accessiblity.

The reasons are plenty, but here is the key points that i believe are the main reasons:

- Games like WAR and AoC are not ready when they are launched. WAR was very solid, but class imbalance and PvP issues were present. AoC's launch was solid in terms of client, but classes where not done at all and content was just not ready beyond level 20.

- It takes ages to get to the fun parts of the games. When WAR launched a player would have to travel to all the major regions to sign up for PvP matches. limited amount of quests in one area meant that a player had to travel to several areas to level up (from level 20 onwards anyway). In AoC the clunky UI and match system for PvP prevented players from easily and quickly joining matches. Same as WAR - several areas had to be visited in order to level up - requiring massive travel times. Crafting in both games required a lot of time in order to get resources.

There are a few new and innovative features. Sometimes they work (Public quests for WAR) and sometimes they don't (melee combat in AoC). But generally games other WoW "fail" because they make it hard and time consuming for the player to get to the fun part. Games like AoC and WAR are also not different enough for WoW players to migrate - why leave a game and a well established character, guild and community, if the game you are going to is essentialy the same, but not done to the same high standard?

WoW managed to expand the genre and draw massive amounts of new players. both AoC and WAR intially drew players away from World of Warcraft, but whoever is left playing now is probably not a WoW fan - people who still play AoC and WAR are people who either have never played WoW, or only shortly played it and not liked it. I doubt that either AoC or WAR have attracted any MMORPG newbies, who never played a game before.

The thing about WoW is not that it's so good, it is that it's easy to access and it offer the player a high variety of gameplay elements in a fashion that is easily, and quickly, accessible.

I am not a fan of WoW, i used to play it but i have not in a while. But, having worked in the industry for some time now, and having worked for MMO developers, i can appreciate why WoW is such a big success.

well i guess we have to disagree there. I think Age of Conan will make back the money it has cost to make :)

but i think that's fair enough - we don't have to agree on this :)

Originally posted by rogert4221

 

You said you don't think Funcom is in trouble because they have been operating at a loss for the past few years.  That is true, but what you failed to mention is that it paid it's bills the last few years by borrowing money against the release of AOC.  That option is no longer available.  It is highly unlikely that Funcom will be able to borrow more money for two reasons.  First, they now have a history of two failed games (finanically)...banks will be very unlikely to think they will hit a homerun on their next game.  Secondly, banks are strapped right now, much more than they were when Funcom was borrowing to make AOC.

Age of Conan is not a financial failure yet. The game has not even been out for a year. Is it underperforming? Certainly, no doubt about that - and everyone knows why that is (hype, launching before it was ready, massive bugs and cut/unfinished features).

But after the server merges, operating cost of the game will be reduced drastically and revenue from the game will be similar to what it was (maybe slightly lower), so as long as the game keeps a certain amount of subscribers it will eventually break even and then make a profit.

Look at AO. It took years to break even and make a profit, but it now DOES make a profit - which means all the debt and costs it accumulated have been paid off. Age of Conan can do the same - the less subcribers it has, the longer it will take, but it can (and i believe it will) break even and make a profit.

It is a massive shame that the game turned out the way it did and that not more people are playing it, but as much as people hate the game and hate some people behind the game, saying it is going to be a fincial failure is wrong.

It will certainly not be good news for Funcom and securing financing in these times will be harder, but it's not necessarily banks where the money for Funcom is coming from either.