It's just that you see a lot of people thinking that once the game is launched, the $15/month is pure profit. Funcom outsourced both it's customer servers and it's servers. In both areas, Funcom is being charged an amount per active server. Probably $7/month for the servers and maintenance and $1.50 per month for customer service.
A lotof people don't understand the business side of MMORPGs or even retail. Like the people who think Funcom gets $40 for every box they sell or that AO is bringing in a profit.
yeah, I was teasing you a bit. It's just that you see a lot of people thinking that once the game is launched, the $15/month is pure profit. Funcom outsourced both it's customer servers and it's servers. In both areas, Funcom is being charged an amount per active server. Probably $7/month for the servers and maintenance and $1.50 per month for customer service. A lotof people don't understand the business side of MMORPGs or even retail. Like the people who think Funcom gets $40 for every box they sell or that AO is bringing in a profit.
I believe Funcom is paying $2/month per subscription for its servers. Just FYI.
Of course Funcom will release another MMO, although first they have to fix AoC.
Just remember that AoC is not a total disaster, probably has around 200K players at the moment, more than many MMO out there.
The shares are plummeting, but that's because the game didn't meet the stock market expectations, and at the moment AoC has to pay some developement debts, but within a year the game will be profitable if it keeps this subscription base.
Chances are that AoC will pick up subscribers if they can improve the game.
So if people is hoping Funcom will go bankrupt, it is not going to happen.............
Just remember that AoC is not a total disaster, probably has around 200K players at the moment, more than many MMO out there.
Lol, sure they have 200k subs Have you actually been online recently? EU servers are very low populated. 2-3 have medium population, others are ghost towns. Maybe all those 200k players are from NA?
Yes mate I understand that it feels like the servers are getting more empty. but for example EQ2 has 2 Euro server only, Vanguard has 6 servers in total (EU+NA) yet SoE is still in business.
Just remember that AoC is not a total disaster, probably has around 200K players at the moment, more than many MMO out there.
Lol, sure they have 200k subs Have you actually been online recently? EU servers are very low populated. 2-3 have medium population, others are ghost towns. Maybe all those 200k players are from NA?
Yes mate I understand that it feels like the servers are getting more empty. but for example EQ2 has 2 Euro server only, Vanguard has 6 servers in total (EU+NA) yet SoE is still in business.
AoC has more subs that those 2 games mate.
EQ2 and Vanguard are only 2 of SOE's games (Eq2 has around 20 NA servers).
You are comparing apples to oranges, FC has dug a huge hole for themselves,if they have 200,000 accounts now (which I highly doubt), I can see them loosing half of those if they don;'t come out with upper lvl content very soon (which as far as I have read, won't happen for sevearl more months).
I hope other development houses are paying attention to the FC/AoC debacle and take it as a sign of what happens when you do everything wrong.
Originally posted by noggy1980 According to funcom they had 415k subs in August, that means even more than that in July. So how on earth is Q4 with 3 months with less than 100k subs going to be better then Q3 that had the decent months of July and August? There is no reason for the costs to be much different. So it's all about the revenue and Q4's revenue is going to be massivly worse than Q3 revenue. If funcom don't make a profit in Q3 (and they won't) I don't see how they can turn it around, as revenue isn't going to improve in the next 6-9 months at least.
I hate when people think the 415k number is from August. It was released in August. The numbers are from no later than June 30th, when the quarter ended.
It was also delivered in market speak, saying that's how many 'active' they had. Again, the cutoff for the report was June 30th. It doesn't take into accounts that will not be renewed, and a game with over 400k players isn't going to be doing server mergers, and simply but, it'd be an amount they'd actively refer to in present, precise terms.
But they don't. They refer to that same.exact.number. When you have a group saying they have the same active players they had 4-5 months ago, when the servers were growing more and more barren, it's a lie. It sucks that AoC was such utter trash, but the bottom line is the game doesn't have anywhere near 415k people playing it.
Also keep in mind, the game was bleeding players quickly before the 'global financial crisis'. If people have less money to spend, they aren't going to be re-subbing to MMOs, and Funcom can use this as a scape goat to try and explain why so many left (even though it'd only be a small part of why).
If AoC still has 100k active, paying subs (excludes any that are paid for but the people gave up on), I'll be amazed. The server situation does not in any way, shape or form point to something that would suggest 400,000+ people are playing though.
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yeah, I was teasing you a bit.
It's just that you see a lot of people thinking that once the game is launched, the $15/month is pure profit. Funcom outsourced both it's customer servers and it's servers. In both areas, Funcom is being charged an amount per active server. Probably $7/month for the servers and maintenance and $1.50 per month for customer service.
A lotof people don't understand the business side of MMORPGs or even retail. Like the people who think Funcom gets $40 for every box they sell or that AO is bringing in a profit.
I don't know if FC will ever release another MMO, but I do know people won't be preordering..
haha. that is almost sig worthy
I believe Funcom is paying $2/month per subscription for its servers. Just FYI.
Of course Funcom will release another MMO, although first they have to fix AoC.
Just remember that AoC is not a total disaster, probably has around 200K players at the moment, more than many MMO out there.
The shares are plummeting, but that's because the game didn't meet the stock market expectations, and at the moment AoC has to pay some developement debts, but within a year the game will be profitable if it keeps this subscription base.
Chances are that AoC will pick up subscribers if they can improve the game.
So if people is hoping Funcom will go bankrupt, it is not going to happen.............
Lol, sure they have 200k subs
Have you actually been online recently? EU servers are very low populated. 2-3 have medium population, others are ghost towns. Maybe all those 200k players are from NA?
Yes mate I understand that it feels like the servers are getting more empty. but for example EQ2 has 2 Euro server only, Vanguard has 6 servers in total (EU+NA) yet SoE is still in business.
AoC has more subs that those 2 games mate.
Lol, sure they have 200k subs
Have you actually been online recently? EU servers are very low populated. 2-3 have medium population, others are ghost towns. Maybe all those 200k players are from NA?
Yes mate I understand that it feels like the servers are getting more empty. but for example EQ2 has 2 Euro server only, Vanguard has 6 servers in total (EU+NA) yet SoE is still in business.
AoC has more subs that those 2 games mate.
EQ2 and Vanguard are only 2 of SOE's games (Eq2 has around 20 NA servers).
You are comparing apples to oranges, FC has dug a huge hole for themselves,if they have 200,000 accounts now (which I highly doubt), I can see them loosing half of those if they don;'t come out with upper lvl content very soon (which as far as I have read, won't happen for sevearl more months).
I hope other development houses are paying attention to the FC/AoC debacle and take it as a sign of what happens when you do everything wrong.
I hate when people think the 415k number is from August. It was released in August. The numbers are from no later than June 30th, when the quarter ended.
It was also delivered in market speak, saying that's how many 'active' they had. Again, the cutoff for the report was June 30th. It doesn't take into accounts that will not be renewed, and a game with over 400k players isn't going to be doing server mergers, and simply but, it'd be an amount they'd actively refer to in present, precise terms.
But they don't. They refer to that same.exact.number. When you have a group saying they have the same active players they had 4-5 months ago, when the servers were growing more and more barren, it's a lie. It sucks that AoC was such utter trash, but the bottom line is the game doesn't have anywhere near 415k people playing it.
Also keep in mind, the game was bleeding players quickly before the 'global financial crisis'. If people have less money to spend, they aren't going to be re-subbing to MMOs, and Funcom can use this as a scape goat to try and explain why so many left (even though it'd only be a small part of why).
If AoC still has 100k active, paying subs (excludes any that are paid for but the people gave up on), I'll be amazed. The server situation does not in any way, shape or form point to something that would suggest 400,000+ people are playing though.