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Funcom Investors Jump Ship as Age of Conan Founders

wowriot.gameriot.com — Age of Conan has struggled mightily, and brought Funcom's stock down 60% with it since launching two months ago. Can it get worse? Yes.

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  • df12, on 07/15/2008, -0/+8I personally decided to skip AoC, it's no surprise that an MMO has problems at launch, it happens to all of them. I do know several people who play, or should I say played, AoC. Bugs, and gameplay issues aside, they almost unanimously gave the game a "meh" rating. Uninspired was the general feeling I got from talking with them.

    Any way, all that being said, I think the author of the article seemed to be a little too excited to point out as many flaws as possible as strongly as possible.
  • wrathofg0d, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4Age of Conan isn't just imbalanced or unfinished. The problem is that they are somehow managing to make the game WORSE with patches instead of fixing them. Don't even try and skirt around the fact that Funcom has frequently released patches that broke things that were fine before. That level of incompetence is just astonishing, and I have no idea how you could even hope to defend that. I mean hell, there was a bug for the first few weeks after they finally added traders where withdrawing money from your bank replaced the money you had in your inventory. What the *****?

    Don't even get me started on how Funcom staffs their customer support entirely with volunteers. That's right, all of their GMs and forum moderators are just a bunch of power-tripping retards culled from throughout the internet. Oh yeah, and that whole "we never said the game WASN'T instanced like a quasi-MMO (Guild Wars)...and you never asked!" thing. My bad for assuming that was something only done in Tortage (the beginning area) to compensate for massive numbers of players on launch. Because, you know, that makes too much ***** sense.

    I have half a mind to write an article of my own, as this one barely scrapes the surface of this tremendous MMO failure. I'd call Conan a bigger failure than Vanguard simply because it had enough hype propelling it to possibly somewhat significantly cut into the market, and Funcom wasted it. Kudos to their marketing team for selling Conan, though. Amazing job on their part.

    I never expected perfection. I expected a product that would improve over time instead of the exact opposite.
  • gizbug, on 07/16/2008, -1/+4Game is a big ol' beta test. The game was based around PVP and Siege battle.
    PVP still isn't full implemented (no pvp points/gear/etc) and siege battles are a slide show.
  • bdickason, on 07/15/2008, -2/+4poor AoC :(
  • rectifier, on 07/30/2008, -0/+2I played it for 5 days and then cancelled, I was completely alarmed that a product with a huge infrastructure in terms of investments and planned implementation over x years, could be this weak. I prescribed to my friends that this was a huge disastrous mess and that I had never seen anything like it. Some I know agreed with me and cancelled, others said whilst it was shockingly unfinished and seemingly no more than a beta, they would stay onboard a while longer as 'all mmorpgs need time.' That mantra was thrown around quite a bit by people willing to prolong the agony incidentally - I don't hear them any more.

    My point is.. if you check the reviews on 10+ fairly well respected sites, you will see many reviews giving this game an 8.5/10, 9/10 even 9.5/10. How the hell is that possible if they were not paid to 'swing' their reviews?
  • wrathofg0d, on 07/23/2008, -1/+3disgruntled former AoC player digging

    I listed my account with a level 80 on craigslist for $50, I'd just like to get most of what I paid initially back at this point.
  • baron666, on 07/24/2008, -0/+2I am an old WOW player ,raided 3.5 years and killed up to Muru in sunwell and retired my full T6 hunter with the release of AOC.I dont have anything against Funcom , i played AO(Anarchy Online) for years and its still one of my favorite MMO to this day maybe because im a sucker for sci-fi. :)

    AOC has many bugs ,technical and design issues, thats true ,i migrated to AOC with 10 other friends from my old guilds and all of them left before the end of 2nd month ,and none of them left becasue of those issues ,the game is just plain boring lack the spirit and just dont give you the will to log on, anyway i was persistent leveled up a necro to lvl 80 ,completed my tier 1 class set and to further increase my chances to love this game i found myself a nice guild with tier 2 city and half way to tier 3 , did few onyx room and atzel and then i simply unistalled the game and cancelled my account.

    AOC is not beta its just a scam of a company trying to raise funds to stay alive ,everything in the game is a proof , they did first 20 level perfect to get nice early reviews after that its an empty boring shell ,its just one big shame that such a great story and lore has been abused and wasted.

    But i owe funcom one thing, since i had enough with wow and not planning to go back for lich king they helped me to get rid of MMO addiction and i think 50 $+1 month fee is not too expensive for the therapy :)
  • AzAkers, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2I'm sad - first I invested a lot of time into my Vanguard MMORPG fansite (http://www.VanguardMMORPG.com), then I did it again with the Conan MMORPG (http://www.ConanMMORPG.com)

    heh, I'm just not having any luck :(
    or... Maybe I'm part of the MMO curse..? Perhaps I should stop making fansites heh
  • Mistaxe, on 07/24/2008, -0/+2Sorry, but the movie wasn't very good.

    The books however? ***** amazing. REH is a wonderful writer.
  • anoo, on 08/04/2008, -0/+1http://digg.com/pc_games/Funcom_customer_service_k ... It took me getting stung to learn my lesson, but it smells better out of that game anyway. No, I'm not just bashing the game for being imperfect. I'm expressing that I've finally learned my lesson with FunCom's horrible customer service.

    There's an email trail for those that care to learn from my pain instead of repeating it.
  • briyan, on 07/15/2008, -0/+1I beg your pardon, but I see no spelling errors in the title. Can you please explain further?
  • Protuhj, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2I wrote this game off as a $50 mistake, and yes, I removed my CC information when I canceled as well. (Appears to have been a good idea)
  • elenath, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1Well, what can I say.

    I kinda liked AoC at first. I thought: Hej, give those guys a month or so. There are certainly big patches in the pipeline. Every new MMO does that. WoW did, LotRO did it, why should it be any different with AoC?

    Boy was I wrong! The big "End of June Content Patch" was nothing but warm air. The appraised PvP- System was either not there (PvP- Exp and Armor) or not working, because it was NEVER tested before (Siege Battles).
    Another issue: Class Balance. In a game designed for massive PvP- battles with hundreds of players it is not possible to balance every class perfectly, but what happened here in AoC was just ridiculous. Examples? Very well:
    - Barbarians hitting Dark Templers (a heavy armor and shield wearing soldier class!) for 4000 Damage with one Combo and thus effectively two-shoting them.
    - Tempest of Set was able to pull like 20 monsters and kill them without any problems (at least they nerfed that a bit...).
    - Melee vs. Caster in general: Melee-combos are ridiculously hard to land because the range of the weapons is very limited. Casters don't have to use any sort of combo to land their spells.
    I could go on and on. To sum it all up: AoC would have needed another 6 months development - at least. But by this time Warhammer online (most propably) and WotLK would have been released already. That's the reason it was released now. To get cash with a completely overhyped game. And to get it fast.
  • travisty17, on 07/15/2008, -3/+4***** thing sucks, yo.
  • ratnacage, on 07/26/2008, -0/+1Hope you plan on living past Sept 23.
  • jason210, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1it must be weird being the only person that posts on a message board.
  • Cyberqat, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1IMHO

    (1) The game is gorgeous. Make no mistake. The map design is stunning and has an excellent balance between feeling spacious and not taking all year to get from X to Y. (Anyone who thinks it does obviously has never played a large world game. EQ2 comes to mind for starts.) Just when an area starts to get really boring, a new and different one opens up to you.

    (2) Quest design is great. The first 30 levels or so are awesome. After that some of the quests do start to seem to be a bit repetitive but there is still enough new and different stuff to keep my interest. Having played CoH for years I have to say that its quests and leveling were MUCH more a boring repetitive grind then AoC at its worst.

    (3) Combat system is interesting. Unfortunately the polish and care shown to the different classes is very uneven. If you play a mainstream fighter type like a Conqueror or Dark Templar the animations are very cool. If you play one of the side classes like the assassin they are pretty cheesy and uninteresting. Since most of what you do in the game is watch your character fight this makes a big difference in satisfaction levels of players of different classes.

    (4) Bugs are present. Thats a given Im afraid in MMOs today. Funcom has released a few patc
    hes with bad regressions but Im hoping they have their development moer udner control now. (Fingers crossed.)

    (5) Handling of their communtiy has been ABYSMALLY bad. Everything the original article said was true, and more. They ignored the US players please for an official RP-PVE server in the US even though over 600 people chimed in asking for it and they have one already in Europe. Not only did they not do this simple thing for the community, they refused to answer at ALL and have just ignored the issue even though the community has been asking for it since day one of release.

    As the poster says, they have become facist in their "moderation" policies either outright deleting or locking any negative threads. Any attempt to talk about their policies results in an "infraction". (see my blog on this subject for more information: http://blogs.sun.com/gameguy/entry/cimmeria_a_comm ...
    )

    Funcom apparently hasn't figured out yet that the operative word in "online game service" is *service.* If this is not changed fast, it will kill an otherwise promising game.
  • Cossa, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1Before you try to correct someone else, check yourself so you don't end up looking like the idiot.

    Meaning of FOUNDER
    Pronunciation: 'fawndur

    Sponsored Links:

    WordNet Dictionary

    Definition:
    4. [v] stumble and nearly fall; of horses
    5. [v] break down, literally or metaphorically; "The wall collapsed"; "The business collapsed"; "The dam broke"; "The roof collapsed"; "The wall gave in"; "The roof finally gave under the weight of the ice"
    6. [v] sink below the surface
    7. [v] fail utterly; collapse; "The project foundered"
  • pktgumby, on 07/16/2008, -0/+1"Founders" = "Flounders" I'm thinking.
  • inactive, on 07/16/2008, -1/+1I ll say Warhammer if it ever releases in my lifetime
  • briyan, on 07/15/2008, -7/+7I take it you are employed by Funcom in the "viral media relations" department?
  • inactive, on 07/16/2008, -2/+2Welcome to Digg;)
  • zdiddy85, on 07/16/2008, -3/+3really?

    I mean, from all that I wrote, that's what you got from that?

    /facepalm
  • dr000000l, on 07/20/2008, -2/+2Cancelled mine and my girlfriends accounts, removed the credit card information etc. in fear they were going to charge for another month x2 accounts. The game itself, as said, is still a beta at the very best, and it will probably only become just another item-grindfest. I'm not a fan of WoW, I kind of despise World of Warcraft, but I'd rather play WoW instead of this crap to be totally honest.
  • 0gravity, on 07/21/2008, -2/+2i've been a long enough Anarchy Online player (Funcom game too) and i must agree with the story that the game's dying, didn't know AoC was already going down too though xD
  • skamper, on 07/17/2008, -3/+3Good books, good movie, bad game.
  • clandbsc, on 07/29/2008, -0/+0I am OUTRAGED at the idea of being charged beyond my cancellation. Is there anything my bank can do about this? Isn't this illegal if they actually do charge me? I'm at risk of being charged and having my bank go overdrawn because I'm going to get charged for something I DO NOT WANT. I still have 10+ days left on my FREE 30 DAYS. How the hell could i possibly get charged for the next month!?!?!?!?
  • clandbsc, on 07/29/2008, -0/+0I am OUTRAGED at the idea of being charged beyond my cancellation. Is there anything my bank can do about this? Isn't this illegal if they actually do charge me? I'm at risk of being charged and having my bank go overdrawn because I'm going to get charged for something I DO NOT WANT. I still have 10+ days left on my FREE 30 DAYS. How the hell could i possibly get charged for the next month!?!?!?!?


    Please respond.
  • cultist667, on 07/16/2008, -3/+3funcom are scammers its been known for years. http://hgc.forumup.info/index.php?mforum=hgc
  • baron666, on 07/31/2008, -0/+0Oh boy i was just curious about latest patch on AOC since they promised a solid pvp fix for this week and i checked the forums, i wasnt hoping for much but just wanted to see if they created a miracle.Well you can trust Funcom on one thing they will keep failing.

    Basicly..

    Everybody was complaining melee clasess one shotting casters(anyone less than 3k health) so things need to be balanced gem wise.

    What funcom did?

    They nerfed protection gems first and people with protection gems which are the ones getting one shotted now receiving even more dmg. and they made damage gems to go in weapons only and because they are weapon only , those gems received a buff.

    Problem is they DIDINT REMOVED OLD ONES!

    As today weaker clasess receive around 10-20% dmg and melee dps deal around 10% more dmg

    And for you viewing plesure here is the official answer to players asking funcom what they are smoking back there.

    `The current changes were required to put everything on the correct level. We are also in the process of assesing what areas of the stat bonuses may need improving. That's something we were only comfortable doing once we had ensured that the consistency issues had been addressed first. While there are no concrete plans just yet, it is an area we are looking into in depth.`

    GG funcom.

  • pewpewarrows, on 07/15/2008, -3/+3Don't get me wrong. Age of Conan is an amusing distraction as I'm playing it casually over the summer. But just recently, even as a casual player, I hit the level cap. And there's nothing to do. That coupled with the onslaught of bugs, crashes, and empty promises solidifies the game as nothing more than slight entertainment until something better comes along.

    Warhammer anyone?
  • jason210, on 07/24/2008, -1/+1I've played several MMOS. All of them suck at launch. THis is because they take as long as a normal game to program and then 10 times as long as a normal game to get all the kinks out, of not only the code but also the hardware. and publishers simply cannot wait until its 99% ready so they get forced out the door. if you are waiting for a perfect mmo release it will not happen in your lifetime.
  • baron666, on 08/10/2008, -0/+0I found today a very well writen text in AOC forums.I salute this guy/gal for pointing out a very specific and important point.I hope next big MMO designers frame this text and read every morning before starting to work.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    (people discussing about new powerpoints of AOC)

    `It was in one of the last newletters before FunCom had a complete news stop. And it just smells like a dev team in panic trying to come up with ideas that will bribe the players to stay in the game. And sadly is also show how far removed the devs are from the reality of the game.

    100+ member guilds? Seriously they should make a demographic analysis of their player base to see the percentage of players who are members of large guilds. I bet the number will be a fraction of the players left (made worse of course by the severe loss of players at this stage).

    FunCom did the same mistake that WoW did very early. They failed to research about normal human group sizes and what kind of relations there are possible with different group sizes and then compare it to what people want from their social network in a MMO.
    Basic human behavior within social units reveal some fairly standard numbers for whats possible and many MMOs fail to follow these basic human rules. AoC more than others.

    For example humans cannot keep a social unit based on friendships and common interest if its larger than 20 to 30 people. After that you need a strong system of social control to make the unit work.

    Its impossible to humans to look at individuals as individuals within a social unit if a social unit is larger than around 100 to 120 people. So if a unit is larger that this then the individual person no longer can see it as something he belongs to as an individual either.

    The military saw these numbers a long time ago and that is why we see the size of platoons and companies as they are. Its also common knowledge in modern organisational planning. For example when we had to restructure where I work there came a direct order that each individual workgroup must max have 20 persons in it.

    Now most people who play MMOs do it to relax and have fun most often together with friends. That means the far majority just want to belong to a small social unit where everyone know each other and are friends. Meaning their guild probably wont have more than maybe 20 to 30 individuals in it. AoC utterly fail to provide any kind of endgame for a social unit of this size!

    Some accept a more rigid and structured social group in order to achieve goals. They will form into larger guilds but if those guilds increase to a size larger than around 100 then they will fragment into smaller subparts with their individual goals because the members can no longer identify with the guild as a single social unit (because they cannot know people in the guild as fellows). This generates the bitter infights you often see in large ambitious guilds and the fragmentation it often ends in.

    FunCom wants people to form guilds of at least 100 people . . . . failing again to understand why people play these games.
  • p4ulo, on 08/09/2008, -0/+0I agree with the majority of things typed here, AOC is a dissapointment. I ll make sure to speak of this game with all my friends to prevent them to spend money on such a poor service.

    Only thing good on this game would be some of the nice graphics (water specially) but then again, at this time what would be of any game if it doesnt come with good visuals.

    My history on this game:
    - bought usa version - cant play on euro servers + no refund
    - spent 1 day downloading the digital version
    - spent several hours trying to install game with no luck - cant install AOC on a drive with an old windows installed in it as it messes with firefox addons (lol its true)
    - bought euro version
    - Game crashes every hour + memory leaks
    - Constant bugs/lag/crash - grayed navigation map + graphical artifacts + 8800 gt oc 512 at 104 degree celsius + rivatuner + fan control at 70% to save my card from being damaged.
    - Finished Tortage, arrive at new town where NPCs dont have any audio voice...
    - Game mostly empty (seen like 6 max players at same time on same spot) on outside zones, more than 50% of times if you find a player in outside zone hes killing you and he is like 6 lvls above u.
    - Quests become boring after awhile - for those who dont have a horse yet, you spend more time crossing the map to talk to 1 NPC and then head back to the opposite side of map to finish it.
    - Lately i get home to play for a bit and i get "cant connect to the auth server" error and have to wait for 3 hours.
    -Sent a few emails to costumer service - no help - if i couldnt connect the auth server they would reply AFTER hours and the problem was already solved by itself.

    - Couldnt log on forum - no help - i get an email saying that they could log on with my account - they should have replied saying " We fixed it you can now log on" instead of making a fool out of ppl who are paying their salary as if i was typing my login/pass wrong.

    -Sent an email asking about the server downtimes if they were accounted for or compensated afterwards since we pay for 30 days and dont have a 24h service - no reply.

    I understand ppl that are still defending this game, some ppl need more time to wake up and see things as they really are.

    I usually dont post much on internet forums but this time, after regreting having spend my money i really think ppl should be aware and will do my best to inform ppl of this negative experience.

    P.S. If you cancel your subscription, make sure you delete your credit card info also.

    Cheers,
    P4ulo
  • petebot, on 07/15/2008, -3/+2This title is an example of incorrect spelling changing the meaning of a sentence. Come on people!
  • detv, on 07/15/2008, -5/+4Why shouldn't AoC be perfect or balanced at lauch? It was hyped up to be, and there was a closed beta and open beta. AoC failed to deliver?

    You compare the WoW beta to AoC. You forgot that WoW's beta started years ago when standards for an MMO weren't so high. Funcom had plenty of time to learn from not only WoW, but every other MMORPG and the mistakes they made. Using the beta/launch as an excuse is stupid.

    You say "hatred for AoC". Didn't this also happen for WoW from AoC players? More specifically, the developers at Funcom trash-talking about it? That "WoW blogging site" also had many AoC posts, talking about how it will kill WoW. They seemed to have died out and many of the bloggers even went back on their word.

    "Besides the stock drop" - That isn't enough proof to see it failed? There's plenty of other proof on that blog post, look for yourself.
  • likwidtek, on 07/15/2008, -6/+5sad but true. Made me miss WoW.
  • erei33, on 07/16/2008, -1/+0***** you and your hating wow fansite, the only reason you focus on AoC is because it was a possible competitor to WoW. Have you seriously even played this game?
  • Chadrew, on 07/16/2008, -6/+5Half of the crap in the article isn't even true. AoC has problems, yes, but it's not that bad.
  • Cossa, on 07/16/2008, -4/+2I try to avoid MMORPGs at release, nearly all of them have problems because the marketing/business geniuses push the development teams to hit a release date prematurely. This is why I like Blizzard, they don't release a product until it's nearly perfect. Although that typically means they blow several planned dates before they finally get it out there.
  • Nil5, on 07/15/2008, -5/+3all mmos have bugs doesnt sum up any excuses for a bugged game, kid. your logic is completely broken. if you wrote those comments sincerely, then perhaps you are not on a level to see what is "polished" and "balanced" game, and plz quote less such terms if you dont really understand what they mean.
  • zdiddy85, on 07/15/2008, -12/+10Ok, I know I'm going to be dugg down for this, but here goes nothing.

    I've been playing AoC on the Hyberbole PvP RP server for the last month and a half, and I don't see my self weening off anytime soon (until Diablo 3 comes out). There have been weekly updates by the twos ever since launch and MANY of the main issues have been addressed. The combat system in AoC is just a blast, and teaming up with my friends to do some raids in the beautiful, gloomy dungeons has been thrilling.

    And so many people I know agree, but if you step onto the forums (or even here, in the comments of digg) the HATRED for AoC is ridiculous. I guess people expected a mmorpg to be ***** PERFECT after launch. It wasn't. and neither was WoW. WoW was a ***** joke at launch and took quite some time to become the masterpiece it is today. People on WoW forums were flaming JUST as much as they are on AoC's, but none of them were 'playing'. They spent all their time bashing the game, jumping on the bandwagon of "its easier to say the game sucks and will fail other than try to become good at it and give it a chance" (whew).

    It just pisses me off to no extent that people think MMORPG's are 'perfect' and 'balanced' after launch. And it pisses me off even more that a WoW blogging site went to SO much trouble to bash AoC without any real sources (besides the stock drop, of course). They don't link to locked forums, they don't have confirmation of late billing, and they do not have any proof of "Funcom released inflated subscription and sales numbers to the press".
  • jrbeilke, on 07/15/2008, -6/+3Goodbye AOC, welcome back WoW and the upcoming WOTLK

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