Curse

Abedeus · Aug 29, 2008, 06:31 AM // 06:31

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Ep...onan-Founders/

I'd say - good thing I didn't get too excited about Age of Conan. And I pity my friend that bought 2 months subscription...

Anarkii · Aug 29, 2008, 09:11 AM // 09:11

It's a rather old post, and while AoC was indeed disappointing, every MMO doesn't need to be a WoW to become profitable. It's at around 450K subscribers today, and if it can sustain 300K+ till the first expansion (Q1 2009), and get enough people to buy the expansion as well, it'll churn out good profits. The share price isn't directly indicative of a game's financial success. People buy on rumours and sell on facts - so they bought hoping AoC will be a WoW-killer etc, and sold when they realize it wasn't. The long term investors won't be kicking themselves or anything...AoC will bring in enough money for a small norway developer.

From the player's pov, it's a shitty game of course.

Abedeus · Aug 29, 2008, 09:37 AM // 09:37

Actually, there are ~100k subscribers right now, maybe less.

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Ep...r-Subscribers/

And in July it was under 250k subscribers, God knows how many now, since, as you can read in the article, admins locks thread about amount of players and ban people asking too much.

Aera · Aug 29, 2008, 10:07 AM // 10:07

Wow, those players are locked in the Nazi world of Hyboria. Rise against the nation and you shall be punished!

nekopowa · Aug 29, 2008, 10:31 AM // 10:31

...and i can still remember all the hype about AoC, lol.

Warhammer Online is probably going to end up the same way.

zwei2stein · Aug 29, 2008, 10:49 AM // 10:49

It was pretty obvious what would happen with AoC.

Unrealistic hardware requirements, Stupid combat system (no autoattack, riiiight.) ....

Plus, most of new MMOs fail miserably anyway. It's dot-com bubble all over again.

Anarkii · Aug 29, 2008, 11:29 AM // 11:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Actually, there are ~100k subscribers right now, maybe less.

http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Ep...r-Subscribers/

And in July it was under 250k subscribers, God knows how many now, since, as you can read in the article, admins locks thread about amount of players and ban people asking too much.

That's wrong. Don't trust a WoW blog to give you accurate figures. Funcom's financial report to its shareholders has the official figures. Peaked at 800K, current 450K.

Fril Estelin · Aug 29, 2008, 11:38 AM // 11:38

Gamasutra's recent report is not so gloom, with openings into Russian and Asian market and Xbox version:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...hp?story=19867

But given the backfire after the disastrous launch, it'll hard for them to compensate I guess. Remember this 45-pages-long thread?

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2008, 11:45 AM // 11:45

Funcom is a terrible game design company that suffers from a common stereotype amongst certain foreign game design groups, namely one of self importance. The Saga of Ryzom suffered from the same problem, these companies will not admit their faults. It took months for the Funcom AoC team to admit there was a problem with female swing speed. Months. And then they banned talking about it.

Quote:

That's wrong. Don't trust a WoW blog to give you accurate figures. Funcom's financial report to its shareholders has the official figures. Peaked at 800K, current 450K.

"Don't trust a WoW blog to give accurate figures, trust the guys who have a complete dictatorship on their forums and have lied time and time again to give you the right ones!"

Please.

-Their stocks have gone down 60%. Check any reputable stock exchange place for their stocks.
-This counts the 3 month subscribers which hasn't ended yet.

I am sorry but if you trust any of their sources you are pretty gullible. They have shown time and time again they are a bunch of liars and have been inflating sub numbers since release.

Funcom is nearly as bad a game company as Ubisoft. I would refuse to work at either place, without a thought.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Unrealistic hardware requirements, Stupid combat system (no autoattack, riiiight.) ....

FYI a lack of autoattacking has been successful in quite a few MMORPG's before AoC. So I don't see your point there. The combat system was stupid tho, just not because of a lack of autoattacking.

Anarkii · Aug 29, 2008, 11:49 AM // 11:49

Funcom is bad. AoC is bad. (I have a level 80 ranger rotting, so I know how bad it is) Doesn't change what I said. With 400K+ subs now, if they manage to sustain 300K+, they can stay profitable.

The share price only went back to what it was before May(when the speculation began). It isn't crashing nor is FC going bankrupt or anything.
--
Edit : Also Funcom lying on their forums or director's 'address to the players' is different from a public company lying on its financial report to its shareholders. The first is rather common these days. The second doesn't happen and you'll get delisted and open to lawsuits if you do.

Abedeus · Aug 29, 2008, 12:01 PM // 12:01

Quote:

With 400K+ subs now, if they manage to sustain 300K+, they can stay profitable.

THEY DON'T HAVE 400k SUBS NOW. Even if they do, it's not active players - those are people that bought the game with 2-3 month subscription and don't play. Realistically:

They had 700k people. And you could check in the article - at the beginning they did have almost 750k active people, by the end of june - less than 250k. Now it's less than 10k active on Xfire. Like I said, even if in reality it's 10 times more, it's not even 150k players. And there must be 500k for them to break even.

Quote:

The first is rather common these days.

But you don't see posts and threads criticizing A.Net and NCSoft closed on this forum or threads on Warhammer Alliance closed because some people don't like GoA (people in charge of WAR in Europe). Right?

Quote:

Warhammer Online is probably going to end up the same way.

Because it's not like 20k people were during the Preview Weekend playing non-stop. It was hard to get on a server...

And there were 850k people signed up for Beta.
And a million retail copies already sold, only for US, because Europe's pre-orders are here only for like 3-5 days.

Oh, and loosing 60% of stock IS bad. Sure, you have 40% left. But you had twice and a half more.

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2008, 12:05 PM // 12:05

Your stock going down 60% isn't bad.

It's pretty RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing terrible. Especially with the current economy.

Anarkii · Aug 29, 2008, 12:26 PM // 12:26

Not when it went up 60% in a month because of pure speculation.

Abedeus · Aug 29, 2008, 01:00 PM // 13:00

...Who told you it went up 60%? It went DOWN 60%. You could check it, you know. It's not like a company can lie about their stocks.

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2008, 01:31 PM // 13:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anarkii

Not when it went up 60% in a month because of pure speculation.

Wow you are completely uninformed and obviously have no clue what you're talking about in this matter! I even told you to check any stock market site, Funcom's stocks barely went up leading up to AoC's release and went to the bottom fairly quickly.

You should probably inform yourself before you make an educated opinion imo.

Winterclaw · Aug 29, 2008, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by darknecrid

It took months for the Funcom AoC team to admit there was a problem with female swing speed. Months. And then they banned talking about it.

Agreed, that is why they failed. Along with the bad fighting system, class balance, horny GMs that are cybering on the job, too much grind, to little incentive to keep playing, no end game, etc.

Anarkii, I heard rangers suck after 50, so I feel for you. I managed to get a barbarian out of tortage and a guardian to 20 before I quit.

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2008, 04:40 PM // 16:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

Agreed, that is why they failed. Along with the bad fighting system, class balance, horny GMs that are cybering on the job, too much grind, to little incentive to keep playing, no end game, etc.

Anarkii, I heard rangers suck after 50, so I feel for you. I managed to get a barbarian out of tortage and a guardian to 20 before I quit.

Exactly.

At least Mythic is straight. After the Preview Weekend, they admitted every single fault with the game (WAR) at that point, and said where they were going with it, how they were going to fix it by launch, and where the game was headed. That's 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000% better than anything Failcom ever did.

Brianna · Aug 29, 2008, 08:16 PM // 20:16

I just wish some good games would come out to play, it's really sad to see all of these games going down the drain.. pretty much like what some people said in the OP article.

Everyone is losing to WoW, except Guild Wars it seems. I've pretty much put off of hoping for a new breakthrough MMO for a long time now, maybe someday Blizzard will make a new MMO other than WoW that is good. I don't really prefer any game company anymore, I just play what is fun and active and all that, I'd play WoW but there are too many things that just don't make my head look that way, such as the cartoony things. It's not the bad graphics, or anything, I just don't like cartoon style graphics. Guild Wars also has it's things that I don't prefer anymore, so I don't play either of those two games.

I think for a long while I will be playing GTA IV on computer, because there will be Multiplayer (For free!

) and I'm sure that once people get bored of regular old singleplayer then they can add some fun mods to it. I'm not sure how modding and multiplayer will fare with eachother (maybe it can be separate, hopefully) but yeah. I heard that is coming out in November, but either way I am looking well forwards to it's arrival, I do have a blast with it on my brother's Xbox360 and the multiplayer is some good mindless fun aside from all the jargon from people on voice chat.

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2008, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brianna

I just wish some good games would come out to play, it's really sad to see all of these games going down the drain.. pretty much like what some people said in the OP article.

Everyone is losing to WoW, except Guild Wars it seems. I've pretty much put off of hoping for a new breakthrough MMO for a long time now, maybe someday Blizzard will make a new MMO other than WoW that is good. I don't really prefer any game company anymore, I just play what is fun and active and all that, I'd play WoW but there are too many things that just don't make my head look that way, such as the cartoony things. It's not the bad graphics, or anything, I just don't like cartoon style graphics. Guild Wars also has it's things that I don't prefer anymore, so I don't play either of those two games.

I think for a long while I will be playing GTA IV on computer, because there will be Multiplayer (For free!

) and I'm sure that once people get bored of regular old singleplayer then they can add some fun mods to it. I'm not sure how modding and multiplayer will fare with eachother (maybe it can be separate, hopefully) but yeah. I heard that is coming out in November, but either way I am looking well forwards to it's arrival, I do have a blast with it on my brother's Xbox360 and the multiplayer is some good mindless fun aside from all the jargon from people on voice chat.

Guild Wars "lost" to WoW a long time ago, its devs just aren't Failcom so they don't ruin their game like Failcom did.

btw, GTA 4 won't be moddable or at least not directly support it. Rockstar is a bit weary since hot coffee.

WAR is PRETTY damn good though.

Brianna · Aug 29, 2008, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Ahh, well, I guess any game would ''Fail'' in a competition for a big player-base to WoW yeah. I still look at Guild Wars as a success though despite what people say, because people still like it and play it, and it's been around for 3 years now - They're working on Guild Wars 2 as well which yes, tells me that GW GM's have not failed at all. I am waiting to see how Guild Wars 2 turns out, I'm just waiting patiently on that and reserving speculation and opinions though.

I do understand the Hot Coffee thing yes - but I have seen people adding new cars to San Andreas and stuff like that, it may not be actively supported I could definitely agree to that, but I am sure people will find ways to do it.