Around summer next year I guess. We've got 1.05 cycle going on at least in September too. Then 1.06 for another 3-5 months. I'm guessing 1.07 is in before the expansion for another 3-5 months, and then the expansion 2-3 monhs after there again.

If they're further ahead than they seem, the expansion might be next after 1.06. That should give an expansion sometime next spring

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by silmaril

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by silmaril

Originally posted by Frobner

If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. 

AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time.

I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.

  So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?

And you still belive the PR.... 

It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.

You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?

 

You do know that Funcom is also working on another MMO using the exact same game engine... 120 ppl here and 100 ppl there doesn't nessiserily mean that they are not working on both...

There is now about one year since a statement was released to shareholders that the Kaupthing bank in Iceland was standing strong.  That was on Friday - On monday (3 days later)  the bank was declared bankrupt and sharehodlers lost everything.   Get a clue on what financial reports are about...

They got over 300 employees. 100 they say are working on TSW, 120 they say are working on AOC, 22 they say are working on their Java MMO. This leaves around 60 for AO, the web MMO, the casual games stuff and whatever else they are doing. In your world of logic what are these people doing if they are not working on the games FC say they are working on?

I am not claiming it is impossible to come with false information. I am saying that there is no reason to believe that these numbers are false. Yes, FC has polished the numbers, but they've never been false. Why should we think they are giving their stock holders false information now?

You are just making up conspiracy theories without any basis in the truth. So why don't you try to come up with some facts instead?

Originally posted by Frobner

Originally posted by silmaril

Originally posted by Frobner

If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. 

AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time.

I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.

  So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?

And you still belive the PR.... 

It's not PR, it's a statement given to stock holders and it's a criminal offence to provide false information to your stock holders. I don't claim that they (like all other companies) won't polish the truth to make it look as good as possible, but when they state "currently over 120 people, excluding customer service, working on the Age of Conan game, primarily in development." I have no reason to think that is not the truth.

You obviously make up your own truths as you go, with the convenience of claiming anything that does not support those truths as "PR". So like I said, you really do not have a clue, do you?

Originally posted by Frobner

If you dont know what minimum life support in MMO means then go look at Vanguard. 

AOC is on minimum life support. The game has already lost over 20 million USD and stats show that the game is falling in subs and playing time.

I know ppl like you hate to talk Xfire but it was proven that it showed pretty much the trend if a game is growing or loosing subs (Comback campaigns of both WAR and AOC showed obvious peaks). AOC has plummited to all time low since then.

  So around 120 people (plus customer service) working on AoC means "minimum life support". You really do not have a clue, do you?

Originally posted by Sereniama

Nice, you stole the idea from a 13 year old boy... -.-

huh?

I keep returning to ATITD. I've played briefly in all four (yes four now. MMORPG.com should update from ATITD III to ATITD IV) tellings. My problem before has been the endless grind for basic resources. That keeps getting better however, which means a lot more time can be spent working on all the different challenges than in the first or second telling.

The major strength of ATITD is all the various game mechanics. Each new resource or test introduced got a different mechanic. It varies from simple "click a button to pick", through large cooperative efforts where many players must dig for stones or stir a cement vat together, to complex mini-games where real player skill is required or competitive games where it is you against the other inhabitants of Egypt.

I've watched the global chat these past couple of days when the commonity as a whole is trying to figure out how these new mechancs introduced with Myrmecology works. It's the first time I've been around when something brand new has been released and it shows a cooperative community like I've never seen before in a MMOG.

I'd strongly recommend MMOG addicts to give ATITD a try. It's a small download and got a free trial and while it is something different in the MMO world, it still got all the fundamental stuff: Nice setting, character development, challenging solo and group content and a chance to actually affect the game world .

Server mergers seem to be 2-3 weeks late now, so they probably won't start merging until January. Fresh start servers are coming after the mergers are complete from what I understand, so if everything is working OK when they start merging, I'd say around the start of February.

These guys were just hired in as extra help on the forums, weren't they? It means less technical support on the EU forums, but other than that I don't think it's gonna have much of an impact.

I think it's great some light is shed on this. I'm from Norway as well, and while not in game development I do work as a software developer. Like it's been mentioned, the clause in the contract about "special independent position", is something many companies in software development and consulting is using over here.

Most of the "old" industries, like manufacturing, oil, retail and finance, got strong unions with the majority of the workforce in a union. For software developers though, most is not in a union so it's a lot easier for the companies to pull shit like this. Since so many do it, people think that's the way it should be too. It is not however. It is possible to produce software just as fast and with better quality without overtime.

It's been a poorly hidden secret that things were worse in Funcom than elsewhere too. We've seen the result of the crunch twice now with MMO releases well below expectations. I really,  really hope the management will see that it is bad business as well as just inhumane to treat employers like they've done.

Please tell me your server and which 10 guilds have cleared T2. Only after they buffed it of course.  Tier 3 was only reachable as an exploit, the content there is obviously not complete even if the remainder of the T2 sets are there.

As regards to sales, they sold around 800k copies, but yea that should be enough to have released a better game. The state of AoC then is old news though, everyone knows it.

What is interesting at this point is what they have done afterwards. I think it was more important to fill the level gaps with good content and improve the existing pre-80 content before moving on to more raid endgame. Of course you as the badass hardcore raider you are don't care about anything than the highest xp/hour until you are at the raids. You are not the majority though, the majority quit long before that.

Also they did not destroy crafting. Crafting was crap, and gems were broken. They have since introduced at least some interesting crafted items, even if the crafting system itself is broken and boring.

The T1 raids and T2 up until Chatha is not "as buggy and exploitable as it was on release". The quality varies of course, but overall it is working well and is quite decent raid content.

Also in regards to translations, that is not for the entire Europe. Nordic countries, Benelux to some degree and parts of Eastern Europe seem to prefer games in in English. Germany and France in particluar wants localized versions though, but even if a game is not translated the European market is quite large.

Originally posted by robby5403

I didn´t read anything about DX10 in the interview and they´re going to release an addon?????First they should add the promised things that they should've adden in the official version cause in this way noone will ever buy that addon.......

DX10 is on the test server already (with bugs), so going out to live as soon as it's ready. Probably mid January or something like that. The expansions is for next fall

Originally posted by tub0rg

that is the same massive work force that managed to implement 5 pvp ranks and a mid lvl instance+zone in 7 months right?

that statement alone is slap to the face.

after a few hundret forum posts of asking when T2 W3 would be opend and t3 implement (yeah it only took a few hundret posts to get a statement) that after 6 month ingame (wing 3 or the main hall of brc is in since brc was released, complete with bosses it just wasent opend) that they were working on it and it wouldnt be in the update 4 and probably not in 5. Heck course they cant find time for that, they still need to add stuff that was promised at release. After we were, somewhat, pissed because of that, the CM replied and im Quoting here that "small buisnisses (like funcom) cant afford 2500 developers like blizzard (noteworthy that blizzard is developing 3 Mayor games, 5 AAA releases, with that beside WoW) because we dont have 11m suscribers (wow patch team is ~ 75-120 ppl at least since the last statement i found) so they just dont have the recources to patch it earlier.

 

Heh, where to start...

First, AoC had a lot of problems at launch. That means that they had to divert everything to fixing issues with existing code and content. I imagine it is only 2-3 months since they started shifting their forces over to new development again.

Second, the pipeline for new content is long. What this means is that it takes a long time before an idea can be seen in the game. Just think of all the work that have to go into design, artwork, sound, new gameplay requirements, internal testing and external testing before something can be seen by the players. When they moved everything they had over to fixing the mess AoC was at release, that left the pipeline dry.

Third, Funcom is only a medium sized developer with a hard-pressed economic situation. They have two MMOs running, another in production and several casual MMOS and probably other projects going as well. I can guarantee that WOW will get a lot more content the next year than AoC though, simply because that is a more succesful game and they can spend more cash on producing the content.

And on raids, yes I would love to have seen wing 3 and T3 raiding open as well. But it seems the raid people after having fixed T1 and T2 (wing 1/2) raids, only now is working on these. Lower level content was more important than raids: People will never see the raids if they don't go through the rest of the content. Also at this time it's no more than 10 or so guilds worldwide that has completed all existing raid content. While frustrating for those that they are at the end, up until now I think it was a fair priority to not focus on new raids

You need for the EU servers or US?

Vanguard already has a seamless world, and a few years back Wish (which was cancelled) also ran without any loading screens. It's not something new, but does require some advanced networking to do the handoffs between the servers in a smooth way. Client side we've already seen many examples of games that run without loading screen, so the main issue is with balancing the server load and moving players between servers.

With all the negative experience people had with AoC's loading screens this year, I think designing an MMO without a seamless world in mind is a bad business move.

Originally posted by OrionMan

 I did not understand you or Pezz, but I do get that we are talking about the Black Ring Citadel. Are you aware of that there is a ton of content here that most of the end gamers have not done? The gargoyle master, Seruah, Chatha and so on a bosses that very few have taken down. The rest of the bosses noone have taken down. If this is not a challenge and a blast I don't know. The lack of end game content is quite exagerated.

I would in fact like to hear if anyone at any point ever have taken down the Black Ring Citadel. That guy or that guild should have a huge medalion, because that place is lethal shit. Lethal!!

The best raid guilds have done BRC wing 1&2, with the exception of Chatha. Chatha is impossible now, but is getting fixes in GU4. BRC wing 3 is not openened yet, so it is impossible to complete BRC and move on to tier three raiding.

For most guilds, the game's raid content is challenging enough for a couple more months, especially since many had to restart raiding after most of their players left during summer and early fall. A few of the top raiding guilds have hit the end of the raid content though.

Originally posted by robby5403

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Test server probably next week and then probably live server towards end of Jan is my guess. We may see some it partially on live before hand, who knows. In the mean time the server merges will consistute the updates whilst waiting.

 

So we have to wait another 2 months till we get DX10.......:S

Test server got updated with the DX10 patch yesterday. There were quite a few issues to work out, and with xmas only a week away I doubt we will see the patch hit live servers until mid January

I guess around 100 in Tortage is right for the best servers these days. For the starting area, I think the number makes it fun to play. You'll see people running around, you'll find grouping buddies if you like and you'll get ganked in White Sands or Underhalls.

On my server, which is one of the top population EU servers, I've just been leveling up a new toon up to 40 and haven't had any trouble finding groups. Also world PvP is alive and kicking in Wild Lands and Conall's Valley.

An empty stretch seems to be 50-70. Above 70 you'll find a lot of players, but the mid levels are quite thin on population. That doesn't mean it's empty. I see people in Global looking setting up groups (for Ymir's Pass in particular) all the time.

Overall I'd say A Tale in the Desert. In a game where everything revolves around crafting, it will of course have more focus than in other games. But they managed to create crafting that is different for each process and depends both on character progression and player skill. Some processes also require multiple players working together, creating digging events where the whole village turn out to gather resources together, or marble search where you need at least companion to work together with.

In regular MMOS, Vanguard got the best crafting system I've played.

Originally posted by WargPest

Originally posted by silmaril

It's cleaned up some, e.g. with some new very nice crafted stuff that both looks good and got good stats (second best to raided). Items still have quite low impact on overall stats and the looks aren't diverse enough. They are adressing it though, with a rebalance of items. What will happen is that the "stat budget" of items will go from about 25% of total stats to 50%. This isn't in yet though, and I think this is a change that will stay on the test live server for a long time before going to live. My guess is it will be close to spring before this is ready and bug free on live servers. Hope I'm wrong though.

So if itemization was one of your biggest issues, I would wait until they get that fix in. Good loot will affect your character a great deal more then as the difference between bad and good loot will be larger.

Nope some of these changes have been implemented.

No, they haven't. Item stat budget is the same now as it was on release. Sure they have released some items and models, but regarding the big rebalance nothing is out on live or test live servers yet.