GamerDNA Blog - Latest Comments in Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Temporary Inbox — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:46:34 -0000

Great post! Much appreciated :)

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Kevin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:31:56 -0000

"something went badly wrong with the June 16th patch...the weekend immediately following this patch saw one of the steepest drops of the observed time period. "

The free 30-day trial period ended at that time. That's the reason for the huge drop at once, but the overall trend is because the game was only finished up to Level 20 at the time of release, just enough for the reviewers and beta players.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Sahdow — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:22:08 -0000

Finally a data miner I think a follow up would be good on the sales correlation especially since many users didn't buy the game at release but were talking into it because its great until end game

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Hades — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:14:13 -0000

LotD had a 150 person roster going into release. We wanted to focus on sieging, zone control, and arena all at the same time. Instead we were treated to broken sieges, massive technical issues, patches that broke more things than they fixed, etc.

Our attrition rate by day 60 of retail was 57%, which left us with around 65 active players. If that is applied across the board, that means that 1 out of every 2 players quits the game within 90 days. Smaller guilds suffered even higher attrition rates because losing 50-75% of their members effectively shut them out of the end game completely.

AOC can recover with server mergers, fixes to the end game, PVP systems with rewards, and giving smaller guilds a way to buy into the end game.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Methedras — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:12:46 -0000

I'm betting a large number never left WoW, just tried AoC out on the side, and then kept playing WoW.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Xianthe — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:53:51 -0000

What's really weird is their Anarchy Onliine test environment is pretty healthy, has rewards built in and other perks. I don't understand why they couldn't move that over. I enjoyed when I played but I missed the wave of players leveling and now my friends are level 80. Plus I'd have to now move servers to be with them.

In the old days I probably would have done so by now, but now I'm on the fence waiting and seeing after putting 300 hours into games like Vanguard with friends then we all left. Of course fun is fun and no time is wasted, but I would like to spend my time these days wisely. If I know an MMO is going to be a veritable wasteland in a few months, I'm timid about time spent.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Jodou — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:24:52 -0000

The biggest problem here is Funcom did not provide a solid beta test and with every knee-jerk patch, it shows. Their method of balancing is to introduce partial changes in waves, which sharply rocks the boat back and forth -- losing players to the sea with each crest. It's this roller-coaster that people grow tired of week after week when paired with the constant client/server instability and new bugs. These are all things that should have been done in beta and not when you're trying to convince players to stay.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Drakiis — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:45:25 -0000

At this stage of the games evolution you get out of the game what you put into it. Most people got soft playing WoW, and of those people many expect to have everything given to them and are players seeking a quick progression in the game without having to do the learning necessary to become proficient in it. They chase the flavor of the month umber class, they do not explore the nature of the feat tree, experiment or do their best to over come obstacles, nor do they have the patience to level, instead opting to sit and moan and finally quit or cancel.

As far as guilds go, I think many are under the delusion that this game is like Guild Wars where anyone can start up a guild and the guild will become large through force of will alone. This couldn't be further from the truth, except for maybe on a pve server most small time gank guilds will not have the organization to truly enjoy the game or meet the requirements needed to prosper in the game as a organization.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Angela Bull — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:08:08 -0000

I am still playing Age of Conan and have high hopes. My guild on Cimmeria, Section One, nearly has a tier II city and our 80's have begun participating in the PvP mini-games. The details of AoC need to be tightened up and content expanded, but the core and combat of AoC rock.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Cedia — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:28:03 -0000

The June 12th patch is when the undocumented change to grey elite monsters went into play. My husband and I cancelled a few days later. Apparently, this is still an issue that is unresolved (and uncommented on by Funcom) as per http://forums.ageofconan.co... Our reason for cancellation was that, if they could change core game mechanics on a whim without notifying their player base at all, what was next?

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Valor — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:07:51 -0000

Nothing has been more true to form than this article. Monitoring the membership of my own guild has shown similar results. The data goes to show that FunCom is only shooting themselves in the foot with each patch released that hinders game play further. FunCom likely has 1-2 more patches (chances) to get it right, or they will lose all the advantage they had over Warhammer Online when it releases.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Radek — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 20:01:06 -0000

As one of the first guilds to siege and do most of the end game content in AoC your review is spot on. Gamerdna is damn cool, I that we can finally see what piles of crap some games have turned into. I do however imagine that the people playing AoC will increase once they put the pvp patch atleast till they realize the rest of the game still sucks.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

samhain — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:55:37 -0000

I think the one stat you are missing is What did people who play conan play before Conan. I would say that not too many people who were enjoying and playing WoW left Conan for WoW (or they did not last very long for obvious reasons), so why would people who weren't playing WoW immediately before Conan play it afterwards?

I think what you have in Age of Conan is players and guilds who were MMO-less who have at some point in the distant past might have played and quit WoW and Conan was the shiney new thing. I also would bet that a lot of people who played Vanguard last year are the same people who tried Age of Conan. I would also say that a good portion of Conan players played EQ2 and Lord of The Rings, both games which were stop overs for many mmo-less players.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

[BoA]Gert — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:46:01 -0000

My guild in AoC has been growing steadily since release; we're now nearing 200 characters, have around 54 members signed up here (and about another 15-20 people who don't sign up) and normally have around 30 people active during peak times.

We've worked to get our tier 2 village completed (that's helped build guild spirit) and we're starting to plan raids.

We have lost a few people along the way but there's nothing I'd say that highlights as being 1 point for people to leave.

AoC has a future - but if you're in a small guild or rushing through then atm there's not much to do.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

wormy — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:26:28 -0000

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was 'Garbage' but personally, after the first 20 levels, I felt like the quality of the game dropped off. Surely there was a resource decision made to nix the dialogue after lvl 20, and I can only guess why the main story quest was bumped for 10 levels, but that is where I got off that train.

I have heard anecdotally that those in guilds within AOC, have been able to ride out the doldrums of the mid levels, and then ride on to realy enjoy the end game. It would be interesting to see the correlation of aoc players who still play are in fact, in guilds.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

samhain — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:55:47 -0000

Ah finally. I've been waiting to see this graph and it confirms my suspicion. I'm not the only one who thinks AoC is more garbage than it was at release. It's a shame that Funcom has seemingly lost control of something with so much potential.

And I'm one of the people who 'left' AoC and started playing WoW. Keyword 'left' and not 'quit' because I'm still leaving the AoC door slightly ajar.

Re: Where Have You Gone, Joe AOC?

Nyphur — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:56:42 -0000

Have you tried to correlate the drops in users with high sales in the previous month? If there's a peak in sales, there'll be a corresponding peak in players quitting one month later when their free month runs out. Not every player who buys the game will enjoy it enough to resubscribe at the end of the free period.