How A MMORPG Dies

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DarkAstraea Posted: 12-04-2008 4:01 PM

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So basically, if you need to start merging your servers just to make a healthy population, your game is already dead.

Other Interesting Related Links:

Layoffs

Server Merges

So in my opinion i would agree with the author's statements that the game he is talking about is dying or is already dead.



Unlike in sports, the game of war has no set time limit and no points are awarded, so how do you determine the winners and the losers? When all your enemies are destroyed? 多分そして。
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Basically the guy who wrote the article (Nelson Williams) is a WoW Fanboi who admits he never actually played AoC... Really userfull information...

The game is a lot better than he makes it out to be. Even considering the issue it had at launch, and the so called lack of content (which has changd drastically) the game was still a LOT of fun to play.

To be honest if Troop hadn't gimped the guild by taking it's only Architect, I probably would have kept playing when time permitted. I think the guild would have still died due to lack of participation on the server that was randomly picked by Warped/Anami. If we had been on a US Server to start I think we would have faired better.

The layoffs and server merges were inevitable. Even if the game was perfect and a polished finished product people would have still left for whatever reasons. Some people just get bored easily (Troop) and some are just excited about the next new thing to come out and can't afford to pay for multiple accounts. So the Mergers happen. Sometimes its a good thing. More people together on one server to fight, raid with and whatever.

Oh well,  I for one miss AoC, so does Mayhem (Drambilia) I might fire up my account for the merger to see how it goes and see if the guild can survive the move with out city intact.

Back to that other not so popular game: Outside....

And Troop used to be here....

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 Well just because he complains about the gameplay i dont really care, lots of games have different opinions on their gameplay/gamestyles. Its the fact that they are merging servers/laying off peoplez which would kill off the game's development. But anyway i'm just talking about how it will die due to lack of population. High population really is key to MMORPG's to bring the game's true potential out(which is why they are having the mergers because the population is decreasing in all or most servers). Sooner or later, the population will decrease low enough that it will be cleared off as a dead game because of low population and popularity. And as we all know already....Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King is still going off with a bang with all its new content (which could drive some of the population away from AoC). But yeah...AoC is/has become a lost cause (just my opinion)

 But back to the Joe situation...why couldn't you just recruit another Architect, couldnt take THAT long to level up another Architect with the amount of people in the Foundation(back then). Then again i wouldn't know cause i didnt pway it =D. But still...can't put all the blame on Joe.

And back to crushing CoR



Unlike in sports, the game of war has no set time limit and no points are awarded, so how do you determine the winners and the losers? When all your enemies are destroyed? 多分そして。
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It costs money (Gold) to train a new architect, granted it's cheaper now than it was when we first started but its still a LOT of money and time.

As for the Server merge, that is a way to keep the game alive, I am sure they lost perhaps even the bulk of their playerbase, but from what I have read there are currently around 400,000 accounts still active, down from 700,000.

That will consolidate players and reduce their operating costs.

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The game has its good points and bad points, like all other games. One of the bad points was that after hitting level 80 on one character the game felt somewhat pointless. I beat the game. I could do raids, for items which stats don't work or if they did work they didn't really make any difference. Or I could farm gold and mine resources which we all know is incredibly fun to do. I could restart a new character and go up to level 80 for another somewhat pointless level cap. At the time I couldn't join in any city raids because the feature was just plain broken and our guild wasn't ready for it yet. Did I kill AoC for the community? Perhaps, but I'm not going to continue playing a game and paying for it if it bores me, and after a while it did bore me.

Having only 400,000 members makes this game a wasteland. Still, it's not dead. I knew from the start they had a knee-jerking reaction and opened up more servers than they should have. Server mergers happen. The thing is, this game isn't WoW and it isn't trying to be. It's fun. It's different. Sometimes it's broken, but so is every other MMO (or, at one time they were). They made some good decisions and some bad decisions (and some really bad decisions!), and they're trying to grab a smaller audience than Blizzard.

If they had unlimited time and money for this game, it would have been Tortage all over, and it would have been a truly incredible game. Instead, they were cut short of money and pressured on time and were forced to release an unfinished game. But it's a game which will continue to live, much like AO has.

Oh, and as for my logic about them having unlimited time and money to make the game; that logic kind of sucks. You could say that about most games. That's the challenege. You have to know as a game designer than you will be pressured and that you have an audience to grab and hold. And they grabbed them, but never quite got a hold of most. Oh well, we will always have Bacon.

http://www.paradisesgarage.com/mcweb2/photos/troop/images/2372/original.aspx[/IMG]

Troop:
The game has its good points and bad points, like all other games. One of the bad points was that after hitting level 80 on one character the game felt somewhat pointless. I beat the game. I could do raids, for items which stats don't work or if they did work they didn't really make any difference. Or I could farm gold and mine resources which we all know is incredibly fun to do. I could restart a new character and go up to level 80 for another somewhat pointless level cap. At the time I couldn't join in any city raids because the feature was just plain broken and our guild wasn't ready for it yet. Did I kill AoC for the community? Perhaps, but I'm not going to continue playing a game and paying for it if it bores me, and after a while it did bore me.

While I agree that the level cap was not only too low, it was also too easy to get there. I think they under estimated how much fun people would have endlessly battling each other in the Guild City battles, which as Troop emntioned were problematic early on. That has obviously been fixed now and it works quite well. And it does make for some crazy battles. However not everyone is into that 24/7.

I think the game lacks open endedness like AO (Anarchy Online) has. You can go almost anywhere and do almost anything within a HUGE universe that will and has held the attention of many for many years now. AoC had the storyline already written out and completed 75 years ago! While AO has a HUGE amazing storyline that has yet to be completed, It is contstantly changing and added to. I am sorry that I spoiled some of you guys on the test server, I think you would have had a much time on live like Daboobah did without my intervention. He has characters on Live into the 100's. Oh well...

Troop:
Having only 400,000 members makes this game a wasteland. Still, it's not dead. I knew from the start they had a knee-jerking reaction and opened up more servers than they should have. Server mergers happen. The thing is, this game isn't WoW and it isn't trying to be. It's fun. It's different. Sometimes it's broken, but so is every other MMO (or, at one time they were). They made some good decisions and some bad decisions (and some really bad decisions!), and they're trying to grab a smaller audience than Blizzard.

LMAO @ Troop: only 400,000 members makes this game a HUGE Success! That's almost half a million people paying monthly!!! And more than most MMO's ever get. How many people play COD4, COD5? What I would like are the average daily player numbers but I don't know them... Anyone know the numbers for Warhammer? I've heard that the game essentially sucks and that the playerbase is pretty dead already, moreso that AoC

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Troop replied on 12-12-2008 5:06 PM

Warhammer Stats

Age of Conan Stats

Warcraft 3 Stats

World of Warcraft Stats

Bacon Stats

Call of Duty 4 Stats

Call of Duty 5 Stats

Starcraft Stats

Err, wait. Check that last one again. Starcraft? That's an RTS that came out in 1998.

 Age of Conan: 903 players daily.

 Starcraft: 1291 players daily.

 Bacon: Millions. Owned.

http://www.paradisesgarage.com/mcweb2/photos/troop/images/2372/original.aspx[/IMG]

interesting, COD4 Daily average 113,459 players, WoW 91,616 but WoW has almost twice the number of minutes.

Starcraft has more users but less time than AoC...

However seeing these stats kinda proves the point. AoC is deadish... almost 1000 per day.... I wonder what AO's numbers are... ROFL 182.. One thing I have noticed though are the people who play those types of games are not big into xfire. Xfire is more of a younger crowd thing. so I think the numbers are more in favor of FPS's and games the younger crowd like, such as WoW..

 anyway, whatever... lol

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