For those having troubles with the announcement made by Funcom...

Original:

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Funcom today announced that the company has made a small adjustment to the release date for The Secret World. Due to market reasons, the ship date has been moved by two weeks to July 3rd, with Early Access starting June 29th. The new launch date places The Secret World in a more positive launch window which will benefit the launch of the game.

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Translation:

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There's more pre-orders then we expected, so we'll delay the release for two weeks. This gives us more time shipping copies to the retailers and have everyone get their copy at release.

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Marketing language isn't that hard to understand, is it?

;)

Originally posted by tares

RI, the smallest state gave them a loan, 38 studios bounced a check  then paid them back after the CFO, CEO, and CFO resigned.  Grant differs from a loan in you need not pay anything back.  What put them out of business was the inability to pay.  If you read my link, it is about a partnership and grants to Funcom.  TBH just heed the advice of your name.

Dreamfall nets a 75/100 on metacritic, it came out during a lull in game releases and I never heard about it so it can't be that amazing.  If it was amazing and profitable then Funcom would switch to single player RPG's and we wouldn't be having this discussion here.  Since I prefer single player RPGs, I would sing great praise if they made great RPGs as bioware and square enix are faltering.

Of course, first you just blanket accuse a European democracy to be that socialist that companies in it don't need to put efforts in their work bc the state will provide anyway, then you come up with equally lame arguments just to make your case of FC being bad in game development. Let's use your logic to other cases, shall we: Blizzard were making singleplayer games, Bioware was making singleplayer games, so according to you bc they made MMORPG's they must've been bad in making singleplayer games, right?

The Longest Journey and Dreamfall were great adventure games that were rated among the best, not RPG's, at least learn the difference.

 

But I get it, especially when you come up with such flawed logic arguments. You dislike FC or some of their games, therefore like how it works for some people in a very black&white way the company can't have done anything good, and their games must all have sucked hard and be 100% bad. I don't feel like discussing things with people who are on such a crusade, so I'm gonna step out of it. You hate/dislike FC, in your eyes all their games must have sucked big time and TSW will too, fine, good for you. Have fun.

Originally posted by tares

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

Taking a closer look at that Funcom financial statement is quite worrisome... 0.o

It pretty much looks like the end of the road for them if TSW doesn't generate substantial profits. Their quarterly loss increased again, and the 22M USD "facility" was clearly needed to keep the wheels turning. They ARE betting the farm on TSW, it seems.

If they don't substantially shrink that quarterly loss, they will bleed to death in 6 months' time. The more they use that 22M overdraft facility, the bigger the montly interest bill will get.

 

With 250 people involved in the TSW development, a large chunk of their expenses can be attributed to TSW. So the pressure to cut that wage bill will be huge post launch. 

 10:1 they are dangerously close to being bought out by EA. Probably going to depend a lot on how TSW does.

No, if anything EA is in a position to be bought out by a larger firm.   AO and AoC are at the end of their life cycle.  How much return on investment can TSW and fashion week net?  Even after the stock crashes post launch it isn't a sound innvestment.

Funcom has Norway backing them.  I know it is wealthy and socialist after passing through so Funcom has little motivation to make some great game, as we have both seen twice before, so they don't know how to compete with blizard/activision or NSoft who made much better games than peers when they were starting out and success allowed them to grow.

6 to 12 million in sales of a non MMO game is commonplace now days, even at a 10% revenue margin that is 72 million in revenue.  I would think revenue for developer would be 20-30 then publisher 20-30 then the rest is retailer.  Those games cost 60+ million to make just like TSW.

Regarding Funcom's quarterly loss, it's because their biggest project to date is in the investment fase. In other words, they have all the expenses and none of the income. Both AoC and AO are currently bringing in money, allowing them to invest into TSW. It's true that TSW needs to bring in money, but for them to survive as a game company, it doesn't need to sell particularily well.

Funcom does not have Norway backing them, the Norwegian goverment has companies like Statoil worth around 73 billion dollars, not small companies like Funcom which can currently be bought for around 100 million dollars. The owners of Funcom is the CEO, developers and assorted private investors. Besides, the majority of the developers are located in Canada who is subsidizing them throuh reduced taxes. Not something Norway would ever do. ;)

Conclusion: since both the developers and the ceo owns part of Funcom, they are working darned hard to make it a success.

I wouldn't mind if they shoved the game back another 3 weeks to give them a full month extra but maybe the 'magic build' is out there somewhere. I like the game a lot but there are a few things that need fixing. Time will tell.

 

Oddly, on the subject of zombies in Kingsmouth, while trash mobs coming back again and again doesn't bother me, I wouldn't mind seeing 4-5 other models added to the mix. Killing the same old man with glasses  nd a blue cap occasionally makes me blink. That said, it's a cosmetic wish and it's more important to work on performance, questing and accurate tool-tip/descriptions of skills.

 

A good game and looking forward to playing.

Originally posted by Yalexy

For those having troubles with the announcement made by Funcom...

Original:

---

Funcom today announced that the company has made a small adjustment to the release date for The Secret World. Due to market reasons, the ship date has been moved by two weeks to July 3rd, with Early Access starting June 29th. The new launch date places The Secret World in a more positive launch window which will benefit the launch of the game.

Translation:

---

There's more pre-orders then we expected, so we'll delay the release for two weeks. This gives us more time shipping copies to the retailers and have everyone get their copy at release.

Marketing language isn't that hard to understand, is it?

;)

 

Is this sarcasm?  Looks to me more like just the opposite.  They're getting less pre-orders than they'd hoped for, and now they're hoping that ramping up the hype machine might help..  

 

Think the beta weekends have probably backfired, and some extra marketting isn't going to make up for it.  Instead of blowing money on ads, they should consider a more serious delay, so that they can revamp the combat aesthetics.

 

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Yalexy

For those having troubles with the announcement made by Funcom...

Original:

---

Funcom today announced that the company has made a small adjustment to the release date for The Secret World. Due to market reasons, the ship date has been moved by two weeks to July 3rd, with Early Access starting June 29th. The new launch date places The Secret World in a more positive launch window which will benefit the launch of the game.

Translation:

---

There's more pre-orders then we expected, so we'll delay the release for two weeks. This gives us more time shipping copies to the retailers and have everyone get their copy at release.

Marketing language isn't that hard to understand, is it?

;)

 Is this sarcasm?  Looks to me more like just the opposite.  They're getting less pre-orders than they'd hoped for, and now they're hoping that ramping up the hype machine might help..  

 Think the beta weekends have probably backfired, and some extra marketting isn't going to make up for it.  Instead of blowing money on ads, they should consider a more serious delay, so that they can revamp the combat aesthetics.

You may believe whatever you like to of course. But if we're talking about trying objectively to understand the info in the OP link, then to me it looks like: it isn't marketing reasons but market reasons to which they stated the delay is for. Tiny but significant difference in meaning, market and marketing usually don't mean the same thing.

You may think what you like about the beta weekends, but like said, if it's about the document, then that states that ratings and overall perception of beta players was fairly ok. Of course, one can always claim that FC must be lying, but then again, discussing the info in the document is useless anyway in such case since people don't believe what it states anyway.

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by tares

RI, the smallest state gave them a loan, 38 studios bounced a check  then paid them back after the CFO, CEO, and CFO resigned.  Grant differs from a loan in you need not pay anything back.  What put them out of business was the inability to pay.  If you read my link, it is about a partnership and grants to Funcom.  TBH just heed the advice of your name.

Dreamfall nets a 75/100 on metacritic, it came out during a lull in game releases and I never heard about it so it can't be that amazing.  If it was amazing and profitable then Funcom would switch to single player RPG's and we wouldn't be having this discussion here.  Since I prefer single player RPGs, I would sing great praise if they made great RPGs as bioware and square enix are faltering.

Of course, first you just blanket accuse a European democracy to be that socialist that companies in it don't need to put efforts in their work bc the state will provide anyway, then you come up with equally lame arguments just to make your case of FC being bad in game development. Let's use your logic to other cases, shall we: Blizzard were making singleplayer games, Bioware was making singleplayer games, so according to you bc they made MMORPG's they must've been bad in making singleplayer games, right?

The Longest Journey and Dreamfall were great adventure games that were rated among the best, not RPG's, at least learn the difference.

 

But I get it, especially when you come up with such flawed logic arguments. You dislike FC or some of their games, therefore like how it works for some people in a very black&white way the company can't have done anything good, and their games must all have sucked hard and be 100% bad. I don't feel like discussing things with people who are on such a crusade, so I'm gonna step out of it. You hate/dislike FC, in your eyes all their games must have sucked big time and TSW will too, fine, good for you. Have fun.

I didn't say anything about Europe, I specificaly mentioned Norway.  Using my logic they should continue to do what works well and maybe invest in a single MMO to see if that works too.  Oh that is what the other companies did!!!  Bioware releasing mass effect 3 and dragon age 3 and a single MMO.   Blizard releases Warcraft then releases Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.  NcSoft releases profitable MMOs so they keep making MMOs.  What the other companys can't do is make 2 bad MMOs then go on and make a third bad MMO because they would go out of business.  When I say bad it means substandard game and low or negative return on investment.

My logic is very sound.  Funcom doesn't pay my bills I play games for fun.  If anything it would be nice if they released a good game as that would give me something to play and from another source/style than South Korea, Japan, and United States.

The beta weekends haven't back fired, they got mostly positive feedback from the beats with 80% of those taking part saying they would buy the game.

Most of the people saying buggy as hell etc.. to my mind weren't even in the beta and are making an "educated" guess based upon Aoc (which was horrible in beta / launch)

The only serious bugs in the beta were the baldy man bug in London, the fight club floor bug and the potion deconstruction exploit.

Performance was very good considering the richness of the environment, I had higher frame rates than gw2 beta (to be fair gw2 is further out) and swtor during its first month. Also handles large groups of players much better than swtor. It wasn't as polished as rift beta though, but its a bloody great huge improvement upon Aoc.

Oh I think the 2 week thing us to fix that baldy man bug BTW.. I hear the craft e,plot isn't present in closed beta.

I'd be surprised if they sold 1 million copies.

 

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He's actually quiet spot on. Everyone who's complaining about tons of bugs in the beta-weekends seems to not have played the game actually.

There was not that much bugs besides the lootbags not being lootable, some people having issues seeing naked characters.

Also performance... with my rather mediochre setup (i5-760, 8GB, SSD, GTX460) I've had absolutely no issues running the game fluently throughout both weekends. the game was allways around 50 FPS on low/mid settings.

From all we know, the game is rather bug-free in it's current state, and that's if we take the CB-responses into account (just look for beta leaks and the reports).

The reason why people don't like the game has other reasons, and there's nothing Funcom can do to make them happy, as they won't change their core-game.

I just hope the other zones are polished aswell.

AoC was pretty much Tortuga (First zone) and after that completely unfinished.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
The beta weekends haven't back fired, they got mostly positive feedback from the beats with 80% of those taking part saying they would buy the game.

Most of the people saying buggy as hell etc.. to my mind weren't even in the beta and are making an "educated" guess based upon Aoc (which was horrible in beta / launch)

The only serious bugs in the beta were the baldy man bug in London, the fight club floor bug and the potion deconstruction exploit.

Performance was very good considering the richness of the environment, I had higher frame rates than gw2 beta (to be fair gw2 is further out) and swtor during its first month. Also handles large groups of players much better than swtor. It wasn't as polished as rift beta though, but its a bloody great huge improvement upon Aoc.

 

I had no problems with bugs or performance.  When I say the game seems unfinished, I'm talking about how a lot of the gameplay, like the combat, seems to have been put on the back burner, and now they're launching before they even get to it.  I've never seen the word "placeholder" used so much, for a game so close to release, before.

 

I was really looking forward to TSW, but trying the beta weekend, I just didn't find it to be any fun.  Maybe I'm in the minority, but I seriously doubt it.  All the complaining doesn't say nearly as much as the general lack of buzz, overall.  I won't be surprised if the game barely breaks 100k box sales in its first month.

 

Originally posted by tares

I didn't say anything about Europe, I specificaly mentioned Norway.  Using my logic they should continue to do what works well and maybe invest in a single MMO to see if that works too.  Oh that is what the other companies did!!!  Bioware releasing mass effect 3 and dragon age 3 and a single MMO.   Blizard releases Warcraft then releases Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.  NcSoft releases profitable MMOs so they keep making MMOs.  What the other companys can't do is make 2 bad MMOs then go on and make a third bad MMO because they would go out of business.  When I say bad it means substandard game and low or negative return on investment.

My logic is very sound.  Funcom doesn't pay my bills I play games for fun.  If anything it would be nice if they released a good game as that would give me something to play and from another source/style than South Korea, Japan, and United States.

Norway has many governmental structure and law similarities with other North European countries, so if you find Norway socialist, then the others according to your vision are too. Using your logic, Funcom did exactly that in case you forgot: after making their first MMORPG, AO, they made Dreamfall, so there goes your point. On the side, for a period of 5-6 years after WoW came out that Blizzard didn't launch any singleplayer game.

As for their MMO games, they're still profitable, meaning the costs of running, maintaining and updating them is lower than the revenues they bring in. Same reason why even MMO's like EQ or DAoC or UO are still up and running and profitable, even when their playerbases has shrunk to a shadow from what they were: revenues surpass costs to a point where profit is made.

Originally posted by Lagoz

I just hope the other zones are polished aswell.

AoC was pretty much Tortuga (First zone) and after that completely unfinished.

 

Closed Beta version 0.9 is out now. And I have heard (or read :P) that the testers responses are outrageously positive. Combat and animations have gotten some changes.

Originally posted by DaSpack

Closed Beta version 0.9 is out now. And I have heard (or read :P) that the testers responses are outrageously positive. Combat and animations have gotten some changes.

Blood effects, new sounds (fancy sound when you crit/penetrate), new damagenumber pop-ups (much better when you crit/penetrate), new state-indicator pop-ups, camera-shake in combat, new animations (pistols have gone from my least favorite to my favorite weapon! - very nice changes). Combat feels completely different - much more responsive, smooth and engaging.

And that's just the combat. A lot of additional changes all way around.

I liked the game before this patch - but it obviously had it's flaws, especially with combat; and I'd understand why one wouldn't like the game. This update has really done wonders! - changed and fixed stuff very few of the betatesters thought was possible at this stage. I'm impressed.

I no longer fear the tortage scenario, as nda has lifted on the press beta and there have been several livestreams of other zones like savage coast, blue mountain and valley of the sun god. My only worry now is the "endgame" pvp, with how bad Aoc forts were.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
I no longer fear the tortage scenario, as nda has lifted on the press beta and there have been several livestreams of other zones like savage coast, blue mountain and valley of the sun god. My only worry now is the "endgame" pvp, with how bad Aoc forts were.

You wont be dissapointed, at all.  

Originally posted by Rightlov

Originally posted by DaSpack

Closed Beta version 0.9 is out now. And I have heard (or read :P) that the testers responses are outrageously positive. Combat and animations have gotten some changes.

Blood effects, new sounds (fancy sound when you crit/penetrate), new damagenumber pop-ups (much better when you crit/penetrate), new state-indicator pop-ups, camera-shake in combat, new animations (pistols have gone from my least favorite to my favorite weapon! - very nice changes). Combat feels completely different - much more responsive, smooth and engaging.

And that's just the combat. A lot of additional changes all way around.

I liked the game before this patch - but it obviously had it's flaws, especially with combat; and I'd understand why one wouldn't like the game. This update has really done wonders! - changed and fixed stuff very few of the betatesters thought was possible at this stage. I'm impressed.

Sounds good. I hope those changes are added to the next open betas to cause better impressions.