truthfully dont care about revenue, no one should who enjoys the game as long as they are making some money to put in new content im fine. that goes for any game i play nowadays. it is pretty sad when ppl start mixing business with pleasure because it just screws everything up for everyone.
I dont understand why the same people month after month invest so much time into putting this game down. If new people are interested in playing, tell them about how CURRENT gameplay/stability is like, not about these arbitrary numbers that don't actually influence how a person enjoys the game.
The game is stable, its pretty, its fun, it has good pvp, and has fatalities. its been years since ive been able to stay with a single mmorpg for several months and not even be the smallest bit bored.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
truthfully dont care about revenue, no one should who enjoys the game as long as they are making some money to put in new content im fine. that goes for any game i play nowadays. it is pretty sad when ppl start mixing business with pleasure because it just screws everything up for everyone.
No, it's not sad. It's reality. Mmorpgs mix business and pleasure inherently.
If the business running the game sucks, the game fails and your pleasure is removed.
I dont understand why the same people month after month invest so much time into putting this game down. If new people are interested in playing, tell them about how CURRENT gameplay/stability is like, not about these arbitrary numbers that don't actually influence how a person enjoys the game. The game is stable, its pretty, its fun, it has good pvp, and has fatalities. its been years since ive been able to stay with a single mmorpg for several months and not even be the smallest bit bored.
Apparently, more disagree with your opinion than agree with it. Too bad your description can't be classified as fact.
Due to a guy I met in the park before, he said that his fishing mate at the tackle shop had spoken to the supplier who's friendly with a farmer, he said his son had met a girl at the pub and her uncle was a sanitation officer in manchester, and he has a facebook with a few friends on it. One of those friends used to live in Paris, and he was in the local bakery when some frenchman slapped him. Anyway, these two got talking, and it turns out that the frenchman works in a shoe shop. So they went to look at some nice Kickers, meanwhile a guy that was walking past (yeah, he thought "the moon is made of cheese, Gromit") saw a McDonalds across the way, and decided to go in for a bite. He got talking to a person sat on the next table, and he was on holiday from Greece, and he has a yacht in italy, so they booked a flight to Rome, and went for a sail. They had a chat, and the yacht cruised around, until they came across a long pier with a cafe. They went into the nearest harbour, and walked to the pier. Whilst on the pier, they noticed a few fairground rides, and realised that they had actually sailed from Italy to Brighton, England. They went on the roller coaster a few times, until one felt sick and had to use the portaloo. Whilst waiting for the portaloo to be vacant, the two got talking to a guy in there who worked for Funcom, and his son was a GM called Steve. He said "we r losing r subs" and all was bad.
Due to a guy I met in the park before, he said that his fishing mate at the tackle shop had spoken to the supplier who's friendly with a farmer, he said his son had met a girl at the pub and her uncle was a sanitation officer in manchester, and he has a facebook with a few friends on it. One of those friends used to live in Paris, and he was in the local bakery when some frenchman slapped him. Anyway, these two got talking, and it turns out that the frenchman works in a shoe shop. So they went to look at some nice Kickers, meanwhile a guy that was walking past (yeah, he thought "the moon is made of cheese, Gromit") saw a McDonalds across the way, and decided to go in for a bite. He got talking to a person sat on the next table, and he was on holiday from Greece, and he has a yacht in italy, so they booked a flight to Rome, and went for a sail. They had a chat, and the yacht cruised around, until they came across a long pier with a cafe. They went into the nearest harbour, and walked to the pier. Whilst on the pier, they noticed a few fairground rides, and realised that they had actually sailed from Italy to Brighton, England. They went on the roller coaster a few times, until one felt sick and had to use the portaloo. Whilst waiting for the portaloo to be vacant, the two got talking to a guy in there who worked for Funcom, and his son was a GM called Steve. He said "we r losing r subs" and all was bad. Troo storeh.
It sounds more truthful than anything Funcom has said in the past few years.
I've seen on the main boards (the boards where only active subscribers can post) that AoC subscriptions (in their view) are up above 200,000, and might even be around 280,000. Now I have a question about this: 200,000 subscribers would mean, at $15 a pop, 9 million dollars in revenue for a quarter. Yet Funcom's revenue for Q1 isn't going to be anywhere near that. And that would assume that Funcom doesn't earn a SINGLE dollar from Anarchy Online or for any box sales. Lol. Of course with average subscriptions being more than $15, and because Funcom has other sources of revenue, subscription are far below this. If Funcom comes in above guidance you might convince me they have 150,000 subscriptions. Instead, don't be surprised when the number is closer to 6.5 million dollars US. And if that is the current population (instead of the retroactive population Jan-March) , when Funcom gives its guidance, how will supporters explain the guidance coming in a few million dollars short? This is simple math folks. Lit
I'm not an AoC player, but who pays for the 1-month sub price on any MMO anymore? I would assume that the 3 month sub price is about $13-$14 a month and the 6 month sub even less? So, the $15 month figure is always a tad unrealistic.
Now, if your talking about earnings (net profit) - yeah .. the company is being hit hard. They are now being taxed at a higher rate because of the increased revenue, they have a very large operations expense and have a bit of debt. 33M per year when spread between the government, payroll, operations, IT and creditors is not very much when you think about it.
There is much, much more on whether a company is sucessful or not than the product or service it sells.
I would never ever pay for 3 or 6 month.Because i don't know what the future reserve.Maybe in 3 week i'm going to be tired of the game and i don't want to pay for something i can't or don't want to play.There's plenty of people like myself , renewing each month.
subbing for 6 month it's like a cellular contract.Fuck that.
I've seen on the main boards (the boards where only active subscribers can post) that AoC subscriptions (in their view) are up above 200,000, and might even be around 280,000. Now I have a question about this: 200,000 subscribers would mean, at $15 a pop, 9 million dollars in revenue for a quarter. Yet Funcom's revenue for Q1 isn't going to be anywhere near that. And that would assume that Funcom doesn't earn a SINGLE dollar from Anarchy Online or for any box sales. Lol. Of course with average subscriptions being more than $15, and because Funcom has other sources of revenue, subscription are far below this. If Funcom comes in above guidance you might convince me they have 150,000 subscriptions. Instead, don't be surprised when the number is closer to 6.5 million dollars US. And if that is the current population (instead of the retroactive population Jan-March) , when Funcom gives its guidance, how will supporters explain the guidance coming in a few million dollars short? This is simple math folks. Lit
I'm not an AoC player, but who pays for the 1-month sub price on any MMO anymore? I would assume that the 3 month sub price is about $13-$14 a month and the 6 month sub even less? So, the $15 month figure is always a tad unrealistic.
Now, if your talking about earnings (net profit) - yeah .. the company is being hit hard. They are now being taxed at a higher rate because of the increased revenue, they have a very large operations expense and have a bit of debt. 33M per year when spread between the government, payroll, operations, IT and creditors is not very much when you think about it.
There is much, much more on whether a company is sucessful or not than the product or service it sells.
I would never ever pay for 3 or 6 month.Because i don't know what the future reserve.Maybe in 3 week i'm going to be tired of the game and i don't want to pay for something i can't or don't want to play.There's plenty of people like myself , renewing each month.
subbing for 6 month it's like a cellular contract.Fuck that.
Exactly. I'd be willing to wager the monthly subs outweigh the quarterly, bi-annually, and annual subs put together in any mmo.
More bad news on the FunCom revenue / subscriber front.
I logged into Anarchy Online on a free account and talked to old friends as well as many random folks.
The last booster pack (small expansion) brought a rush of old players back but they quickly left as the add-on was a big disappointment (and a classic FC untested mess). Between that and FC's neglect of the game while they continue to try and bandage AoC, AO is now bleeding players rather badly.
Also, AO's income from in-game advertising looks to have dried up, every single billboard is the same advertisement ... and it's for Age of Conan.
Bad Times.
edit:
the AoC Ad in AO is false advertising, "build your avatar and become King Conan" is the tag line. yeesh
More bad news on the FunCom revenue / subscriber front. I logged into Anarchy Online on a free account and talked to old friends as well as many random folks. The last booster pack (small expansion) brought a rush of old players back but they quickly left as the add-on was a big disappointment (and a classic FC untested mess). Between that and FC's neglect of the game while they continue to try and bandage AoC, AO is now bleeding players rather badly. Also, AO's income from in-game advertising looks to have dried up, every single billboard is the same advertisement ... and it's for Age of Conan.
Bad Times.
edit: the AoC Ad in AO is false advertising, "build your avatar and become King Conan" is the tag line. yeesh
Wonder when we see the first ad for The Secret World in AOC.
I have a feeling there will be a pretty hefty loss this quarter from the win back campaign and advertisement fees, just a couple weeks till we find out
I am psyched about the AoC expansion though as I'm sure it will take an entire year post expansion to fix all of the bugs/missing content, etc.
Funcom will never get it but for anyone else: lesson learned if you do something, do it well the first time or don't bite off more than you can chew
More bad news on the FunCom revenue / subscriber front. I logged into Anarchy Online on a free account and talked to old friends as well as many random folks. The last booster pack (small expansion) brought a rush of old players back but they quickly left as the add-on was a big disappointment (and a classic FC untested mess). Between that and FC's neglect of the game while they continue to try and bandage AoC, AO is now bleeding players rather badly. Also, AO's income from in-game advertising looks to have dried up, every single billboard is the same advertisement ... and it's for Age of Conan.
Bad Times.
edit: the AoC Ad in AO is false advertising, "build your avatar and become King Conan" is the tag line. yeesh
sorry, but i disagree with the booster pack being a dissapointment. it was actually pretty bugfree (at least compared to the other expansions when they released) and the overall opinion of ppl is that they like it. its true tho that ive seen some ppl logging back on and trying the booster pack but quickly leaving. anyway, the AO pop is stable like it has been since LE (they lost some players after that expansions, including me, but i came back).
i actually need a AO break for a few months but im definitely back when they release the new engine, i really really hope it brings a influx of new players
MMOs currently playing: - About to play: Lord of the Rings Online Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
Ummm?..yeah...we can explain it easily...because "growth" is not the same thing as "profit". The game has been growing...gradually..since it's mis-launch. That is not to say its making money/profit yet...or meeting hopeful projections....but that..if it continues to improve and grow...like all businesses...it is closer to making a profit..or at least breaking even. So..that is how it can grow yet still show negative revenue from it's launch ..just under a year ago.
I think Revenue - expences will be around break even, maybe around -0.5 million. So I've voted for break even. However nearly every one of funcoms quarterly reports since realase has had something bizzare going on so im not going to predict actual profit. For example last quarter their revenue was 8.6 mill, expences were 7.3mill yet they lost 31 million, mostly because of impairment of intangible assets
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
If someone decides to support a game by not defending the content, but instead highlighting the game's growth, then it is fair game. Fact is, a lot of people make their MMO buying decisions based on a growing community. It is Funcom's best interests to release a meme into the gaming community that the game is growing. But in the interest of actual gamers, if such rumours are false, they deserve to be outed. And unfortunately for Funcom, its balance sheet does not lie.
If their balance sheet is showing income then it is lieing. Income is on the income statement. Retained earnings, which is more than just revenue, it is profit/loss is on the balance sheet.
I think the free trial started either in the last few days of the quarter or perhaps in the next quarter, but yeah there probably still would have been costs involved with setting that up and with an increase in avertiseing that I'd not taken into account.
however I also didn't know about an ao booster at 20 dollars a peice, that will throw the numbers some and make aoc numbers actually lower than they appear.
I think the most relavent piece of information for AOC players will be the 'employees' section.
In their last report in February, they said they decreased overall employees from 319 to 302, and at the same time, they said they increased the number of people working on Secret World.
This means there was a pretty drastic decrease in people working on AOC... which means slower bug fixes and much slower addition of new content, which is basically what we've seen over the past 8 months (very little new content).
I've said it before, one of the things that kept me subscribing to AOC was the 'hope' for the future. As funcom continues to cut staff for AOC, the odds of my hope actually coming to the game is disappearing. Even one of the biggest supporters of this game posted a thread about quitting because the slow rate of bug fixes.
You do realize that the team of developers building and launching an MMO is smaller than the standard support team that fixes bug and release occasional content patches. I am sure the FunCom has various projects and tasks and it is highly unlikely that all the staff worked on AoC. The focus of staff changes based on the stage of the MMO; development, launch, maintenance, expansion development, expansion launch, maintenance, etc...
If your fragile hope was based on 17 people that may or may not have been working on AoC then I suggest you move along and find Hope in something a bit more substantial.
I think Revenue - expences will be around break even, maybe around -0.5 million. So I've voted for break even. However nearly every one of funcoms quarterly reports since realase has had something bizzare going on so im not going to predict actual profit. For example last quarter their revenue was 8.6 mill, expences were 7.3mill yet they lost 31 million, mostly because of impairment of intangible assets
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
Ugh...you made me agree with you again. How horrible (lol)
They were sinking pretty far when we last saw the report, and I cannot see that massive of a turnaround yet, but not a massive loss either.
I voted 1-20 mil, and maybe a break even on the next round after patch 1.05.
I think Revenue - expences will be around break even, maybe around -0.5 million. So I've voted for break even. However nearly every one of funcoms quarterly reports since realase has had something bizzare going on so im not going to predict actual profit. For example last quarter their revenue was 8.6 mill, expences were 7.3mill yet they lost 31 million, mostly because of impairment of intangible assets
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
Ugh...you made me agree with you again. How horrible (lol)
They were sinking pretty far when we last saw the report, and I cannot see that massive of a turnaround yet, but not a massive loss either.
I voted 1-20 mil, and maybe a break even on the next round after patch 1.05.
yeah it sucks when we have to agree with each other
but I agree that they are holding pretty steady right now which beats the hell out of dropping like a stone like they were 7 or 8 months ago. Craig has made some good changes, but that 1.05 is going to please the heck out of a lot of people and just plain piss off some others. I like the mildly item centric style of play and if they get the balance pretty close I can see me resubbing for awhile.
Whoa…there’s a lot of seemingly AoC fanbois rebelling against the thought that someone who hasn’t played AoC can analyze the market, the community, and make a declaration of what they see. Kind of like the old-timers who wouldn’t accept the fact that the world was round. I am one of those 700,000 subscribers who got the game, tried it, and said, “Wow..what a piece of crap.” After reading this thread, I can safely say that what the author wrote reflects my own view with the game. He has a good enough grasp on the game. AoC is a crap game. It matters not a whit what changes, upgrades, fixes, or anything else happen now - it had its 15 minutes of fame, and worked hard to earn its title as one of the worst MMO releases ever. Couple that with Funcom’s poor business decisions and customer support, and its a crap game. In the eyes of all but the fanboi, AoC was an experience in suckage. Just deal with it.
You do realize that your post puts you dangerously close to be a Hateboi.
The game had a HUGE amount of technical problems and poor customer service but the rest of your observation is purely your opinion. Declaring the game is "crap" and "suckage" doesn't help your argument and paints the picture of a bitter person that is still hanging on the Hate of an MMO almost a year after you stopped playing. Did AoC seriously scar you that badly that a year later you are still hurt ?
The game had a HUGE amount of technical problems and poor customer service but the rest of your observation is purely your opinion. Declaring the game is "crap" and "suckage" doesn't help your argument and paints the picture of a bitter person that is still hanging on the Hate of an MMO almost a year after you stopped playing.
While I have to agree that technical problems, poor customer service and lack of content did hurt the game a lot, there were a lot of us that quit the game simply because the fun factor was not there. When 7 out 8 purchasers quit your game I have to agree with Battle that the game had some serious suckage and so far with all of the improvements there is not exactly a stampeded of people returning. maybe 1.05 can change that. Time will tell.
Comments
truthfully dont care about revenue, no one should who enjoys the game as long as they are making some money to put in new content im fine. that goes for any game i play nowadays. it is pretty sad when ppl start mixing business with pleasure because it just screws everything up for everyone.
I dont understand why the same people month after month invest so much time into putting this game down. If new people are interested in playing, tell them about how CURRENT gameplay/stability is like, not about these arbitrary numbers that don't actually influence how a person enjoys the game.
The game is stable, its pretty, its fun, it has good pvp, and has fatalities. its been years since ive been able to stay with a single mmorpg for several months and not even be the smallest bit bored.
Most memorable games: AoC(Tryanny PvP), RIFT, GW, GW2, Ragnarok Online, Aion, FFXI, FFXIV, Secret World, League of Legends (Silver II rank)
No, it's not sad. It's reality. Mmorpgs mix business and pleasure inherently.
If the business running the game sucks, the game fails and your pleasure is removed.
Apparently, more disagree with your opinion than agree with it. Too bad your description can't be classified as fact.
I can totally back this up.
Due to a guy I met in the park before, he said that his fishing mate at the tackle shop had spoken to the supplier who's friendly with a farmer, he said his son had met a girl at the pub and her uncle was a sanitation officer in manchester, and he has a facebook with a few friends on it. One of those friends used to live in Paris, and he was in the local bakery when some frenchman slapped him. Anyway, these two got talking, and it turns out that the frenchman works in a shoe shop. So they went to look at some nice Kickers, meanwhile a guy that was walking past (yeah, he thought "the moon is made of cheese, Gromit") saw a McDonalds across the way, and decided to go in for a bite. He got talking to a person sat on the next table, and he was on holiday from Greece, and he has a yacht in italy, so they booked a flight to Rome, and went for a sail. They had a chat, and the yacht cruised around, until they came across a long pier with a cafe. They went into the nearest harbour, and walked to the pier. Whilst on the pier, they noticed a few fairground rides, and realised that they had actually sailed from Italy to Brighton, England. They went on the roller coaster a few times, until one felt sick and had to use the portaloo. Whilst waiting for the portaloo to be vacant, the two got talking to a guy in there who worked for Funcom, and his son was a GM called Steve. He said "we r losing r subs" and all was bad.
Troo storeh.
It sounds more truthful than anything Funcom has said in the past few years.
another dead title ...i give it 8 month max till the last server shuts down
I'm not an AoC player, but who pays for the 1-month sub price on any MMO anymore? I would assume that the 3 month sub price is about $13-$14 a month and the 6 month sub even less? So, the $15 month figure is always a tad unrealistic.
Also, keep in mind that FunCom had a revenue increase of about 33M over the past year. (investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp)
Now, if your talking about earnings (net profit) - yeah .. the company is being hit hard. They are now being taxed at a higher rate because of the increased revenue, they have a very large operations expense and have a bit of debt. 33M per year when spread between the government, payroll, operations, IT and creditors is not very much when you think about it.
There is much, much more on whether a company is sucessful or not than the product or service it sells.
I would never ever pay for 3 or 6 month.Because i don't know what the future reserve.Maybe in 3 week i'm going to be tired of the game and i don't want to pay for something i can't or don't want to play.There's plenty of people like myself , renewing each month.
subbing for 6 month it's like a cellular contract.Fuck that.
I'm not an AoC player, but who pays for the 1-month sub price on any MMO anymore? I would assume that the 3 month sub price is about $13-$14 a month and the 6 month sub even less? So, the $15 month figure is always a tad unrealistic.
Also, keep in mind that FunCom had a revenue increase of about 33M over the past year. (investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp)
Now, if your talking about earnings (net profit) - yeah .. the company is being hit hard. They are now being taxed at a higher rate because of the increased revenue, they have a very large operations expense and have a bit of debt. 33M per year when spread between the government, payroll, operations, IT and creditors is not very much when you think about it.
There is much, much more on whether a company is sucessful or not than the product or service it sells.
I would never ever pay for 3 or 6 month.Because i don't know what the future reserve.Maybe in 3 week i'm going to be tired of the game and i don't want to pay for something i can't or don't want to play.There's plenty of people like myself , renewing each month.
subbing for 6 month it's like a cellular contract.Fuck that.
Exactly. I'd be willing to wager the monthly subs outweigh the quarterly, bi-annually, and annual subs put together in any mmo.
More bad news on the FunCom revenue / subscriber front.
I logged into Anarchy Online on a free account and talked to old friends as well as many random folks.
The last booster pack (small expansion) brought a rush of old players back but they quickly left as the add-on was a big disappointment (and a classic FC untested mess). Between that and FC's neglect of the game while they continue to try and bandage AoC, AO is now bleeding players rather badly.
Also, AO's income from in-game advertising looks to have dried up, every single billboard is the same advertisement ... and it's for Age of Conan.
Bad Times.
edit:
the AoC Ad in AO is false advertising, "build your avatar and become King Conan" is the tag line. yeesh
Wonder when we see the first ad for The Secret World in AOC.
EA released its' FY 09 Q4 report, and apparently WAR still has about 300k subs.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6209194.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1
I'd like to see Funcom man up and release sub numbers next week, if for no other reason than to stop these sub number threads for at least a month.
I have a feeling there will be a pretty hefty loss this quarter from the win back campaign and advertisement fees, just a couple weeks till we find out
I am psyched about the AoC expansion though as I'm sure it will take an entire year post expansion to fix all of the bugs/missing content, etc.
Funcom will never get it but for anyone else: lesson learned if you do something, do it well the first time or don't bite off more than you can chew
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
sorry, but i disagree with the booster pack being a dissapointment. it was actually pretty bugfree (at least compared to the other expansions when they released) and the overall opinion of ppl is that they like it. its true tho that ive seen some ppl logging back on and trying the booster pack but quickly leaving. anyway, the AO pop is stable like it has been since LE (they lost some players after that expansions, including me, but i came back).
i actually need a AO break for a few months but im definitely back when they release the new engine, i really really hope it brings a influx of new players
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
Ummm?..yeah...we can explain it easily...because "growth" is not the same thing as "profit". The game has been growing...gradually..since it's mis-launch. That is not to say its making money/profit yet...or meeting hopeful projections....but that..if it continues to improve and grow...like all businesses...it is closer to making a profit..or at least breaking even. So..that is how it can grow yet still show negative revenue from it's launch ..just under a year ago.
well less than 24 hours till the report is released, anyone care to make a wager on the results
I miss DAoC
I think Revenue - expences will be around break even, maybe around -0.5 million. So I've voted for break even.
However nearly every one of funcoms quarterly reports since realase has had something bizzare going on so im not going to predict actual profit.
For example last quarter their revenue was 8.6 mill, expences were 7.3mill yet they lost 31 million, mostly because of impairment of intangible assets
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
I miss DAoC
If their balance sheet is showing income then it is lieing. Income is on the income statement. Retained earnings, which is more than just revenue, it is profit/loss is on the balance sheet.
I think the free trial started either in the last few days of the quarter or perhaps in the next quarter, but yeah there probably still would have been costs involved with setting that up and with an increase in avertiseing that I'd not taken into account.
however I also didn't know about an ao booster at 20 dollars a peice, that will throw the numbers some and make aoc numbers actually lower than they appear.
<Mod Edit>I think the most relavent piece of information for AOC players will be the 'employees' section.
In their last report in February, they said they decreased overall employees from 319 to 302, and at the same time, they said they increased the number of people working on Secret World.
This means there was a pretty drastic decrease in people working on AOC... which means slower bug fixes and much slower addition of new content, which is basically what we've seen over the past 8 months (very little new content).
I've said it before, one of the things that kept me subscribing to AOC was the 'hope' for the future. As funcom continues to cut staff for AOC, the odds of my hope actually coming to the game is disappearing. Even one of the biggest supporters of this game posted a thread about quitting because the slow rate of bug fixes.
You do realize that the team of developers building and launching an MMO is smaller than the standard support team that fixes bug and release occasional content patches. I am sure the FunCom has various projects and tasks and it is highly unlikely that all the staff worked on AoC. The focus of staff changes based on the stage of the MMO; development, launch, maintenance, expansion development, expansion launch, maintenance, etc...
If your fragile hope was based on 17 people that may or may not have been working on AoC then I suggest you move along and find Hope in something a bit more substantial.
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
Ugh...you made me agree with you again. How horrible (lol)
They were sinking pretty far when we last saw the report, and I cannot see that massive of a turnaround yet, but not a massive loss either.
I voted 1-20 mil, and maybe a break even on the next round after patch 1.05.
good way of looking at it Noggy , but you also have to consider the free trial is not free for FC. They lose probably about 5 or 10 dollars for each trial account for bandwidth etc. And from the looks of the numbers I can see, there does not seem to be a lot of conversion to paid accounts yet. I think they will lose between 1 and 10 mil this quarter.
Honestly though it will be next quarter that really matters, the one post the 1.05 patch. I really think that will be the drown or swim to shore event.
Ugh...you made me agree with you again. How horrible (lol)
They were sinking pretty far when we last saw the report, and I cannot see that massive of a turnaround yet, but not a massive loss either.
I voted 1-20 mil, and maybe a break even on the next round after patch 1.05.
yeah it sucks when we have to agree with each other
but I agree that they are holding pretty steady right now which beats the hell out of dropping like a stone like they were 7 or 8 months ago. Craig has made some good changes, but that 1.05 is going to please the heck out of a lot of people and just plain piss off some others. I like the mildly item centric style of play and if they get the balance pretty close I can see me resubbing for awhile.
I miss DAoC
You do realize that your post puts you dangerously close to be a Hateboi.
The game had a HUGE amount of technical problems and poor customer service but the rest of your observation is purely your opinion. Declaring the game is "crap" and "suckage" doesn't help your argument and paints the picture of a bitter person that is still hanging on the Hate of an MMO almost a year after you stopped playing. Did AoC seriously scar you that badly that a year later you are still hurt ?
While I have to agree that technical problems, poor customer service and lack of content did hurt the game a lot, there were a lot of us that quit the game simply because the fun factor was not there. When 7 out 8 purchasers quit your game I have to agree with Battle that the game had some serious suckage and so far with all of the improvements there is not exactly a stampeded of people returning. maybe 1.05 can change that. Time will tell.
I miss DAoC