Ragnar tweeted today that Funcom will continue to support TSW.
@Ragnar Tørnquist? Funcom aren't giving up on #TSW. Quite the contrary, it's the company's main focus. The team will continue to work as planned!
It makes all kinds of sense for Funcom to be exploring what worked and what didn't. There are several notes in the quarterly report that mention impact and adjustment based on commentaries from the press.
Ragnar tweeted today that Funcom will continue to support TSW.
@Ragnar Tørnquist? Funcom aren't giving up on #TSW. Quite the contrary, it's the company's main focus. The team will continue to work as planned!
It makes all kinds of sense for Funcom to be exploring what worked and what didn't. There are several notes in the quarterly report that mention impact and adjustment based on commentaries from the press.
Hopefully, these numbers will make Funcom and other developers shift away- far away- from the tired old themepark model. If you want a themepark, you have WoW, GW2 and a large number of lesser played games.
The MMO genre needs something new. I think the success of DayZ will point to a new and more challenging future for MMOs. The realistic sim is a genre that needs to be explored more fully in multiplayer gaming. While DayZ is just a mod, it is also just a start. I for one hope that there will be many more titles that focus on realism and more difficult and rewarding play.
Kind of shocking. While I can't say it was an 'amazing' game, it was by far a better game then ToR and had plenty to it that made it interesting to detract from the combat system that could feel a bit clunky (which to me is not far at all from what GW2 feels like).
Shame really, I never got into it but it wasn't a game I'd want to fail either.
Ragnar tweeted today that Funcom will continue to support TSW.
@Ragnar Tørnquist? Funcom aren't giving up on #TSW. Quite the contrary, it's the company's main focus. The team will continue to work as planned!
It makes all kinds of sense for Funcom to be exploring what worked and what didn't. There are several notes in the quarterly report that mention impact and adjustment based on commentaries from the press.
This is good news. Hopefully they can afford to keep enough of the team together to put out regular updates. Realistically the monthly schedule they proposed seems dead. Maybe bi-monthly at best now.
I bought the game and thought it was pretty decent. I like the modern setting with the horror aspects. The voice acting was excellent and the storylines very interesting. The investigation missions are a great twist and truly something different to what's out there now.
I was leary to buy it initially even though I am one of those people who really appreciate the setting! Leary because I bought AO when it came out and it pretty well poisoned Funcom's name for me. I wonder how many MMO players were really turned off based off Funcom's 'less than stellar' reputation for MMO's of the past?
I was pretty impressed with TSW and was surprised that Funcom got it one right finally!
All that being said, I guess it didn't have a lot of staying power with me either. After I worked my way though the game I can't say there was enough there to keep me paying a monthly sub.
As someone who never even considered buying it: TSW just looked like a well-crafted piece of DULL who had nothing to offer my social cravings.
TSW rates highly both on metacritic and here, but I suspect that it convinced single-player oriented gamers who actually likes questing, while the more community-oriented ones steered clear.
It is curious... It's not often we see a hailed game (and continously so) fall so hard?
Originally posted by Demandman TSW rates highly both on metacritic and here, but I suspect that it convinced single-player oriented gamers who actually likes questing, while the more community-oriented ones steered clear.
That might be your experience, but it hasn't been mine. /shrug
The really sad part is all the trolls who whine every day that every game is nothing but a WoW clone go out of their way to trash talk any game that goes out of its way not to be a WoW clone.
After the debacle that was Post Tortage in AoC did anyone REALLY think that the gaming community would go out and get behind TSW? I mean come on, you'd have to be delusional or just be ignorant to think that Funcom got out AoC with anything than a last dying breath.
What they should have done is update Anarchy Online, there are no real Sci-Fi MMO's right now, let alone any with the depth of AO. Instead they got greedy and now get to pay the price.
May have worked out better for you Funcom if you hadn't pretended this was an MMO and just sold it as a coop RPG, as you should have.
Dishonesty sinks you again.
This. A lot of people who beta tested the game and liked it didn't feel like it was worth the monthly sub, didn't buy it, and told everyone they knew that, while TSW was a good game, it wasn't really an MMO.
If TSW and SWTOR were F2P/b2p from the start, both games would have done a lot better.
Oh without a doubt. People expect something when you label a game as an MMORPG and stick a monthly fee on it. TSW and SWTOR didn't have those things.
Why was the title of this article not: "Funcom laying off 50%, Getting out of the MMO development business".
Those being the two most important takeaways from that release.
Oh, and FC wrote off $35 mil on the value of TSW because it is tanking.
Interesting, but what do you mean they "wrote off $35 million". How do you value an MMO, is this predicted subscriptions?
They listed it on the financial report as an "impairment charge", which is to say they wrote of that much of documentable value of TSW, which is to say cost of development, value of sales contracts, value of IP (when applicable), and various other things. The total value FC puts on TSW is anyone's guess, but they certainly chopped off a big chunk.
They also listed spending $9.8 mil on launch costs, including marketing for TSW, for all the good it did them.
The long and the short of it is FC got slammed on the non-success of TSW. They are not cashflow positive as a company, and won't be for a while, if ever. And thus the "around 50%" layoffs, which is a ton.
The whole financial report sounded as if deperately trying to find some positive bits in a sea of punishment.
Comments
And...this is the type of post that makes people hate GW2 fans.
In game community in GW2 is awesome, only the forums here are infested by people like these.
Bite Me
Ragnar tweeted today that Funcom will continue to support TSW.
@Ragnar Tørnquist?
Funcom aren't giving up on #TSW. Quite the contrary, it's the company's main focus. The team will continue to work as planned!
It makes all kinds of sense for Funcom to be exploring what worked and what didn't. There are several notes in the quarterly report that mention impact and adjustment based on commentaries from the press.
That's good news!
He was a man of few words.
Bite Me
Hopefully, these numbers will make Funcom and other developers shift away- far away- from the tired old themepark model. If you want a themepark, you have WoW, GW2 and a large number of lesser played games.
The MMO genre needs something new. I think the success of DayZ will point to a new and more challenging future for MMOs. The realistic sim is a genre that needs to be explored more fully in multiplayer gaming. While DayZ is just a mod, it is also just a start. I for one hope that there will be many more titles that focus on realism and more difficult and rewarding play.
Kind of shocking. While I can't say it was an 'amazing' game, it was by far a better game then ToR and had plenty to it that made it interesting to detract from the combat system that could feel a bit clunky (which to me is not far at all from what GW2 feels like).
Shame really, I never got into it but it wasn't a game I'd want to fail either.
This is good news. Hopefully they can afford to keep enough of the team together to put out regular updates. Realistically the monthly schedule they proposed seems dead. Maybe bi-monthly at best now.
I bought the game and thought it was pretty decent. I like the modern setting with the horror aspects. The voice acting was excellent and the storylines very interesting. The investigation missions are a great twist and truly something different to what's out there now.
I was leary to buy it initially even though I am one of those people who really appreciate the setting! Leary because I bought AO when it came out and it pretty well poisoned Funcom's name for me. I wonder how many MMO players were really turned off based off Funcom's 'less than stellar' reputation for MMO's of the past?
I was pretty impressed with TSW and was surprised that Funcom got it one right finally!
All that being said, I guess it didn't have a lot of staying power with me either. After I worked my way though the game I can't say there was enough there to keep me paying a monthly sub.
As someone who never even considered buying it: TSW just looked like a well-crafted piece of DULL who had nothing to offer my social cravings.
TSW rates highly both on metacritic and here, but I suspect that it convinced single-player oriented gamers who actually likes questing, while the more community-oriented ones steered clear.
It is curious... It's not often we see a hailed game (and continously so) fall so hard?
I was looking forward to it until i played it in beta.
Great ideas... horrible, clunky gameplay. Gameplay was like a so-so indie game. I figured it would do a bit better then 200k tho.
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After the debacle that was Post Tortage in AoC did anyone REALLY think that the gaming community would go out and get behind TSW? I mean come on, you'd have to be delusional or just be ignorant to think that Funcom got out AoC with anything than a last dying breath.
What they should have done is update Anarchy Online, there are no real Sci-Fi MMO's right now, let alone any with the depth of AO. Instead they got greedy and now get to pay the price.
Oh without a doubt. People expect something when you label a game as an MMORPG and stick a monthly fee on it. TSW and SWTOR didn't have those things.
Why was the title of this article not: "Funcom laying off 50%, Getting out of the MMO development business".
Those being the two most important takeaways from that release.
Oh, and FC wrote off $35 mil on the value of TSW because it is tanking.
Interesting, but what do you mean they "wrote off $35 million". How do you value an MMO, is this predicted subscriptions?
"after the time of dice came the day of mice "
They listed it on the financial report as an "impairment charge", which is to say they wrote of that much of documentable value of TSW, which is to say cost of development, value of sales contracts, value of IP (when applicable), and various other things. The total value FC puts on TSW is anyone's guess, but they certainly chopped off a big chunk.
They also listed spending $9.8 mil on launch costs, including marketing for TSW, for all the good it did them.
The long and the short of it is FC got slammed on the non-success of TSW. They are not cashflow positive as a company, and won't be for a while, if ever. And thus the "around 50%" layoffs, which is a ton.
The whole financial report sounded as if deperately trying to find some positive bits in a sea of punishment.
Wow, I thought they sold at least 500k.
Disappointing news for FunCom, this was supposed to be there magnum opus.
A pseudo online Diablo game, their magnum opus? No, that was Anarchy Online.
I think they should just do away with the box price. Make it sub based, but dont have a box, just a $5 price tag for the game key. Kinda like EvE.
Moral of the Story-
B2P + P2P + Cash shop = Failure.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Vanguard would kill for 10k subs lol.
SOE would kill for 10k subs.