This game has sold over one million copes in 2008 and should live on for another 5-7 years if they manage to gain some 20% to 50% extra subscribers.
They have just launched in Russia and Poland and should be very close to a launch in Korea.
Once patch 1.5 is out, they will restart their heavy marketing machinery and open up trial accounts and a win-back program for the 900 thousand previous players.
This all would not suffice if they had not fixed most of what was wrong with the game. With patch 1.5 they will have a great game. Pretty much what they markede a year ago.
In about one month we will see if this goes like you have suggested, or the other way. I enjoy the game so I hope they do well.
Ive been making that point for months as well, already have a sizeable amount short, needs to come down to ~1.2million in my opinion, might pump a little more into it at some point.
A month old but it supports my question from back in Dec...why does TSE support the current price? We know about sales of up to 800k (based on reported subscribers at some point) but have had no sales numbers since and subscriber base continues to plummet.
This is an interesting read if you want to get a roundup on what has happened with AoC since the launch in May 08.
It is the second post in the forum, and written by TheNinjaboy. His description of the development fits very well with my experience of the game since launch. It is also interesting to see how people respond to the post below.
...for this update, we have the Tarantia Commons playfield...It was originally slated to be pitched somewhere in the level 40-50 range. However, upon further analysis after launch, we decided to switch it to be in the 70-80 range... As with Ymir's Pass, it offers a very unified and interesting story...
Funcom has reported its financial results for the fourth quarter, revealing an operating loss of USD 23.3 million, caused by a depreciation of USD 22.8 million due to the lagging performance of Age of Conan. The poor performance is compounded by the announcement that the company's chief financial officer, Olav Sandnes, has resigned from the position.
While so many other companies are laying off employees, it might surprise you to hear that Funcom is actually hiring for Age of Conan. As announced in a forum post yesterday by AoC's Game Director Craig "Silirrion" Morrison, Funcom is hiring for three positions currently: Flash/UI Designer, Environmental Artist and AI Designer.
By Crom indeed! A literal tidal wave of patch notes has hit the Age of Conan boards this morning, giving all of the gritty details of Conan's next major patch.
New Game Director Craig Morrison calls "No retreat, no surrender!" as FunCom's barbaric MMO charges into the future. "Everybody" knows that MMO launches quickly followed by server merges are often the kiss of death. MMOs are expensive, after all. If a game has so few players that hardware is gathering dust, it makes sense in a for-profit company to pull the plug. The problem with things that "everybody knows," of course, is that they often turn out to be untrue.
With the server merges slated for Age of Conan complete, Funcom can now turn their full development attention to bug fixes and new content for their violent fantasy title. A brand new Director's Letter from Craig Morrison has outlined new shinies that are coming to Hyborea very soon - so soon they're already on the test server. The biggest chunk of newness has to be the Xibaluku dungeon.
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This game has sold over one million copes in 2008 and should live on for another 5-7 years if they manage to gain some 20% to 50% extra subscribers.
They have just launched in Russia and Poland and should be very close to a launch in Korea.
Once patch 1.5 is out, they will restart their heavy marketing machinery and open up trial accounts and a win-back program for the 900 thousand previous players.
This all would not suffice if they had not fixed most of what was wrong with the game. With patch 1.5 they will have a great game. Pretty much what they markede a year ago.
In about one month we will see if this goes like you have suggested, or the other way. I enjoy the game so I hope they do well.