[AoC] Age of conan set to fail more

[Majestic_Clown]

http://www.edge-online.com/news/age-conan-415k-customers

AoC currently sits on 415,000 customers right now from the 1.2 million game sales retails.

Dramatic drops!!!

[KvdM]

So how much do they ask per month? (probably €10-15)

415 000 x €10 = € 4 150 000 per month

Wouldn't call it a failure yet, especially since mosts mmo's don't even have that many subscribers:

http://www.mmogchart.com/charts/

[Temor]

So how much do they ask per month? (probably €10-15)

415 000 x €10 = € 4 150 000 per month

Wouldn't call it a failure yet, especially since mosts mmo's don't even have that many subscribers:

http://www.mmogchart.com/charts/


Failure is relative. 415,000 subscribers to WoW's over 10,000,000 subscribers means that Age of Conan failed in my opinion which I'm VERY extremely happy about. This further identifies what I've been saying on a lot of message boards about new games that come out. The more different they make the game from WoW, the more likely it will not do as good. Most people have a lot of different ideas about how their perfect MMORPG should work. My view is WoW is just about perfect as far as game play. There's only a few bugs here and there that are irritating but as far as the game play, WoW has it put together very well.

I preordered a couple $5 copies of Warhammer Online to check it out, but I'm guessing that it won't do as well as AoC.

[Dominian]

First to the OP AoC sold 800k copies but sent out 1.2 mill so they lost 50% of theyr customers..



So how much do they ask per month? (probably €10-15)

415 000 x €10 = € 4 150 000 per month

Wouldn't call it a failure yet, especially since mosts mmo's don't even have that many subscribers:

http://www.mmogchart.com/charts/


Failure is relative. 415,000 subscribers to WoW's over 10,000,000 subscribers means that Age of Conan failed in my opinion which I'm VERY extremely happy about. This further identifies what I've been saying on a lot of message boards about new games that come out. The more different they make the game from WoW, the more likely it will not do as good. Most people have a lot of different ideas about how their perfect MMORPG should work. My view is WoW is just about perfect as far as game play. There's only a few bugs here and there that are irritating but as far as the game play, WoW has it put together very well.

I preordered a couple $5 copies of Warhammer Online to check it out, but I'm guessing that it won't do as well as AoC.

How can you be happy that it failed? You do realise that IF warhammer fail Blizzard have NO pressure at all at them for WOTLK? 400k a failure? WoW didnt have much more players from release and they had about 0 competition at that time.

AoC failed because of a having a crappy game of release and personally im not the type who enjoy that kind of gameplay, and people expected a new wow even thought Funcom tried to state that it wouldnt be like wow. I actually want to thank Funcom for not taking the easy road and just thinking about the money like Blizzard seems to do at times.

Like you said AoC took to much focus away from the gameplay but had a WORLD different player base.. WoW gives me the feeling that 9/10 do not have any clue how to play at all but i might just be unlucky. Easy welfare epics to satisfy customers.

And thats exactly the reason why wow have gone big is because you can get gear without actually have ANY clue at all, hell wtf you can get gear by afking wich most seems to do anyway.

[JezPeRR]

I bought the game on the release date, and stopped playing it after giving it a 14 day tryout (not playtime)
could not get used to the interface, to many loading screens and grafic glitches.. so i rerolled WoW again.

thx, but no thx.

[robbotats]

My view is WoW is just about perfect as far as game play. There's only a few bugs here and there that are irritating but as far as the game play, WoW has it put together very well.






WORLD of warcraft. There hasnt been world pvp in this game since pre TBC and even then, you really had to go looking for it.

Grinding honor in BG's just so you can compete in arena is not just about perfect gameplay. Sitting in Shattarah waiting for BG and arena Q's to pop is not fun. This doesnt seem to be the world of warcraft that I read about in the lore.

For people who like PvE, no one will beat WoW, i wont argue that, but which companies are working on PvE MMORPG's?

There is a gaping hole in the market for someone to make a decent PvP MMORPG with an emphasis on world pvp.

And yes, as said above, how can anyone be happy that Blizz is the only force in the MMORPG field? With all the millions that these bastards make, not once did they consider aussie servers, too hard aye? well well, look what Myth just did, planted an aussie server in Australia. If Australian wow players get a server on Aussie soil now, you have no one else to thank but Myth because we have been QQ'ing to a brick wall for years with no luck.

[Tizer]

I think WAR will do a lot better than AOC. After playing AOC for a few weeks and WAR for a few hours, i know where my money is.

[Yamio]

And thats exactly the reason why wow have gone big is because you can get gear without actually have ANY clue at all, hell wtf you can get gear by afking wich most seems to do anyway. /agree

Playing to the lowest common denominator (meaning a larger fan base) is the ultimate goal. Other games can try to reinvent the wheel that Blizzard has perfected and I think it'll be years before anyone will actually do it. With WoW, you don't have to be good, or smart, or have fantastic skills to have fun and get good gear, which is all most people want anyway. Blizzard figured that out a long time ago with Diablo 2.

I also agree that with the failure of AOC (and from what listening to the prognosticators say, WO will fail as well), Blizzard has no real incentive to make WOTLK the best it could possibly be. I think it'll be good, but I'm not sure about it being great. How can something get better if there isn't the forceful push of real competition?

[KvdM]

Failure is relative. 415,000 subscribers to WoW's over 10,000,000 subscribers means that Age of Conan failed in my opinion which I'm VERY extremely happy about.

The numbers just don't backup that opinion. There's plenty of mmo's around that have far less players and are thriving. 415 000 Subscribers equals about 3% of the market and that's not bad for a game that just been released, considering there are games that have been around for much longer have a much smaller player base.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart7.html

The game maybe didn't live up to your expectations, but that doesn't make it a failure.


This further identifies what I've been saying on a lot of message boards about new games that come out. The more different they make the game from WoW, the more likely it will not do as good. Most people have a lot of different ideas about how their perfect MMORPG should work.

It's actually the other way around. The more you make a game the same as another game, the more people will feel that you're just copy of that other game. The market is currently already saturated with fantasy MMO games:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart8.html

With more being announced and about same number being canceled every month (quite often even before the game has been released). It's actually the mmo's that try to do something completely different that have the most chance of succeeding. This is because they create their own niche market and don't have to compete with all the other mmo's that are all trying to do the same thing.


My view is WoW is just about perfect as far as game play. There's only a few bugs here and there that are irritating but as far as the game play, WoW has it put together very well.

As a game developer, I've looked at thousands of different game mechanics, played/tested hundreds of different games to find out what does and doesn't work, to see and feel what the strong and weak points of those games are. In my experience most games have several features that they are doing better then their competition. WoW certainly has a higher number of good features then most other mmo's, but that doesn't make it perfect. It has its share of gameplay failures too.

[Overflo]

Unfortunately when it comes to the gaming market to, i've noticed that many people will play a game entirely out of spite of a games competition. I have friends who felt at certain points 'betrayed' by blizzard and turned to a new MMO in order to exact their revenge. The problem is most of them disliked the gameplay of AoC compared to WoW, but once again many people were expecting AoC to translate into WoW with more blood/pvp!

Personally i Agree that different is going to be the key but I don't believe different will work to its max potential for some time, as many people are now very comfortable with WoW. It has dominated the market with its game, and like it or not, people have become engulfed in its gameplay to the point of nearly having an automatic distaste for any games not designed like it.

If there is one thing i can note about blizzard, its that they make their games in a fashion where you will distaste any other game of the genre if its not like the blizzard version. Starcraft/warcraft did that to me with strategy games and Diablo II made me hate all other rpg's that didn't have its fast pace/control.

They definetly are good at what they do, i do hope for some competition to role in sometime soon, but i can't see it lasting unfortunately.

[Shuri]

Crappy game is crappy. I played that game for my trial period and quit. The gathering system was designed by a sadist. PvP was a joke, zoning in to an instanced (yet shared) dungeon only to get your ass handed to you by someone before your load screen is even done is made of pure fail. Piss poor design, If I had more cash I would have shorted FunCom's stock long ago.

[Lokked]

AoC promised me a PvP oriented game and delivered to me the worst PvP experience I've seen to date:
FFA PvP, where you can even kill your own guildmates if not partied with them.
City Seiges, which is the end game, which you need to book ahead of time, which you need to win a bid using your pool of "PvP Points" before you can even book your Seige Time.
Contains classes that can't even win a PvP battle when they get the jump on someone killing an NPC.
Contains classes that can take on 3 or 4 players at once, and the community knows this, so everyone has rolled one.

I enjoyed EQ2 PvP more then AoC (and WoW's more then EQ2).

[-silencer-]

Like you said AoC took to much focus away from the gameplay but had a WORLD different player base.. WoW gives me the feeling that 9/10 do not have any clue how to play at all but i might just be unlucky. Easy welfare epics to satisfy customers.

And thats exactly the reason why wow have gone big is because you can get gear without actually have ANY clue at all, hell wtf you can get gear by afking wich most seems to do anyway.
That's what upsets me most about WoW. They create the game with a fantastic feel for PvE and world PvP, and continually fuck it over for the sake of Arena PvP. E-Sport bullshit.. create a game as PvP-based from the ground up so the system itself isn't broken to begin with. That way you're not trying to bait and switch the players who aren't in it for the ESport crap.

[TheBigBB]

My big problem with WoW PVP is that they don't make enough maps. It's totally unacceptable to have only 4 maps to play on in battlegrounds for a game that's been out for this long. Make a possible 2 or 3 map variations for each!

Blizzard are adding a PVP-only zone in WOTLK, so we'll see how that goes. My problem with world PVP in general has been that one side will win due to pure numbers. The team with a lot more people almost always wins, and how do you have a good time when you don't have a fair shot? I know a lot of people here were saying in other threads that they liked the possibility of having to overcome great odds, but I doubt this kind of imbalance would hold your attention in the long run even if you think you'd enjoy that for a couple months. At some point you're going to need to win battles to advance your character, and when you can't do that because the other side has more people all the time, it's not going to be enjoyable.

[Caspian]

http://www.edge-online.com/news/age-conan-415k-customers

AoC currently sits on 415,000 customers right now from the 1.2 million game sales retails.

Dramatic drops!!!415k is a respectable number. As stated many MMOs do just fine at or below that number. I don't know WoW's number 3 months after release but it was probably close.

What makes this a failure is that they sold 1.2 million copies and only 415k are still playing. That means 2/3rds of the people who bought it stopped playing. When 2 out of 3 people who bought the game no longer play it, it is in a downward spiral. To have that level of exodus so soon after release means that it will not be a long term success. It might do OK but will not challenge any game for "most users".

WAR might be different. There are a lot of things that look exciting. But they had to cut a ton of content to get to this release date and have under gone a large number of change internally as a company. I would not be suprised to see a bunch of people leave WoW to play WAR then come back for WoTLK if WAR disappoints. Only time will tell.

[Dominian]

http://www.edge-online.com/news/age-conan-415k-customers

AoC currently sits on 415,000 customers right now from the 1.2 million game sales retails.

Dramatic drops!!!415k is a respectable number. As stated many MMOs do just fine at or below that number. I don't know WoW's number 3 months after release but it was probably close.

What makes this a failure is that they sold 1.2 million copies and only 415k are still playing. That means 2/3rds of the people who bought it stopped playing. When 2 out of 3 people who bought the game no longer play it, it is in a downward spiral. To have that level of exodus so soon after release means that it will not be a long term success. It might do OK but will not challenge any game for "most users".

WAR might be different. There are a lot of things that look exciting. But they had to cut a ton of content to get to this release date and have under gone a large number of change internally as a company. I would not be suprised to see a bunch of people leave WoW to play WAR then come back for WoTLK if WAR disappoints. Only time will tell.

Actually his numbers are right when it comes to players left but 1.2 mill copies were shipped and 800k bought.

Ofc people will some will get disapointed with WAR as i assume some will love theyr pvp system and some will hate it. (dont ask me i havent tried it) What i loved about AoC was that people werent generaly assholes like in wow were you barley cant group and not get a prick. People in bgs tend to play like they either dont care or dont have a clue. As mentioned pvp in conan didnt feel complete at all as i could kill anyone if i used my 3 min cooldown wich was a 5 or 6 second stun wich did crazy damage, but trying to chase casters and using combos wasnt fun at all.

AoC dont apply to most users and i have no idea why Funcom stated themself as a competition to WoW in the last interview with Dagbladet.no, it realy disapointed me becausei expected them to cover another part of the MMO players and not try to compete with the 3vil money machine. :)

[Zzc2]

AoC failed because of a having a crappy game of release and personally im not the type who enjoy that kind of gameplay, and people expected a new wow even thought Funcom tried to state that it wouldnt be like wow. I actually want to thank Funcom for not taking the easy road and just thinking about the money like Blizzard seems to do at times.


I remember during the release of WoW that Blizzard was going bankrupt. I may be wrong, but that's what I remember seeing in the news around the release of WoW.




<The Hive>

[SilverSlice]

one have to take into consideration that, aoc where released rigth before the summer, and its a 18+ game, quite a lot of people above that age group, enjoy spending time outdoors in the sunshine, drinking beer watching the lady's and so on. to get more real subsription numbers one should wait another two months so those who unsigned for the summer can resign after the summer remember student who got it may have less then good financiel situation as does a lot of other people, so a bite saved in aoc montly fee's is another 1 to 3 beers :)

Silver

[robbotats]

My problem with world PVP in general has been that one side will win due to pure numbers. The team with a lot more people almost always wins, and how do you have a good time when you don't have a fair shot? I know a lot of people here were saying in other threads that they liked the possibility of having to overcome great odds, but I doubt this kind of imbalance would hold your attention in the long run even if you think you'd enjoy that for a couple months. At some point you're going to need to win battles to advance your character, and when you can't do that because the other side has more people all the time, it's not going to be enjoyable.

If the game is pvp focused, you wont be outnumbered, all your guild mates will be playing to pvp. You wont get replies like "Nah I need to farm 40 AB tokens tonight", thats why world pvp is dead, the only rewards for pvp are in BG or Arena.

The rewards need to be in world pvp for it to happen. Warhammer......attack a keep, kill the boss of that keep and unlock the armor vendors. That makes me want to go world pvp.

[Otlecs]

The only thing I liked about AoC when I tried it on a RPPvP server was the free-for-all PvP system. Everything else was pretty much rubbish, although the insane overuse of instancing to make up for a poor technical platform was the final straw.

The numbers will continue to decline.

Now... WoW with a free-for-all PvP system outside of towns. THAT I would re-roll for in a heartbeat.

Ah well. I can dream.

[Eroa]

there was only one thing I enjoyed about AoC, and that was canceling my account with them

Sure, WoW was no where near perfect when it was released, seeing as I was a hardcore pvper from daoc I didn't really enjoy wow at the start, but AoC just pushed it even further and released a game so far away from beeing finished, just the fact that female charachters were doing 33% less damage? I mean seriously, it was know all the way through the betas and wasn't fixed untill several months into the release

Funcome should have been smart and waitied untill after the summer with the relase, seeing it being 18+ content and all, and as stated before, alot of 18+ people, like there summers to be a summer, specially when you are from places like me (north of sweden) where we have snow most parts of the year and as worst in the winter 3h sunlight a day

[Kopitar]

The only thing I liked about AoC when I tried it on a RPPvP server was the free-for-all PvP system. Everything else was pretty much rubbish, although the insane overuse of instancing to make up for a poor technical platform was the final straw.

The numbers will continue to decline.

Now... WoW with a free-for-all PvP system outside of towns. THAT I would re-roll for in a heartbeat.

Ah well. I can dream.

I rarely see more than 1 instance of an area these days, not enough people :(

A WoW FFA PVP server is the only thing that will make me come back....

/Lootable corpses would also be a nice addition to this server

[Elesar]

So, call me strange, but...

I love AoC. I have a lvl 80 ToS on the PvE server Dagoth. My guild is not large, but not so small as to never see people online. We have about 20 active members with several that have dropped until the end of summer, with promises to return and an eagerness to get to 80.

The main problem with AoC, as far as I can see, is that it was a premature release. Other issues are the demanding spec's of the game, a lack of content (Due to early release), and the PvP system not being fully implemented yet.

Leveling in the game was a stop-go pace. You would fly for a few levels, then hit dry areas in the content and be stuck at one level for several days of playing with little to do other than the daily quests (reset every four hours). The crafting system, while juvenile in its simplicity, is good in so much as you can make gear and consumables that are actually useful.

Player made cities are a nice feature of the game, and my city is nearly done with T2 (of 3). Once at T3, your guild is the able to go and compete for a battle-keep for the GvG instances.

Instancing: Is not due to a technical disadvantage. It is there for the players sake. Imagine running into a zone with the graphics that AoC has, and having a couple hundred people there. ANY system would lock solid. I run my system (8800GTS, AMD 6400+, 4GB RAM) at medium-high settings, and in a largely populated area, I can only pull around 35 FPS. Sure the game could utilize dated graphics like those that WoW is using, and the there wouldn't need to be instances, but what is the use of advancing the technology in gaming systems if we are going to still be using cell shading and blocky models in ten years time?

The combat system in AoC is by far the most intense that I have seen for a one character experience. This does hinder the ability to multi-box the game, along with the current lack of a /follow command.

Healing in the game is rather dificult, but a welcome change. A healer is never just a healer. All three classes can deal a decent amount of damage, and are easily solo-able if that is your style. The issue is the current balancing of the healing, which I think is rather under-par. Each class of healer can only heal effectively if the target is not already under the effects of other healers of the same class. On top of that, healers only get three heals by default, two HoTs and one burst. The burst induces a 60 second debuff against burst heals from the same class. The HoTs are difficult. The smaller one is non-stackable, regardless of the healers class. The larger of the two stack, but only from different-class healers. This can make it difficult to keep your tank up when being hit for 2-3k dmg by Vistrix (Big dragon raid boss). Heals are also only 50% effective on the healer itself.


Well, I seem to have lost my train of thought now, and need to act like I'm actually working before my boss catches me on the net again. Hope I provided a bit of insight on the game for those that haven't tried it, or quit before giving it a fair shot.

[Steph]

I bought AoC hoping for a new UO, i.e. ffa pvp and player towns. With all failures in deployment, server and client stability and more importantly poor design and ergonomics, I was hard pressed to play for more than an hour or two at a time. I remember trying out WoW and loving all the improvements made compared to UO. When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed. Yes, the graphics are nice. But then, what really makes a game is not pretty playing pieces, it is the game itself being sound and fun. I care more about classes, abilities, quests and game mechanics working than fancy graphics.

In retrospect I am very happy that I did not buy any fluffy collectors edition or wasted any money beyond the cover price of the normal game edition on this train wreck. =]

[Dominian]

I bought AoC hoping for a new UO, i.e. ffa pvp and player towns. With all failures in deployment, server and client stability and more importantly poor design and ergonomics, I was hard pressed to play for more than an hour or two at a time. I remember trying out WoW and loving all the improvements made compared to UO. When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed. Yes, the graphics are nice. But then, what really makes a game is not pretty playing pieces, it is the game itself being sound and fun. I care more about classes, abilities, quests and game mechanics working than fancy graphics.

In retrospect I am very happy that I did not buy any fluffy collectors edition or wasted any money beyond the cover price of the normal game edition on this train wreck. =]

Server stability??

I dont actually remember the servers beeing down at all while i played AoC apart from the 2 hours the first day, and poor design i assume the items didnt flash enough? Most of the areas in AoC were realy uniqe and you could walk trought a zone not feeling you been in the same place all the time. (Count the farming spots OUT) Try walking trought desolace,durotar,un'goro etc you wont find spots that atleast to me feels uniqe when the same buildings are placed all over the game. The game itself wasnt fun for me either thought... I realy hoped AoC would work for me but sadly im just another wow puppy! :(

[Elesar]

When trying out AoC it was more like a trip into historic interfaces, back before people knew words such as 'usability' or 'ergonomics' existed.Well, you do have to keep in mind that you likely tried it when there were just one or two, if any UI mods out yet. I personally author the EldarUI (Though it hasn't been updated in a while) and always look for ways to improve on the oh-so-lacking default UI. Honestly, the majority of games that I have tried had a piss poor default UI (Including WoW), but just give some time for the authors to explore the schema of the UI markup language (XML in AoC's case) and there will be better things to come.

One thing that would have helped is if FunCom gave us authors any kind of information on the UI modification process. All they really said was where to put the modified files, but no list of valid arguments or game variables. I still haven't figured out how to draw my own window in the game, which was the easiest thing to do when I did UIs for Vanguard. All anybody has been able to do so far is create info-windows, which are just html/text scripts that print text into a pop-up type window.

Again, with the game being as young as it is, there is always new content, better optimizations, better stability being patched in. The only time the servers are down are for patch days (Though the downtime is sometimes longer than announced). On a rare occasion an instance may crash, but is back up by the time that you can type your password back into the login screen.

We are still waiting to hear if the dev's ever come through on the rumored LUA integration/update, but I think that that has been swept under the rug, and will likely be denied as having ever been a plan from the start.

[wowphreak]

guess yeh all forgot how wow started of eh. Server crashing regulary unfinished content, half bake classes. Every MMO game starts off that way.
What yer playing now is been in development for years.

[glo]

guess yeh all forgot how wow started of eh. Server crashing regulary unfinished content, half bake classes. Every MMO game starts off that way.
What yer playing now is been in development for years.

Wow has of course had much polish applied since release but it was far superior to AoC on day 1.

As far as WAR goes it will come out with much less content because of economical pressure but I doubt very much it will come close to flopping in a way even close to we have seen from recent MMO's. I fully expect WAR to enjoy 10-20% market share within a couple years. WAR has a more sophisticated engine running the game with even more of a background story and extensibility options. The only way I see WAR disappearing is for WoW 2 to come out along with a sci-fi based game by blizzard(both with more advanced engines then the current wow) bundled for a single monthly fee. At that point they will corner the mmo market for awhile.

I for one hope WAR does extremely well, if you ever played warhammer 40k you can picture how amazing an mmo based on that game would be and that is their next project.