Age of Conan

Originally posted by jerryblue

I dont have nothng with underage peoples like you, with peoples that dont know how to use google.

 dont have nothng troling AOC or WOW or any other game, but i must say these:

When you startd these thread MR.EDITOR, aparently you dont know nothng about games sells. The Burning Crusade was sold for 3,5 milions copys in the first 2-3 weeks. Also Mario wwi (not a mmo) sold in 6 millions copys last Christmas in that week.

More then that Diablo II (and wasnt a mmo, just arcade type on battlenet) was sold in 16 millions copys, and for sure these time sells will double, because was the most popular rpg in the early arcade multyplayer time, a worldwide love, the equivalent of Heroes of Might and Magic III TBS.

Your profecy dont have any fundamental base, AoC will not kill any other mmo, not even a single, multiplayer, arcade, or a console game, same like LOTR, just another ordinary mmo.

 

 

Good point! Peoples bought AoC to play somthng diferent. Nothng impresive with AoC.

I still can't believe people justify a game that is not finished and still being released.

I mean i am not going to pay 50 euros for a game that is still broken. This was acceptable 5 years ago with mmo's but now ... come on get real ffs. Its like making something half done and you expect to get money for it?

lets see you live in a house that has no roof or something like that.Yes you can make a roof later but don't expect me to pay for the house before that roof is there.

If you want to make an mmo either make sure it is done @ release date or postpone it. And i thought people would learn what happened to everquest 2 but i guess you really need to experience it yourself before you learn. (yes everquest 2 was crap @ release date (ok some people didn't think so but most did).)

Atleast EA mythic was smart enough to realise that.

And yes i know money is a problem with game company's. But make a decent plan then or cut back on some gameplay stuff. (WTF @ lvl 80 btw, having big numbers doesn't mean anything btw and it doesn't help the content)

One discussion is whether AoC is good or not, is it broken etc. I have a strong opinion here myself but see that discussion as very different from the one the OP tries to have.

The other discussion is how AoC is doing sales and subscription wise. FC reported that 700,000 people have created accounts during the release frenzy. This is an impressive number by almost all means.

However, people who are on the servers have noted that alot of friends in their friend list/guild are not logging on anymore. We can note the amount of rage that alot of players are feeling around the state of the release client and how patches are applied and what those patches address. So the magic question becomes how many people are leaving? And how many new subscriptions are being created?

For the second question I believe that the Amazon sales chart says alot. This implies that new account creation is dropping very fast (based on the Amazon sales data).

In terms of how many people that are actually leaving the game I believe the best proxy to be X-fire activity. The absolut number of X-fire users tells us nothing since they will be more active in some game segments than others. When looking at a trend however I think it is fair to say that X-fire users are not different to other players in any major way. Looking at X-fire statistics activity has dropped by more than 50% in the first month (Source: http://www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/ ).

That implies a huge drop in active accounts even during the first month before the free subscription month was over.

All-in-all I would say that all data (even though we do not know for sure) points in one direction and that is that sales are declining fast and that players are leaving after the first month in droves. 100-200k active subs by the end of September might be an accurate estimate based on what we know which would mean that AoC is a new LOTRO size-wise but on a very negative trend curve.

People claim that all MMORPG releases are buggy and we should tough period this out - this is normally the case (although we should be getting a near perfect release most problems can be lived with on a short-term). However, what strikes me as setting AoC apart from any other MMO release is what has happened to the game just after release - rather than actually fixing the bugs and putting a plan together that will introduce more content in a short time-frame Funcom do the following:

Create more bugs - this is the most shameful aspect of how this game is being handled, are any of these patches tested at all ? Bugs introduced or made worse so far include making drops through bridges and steps worse, feats breaking, lag spikes, graphical glitches with trees occluding stuff they should not and leaves missing, slots disappearing and gems vanishing, performance issues, crashing and lag dropouts. This is the tip of the iceberg - the list goes on...

Class balancing and nerfing - this game has not been around long enough yet for many to get a proper feel for how the class balance works, I can understand some classes appear overpowered (ToS for one - I have a 68 ToS and realise how unbalanced it was) but FC take a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, nerf AoE across the board and destroy classes that already are seen as a bit week by any (necro fixes, anyone?). A more considered approach should have been taken to the balancing. In fact how was balance tested during the development cycle - was it tested at all ?

Patch things that are totally irrelevant at this point in time - mob eyebrows ?, freckles, dancing, tooltip changes, etc. At this early stages the fixing of bugs should place a priority on crititcal bugs - the ones that will cause customers to leave. Performance, stability and broken features should be addressed first.

Poor customer support - this has to be one of the hardest games to get a GM/support answer on. Forum posts are regularly deleted and feedback to the community to the devs is severely lacking. Try getting an answer to a petition before it times out and you have to resubmit it.

Lies - Funcom have flat-out lied about things that should have been in the game at launch and have misled us to the point that I am surprised legal procedures have not ensued, they also continue to lie and spin-doctor their way out of trouble after release. Fortunately most players can see past the smoke and mirrors.

Any MMO released so far has had chance to recover from its initial bugs and design flaws and many have, but to do so you should be fixing the problems, talking to the fanbase and providing support - Funcom are doing none of these, this game has too many critical, game-breaking issues for many players that should be a priority. For me and many others this game has already crashed and burned - some people just need more time to realise this than others. I hope other developers are watching this game closely - it gives many pointers on how a release should NOT be handled.

Another thing to note about sales of AoC (back on topic now) - my local GAME got a stack of copies in at time of release and the majority of them are still sat there now unsold (I have talked to staff about this and confirmed they are intial allocation). How accurate is the actual sales figure and is it just the case that the 700,000+ being quoted is what had shipped ? I don't remember Funcom actually quoting their own sales and subscription figurea.

My local GAME had np at all selling out of EQ2, WoW, Daoc or most other MMO games at release and top selling console titles have managed to fly out of stock in the past so the shop itself should be busy enough to sell those copies.

Originally posted by Flywheel

 How accurate is the actual sales figure and is it just the case that the 700,000+ being quoted is what had shipped ? I don't remember Funcom actually quoting their own sales and subscription figurea.

its 700k registered accounts

www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi

With more than 700.000 accounts created so far we have a fantastic platform to build from

a king ??? dunno about that maybe an earl or summit further down the monarchy food chain . lol . as others have said units sold and subscribers are two very different things . it ll proberbly be a moderate success on a par with lord of the rings or city of heroes . its not a wow killer . if it was you would see huge numbers leaving warcraft for it . all your getting it people who ve brought it tried it and came back bad mouthing it . i personally wanted to like it . it has some nice ideas but it also gets far too many things wrong game play wise .

most people i know are describing it as a broken game ...thats not just wow fanbois i play lord of the rings too .

i d be willing to give it another go if theres a free trial available so i can see how much its improved .

it really needs a lot of work imo

new king? I will just comment next thing: LOL

Anyone who imagines that AoC is the "new king of MMOs" has innumeracy problems that are beyond any hope of resolving.

Originally posted by SioBabble

Anyone who imagines that AoC is the "new king of MMOs" has innumeracy problems that are beyond any hope of resolving.

Whoa