Age of Conan

Originally posted by neonaka

 tell someone who leaves a perfectly legit review post and say the cancel or they cancel for now and will wait 6 months to try again.

These post now across all boards are in the Thousands.

(reading or posting)

they see a game in the store or heard about it from their friends - and rest is history

There is no question that shipping or even selling 1,000,000 units is a success. Certainly a nice $50,000,000 infusion of cash is welcome after so many years in development. The tricky thing about this (and its the same for any business) is making those numbers stick. 

And shipping so many units does present an interesting problem for them.  They have to launch a ton of servers to accomodate these new customers.  Tons of customer support people, elaborate billing software etc.  I am sure Funcom is in a rapid hiring mode or is signing very large outsource agreements to meet the demand of these 1 million boxes.  The real potential problem comes in month two, three, four-if the game doesnt have stickyness-if AOC is riding a hype and good marketing wave and we see major slippage in subscribers vs. initial buyers we will see Funcom way over extended.  They will have more servers, more employees and more outsource contracts than thier actual subscriber base can support.

However-if there is stickyness than all wil be just fine.  So its an interesting business problem for the execs at Funcom.  They can sit and rejoice at the awesome number of boxes sold.  After celebrating that for 15 minutes they than have to turn to the real and more difficult problem of exactly how much infrastructure they have to build and maintain to support a subscriber base that could be as high as 1 million + or may be 25%-75% lower than that in the coming months-as players make thier long term committment to stay or leave the game.

POTBS experienced a similiar problem and misread the tea-leaves.  They took the number of beta sign ups, the buzz on the forums and the number of initial pre-orders sold and decided to launch X number of servers.  They invested heavily in internal capacity to support what they thought would be a significant number of subscriptions. Two things happened to them-the buzz didnt match the game and many many many players who beta'd or logged on in that first month HATED the game.  POTBS was left with about 4x to many servers and internal capacity that far outstripped demand.  It appears as though they have survived for now-but id be shocked if they are operating month to month in the black.  It takes a while and expense to shed excess capacity.

So..congratulations to AOC for 1,000,000 boxes. I am sure the investors are happy to see at least thier initital investment in development cash paid back.  The real test will be how Funcom balances this huge number with thier own internal capacity to support it vs. the eventual subscription rate.

As someone that thinks AOC is a stinking pile of garbage I look forward to seeing that subscription rate plummet, servers close and Funcom bleed red for a few quarters-as they digest this over hyped piece of trash.  Id be perfectly happy for the game and the company to survive (I thought AO was awesome) but i really really really dont want anyone in the industry looking to this frankenstein of a game as a model for future MMO's.

Originally posted by warulven

 

Originally posted by neonaka

 

Originally posted by Nadia

even if sub counts are dropping  (and I'm not saying they are)

that wont be public knowledge until mid August

 

 

Nadia please do not take this the wrong way, but if you have been hopping around the net to find out the general census of what people are doing in regards to AoC. The sub count is dropping, and it is dropping very fast. You are in denial if you think AoC is on the rise.

 

The game will survive don't get me wrong, it is going to have it's players. Just not a large number, I am still expecting it to land somewhere next to Lord of the Rings in subs, maybe a tad less if they don't get a handle on the things that need fixed faster than what they are going. It will survive tho.

 

We will see by the end of the year once all the more polished non rushed games hit the shelves how it's sub counts hold up. Hopefully enough to keep it going and not tank the company.

 

And if you think the forums are a general census of what the majority of aoc players think, then you are the one who is delusional.

Just because a minority of people are whining about aoc on the forums doesn't mean that most people aren't enjoying it.

Seriously, everybody I know  who plays it, are having a blast. Yes, there are numerous bugs and issues, but nothing that has stopped them from enjoying it.

We aren't talking about AoC players, we are talking about people like me who think AoC sucks ass.

I am not in the "AoC Community" right now i'm in the MMORPG.com community.

Your view is one sided. with the above red response.

I don't consider people coming on this forum talking about their bad experience with a game to be whining.

I consider it to be helpful for people not to waste money on bad products.

You shouldn't feel threatened by my remarks if you think your game is so great. If it really is that great you have nothing to worry about right?

AoC had 400k subs at launch. That's all fine and dandy, but I can tell you right now with the amount of bad publicity this game is getting by the users, that number is dropping not growing.

Regardless if gamespot and all these other major gaming sites are giving this game a 8+ rating (which people know you can't trust that because they play to money not to gamers) It isn't stopping gamers who have played the game to come tell their stories of how the game really is.

If you like it GREAT!

Just quit thinking everyone needs to think like you and your buddies. I'm not sitting here trying to force you to quit AoC, I could care less if you play and enjoy it. It isn't going to stop me from calling it a DX10 wannabe shiny piece of shit.

Originally posted by warulven

 

Originally posted by neonaka

 

Originally posted by Nadia

even if sub counts are dropping  (and I'm not saying they are)

that wont be public knowledge until mid August

 

 

Nadia please do not take this the wrong way, but if you have been hopping around the net to find out the general census of what people are doing in regards to AoC. The sub count is dropping, and it is dropping very fast. You are in denial if you think AoC is on the rise.

 

The game will survive don't get me wrong, it is going to have it's players. Just not a large number, I am still expecting it to land somewhere next to Lord of the Rings in subs, maybe a tad less if they don't get a handle on the things that need fixed faster than what they are going. It will survive tho.

 

We will see by the end of the year once all the more polished non rushed games hit the shelves how it's sub counts hold up. Hopefully enough to keep it going and not tank the company.

 

And if you think the forums are a general census of what the majority of aoc players think, then you are the one who is delusional.

Just because a minority of people are whining about aoc on the forums doesn't mean that most people aren't enjoying it.

Seriously, everybody I know  who plays it, are having a blast. Yes, there are numerous bugs and issues, but nothing that has stopped them from enjoying it.

 Silly person, how do you think polls are conducted?

While I've not played AOC personaly  I'm wondering where the Vitriol is comming from.

If these figures are in fact true this is a huge milestone for Funcom. It's almost like people are scared of something. At anyrate congrats are in order. You don't reach that many sales by producing garbage.

ZV

Wouldn't matter if they shipped 5 million boxes, the game is a shallow, no amount of copies will change that.

Originally posted by Nadia

 

Originally posted by neonaka

 tell someone who leaves a perfectly legit review post and say the cancel or they cancel for now and will wait 6 months to try again.

These post now across all boards are in the Thousands.

I see your point but still I would argue that the vast majority of players never visit -any- game forum

 

(reading or posting)

 

they see a game in the store or heard about it from their friends - and rest is history

And Nadia this I will agree with you on, but also just think about all those we KNOW are leaving + all of those we CAN'T SEE because they quit but never go to a forum to say so.

Then again I can't base anything off the invisible players that do not frequent game forums. I would just logically assume that there are quite a few players that have quit and I will never know it.

Originally posted by howardb

 

The 700.000 initial units of Age of Conan has in large sold out.

Nope your wrong. You post stories people already post then you make up some funny stories about how thay have sold 700k copies. Yeah, I think someones fanboism is showing.