It does actully makes a lot of sense. Guess there is a bad atmosphere at Funcom office Monday morning. It will certainly be the worst times of AoC short story. People are very upset and that is for a good reason. I cant understand the reason behind the combat system revamp. And I suspect the many months delay was a "Cover-up" by Funcom. They didnt want to share any information about there PvP system. They hold the cards close to them and tried to ignore the facts. At least the share
holder figure the truth at least. Some of development team will mostly likely get fired now.
If anything this is good new for the fans of this game. With the lack of any real beta this close to the original release date it was looking like Funcom was pulling another AO. I applaud them for doing the right thing not the profitable thing.
Not sure how much you actually know about private corporations but for them the right thing and the profitable thing is the same thing. Do you think they delayed the release out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they know that know after games like WoW and LOTR, which had almost perfect launches, they will have to do something similar or people will leave in droves. Just like they did for Vanguard and specially with their main competitor seemingly releasing a much more finished game.
You can be assured that this will take people that would've bought AOC in October and put them buying WAR instead since it'll be out before or right around AOC. Bad move IMO, AOC really needs to launch at least a month before WAR if they're gonna have any chance of stealing people off the WAR bandwagon.
If it isnt ready then it would be a really bad idea to release it. So, not releasing it because it isnt finished is not a misstake. However, announcing a release date and then pushing it back five months is a major miscalculation on their parts and something that they will suffer from.
If anything this is good new for the fans of this game. With the lack of any real beta this close to the original release date it was looking like Funcom was pulling another AO. I applaud them for doing the right thing not the profitable thing.
Not sure how much you actually know about private corporations but for them the right thing and the profitable thing is the same thing. Do you think they delayed the release out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they know that know after games like WoW and LOTR, which had almost perfect launches, they will have to do something similar or people will leave in droves. Just like they did for Vanguard and specially with their main competitor seemingly releasing a much more finished game.
I know a good deal... I also know that Funcom is a publicly traded company that lost almost 25% of it's stock value after this announcement. There have been several reports that investors are seriously pissed as some have lost millions. Most of these investors are not in for the long haul so they could care less about a troubled launch if there are enough initial subscribers to have a return on their investment. Releasing in Oct would have been very bad for Funcom potentially bankrupting them if people left, but the investors would have been fine. This will also cause issues with future ventures as investors see the turn around for investments get pushed back far beyond projections.
No Funcom did what they had to do for the company... I never said they did it for the fans... but the fans and the company goals are parallel right now.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
I'm a bit curious how this is going to end. I remember AO, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall as mediocre-to-poor games. One of the much-vaunted features of Conan is the combat system, but as far as I know Funcom has never made a combat-oriented game. Unless you count the "combat system" in Dreamfall, which was an utter sack of dirt.
There's a lot of good people working on Conan (some of their concept artists are simply marvellous, for instance), but I get the feeling their management and some of their senior creatives are ... lacking. Ragnar Tørnquist, the "creative mastermind" behind The Longest Journey, Dreamfall and Anarchy Online, is little more than a hack. The plot and dialogue in both TLJ and DF is dreadful (even though their settings are relatively inspired, although part of that could easily be attributed to the concept artists), and his Anarchy Online book is terrible. I don't know whether he's involved with this or not, but if he is ... well, it doesn't count in favour of poor Conan. Also, if Funcom's management has been willing to hedge the future of the company on Tørnquist's imagination not once or twice but three times, I'd wager they've got quite a lot of confidence in the man. I'd be outright surprised if he wasn't involved with this at a pretty senior level. It also says a lot about the decision making ability of the management.
We'll see. I'm just a little bit worried by the recent development, and I wonder what they're going to do about their potential competition. WoW is obviously bigger than Conan, and even though Warhammer is just as smelly and nerdy as Conan, it's got a much more experienced team behind it, a much more powerful marketing machinery and a more lucrative license. Who reads Conan? Who cares about Conan? I might be out of the loop, but I don't know anyone who likes Conan. Most people think the property is ridiculous.
My prediction? Funcom is going down, down, down. They've had it coming for some time, and unless they manage to handle this fiasco in a very graceful manner, they're not just down, they're Houston 500 down!!!. They don't have massive amounts of cash stashed away, they don't have Blizzard's reputation (or bank account, or, in fact, anything Blizzard has) and they don't have an EA-sized publisher backing their product. They've got Eidos.
I thought The Longest Journey was excellent - one of my top adventure games of all time (and I've played most of the genre.. back to the kings quest/space quest/monkey island days).
However... by the same token I thought that Dreamfall was one of the worst. It felt hastily thrown together, the story was rather weak compared to the first game and the 'combat' was a complete failure (still can't figure out why they decided to even put that in at all).
In the end the game will work out fine and yet again we have people storming the conan forums who probably aren't going to play AOC flaming/bashing away at Funcom cause they have nothing else better to do. Granted I was a little sad about the announcement but better to push back the release to fix what wasn't ready and have it done the right away.
Battlekruze I don't know why I ever read your posts. Behind your well written banter your just doing your nerdy dance and singing 'Funcom is going down, 100's of people are gonna get fired, haha haha ha!' Grow up man.
Oh and Tornquist is the guy behind their The Secret World project, he isn't involved in AoC in any significant sense. Beyond that Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two of the most critically acclaimed adventure titles in the last 10 years. Dreamfall alone won dozens of awards. Just because you didn't like them, doesn't mean Tornquist is an no-talent hack. I also got a chuckle out of calling Mythic a 'more experienced team.' What is their experience? DAoC? Have you played it lately? The best servers are lucky to have 300 people on them on prime-time. My old home Isuelt is lucky to have 120 on saturday nights. Sucks, but I wouldn't call DAoC a huge success story, or even more successful then AO, by any stretch of the imagination.
Can I have what you're smoking? I was going to reply to your WAR was pushed back 1 year too! reply (it was realy pushed back about 3 months from Q4 07 to Q1 08) but this is just off the wall crazy... DAoC not more successful then AO? /boggle . Reputation is everything in mmos now, why do you think WoW did so well? cause almost EVERYONE knows Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo as being stand up games. The same holds true for Mythic with its solid launch, high subs and mostly fun game DAoC. What is AO and Funcom known for? one of THE WORST launches for an mmo ever seen from crashes to chars LOST to countless other bugs. This game (AoC) when i first heard of it honestly drew me in with its combat system. After reading up more and wishing/hoping for any info on pvp, casting system or the crafting system im disipointed and saw the delay coming.
Mythic IS more experienced then Funcom, Funcom has to prove itself to me and everyone else not a rabid fanboy that they can launch a great MMO... so far its looking bad.
I am less bothered by them rewriting code to improve the game than the constant references to DX10. Considering how Microsoft are releasing games they see as must-buy only in vista compatable format I hope they don't intend to use the delay as an excuse to do the same for this game- just so they can force people to buy a buggy operating system. That, rather than delays, would stop me buying this game.
Battlekruze I don't know why I ever read your posts. Behind your well written banter your just doing your nerdy dance and singing 'Funcom is going down, 100's of people are gonna get fired, haha haha ha!' Grow up man.
Oh and Tornquist is the guy behind their The Secret World project, he isn't involved in AoC in any significant sense. Beyond that Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two of the most critically acclaimed adventure titles in the last 10 years. Dreamfall alone won dozens of awards. Just because you didn't like them, doesn't mean Tornquist is an no-talent hack. I also got a chuckle out of calling Mythic a 'more experienced team.' What is their experience? DAoC? Have you played it lately? The best servers are lucky to have 300 people on them on prime-time. My old home Isuelt is lucky to have 120 on saturday nights. Sucks, but I wouldn't call DAoC a huge success story, or even more successful then AO, by any stretch of the imagination.
I have to agree with Skitzo on this one.
DAoC was much more a success than AO was. AO started with 60,000 subscribers on release. Within 6 months it was down to 20,000. By the beginning of 2004, it had worked back up to just under 40,000 but has continued to decline ever since, hovering just over 10,000 subscribers.
Dark Age of Camelot started with 250,000 subscribers when it released in 2001 and kept that number pretty solid until the beginning of 2005 when it started to decline. It has never dropped below 100,000 subscribers, which is more than Anarchy Online had at its high point.
As for Mythic's history. You think DAoC is the only game they've ever developed? Mythic is pushing it's 12th year in existence. They have 15 Online games to their credit. Mythic is a more credible company when it comes to developing an MMORPG than Funcom is right now. Funcom has developed some great single player games, but their first foray into the MMORPG world went horribly. They have to make up for it, they know it, and that's why we have this delay.
Honestly this makes me dislike the devs. They kept saying "AoC WILL be out Oct. 30th." "We are confident that AoC will be released on Oct. 30th." "The combat system is revoluationary. It's amazing." Now they're saying. Well the combat system isn't revolutionary and we need to make it easier and easier to get into. And we're not really that confident for an Oct. 30th release. You guys have fun waiting for this game. I'm really surprised at all the people saying it's a "good thing" though. When a first delay happened, sure it was a good thing, but when a second happens, it makes you wonder what they were doing this whole time. Did no one internally realize that the combat system was flawed as is? Did they really have to have beta to see exactly what they had made? To me this speaks of a lack of internal testing, and a lack of planning ahead. I mean what have they been doing since they delayed it the first time? Working on the Camel and Tarantula animations? Sorry, this just really pisses me off. The devs can sit there and claim this and claim that and everyone just soaks it up and believes it. Then when they delay the game to change everything the were claiming, everyone just soaks it up again. Maybe in 2009 they'll have perfected the game. Screw Funcom and their wily, lets spew crap at everyone ways. I won't be playing or following AoC anymore. Kudos to those of you that think Funcom "knows what they're doing."
while I mostly agree with what your saying you should also note that while having a flawed/hard combat system may seem like an obviouse flaw for devs to find it isn't always the case. Now I've never worked on a game myself but I've heard often from developers that when you work with a game so closely for so long you get so close to the game that you can't actually tell if it's any good or not. You might think it's brilliant because it's everything you envisioned it to be but that doesn't mean the game isn't actually crap.
it's very reasonable that the devs couldn't see the combat system problems themselves because they had used the system so long that it felt perfect to them but it took the input from new beta testers to realize that it wasn't so perfect after all.
Coming from a Software testing group that tests accounting software. If we would have come out and said "Hey we have this problem with adding, subtracting and multiplying." It doesn't work right. And we had been developing/internally testing it for 2 years. We would have all been fired.
it's an extreme example, but it's accurate.
The thing is. It "is" a good thing that they're delaying it. The bad thing is that the reasons for delaying it are things that people have been pointing out for 2 years, and they didn't think to go back and think they were credible opinions until probably the majority of beta testers gave them the same exact opinions.
I think it's bad form on the testing group that works for Funcom. Someone should have "ponied up" and said "Ummm guys, this combat system is a bit hard and could use "a lot of little tweaks over the whole thing."
The difference here being that multiplication, addition and subtraction are common knowledge where as designing games is not. No I'm sorry, this in an extreme example but not an accurate one by any measure.
And as for these people pointing out the errors, if you are referring to people within the company who have played the game then ok I'll admit that's a screw up. On the other hand if your just referring to all the people speculating on what they've read and seen well, it's hard for a company to take them very seriously if they haven't actually played the game.
I also do not think that the combat system is the sole reason for delay or even the primary one but more a convenient reason to feed to all the angry fans.
-Snowman <- this name was taken.....but I like it more
How do you WAR fanboi's even know he was talking about WAR? He simply said "Hey, we could have given you some bull**** reason about needing more time to polish a startup area or whatnot. This is the truth. It stings." Perhaps he saying just that, 'I could just tell you we need to improve the startup zone. But instead I'll be a man and give you the real reason, even though it makes me look bad for doing it cause I didn't realize the problem earlier.' Just because thats the exact excuse Mythic gave us for their near-year delay, doesn't mean he was even talking about it. Someone replies 'hey nice call, I didn't even see that on the first read through.' You saw it, you just didn't associate it with Mythic's reasons behind the delay until you saw someone make that association in this thread. It's much more likely that Gaute, a world away, absorbed in making his game, doesn't even know why WAR was delayed, just that it was.
Oh and don't say other Dev's don't take shots at other companies. Please, Mark Jacobs used to do it ALL THE TIME when DAoC was young, and still does from time to time.
My god, your right! Wow, there must be millions of mmos in development right now that recently suffered a delay and used that excuse. Well congratulations on proudly covering your eyes and pretending that this was just some open statement aimed at nothing in particular. You really think that when he wrote that he didn't know that there would be a lot of people who would think that was aimed at warhammer? Of course he knew, he wants people to take into account what it's competitor said when they delayed and think "well a delay is bad but at least they didn't use some lame excuse like the one Mythic used".
-Snowman <- this name was taken.....but I like it more
Battlekruze I don't know why I ever read your posts. Behind your well written banter your just doing your nerdy dance and singing 'Funcom is going down, 100's of people are gonna get fired, haha haha ha!' Grow up man.
Oh and Tornquist is the guy behind their The Secret World project, he isn't involved in AoC in any significant sense. Beyond that Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two of the most critically acclaimed adventure titles in the last 10 years. Dreamfall alone won dozens of awards. Just because you didn't like them, doesn't mean Tornquist is an no-talent hack. I also got a chuckle out of calling Mythic a 'more experienced team.' What is their experience? DAoC? Have you played it lately? The best servers are lucky to have 300 people on them on prime-time. My old home Isuelt is lucky to have 120 on saturday nights. Sucks, but I wouldn't call DAoC a huge success story, or even more successful then AO, by any stretch of the imagination.
I have to agree with Skitzo on this one.
DAoC was much more a success than AO was. AO started with 60,000 subscribers on release. Within 6 months it was down to 20,000. By the beginning of 2004, it had worked back up to just under 40,000 but has continued to decline ever since, hovering just over 10,000 subscribers.
Dark Age of Camelot started with 250,000 subscribers when it released in 2001 and kept that number pretty solid until the beginning of 2005 when it started to decline. It has never dropped below 100,000 subscribers, which is more than Anarchy Online had at its high point.
As for Mythic's history. You think DAoC is the only game they've ever developed? Mythic is pushing it's 12th year in existence. They have 15 Online games to their credit. Mythic is a more credible company when it comes to developing an MMORPG than Funcom is right now. Funcom has developed some great single player games, but their first foray into the MMORPG world went horribly. They have to make up for it, they know it, and that's why we have this delay.
Thats funny and ironic you said that....i mean lets take a CLOSER look at that one statement u said about experience...
Mythic Entertainment was formed under that name in 1995, their first actual MMORPG was DAoC in 2001. Sure they did some online RPGs but nothing of the magnitude of DAoC. NOW!!
Funcom was founded in 1993. they have made officialy 4 MMORPG titles. AO (which you all know), a game called Midgard (it was under development, but cancelled), AoC (still under development) and a new one called The Secret World (also under development) Now when i say they "officially" made the cancelled one, sure it was not released...but the game is still their property and was a official attempt. and if you want to total the games each has made heres the tally:
Mythic: 9 (which includes the 2 games they made a long time ago under a diff name)
Funcom: 23 (as of end of 2006) -note these are ALL games made...including the MMOs
I can see where the experience lies...ill trust that Funcom will give us all a great game.
edit: als please note that while DAoC has more expansions than AO....AO has recieved 20 international awards since its launch...DAoC has none but is also known for its current success.
Thats funny and ironic you said that....i mean lets take a CLOSER look at that one statement u said about experience... Mythic Entertainment was formed under that name in 1995, their first actual MMORPG was DAoC in 2001. Sure they did some online RPGs but nothing of the magnitude of DAoC. NOW!!
Funcom was founded in 1993. they have made officialy 4 MMORPG titles. AO (which you all know), a game called Midgard (it was under development, but cancelled), AoC (still under development) and a new one called The Secret World (also under development) Now when i say they "officially" made the cancelled one, sure it was not released...but the game is still their property and was a official attempt. and if you want to total the games each has made heres the tally: Mythic: 9 (which includes the 2 games they made a long time ago under a diff name) Funcom: 23 (as of end of 2006) -note these are ALL games made...including the MMOs I can see where the experience lies...ill trust that Funcom will give us all a great game.
edit: als please note that while DAoC has more expansions than AO....AO has recieved 20 international awards since its launch...DAoC has none but is also known for its current success.
However, lets look at the facts. Mythic has released ONE good MMO , Funcom has release one OK MMO that never had the sucsess of Mythics. Still .... + if you count expantiosn that people acctully boaught mythics very far ahead in the MMO arena.
As for awards Mythic has recived them year after year. Where do you get that they have gotten none ?
PS they had 11 games done before daoc and most of them where online is some fashion .. not mmos however.
This is just from the first year. And proably not all of it . Lets do somthing quite neat look at this sites 2005 / 2006 reader voting awards .. mythic and daoc is on many of them (not at the top but then again it has been quite some time after release) Still Funcom and AO is no where to be seen.
That being said when DAOC released it broke records in the US and Europe for selling games and selling mmo. Fasting growing MMO etc. Those no longer are the top but they were at one point .. AO was not.
Id agree that Funcom has made more games, but to say they are Better or more experinced in MMO seems a tad off. GO out and ask some mmoers 1 year ago who is funcom and who is mythic , many people know of daoc and mythic. less know of AO , and even less know that funcom made AO.
Id also argue that Funcom and mythic's bussiness modes are differnt. ATM funcoms planing on working on two mmos.. mythics not becuase they pretty much do not view game making as a bussiness which more = better. They have a long time goal of making games they like, making games that stand out and deliver their type of online experience. Look at them now Mythics trying to get one just one good product out, Funcom is doing what SOE does and getting together dev teams and putting them to work on a varity of projects.
The odd thign about this is i don't think Blizzard does this even... and when i think about most of the good mmos i have played they where made by single dev teams with the higher ups being involved day to day with the creation of those games.
PS. i have wrote this but the thread should be locked becuase thsi si not really about the delay anymore.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
In addition to AO, don't they have some other game products. Thats zero income for Funcom
They orignal planned that AoC project would cost about $50MM. Note; I am not claiming AoC is the entire picture but one would be hard put to argue that AoC isn't going to be the vast majority of company earnings in the next two years.
As far as how much they spent, they don't break it out by project but software companies put development expenses on the balance sheet and then bleed those expenses into the income statement over time as the games start generating revenues.
Date / Capitalized software costs
December 2006 / $20MM
March 2007 / $23MM
June 2007 / $27MM <-----Funcom gain a ekstra $30 million to cover this
Now, of course, other game develoment is in those numbers to some degree, but the vast majority has to be AoC. The you have to consider the $30MM they just raised. Where will that be spent? Once again I expect the vast majority will go to support AoC, either as development costs or marketing costs.
The release date was 10/30 until last week. Their publisher really thought they'd be in beta by now. But they're not, so they can hardly hand out keys. But it looks like Eidos are very angry for the moment same with the shareholder. I look on the Olso Børsen and I could see a lot of Funcom boardmember have made a lot of inside trading in a attemp to raise the stock. The crisis is not yet over.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Contrary to the haters that have posted here, there is NO crisis. After being on vacation for the last 10 days I am suprised to see the same people still posting the same bull. It also seems its these same people still have a problem with the company and the release date being pushed back. Get over it already!
Yea I cried loads when Imperator got cancelled poor mythic. Cried too when EA were down a couple hundred million $ too lately.
Seige Info as it happens will cheer up the cynical, critical, crap-feeders...
It was very depress to go online to check Funcom stock situation on Olso Børsen. I hoped that recent news would have aid the dark crisis. But dispite that both Funcom have annoucened that a new Conan movie will be made and they won a award on the Leipzig GC the stock have not recover at all. It seem to have almost have stable on 22-23 sadly enough. So even trough countless mandatory reports lately and inside trading at not helped at all.
Even worse it that employers of Funcom are not libert to discuss anything at all about Funcom storck or the finance situation. Because I am really worried at the moment on the very low stock prices right now. I don't know if I should cancel my pre-order because I am affraid that the product "Age of Conan" maybe not arrive on the sence to time. It just seem it get delayed and delayed. It was orginal planned to skip 2006, but now it will first come to 2008 with a small chance. This is reallly depressing news.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Battlekruse
It was very depress to go online to check Funcom stock situation on Olso Børsen. I hoped that recent news would have aid the dark crisis. But dispite that both Funcom have annoucened that a new Conan movie will be made and they won a award on the Leipzig GC the stock have not recover at all. It seem to have almost have stable on 22-23 sadly enough. So even trough countless mandatory reports lately and inside trading at not helped at all. Even worse it that employers of Funcom are not libert to discuss anything at all about Funcom storck or the finance situation. Because I am really worried at the moment on the very low stock prices right now. I don't know if I should cancel my pre-order because I am affraid that the product "Age of Conan" maybe not arrive on the sence to time. It just seem it get delayed and delayed. It was orginal planned to skip 2006, but now it will first come to 2008 with a small chance. This is reallly depressing news.
Oh the doom is nearly so much to make me commit suicide!! DOOOMMMM!!
Funcom has around $28 million in liquid cash and are loosing about $1.5 per quarter - apparently.
But you know what people say I put spin on the truth, Battlekruse likes to do Spin the negative all the time - even admitted already has no interest in the game -
However, as not to sound different, Yes Funcoms stock situation doesn't at first look that great, but they aren't in danger of anything bad. To go on and on about delays again, is just your assumption Battlekruse. Comes to 2008 - with a big chance. Whats depressing? that the stocks are a little low since they announced the delay?
*passes the tissues, there, there, cry it out and leave it alone now.
Seriously though - you really think that all of this has any bearing on the outcome of the game at all?
Comments
Delayed release? Are you freaking joking me?
.... Wow, add another 5 months to my count down list. For heaven sakes...
Okay, we shall see if the stock rises back up again. Or if it stays low and FC has to cancel AoC.
Obviously 47% is a major loss and without coming back up I doubt they will have the funds to do all they intended.
Spoils of War - The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
It does actully makes a lot of sense. Guess there is a bad atmosphere at Funcom office Monday morning. It will certainly be the worst times of AoC short story. People are very upset and that is for a good reason. I cant understand the reason behind the combat system revamp. And I suspect the many months delay was a "Cover-up" by Funcom. They didnt want to share any information about there PvP system. They hold the cards close to them and tried to ignore the facts. At least the share
holder figure the truth at least. Some of development team will mostly likely get fired now.
MARCH 08?????????????? Thats soooooo long. Im a little mad/sad
Not sure how much you actually know about private corporations but for them the right thing and the profitable thing is the same thing. Do you think they delayed the release out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they know that know after games like WoW and LOTR, which had almost perfect launches, they will have to do something similar or people will leave in droves. Just like they did for Vanguard and specially with their main competitor seemingly releasing a much more finished game.
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If it isnt ready then it would be a really bad idea to release it. So, not releasing it because it isnt finished is not a misstake. However, announcing a release date and then pushing it back five months is a major miscalculation on their parts and something that they will suffer from.
My gaming blog
Not sure how much you actually know about private corporations but for them the right thing and the profitable thing is the same thing. Do you think they delayed the release out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they know that know after games like WoW and LOTR, which had almost perfect launches, they will have to do something similar or people will leave in droves. Just like they did for Vanguard and specially with their main competitor seemingly releasing a much more finished game.
I know a good deal... I also know that Funcom is a publicly traded company that lost almost 25% of it's stock value after this announcement. There have been several reports that investors are seriously pissed as some have lost millions. Most of these investors are not in for the long haul so they could care less about a troubled launch if there are enough initial subscribers to have a return on their investment. Releasing in Oct would have been very bad for Funcom potentially bankrupting them if people left, but the investors would have been fine. This will also cause issues with future ventures as investors see the turn around for investments get pushed back far beyond projections.No Funcom did what they had to do for the company... I never said they did it for the fans... but the fans and the company goals are parallel right now.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
I'm a bit curious how this is going to end. I remember AO, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall as mediocre-to-poor games. One of the much-vaunted features of Conan is the combat system, but as far as I know Funcom has never made a combat-oriented game. Unless you count the "combat system" in Dreamfall, which was an utter sack of dirt.
There's a lot of good people working on Conan (some of their concept artists are simply marvellous, for instance), but I get the feeling their management and some of their senior creatives are ... lacking. Ragnar Tørnquist, the "creative mastermind" behind The Longest Journey, Dreamfall and Anarchy Online, is little more than a hack. The plot and dialogue in both TLJ and DF is dreadful (even though their settings are relatively inspired, although part of that could easily be attributed to the concept artists), and his Anarchy Online book is terrible. I don't know whether he's involved with this or not, but if he is ... well, it doesn't count in favour of poor Conan. Also, if Funcom's management has been willing to hedge the future of the company on Tørnquist's imagination not once or twice but three times, I'd wager they've got quite a lot of confidence in the man. I'd be outright surprised if he wasn't involved with this at a pretty senior level. It also says a lot about the decision making ability of the management.
We'll see. I'm just a little bit worried by the recent development, and I wonder what they're going to do about their potential competition. WoW is obviously bigger than Conan, and even though Warhammer is just as smelly and nerdy as Conan, it's got a much more experienced team behind it, a much more powerful marketing machinery and a more lucrative license. Who reads Conan? Who cares about Conan? I might be out of the loop, but I don't know anyone who likes Conan. Most people think the property is ridiculous.
My prediction? Funcom is going down, down, down. They've had it coming for some time, and unless they manage to handle this fiasco in a very graceful manner, they're not just down, they're Houston 500 down!!!. They don't have massive amounts of cash stashed away, they don't have Blizzard's reputation (or bank account, or, in fact, anything Blizzard has) and they don't have an EA-sized publisher backing their product. They've got Eidos.
I thought The Longest Journey was excellent - one of my top adventure games of all time (and I've played most of the genre.. back to the kings quest/space quest/monkey island days).
However... by the same token I thought that Dreamfall was one of the worst. It felt hastily thrown together, the story was rather weak compared to the first game and the 'combat' was a complete failure (still can't figure out why they decided to even put that in at all).
So.. its either hit or miss I guess.
TLG was great, and i liked Dreamfall as well (yes it was a little bounchy storywise, but still was a great game)
In the end the game will work out fine and yet again we have people storming the conan forums who probably aren't going to play AOC flaming/bashing away at Funcom cause they have nothing else better to do. Granted I was a little sad about the announcement but better to push back the release to fix what wasn't ready and have it done the right away.
Mythic IS more experienced then Funcom, Funcom has to prove itself to me and everyone else not a rabid fanboy that they can launch a great MMO... so far its looking bad.
I am less bothered by them rewriting code to improve the game than the constant references to DX10. Considering how Microsoft are releasing games they see as must-buy only in vista compatable format I hope they don't intend to use the delay as an excuse to do the same for this game- just so they can force people to buy a buggy operating system. That, rather than delays, would stop me buying this game.
DAoC was much more a success than AO was. AO started with 60,000 subscribers on release. Within 6 months it was down to 20,000. By the beginning of 2004, it had worked back up to just under 40,000 but has continued to decline ever since, hovering just over 10,000 subscribers.
Dark Age of Camelot started with 250,000 subscribers when it released in 2001 and kept that number pretty solid until the beginning of 2005 when it started to decline. It has never dropped below 100,000 subscribers, which is more than Anarchy Online had at its high point.
As for Mythic's history. You think DAoC is the only game they've ever developed? Mythic is pushing it's 12th year in existence. They have 15 Online games to their credit. Mythic is a more credible company when it comes to developing an MMORPG than Funcom is right now. Funcom has developed some great single player games, but their first foray into the MMORPG world went horribly. They have to make up for it, they know it, and that's why we have this delay.
Why do most of these posts remind me so much of this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Zwk-OLCcY
(my quick 2 cents.... AoC will come out... will take a bit longer, even though we don't like it, but it will be a better game b/c o fit)
while I mostly agree with what your saying you should also note that while having a flawed/hard combat system may seem like an obviouse flaw for devs to find it isn't always the case. Now I've never worked on a game myself but I've heard often from developers that when you work with a game so closely for so long you get so close to the game that you can't actually tell if it's any good or not. You might think it's brilliant because it's everything you envisioned it to be but that doesn't mean the game isn't actually crap.
it's very reasonable that the devs couldn't see the combat system problems themselves because they had used the system so long that it felt perfect to them but it took the input from new beta testers to realize that it wasn't so perfect after all.
Coming from a Software testing group that tests accounting software. If we would have come out and said "Hey we have this problem with adding, subtracting and multiplying." It doesn't work right. And we had been developing/internally testing it for 2 years. We would have all been fired.it's an extreme example, but it's accurate.
The thing is. It "is" a good thing that they're delaying it. The bad thing is that the reasons for delaying it are things that people have been pointing out for 2 years, and they didn't think to go back and think they were credible opinions until probably the majority of beta testers gave them the same exact opinions.
I think it's bad form on the testing group that works for Funcom. Someone should have "ponied up" and said "Ummm guys, this combat system is a bit hard and could use "a lot of little tweaks over the whole thing."
The difference here being that multiplication, addition and subtraction are common knowledge where as designing games is not. No I'm sorry, this in an extreme example but not an accurate one by any measure.
And as for these people pointing out the errors, if you are referring to people within the company who have played the game then ok I'll admit that's a screw up. On the other hand if your just referring to all the people speculating on what they've read and seen well, it's hard for a company to take them very seriously if they haven't actually played the game.
I also do not think that the combat system is the sole reason for delay or even the primary one but more a convenient reason to feed to all the angry fans.
-Snowman <- this name was taken.....but I like it more
My god, your right! Wow, there must be millions of mmos in development right now that recently suffered a delay and used that excuse. Well congratulations on proudly covering your eyes and pretending that this was just some open statement aimed at nothing in particular. You really think that when he wrote that he didn't know that there would be a lot of people who would think that was aimed at warhammer? Of course he knew, he wants people to take into account what it's competitor said when they delayed and think "well a delay is bad but at least they didn't use some lame excuse like the one Mythic used".
-Snowman <- this name was taken.....but I like it more
Thats funny and ironic you said that....i mean lets take a CLOSER look at that one statement u said about experience...
Mythic Entertainment was formed under that name in 1995, their first actual MMORPG was DAoC in 2001. Sure they did some online RPGs but nothing of the magnitude of DAoC. NOW!!
Funcom was founded in 1993. they have made officialy 4 MMORPG titles. AO (which you all know), a game called Midgard (it was under development, but cancelled), AoC (still under development) and a new one called The Secret World (also under development) Now when i say they "officially" made the cancelled one, sure it was not released...but the game is still their property and was a official attempt. and if you want to total the games each has made heres the tally:
Mythic: 9 (which includes the 2 games they made a long time ago under a diff name)
Funcom: 23 (as of end of 2006) -note these are ALL games made...including the MMOs
I can see where the experience lies...ill trust that Funcom will give us all a great game.
edit: als please note that while DAoC has more expansions than AO....AO has recieved 20 international awards since its launch...DAoC has none but is also known for its current success.
However, lets look at the facts. Mythic has released ONE good MMO , Funcom has release one OK MMO that never had the sucsess of Mythics. Still .... + if you count expantiosn that people acctully boaught mythics very far ahead in the MMO arena.
As for awards Mythic has recived them year after year. Where do you get that they have gotten none ?
PS they had 11 games done before daoc and most of them where online is some fashion .. not mmos however.
"Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year award", 2001 Best Online Game by Computer Gaming World, IGN Vault's 2001 Game of the Year and Online World of the Year awards, Computer Games Magazine's Online Game of the Year award.
This is just from the first year. And proably not all of it . Lets do somthing quite neat look at this sites 2005 / 2006 reader voting awards .. mythic and daoc is on many of them (not at the top but then again it has been quite some time after release) Still Funcom and AO is no where to be seen.
That being said when DAOC released it broke records in the US and Europe for selling games and selling mmo. Fasting growing MMO etc. Those no longer are the top but they were at one point .. AO was not.
Id agree that Funcom has made more games, but to say they are Better or more experinced in MMO seems a tad off. GO out and ask some mmoers 1 year ago who is funcom and who is mythic , many people know of daoc and mythic. less know of AO , and even less know that funcom made AO.
Id also argue that Funcom and mythic's bussiness modes are differnt. ATM funcoms planing on working on two mmos.. mythics not becuase they pretty much do not view game making as a bussiness which more = better. They have a long time goal of making games they like, making games that stand out and deliver their type of online experience. Look at them now Mythics trying to get one just one good product out, Funcom is doing what SOE does and getting together dev teams and putting them to work on a varity of projects.
The odd thign about this is i don't think Blizzard does this even... and when i think about most of the good mmos i have played they where made by single dev teams with the higher ups being involved day to day with the creation of those games.
PS. i have wrote this but the thread should be locked becuase thsi si not really about the delay anymore.
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
In addition to AO, don't they have some other game products. Thats zero income for Funcom
They orignal planned that AoC project would cost about $50MM. Note; I am not claiming AoC is the entire picture but one would be hard put to argue that AoC isn't going to be the vast majority of company earnings in the next two years.
As far as how much they spent, they don't break it out by project but software companies put development expenses on the balance sheet and then bleed those expenses into the income statement over time as the games start generating revenues.
Date / Capitalized software costs
December 2006 / $20MM
March 2007 / $23MM
June 2007 / $27MM <-----Funcom gain a ekstra $30 million to cover this
Now, of course, other game develoment is in those numbers to some degree, but the vast majority has to be AoC. The you have to consider the $30MM they just raised. Where will that be spent? Once again I expect the vast majority will go to support AoC, either as development costs or marketing costs.
The release date was 10/30 until last week. Their publisher really thought they'd be in beta by now. But they're not, so they can hardly hand out keys. But it looks like Eidos are very angry for the moment same with the shareholder. I look on the Olso Børsen and I could see a lot of Funcom boardmember have made a lot of inside trading in a attemp to raise the stock. The crisis is not yet over.
Contrary to the haters that have posted here, there is NO crisis. After being on vacation for the last 10 days I am suprised to see the same people still posting the same bull. It also seems its these same people still have a problem with the company and the release date being pushed back. Get over it already!
Yea I cried loads when Imperator got cancelled
poor mythic. Cried too when EA were down a couple hundred million $ too lately.
Seige Info as it happens will cheer up the cynical, critical, crap-feeders...
Avery!! welcome back from your trip hope ya had a good time buddy!
It was very depress to go online to check Funcom stock situation on Olso Børsen. I hoped that recent news would have aid the dark crisis. But dispite that both Funcom have annoucened that a new Conan movie will be made and they won a award on the Leipzig GC the stock have not recover at all. It seem to have almost have stable on 22-23 sadly enough. So even trough countless mandatory reports lately and inside trading at not helped at all.
Even worse it that employers of Funcom are not libert to discuss anything at all about Funcom storck or the finance situation. Because I am really worried at the moment on the very low stock prices right now. I don't know if I should cancel my pre-order because I am affraid that the product "Age of Conan" maybe not arrive on the sence to time. It just seem it get delayed and delayed. It was orginal planned to skip 2006, but now it will first come to 2008 with a small chance. This is reallly depressing news.
Oh the doom is nearly so much to make me commit suicide!! DOOOMMMM!!
Funcom has around $28 million in liquid cash and are loosing about $1.5 per quarter - apparently.
But you know what people say I put spin on the truth, Battlekruse likes to do Spin the negative all the time - even admitted already has no interest in the game -
However, as not to sound different, Yes Funcoms stock situation doesn't at first look that great, but they aren't in danger of anything bad. To go on and on about delays again, is just your assumption Battlekruse. Comes to 2008 - with a big chance. Whats depressing? that the stocks are a little low since they announced the delay?
*passes the tissues, there, there, cry it out and leave it alone now.
Seriously though - you really think that all of this has any bearing on the outcome of the game at all?