AOC - General Discussion II

[spronk]

Its a fascinating economic lesson on how small the windows of opportunity are sometimes - I've been watching ebay for a week just watching sales of AoC stuff, not gonna sell my account - maybe in a year AoC will be great, maybe my PC char will be playable on xbox - but its fun to watch. I sold a couple of amazon and bestbuy pre-order keys a month ago for $100-150 each. Last week I saw some sell for $10-20 each. Not much has changed in game on these items, in fact the rhinos/mammoths have gotten better, but the prices went down fast.

I still can't figure out why a conq sold for $799 while every other 80 account has sold for under $200. If you are interested in the game there are a couple of accounts for sale that are $1 bid, expiring in a day or two (usually level 20-40 on em). Cheap way to get your own account, although it won't be under your name.

Be careful of key loggers too, Funcom's web security is really, really bad. I was gonna give out my account to some wow guildies to try out (and maybe level my ToS, lol), but apparently you can login to the website and if you click on change email twice, it'll do it without any confirmation required from the original email owner. Wish they had a way to enable a 2nd password for web access or a "kiddie password", so you can let people try out the level 50+ game without fear of losing account ownership.

[TwiNCannoN]

Gold prices have been a pretty good indicator as well (as much as I hate RMT, I can't argue with it being an important stat to look at)... I mean granted there's been some mild gold exploits as well but - $20/gold a month ago, $6/gold a week ago, $3/gold today. Jeesh.

[Draegan]

Gold is more readably available.

[Vehn]

Humm well AoC has had 700,000 subscribers since release. Wonder how many of those have cancelled though... doubt Funcom will tell us anytime soon

Funcom - Age of Conan continues to dominate retail charts

[Falmer]

Originally Posted by Vehn

Humm well AoC has had 700,000 subscribers since release. Wonder how many of those have cancelled though... doubt Funcom will tell us anytime soon

http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/fro...TENT&item=1004

404'd for me, can't believe they'd keep 700k subs through all the recent shit though.

[Dashal]

They're probably still doing well. Game hasnt fallen apart for me yet at 45, so I'd guess a lot of people are still plugging along.

Maybe not 700k but I doubt it's halved either.

[Falmer]

Originally Posted by Dashal

They're probably still doing well. Game hasnt fallen apart for me yet at 45, so I'd guess a lot of people are still plugging along.

Maybe not 700k but I doubt it's halved either.

I hope they are, but the official forums are full of doom and naysaying and most of my in-game friends aren't exactly happy about the current state of the game either (and that's just lvl 80 people, can imagine it would be a lot worse if they still had the 70-80 "new* grind before them).
I think the biggest gripe of a lot of people, especially those who've played a few mmos, is the complete lack of communication with the playerbase, Funcom just doesn't seem to give a fuck. I hope they change their approach soon, it would be stupid if something like this cost them subs.

[Lalala]

Originally Posted by Vehn

Humm well AoC has had 700,000 subscribers since release. Wonder how many of those have cancelled though... doubt Funcom will tell us anytime soon

Funcom - Age of Conan continues to dominate retail charts

The real test will probably be when something new come out, either Warhammer Online or the WotLK expansion.

[Inconsiderable]

Tools. 700.000 created account means 350.000 (prolly more) canceled already.

[Twobit Whore]

First of June they announced over 500k, so 200k in a month. That number will just keep going down.

Cancel rate seems high. Without major changes and fixes and additions they will be lucky to have 200k subs after 3 months.

Of course that could be profitable and good enough for them.

[Senen]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

First of June they announced over 500k, so 200k in a month. That number will just keep going down.

Cancel rate seems high. Without major changes and fixes and additions they will be lucky to have 200k subs after 3 months.

Of course that could be profitable and good enough for them.

I'm going to go out and say the cancel rate probly won't be that high. Most of the complaining is your average hot air. I'd argue that AoC's release was one of the best to date in a MMO. I know thats been the sentiment in game from most of the people you see talking and comparing it with every other notible game in the last 9 years. Sure theres been problems with content etc, but it again boils down to the fact that no company will ever keep up with the bleeding edge player base. Just look at WoW for a great example extremely slow at content updates, random sweeping class ballance changes even to this day as there coming up on there new expansion. I still think people expect unrealistic experiences from MMO's if your flying thru content as fast as you can thats not realy the games fault. For everyone 1 person thats running to the end game as fast as they can theres 20 others barely hitting the mid lvls those are the people that keep the game going.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Senen

I'm going to go out and say the cancel rate probly won't be that high. Most of the complaining is your average hot air. I'd argue that AoC's release was one of the best to date in a MMO. I know thats been the sentiment in game from most of the people you see talking and comparing it with every other notible game in the last 9 years. Sure theres been problems with content etc, but it again boils down to the fact that no company will ever keep up with the bleeding edge player base. Just look at WoW for a great example extremely slow at content updates, random sweeping class ballance changes even to this day as there coming up on there new expansion. I still think people expect unrealistic experiences from MMO's if your flying thru content as fast as you can thats not realy the games fault. For everyone 1 person thats running to the end game as fast as they can theres 20 others barely hitting the mid lvls those are the people that keep the game going.

Oh, come on; that's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. There are easy indicators of population in these games and AoC isn't that hard to figure out. You can do player searches by zone, and if there are 30% of the number of players around this week as compared to last week (before the big cancellation wave after the first free month), then you know they have real, huge problems.

This is beside the personal evidence of the large number of posters here that have/had AoC accounts. When my guild's forums are full of "Bye" posts in General, I know there's a huge problem (and they're leaving the game, not the guild). When 90%+ of the 40-50 ex-WoW guildies and friends/associates who tried out AoC are canceled and back in WoW (and I'm sure many people here have similar experiences), it certainly isn't "average hot air".

The only people posting positively about AoC like you are those that haven't reached the massive wall of fun-stoppage that happens when you hit level 80 and/or are actually trying to enjoy the stupidly bugged-out "end game" encounters and PvP.

This game was great fun until level 80 (which you can do casually in a month, so stuff that "fly through the content" shit, please), and it might be real fun again in 8-12 months when they add some content. But for now, FunCom really screwed the pooch and deserves all the hate and cancellations they are getting.

[Jehryn]

I think you just proved his point. A majority of the people who are already lvl 80 are experiencing the lack of content and the increased number of bugs at the endgame. Those people (like the ones in your guild) might be thinking about leaving or coming back in a few months. But they only represents a small hardcore portion of the population base. If they can fix a good amount of bugs and add some decent content by the time the majority of the player base is reaching lvl 80, there won't be a big problem in terms of population.

And concerning the "fly through the content shit plz", i'm a Beta tester who started with the early acces in europe, i know the game fairly well and have been playing a decent amount of time. At the moment i'm lvl 52 and am still having fun. If you play AoC calmly and try to experience the lore, questlines, crafting etc.. instead of maximizing your lvling speed, it will take 1-3 months to reach max level. The fact that have already "beaten" the game is a personnel preference, to each his own, but no MMO developer is pacing its schedule around the bleeding edge crowd, nor should they. (It took Blizz 9 months to go from BT to SW, but as far as i know the game ain't dead yet)

[Tropics]

If your subscription rate in a MMORPG is going down instead of up 1-2 months after release you are in trouble. Most good MMORPG's gain subscription rates slowly in the beginning or at least hold parity, not go plummetting down in double digit percentages like AOC is doing atm. The game is in deep deep trouble. The reality is it was poorly designed with regards to the instanced zoned up world and their recent patches and changes are making alot of people feel pretty good about hitting the cancel button.

[Gecko]

. Like any online game you won't keep everyone who buys it, and during summer time a lot of people will hold off purchasing.

The game is well designed, but lacks polish and has a lot of bugs and certainly could have used more development time. The fact it's based on an instanced world with high ress graphics is a plus for some, so what you need to say is you personally do not like it. I'm sure there are others, and many who are mad at the glitches and problems, but thats the case with these things at release.

A lot of people are still playing the game. Many are playing a lot less hours, and the WOW kiddies who really never wanted to be in AOC will have left, making the game better for those who purchase and start playing in August.