Age Of Conan Subscriptions Well Above 100,000?
It’s been a long time since we heard the latest numbers for Funcom’s Age of Conan, however with the release of update 6 and their guild ranking system, we can now guesstimate how many subscribers AoC really has. As I did last week with CrimeCraft when I guesstimated there numbers were below 10,000, I went to Age of Conan’s guild ranking system, imported all the guild member numbers from each server and added up the totals. Surprisingly it seems that Age of Conan is well above the 100,000 subscriber count which many people though it was below.
Adding up the guild member numbers came out to 97,167 players. As I did with Crimecraft’s estimate I’ll double this number as many people do not join guilds and like to solo. So then the number of active AoC players comes to 194,334 players. I would bet that is an over estimate, I would seriously doubt that 50% of AoC players are soloing without a guild. So maybe it’s closer to 150,000.
This estimate should obviously be taken with a grain of salt as I am unsure what guild member numbers really means. Do guild members equal active subscribers? Or is Funcom adding inactive accounts into the guild count?
Regardless, I think it is safe to say that Age of Conan is above the 100,000 subscribers mark. It might very well be that Age of Conan is seeing its member base grow now that they have had some time to iron out the kinks. No official word from Funcom.
Age Of Conan Subscriptions Well Above 100,000?
It’s been a long time since we heard the latest numbers for Funcom’s Age of Conan, however with the release of update 6 and their guild ranking system, we can now guesstimate how many subscribers AoC really has. As I did last week with CrimeCraft when I guesstimated there numbers were below 10,000, I went to Age of Conan’s guild ranking system, imported all the guild member numbers from each server and added up the totals. Surprisingly it seems that Age of Conan is well above the 100,000 subscriber count which many people though it was below.
Adding up the guild member numbers came out to 97,167 players. As I did with Crimecraft’s estimate I’ll double this number as many people do not join guilds and like to solo. So then the number of active AoC players comes to 194,334 players. I would bet that is an over estimate, I would seriously doubt that 50% of AoC players are soloing without a guild. So maybe it’s closer to 150,000.
This estimate should obviously be taken with a grain of salt as I am unsure what guild member numbers really means. Do guild members equal active subscribers? Or is Funcom adding inactive accounts into the guild count?
Regardless, I think it is safe to say that Age of Conan is above the 100,000 subscribers mark. It might very well be that Age of Conan is seeing its member base grow now that they have had some time to iron out the kinks. No official word from Funcom.
Funcom Turns To Blackmail
Former subscribers to Funcom’s Age of Conan are reporting that the company has changed its recruiting tactics. Instead of luring former players back with higher XP, in-game items and other bonuses, Funcom has relegated itself to straight up blackmail.
Don’t resubscribe, then your characters below level 20 will be wiped from existence. From the e-mail:
“Dear customer,
Thank you for playing Age of Conan.
As part of our maintenance your account is now flagged to have your characters below level 20 deleted as part of maintenance. Please re-activate your account now to ensure that your characters progress and names stay intact.
As a welcome back offer we would like to give you a time-limited offer for 7 days of additional play time if you choose to re-subscribe now. Please click this link to use this special offer!”
Funcom’s marketing department, which I can only imagine is also Satan’s marketing department, has crossed the line with this. The company is not only willing to blackmail its players into resubscribing, but then turns around and pretends that it’s a perk. You’ll get 7 days of play time if you bite on the “special offer!”
Honestly Funcom, do you believe your subscribers are so stupid that they won’t see past this scheme? It costs the company approximately nothing to keep our characters archived on the database, or it should if Funcom is doing it correctly, and yet we are threaten with deletion. I know some people will resub to save their toons, but in the end the company has damned itself in my, and many other player’s eyes.
I don’t care if this is a technical decision because servers or databases are being merged. It’s a horrible move, period. End of story.
Thanks for making the decision to check out Age of Conan again an easy one.
/uninstall
Funcom Turns To Blackmail
Former subscribers to Funcom’s Age of Conan are reporting that the company has changed its recruiting tactics. Instead of luring former players back with higher XP, in-game items and other bonuses, Funcom has relegated itself to straight up blackmail.
Don’t resubscribe, then your characters below level 20 will be wiped from existence. From the e-mail:
“Dear customer,
Thank you for playing Age of Conan.
As part of our maintenance your account is now flagged to have your characters below level 20 deleted as part of maintenance. Please re-activate your account now to ensure that your characters progress and names stay intact.
As a welcome back offer we would like to give you a time-limited offer for 7 days of additional play time if you choose to re-subscribe now. Please click this link to use this special offer!”
Funcom’s marketing department, which I can only imagine is also Satan’s marketing department, has crossed the line with this. The company is not only willing to blackmail its players into resubscribing, but then turns around and pretends that it’s a perk. You’ll get 7 days of play time if you bite on the “special offer!”
Honestly Funcom, do you believe your subscribers are so stupid that they won’t see past this scheme? It costs the company approximately nothing to keep our characters archived on the database, or it should if Funcom is doing it correctly, and yet we are threaten with deletion. I know some people will resub to save their toons, but in the end the company has damned itself in my, and many other player’s eyes.
I don’t care if this is a technical decision because servers or databases are being merged. It’s a horrible move, period. End of story.
Thanks for making the decision to check out Age of Conan again an easy one.
/uninstall
Age of Conan Moving Towards Free to Play?
Yesterday Funcom made an announcement that Age of Conan would offer an unlimited free to play trial offer for an players that signed up before Jan 1st, 2010. The offer included levels 1 – 20 and was limited to the intro island of Tortage, but players could play the game in this zone for as long as they wanted.
It is no longer a secret that free to play MMORPGs not only work, but can make serious cash by having in-game stores or offering tiered memberships with benefits to players that pay extra. Age of Conan was rocked by a horrible launch losing a huge chunk of their player base within a few months, however over the last year they’ve made serious improvements. As we recently saw with Dungeons & Dragons Online, moving to the F2P model can seriously revive an almost dead MMO. Although I wouldn’t put D&D and AoC in the came category, it is safe to say AoC is not as health as they would want to be. Switching to a F2P model might be the cure and revive a game that seem to have long reached its peak.
Funcom might be testing the waters with this unlimited free trial. Who knows, we might be seeing a completely free to play Age of Conan sooner than you think. Checkout the free offer here.
Age of Conan Moving Towards Free to Play?
Yesterday Funcom made an announcement that Age of Conan would offer an unlimited free to play trial offer for an players that signed up before Jan 1st, 2010. The offer included levels 1 – 20 and was limited to the intro island of Tortage, but players could play the game in this zone for as long as they wanted.
It is no longer a secret that free to play MMORPGs not only work, but can make serious cash by having in-game stores or offering tiered memberships with benefits to players that pay extra. Age of Conan was rocked by a horrible launch losing a huge chunk of their player base within a few months, however over the last year they’ve made serious improvements. As we recently saw with Dungeons & Dragons Online, moving to the F2P model can seriously revive an almost dead MMO. Although I wouldn’t put D&D and AoC in the came category, it is safe to say AoC is not as health as they would want to be. Switching to a F2P model might be the cure and revive a game that seem to have long reached its peak.
Funcom might be testing the waters with this unlimited free trial. Who knows, we might be seeing a completely free to play Age of Conan sooner than you think. Checkout the free offer here.
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.
There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.
So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.
One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO. I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.
Paragus
Co-leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
AoC Server Merges - When Worlds Collide
When it comes to MMOs, it is the nature of the beast that a strong population is critical to the survival of a game. So what happens when the massively multiplayer turns out to be not so massive? Developers often have to make the hard decision and start offering transfers, which ultimately gets followed up with server merges.
There is no denying that Funcom’s Age of Conan has had a rough going during the course of the 6 months it has been released. Funcom and their stockholders watched with horror as roughly half of their subscribers jumped ship in the first 90 days. Now after server transfers, Funcom has now entered the server merging phase to help sure up the population levels for their remaining players. Controversy is starting to brew regarding their decision to merge 2 servers of different rule-sets, the normal PvP server “Bloodspire” and an RP-PvP (Role Playing) server “Hyperborea” are about to collide into what looks to be a very interesting situation.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I have never played on an RP server in any of the MMORPG’s I have played, but I do respect the option to have that playstyle choice. Now I will also be the first to admit that I have played on non-RP PvP servers in Age of Conan, and I have witnessed first hand the culture of these servers. It could be that some on these servers are role-playing as a mentally-unstable sociopathic teenager, but one has to wonder how the role-players will react to their new friends.
So what happens now? To the best of my knowledge, I can’t recall seeing a situation like this in an MMO and we can’t blame Funcom for trying foster a healthy environment for the players in terms of population. What is about to unfold will be a very interesting social experiment. I decided to take a look at some of the server forums to see the reaction from the communities, and so far it looks like a mixed bag. I don’t believe that both cultures will be able to survive personally, so the question will be to see who folds.
One possible scenario is that the non-RP types might be willing to give role-playing a shot, although I suspect that this is probably not going to be the case. The other scenario could be that this officially ends the culture of role-playing in this community, and the disgruntled RP crowd tries to proceed to the nearest exit by seeking a transfer or opting out all together. Funcom has made their choice and now it is up to the players of these servers to make their own. Let’s see if the players be willing to give up the RP in RPG for the MM in MMO. I am interested to hear player’s predictions on how you think this will play out.
Paragus
Co-leader of Inquisition
www.inqguild.com
The Steak Just Walked Out
Just when I thought I had escaped writing about Age of Conan, something as superb as THIS knocks on my electronic front door. The infamous Gaute Godager, Game Director for Age of Conan and of Steak and Wine fame, has ‘resigned’ from Funcom. For those that don’t know what ‘resigned’ means, it means that they told him to resign or they’d fire him.
I can’t help but feel a little responsible for all this. Sure, my scathing review of sorts of Conan probably didn’t help his cause - but I think I’ve been too hard on the guy. I’ve called him out multiple times, not only for his Steak and Wine quote (man I love that) - but also possibly one of the weirdest ‘welcome to the game’ messages ever created. He managed to include slave whipping, confuse it’s players on whether they are riding a ship or driving it, use the phrase “nature launches” and even use the word “bumpiness”. I’m almost tearing up re-reading that announcement. It seemed so long ago we were so naive of the ways of Funcom and had such high hopes for the game.
While I wish Gaute the best of luck in his new career - and speculation on where that will be will only cause fear in the collective MMO community - I think it’s safe to say that MMO’s probably aren’t your forte. That might be a bit harsh, but for those keeping count, that’s 0/2 for Mr. Godager - Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. At least Richard Garriott has Ultima Online to reminisce about as he shoots off to the Moon or whatever.
Adieu, Mr. Go Danger, your savvy wit and cheeky quips will forever be remembered.
The Steak Just Walked Out
Just when I thought I had escaped writing about Age of Conan, something as superb as THIS knocks on my electronic front door. The infamous Gaute Godager, Game Director for Age of Conan and of Steak and Wine fame, has ‘resigned’ from Funcom. For those that don’t know what ‘resigned’ means, it means that they told him to resign or they’d fire him.
I can’t help but feel a little responsible for all this. Sure, my scathing review of sorts of Conan probably didn’t help his cause - but I think I’ve been too hard on the guy. I’ve called him out multiple times, not only for his Steak and Wine quote (man I love that) - but also possibly one of the weirdest ‘welcome to the game’ messages ever created. He managed to include slave whipping, confuse it’s players on whether they are riding a ship or driving it, use the phrase “nature launches” and even use the word “bumpiness”. I’m almost tearing up re-reading that announcement. It seemed so long ago we were so naive of the ways of Funcom and had such high hopes for the game.
While I wish Gaute the best of luck in his new career - and speculation on where that will be will only cause fear in the collective MMO community - I think it’s safe to say that MMO’s probably aren’t your forte. That might be a bit harsh, but for those keeping count, that’s 0/2 for Mr. Godager - Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. At least Richard Garriott has Ultima Online to reminisce about as he shoots off to the Moon or whatever.
Adieu, Mr. Go Danger, your savvy wit and cheeky quips will forever be remembered.
