Regular readers will know that I don’t think too highly of Funcom’s truly awful Age of Conan. Part of the pain/hate/call it what you like, is that I wanted the game to do extremely well and, yes, I believed Funcom when it said that it would take the lessons learned from Anarchy Online and apply them to AoC’s development and launch. Huh, what hollow words they seem now.
Some might think this is an overreaction, but I felt that Funcom had personally visited my house, pissed in my Wheaties and slapped me in the face for good measure when it pulled its lets-make-the-first-20-levels-really-good trick, resulting in beta testers and games reviewers assuming the whole game was just as good and pumping out quick reviews that rate AoC far, far, far more highly than they would of if they had actually played through the full game.
Anyway, enough bile for now, I saw a piece this morning where AoC’s Erling Ellingson has commented to Massively about the game and has confirmed that with over 800,000 boxes sold, only 400,000 people remain subbed, three months later. This figure had been thrown around on the official AoC forums for a couple of weeks following the latest Funcom quarterly report which revealed as much but, as you’d expect, a small army of Funcom fanboi’s over there actively denied it was possible and the game was in great shape and the naysayers were only a small part of the forum community only. Wow. I wonder how those guys are feeling now? The stats were right, guys.
I mean, the 50% drop just staggers me. Sure, a game will NEVER retain 100% of its subscribers after the first month, but to lose 50% of them in just three months seems like a rather high figure to me. What about you? I just can’t see this being healthy at all.
And as some other online pundits have already said, that figure of 400,000 current subscribers would undoubtedly include (i) People who are on their first free month and, like 400,000 people before them, definitely won’t be resubbing and, (ii) People who bought six-month subs who could very well be no longer playing the game out of pure disgust, yet will get counted as subscribers for some months to come. So the overall population might not have finished dropping yet.
[...] but I’ve had more to say about my hate for Age of Conan over at MMOCrunch. Feel free to have a read. « The [...]
August 25th, 2008 at 9:39 pmQuote
I guess it’s just a matter of perspective, but 400,000 active subscribers, on top of unexpectedly-large box sales seems like a pretty huge success to me, especially since the game is not very good.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:07 amQuote
Who cares, really. I hope it does well. What’s the harm in that? I got better things to do then to wish that a company that makes something as harmless as video games goes under.
I can;t say that a video game has ever hurt my feelings that much. And hell,all I do is art, drums, beer and video games.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:14 amQuote
I purchased the 3 month prepaid card, but quit after 3 weeks. So I’m still included in the “active subscribers” I’m sure the actual number is closer to 300k
August 26th, 2008 at 12:15 amQuote
Jack Ratched, the 400,000 people remain subbed… that’s a lot different to being “active” subscribers. Some of them wouldn’t be playing at all. Infact, I’ve seen a lot of threads on the official AoC forums where people have searched all the game zones on their server and only found 200 people at peak times, etc. So clearly the game isn’t going “well” in terms of users.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:23 amQuote
Not to forgett the subscribers, who gave FC one or two month time to bring the pvp system or fix the endgame and dont continue their subscription after the end of august, like me.
i know a lot of raid guilds with 60+ people who are now one-two man teams….
August 26th, 2008 at 4:19 amQuote
400,000 subscribers and 50% retention is actually pretty damn good. WoW retention may even be below or right around there in any given 3 month period.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:46 amQuote
I am still subbed to the end of October but I have gone back to WoW and LOTRO. Everyone I knew has stopped playing AoC.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:03 amQuote
AoC is actually a bigger success than LOTRO, which is highly amusing to me.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:16 pmA bigger license cannot get as many players as a failing, massively mucked up game.
LOTR should have been the one true MMO (sorry for the pun) to rock the boat for WoW.
It did not.
Yet, here is AoC with its screwed up mechanics and messy engine walking all over LOTRO in just the first month alone.
Truly sad.
WAR will do considerably better though.
AoC and LOTRO will share one thing. IP based games with a niche group of players.
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@Ryan Shwayder, one of the things I noted is that the 400,000 is probably quite misleading and it’s going to drop even further in the months ahead. Say the populaion halves again in the next few months. Are you really saying that companies are cheering and patting themselves on the back to have a mere 25% of the people who bought the game still subbed, six months after launch? That would be an epic fail in any other business.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pmQuote
Lotro had to compete with Burning Crusade, AoC had nothing to compete with, and actually benefitted from thousands upon thousands of WoW subscribers who are bored.
AoC is balls. I’m one of the 400k who hasn’t played in months but keep forgetting to cancel.
50% retention is inflated. its way less than that. GFX are a major factor in people playing an MMO. AoC is graphically superior to everything in existence save Crysis and still can’t hold subscriptions.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pmQuote
AoC, despite the fact it has an awful start, will actually be a REALLY good game in six to twelve months. Unfortunately it’s current state has been a bitter pill that I’m pretty sure few will try to take again.
Funcom need to realise that that they can’t refine their games AFTER launch. They did it with AO and that was a disaster; now it’s actually quite a good game, but people will go back to it on gameplay alone.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pmQuote
I really like AOC due to the new combat style that it has. i don’t like to click and stuck or whatever… aoc turned pvp and fighting to another lvl.. and it has very good dungeons that actually interact with the player not just a big boss w8ing 4 u.i played rf online everquest 2, anarchy, guild wars, star wars galaxies vanguard and this, aoc has the best fighting gameplay and gore and best dungeons and star wars galaxies has real player towns everywhere u want them to be build with taxes mayors etc.etc. which is very fun, but classic style combat, i call it “click and done”.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:53 amQuote
As far as i know WoW’s lunch wasn’t too good afterall
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:30 amSo I am still gona play Aoc, and I think it’s a really good game …
Bugs will be fixed and so on so don’t think wrong about AOC
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