| Archive for HardCore Gamer Networks Is it in your blood? |
| Badie05 |
Age of Conan Desperate for SubscribersBefore You start this is from a WoW Fan site but evidently at the same time AoC's xfire ranking went from 5th to 7th :S....what's going on Funcom...And I do not believe half the stuff below but news it news.Following a supposedly successful launch, Funcom's Age of Conan has begun to crumble as the opening-month hype wears off and the criticisms increase. Today's extremely demanding MMO players are accustomed to a very high standard of gameplay and polish that seems just out of reach for Funcom's new title, and the rapidly declining user base is evidence that this experiment has failed. The AoC Launch Numbers While the videogame media tossed around some big numbers at the AoC launch, including a major figure of 700,000 copies, the actual sales numbers were unknown, as Funcom could not/would not report any details beyond what they had shipped to retailers. A recent press release, however, has given us more details about what happened to these 700,000 copies of the game. http://chart.apis.google.com/char...;chd=t:40,30,20,10&chl=Unsold| AoC Sales Performance That's right, we have a rather unhappy picture as we near the "one month" point for Age of Conan. * ~40% are still sitting on retailer shelves * ~30% were bought and returned due to insufficient system reqs * ~20% were bought and installed but canceled without subscribing * ~10% were bought and set up a subscription to continue playing Of the much-hyped 700,000 number, this leaves us with about 70,000 Active Players in the world of Hyboria. Missing The Mark By 86% Is 70,000 players enough of a "critical mass" to sustain community growth and allow the game to maintain a playerbase as time goes on? Funcom initially estimated that they would need about 500,000 monthly subscriptions for a "break even" point to sustain the game. The server maintenance costs and massive initial development time on a resource-heavy game like Age of Conan are such that this figure will need to be reached within six months of launch if there is any hope for the game to live on. One month after release, they have achieved 14% of their goal, and the player base is trending downward. Not good news for Conan fans. What Went Wrong? In assessing the damages, Funcom officials are hesitant to speculate on problems with the game in fear of scaring off even more of their dwindling playerbase, but I will go out on a limb here and make some guesses for the benefit of my readers. 1. Nobody Can Run The Game This must be a big factor, given that half of the copies that actually sold came right back to the retail store because users could not run the game. System requirements proved too high to reach beyond the tight-knit group of "hardcore" gamers who spend thousands per year on PC gaming. 2. The World Has No Character Age of Conan's designers attempted to deliver us a dark, gritty, realism-themed world that ended up feeling derivative, lifeless, and boring. The legions of gamers who enjoy MMO as an escape into an alternate world found Hyboria devoid of magical excitement, fun, and wonder. 3. World of Warcraft Raised The Bar Too High After over three years of playing a polished, highly stable product from Blizzard, the masses of new and old MMO fans coming from World of Warcraft to "try something new" were disgusted with the instability of the game client, the poor response of the customer service teams, and the general poor pacing and lack of content offered in Age of Conan. This level of service may have been OK five years ago, but gamers won't accept it now after they've been spoiled by WoW. 4. Funcom Broke Promises That Never Should Have Been Made World PvP, large scale outdoor battles, and Guild warfare were all hyped in Age of Conan, but none of it was delivered. When players took too much control over the world, developers swiftly removed access and implemented lockdown controls to convert the game into a fairy-tale amusement park. Yet another developer failed to realize that an open-ended large-scale PvP with total freedom is not only technically impossible, but is also not enjoyable for most players. Games need structure and direction to provide entertainment, even though a few hardcore gamers think they will have more fun without it. Funcom attempted to bait the hardcore gamers by promising that which they could not deliver, and the hardcore gamers called their bluff. 5. The Game Is Bad Combat system is bad, world is bad, interface is bad, everything is bad. This game was built around graphics and an opportunistic release in a lull period for World of Warcraft. Sales were made and then lost as gamers realized it truly was just a bunch of hype. Can It Be Fixed? At this point, Age of Conan appears to be doomed. Only a tiny fraction of people who tried the game are interested in playing, and Funcom is making changes that alienate more active subscribers each day. It won't be long before we see more free playtime promotions, refer-a-friend, and deep discounts at the retail level as Age of Conan breathes its dying breath. The only money to be made at this point is to sell the game box based on the graphics and marketing materials. With a converted subscription rate of less than 10%, Funcom has to be satisfied with this failed experiment and move on to their next project. People Would Rather Wait For More WoW The sad truth that we realize, after this past month, is that speculating and reading about upcoming changes for WoW: WotLK is actually more fun and interesting than playing Age of Conan. Shame on Funcom, or congrats to Blizzard? Who knows. Either way, it's time to say an official "Goodbye" to Age of Conan. |
| Swift |
this is complete BS, Blizzard is targeting Funcom, my only worry is that Blizzard has a very high chance of winning due to the fact that they're a bigger, stronger company who have the votes of more gamers, hell, even i like Blizzard more than Funcom |
| Badie05 |
They really need to fix optimization and add more content. Everything else rox. Like combat is the best ever....The dude who wrote this was a WoW addict so I take no offense but I do feel a bit of regret if this is indeed true :S. |
| Swift |
well, they're still releasing alot of patches, and i'm pretty sure that they're going to reduce the games requirements, possibly take out some graphical effects, like tiny specs of dirt lol, cause this game has alot of dirt, and i don't think they need every dot of it, because this is the first game that i've seen with such immense detail, frekin WoW just has floor tiles for gods sake |
| Badie05 |
I agree on that one...stupid low PC req WoW players...Blizzard is just attacking Funcom cause its scared of losing to them in the future 
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| Swift |
sadly enough Blizzard didnt even have anything to worry about, they're just picking on funcom cause they can, and they wanna get rid of them ASAP |
| bashmo |
dudes blizzard > funcom. Why? WoW = amazing to many ppl(10 mill.) to be exact. AOC cant even be ran by hald of the MMO fans around :S |
| Swift |
the people who can't run it don't have any clue on how to optimize their settings, on running an X1650 and i'm playing it, the people who return are whiny little bitches who don't like lag at all, well sorry to say good luck finding an mmo that's perfectly optimized, WoW wasn't optimized when it first came out, only reason that many people can play it now is cause they had to of upgraded their pc's in the amount of years it's been released |
| Badie05 |
AoC has almost 1 Mil. So ya
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| Swift |
honestly anyone whining about AoC now will probably be able to run it in a few months due either to patches fixing the game or them upgrading for any reason |
| HungryHungryHippo |
1. Nobody Can Run The Game
This must be a big factor, given that half of the copies that actually sold came right back to the retail store because users could not run the game. System requirements proved too high to reach beyond the tight-knit group of "hardcore" gamers who spend thousands per year on PC gaming. [mod edit] swift, this computer will NEVER be able to run AoC
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| Badie05 |
UPGRADE 
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| Falkien |
you can return pc games?? what |
| Badie05 |
To the developer yes. Not to the Retail store. |
| Falkien |
This game failed to produce it is over... move on.. |
| Zaraki Kenpachi |
you guys overhyped it to me it was just another MMO...and blizzard is just better since they made warcraft 3 and diablo LOD...... |
| Kare Bear |
Well coming from a WoW fan, they're obviously going to exaggerate every point and insert their own opinion.
Thus, there are valid points but they're blown out of proportion. |