AoC - 400.000 players (27.05.08)

[sam, an eggplant]

LOTRO was hardly a flop, it's doing quite well. It didn't live up to the developers' hopes, but then what does? AoC didn't either; they hoped to sell through 700k in the first month and I reckon will end up doing around 500k, which still makes it the second most successful major western MMO launch ever. Remains to be seen how well they retain customers, from all I've heard the game is pretty rough past level 45 or so so some of that good will may start drying up.

Now DDO and AC2, those were flops.

[tazelbain]

For any high-risk venture, anything other than great success is a failure.

[lamaros]

For any high-risk venture, anything other than great success is a failure.

Some people here obviously think just shipping a MMO is some sort of success. Wth standards so low...

Given the money reportedly spent on AoC I'm sure they wont' be happy with a LotRO outcome.

[stray]

How much did it cost btw?

[edit] Oh shit, around 70 million.

Hmm...

[Oban]

(49.99 * 400,000) - 70,000,000 = Whoops

[Register]

Every so often the DaoC test server was converted to use the dred rule set. So to satisfy all there collective E-Peens the best (or most vocal) 8-man groups from the 'blue' servers and the Dreds would copy over to the test server and duke it out.

This almost always ended with the Dred teams being a lot less vocal about how awesome they were, especially after losing, even with having the 3 realm class spread 8-man against the single realm Blue server team.

The other thing that would happen would be a 8-man team from a blue server, would reroll onto the Dreds, spend a few months farming the old MagMell loop, be the top earner for their time spent, then either quit the game entirely or go back to their old server, deciding farming zergs IS actually more fun then ganking spawn campers and having ignore lists longer then dictionaries.

Did not quite follow this patch server 'tournament', but when I was on Modred, Wrath was the strongest team/guild and they were utterly dominant. There was a top team (Bedlam I think) that rerolled on Modred, but they still lose most of the time to Wrath. Wrath's setup was caster heavy, mixing 2 enchanters for the fire resist debuff/stun and their leader is a fire wizard who nukes for unearthly damage with the debuff on. I don't think that such a combo is possible with realm class restrictions.

Having played on RVR servers first, the only other team that really impressed me was Rel Por. Their exploits were the stuff of legends back then. I honestly believe that most of the regular RVR teams would have been destroyed by Wrath.

[Merusk]

(49.99 * 400,000) - 70,000,000 = Whoops

Hey, it'll only take them 8 years to hit profitability at 400k users.. with no other costs and 100% of sub fees AND box revenue going to pay it off. That's fine, right? 

I kid, I kid.

[Wasted]

The game supposedly cost closer to 40mil, they sold out of Collectors edition and had 100k ish people pay $5 for the early access

[WindupAtheist]

LOTRO was hardly a flop, it's doing quite well.

Bruce has it at around 150k subs, and while I wouldn't call his chart reliable, neither is it known to be totally wrong.  That's just a touch more than he has listed for CoX, and a bit less than he has listed for EQ1, although the EQ1 numbers haven't been updated in a year.  If you have a better source, I'm all ears.  Because an "EQ1 in 2007" subscriber level for a new A-list MMO with a high-value IP is fucking failure.

[Oban]

The game supposedly cost closer to 40mil, they sold out of Collectors edition and had 100k ish people pay $5 for the early access

((100,000*89.99)+(300,000*49.99)+(100,000*5))-40,000,000 = Whoops.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The game supposedly cost closer to 40mil, they sold out of Collectors edition and had 100k ish people pay $5 for the early access

((100,000*89.99)+(300,000*49.99)+(100,000*5))-40,000,000 = Whoops.

LOL

[Oban]

Actually, considering that a publisher only gets a percentage of the suggested retail price...



(((100,000*89.99)+(300,000*49.99)+(100,000*5))/2)-40,000,000 =

[Nebu]

How can you prove any of that, even remotely? Sounds liek another PvE dude generalization to me. The main logic though, to me, that would lean towards you being correct is sheer numbers...When you have a hundred groups of 8 on PvE servers as opposed to ten coming from PvP servers, chances are most of the top ten would be from the PvE side.

They fought eachother directly on the test server.  Funny thing is that they either had equivalent gear or the PvE teams were from the classic servers and actually lacked ToA gear and abilities (which is a significant disadvantage if you consider ML abilities). 

I personally playeed on Andred, Mordred, and Pve servers.  My experiential evidence was similar to what happened on the test server. 

[shiznitz]

With finance theory like that, I hope none of you ever try running a business.  All that matters right now if is the cash flow from the subscriptions will cover operating and development expenses. The answer to that is clearly yes.  Whatever it cost to develop the game is now irrelevant. The money is gone so you ignore it for any evaluation of Funcom as an ongoing operation. Investors will certainly look at Funcom's track record of delivering returns before financing future projects. Investing $40 million over three years to get a $10 million income stream is a good investment. If that investment stream is only $5 million, not so much.

Funcom is a public company, as many of you know. It has a market value of about $525 million. That implies they will earn about $40 million a year for the forseeable future (using an 8% discount rate [40/0.08=500]).  That is an optimistic expectation at this point, but not insane.

[Murgos]

With finance theory like that, I hope none of you ever try running a business.  All that matters right now if is the cash flow from the subscriptions will cover operating and development expenses. The answer to that is clearly yes.  Whatever it cost to develop the game is now irrelevant. The money is gone so you ignore it for any evaluation of Funcom as an ongoing operation. Investors will certainly look at Funcom's track record of delivering returns before financing future projects. Investing $40 million over three years to get a $10 million income stream is a good investment. If that investment stream is only $5 million, not so much.

Funcom is a public company, as many of you know. It has a market value of about $525 million. That implies they will earn about $40 million a year for the forseeable future (using an 8% discount rate [40/0.08=500]).  That is an optimistic expectation at this point, but not insane.

Don't bother, some people want it to fail so they will say it's failing regardless of how long it goes on.

People say Eve is a failure or EQ2 is a failure or etc...  It's a stupid argument because it's almost always relative.

[Oban]

With finance theory like that, I hope none of you ever try running a business. 
...
That is an optimistic expectation at this point, but not insane.

Thank you for doing your part to keep the stock market moving forward.

[CharlieMopps]

I think the game is fun. I'm having a good time so-far.

They do have a problem however. The main quest is never really explained very well, and it isn't immediately clear that the first town is a "Starter" town. I know 2 people that quit playing because they thought the entire game was like guildwars in that, they just popped into instance zones to play. Not realizing they would eventually get out of the 1st town. Also, it's not clear you need to put points into your skills. And, being a scout class, I was almost totally crippled without "Hide" to complete the main quest.b There should be constant spammed, pop-up windows every 10min until you go to the skill screen and use at least 1 point. Usually you level in the middle of a fight, the "Make sure to use your skill points" window appears, but your fighting so you just clear it. Little details like that are going to lose them subs pretty fast.

[Merusk]

With finance theory like that, I hope none of you ever try running a business. 

 

Obvious joke was obvious.

If it doesn't shut down and maintains enough subs to keep going, it's not a failure.   This isn't business theory, this is a web board for making snarky remarks... usually very UN-informed snarky remarks no less.*

*Ed to clarify:  Uninformed in regards to MMO & game development.  You can practically hear the eyerolls from the Devs who bother to come by anyomre. 

[Pendan]

Before the AOC release NPD thought LotRO is the 3rd biggest MMO in the US: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10377&Itemid=2
This is US only so does not include Europe where LotRO has also done fairly well. However because it does not include Europe, Eve does not show up. I find it interesting that EQ2 (or EQ) does not show in the top 5. So many say LotRO is a failure. What about EQ2?

The accuracy of NPD numbers can be debated but a portion of the buisness community will except them. In other words venture capital will use the NPD numbers even if they are flat wrong.

[stray]

I doubt that it costs just 40 mill. Unless you cut back advertising and infrastructure costs.

[Numtini]

I find it highly dubious based on the number of servers and the number of players I seen on them that LOTRO has more than 500k subs, which would be what would put them above FFXI. I believe the research firm may have fallen for the "4 million characters created" stuff.

[HaemishM]

For any high-risk venture, anything other than great success is a failure.

Some people here obviously think just shipping a MMO is some sort of success. Wth standards so low...

Yep, our standards are incredibly low and yet still some manage to shit out an MMOG that doesn't even meet those standards.

EDIT: Because our != are

[Pendan]

I find it highly dubious based on the number of servers and the number of players I seen on them that LOTRO has more than 500k subs, which would be what would put them above FFXI. I believe the research firm may have fallen for the "4 million characters created" stuff.

And once again their data is US. I did not mention it, but is in the link provided, the data is PC only. 500k for FFXI is worldwide and includes PS2.

[Sir T]

A lot of people in eve have 2 or more  accounts (they even have a deal where you can get a second account at a lower price for x months) so you can take EVEs "subscription" numbers and slash them by half

[Montague]

I find it highly dubious based on the number of servers and the number of players I seen on them that LOTRO has more than 500k subs, which would be what would put them above FFXI. I believe the research firm may have fallen for the "4 million characters created" stuff.

And once again their data is US. I did not mention it, but is in the link provided, the data is PC only. 500k for FFXI is worldwide and includes PS2.

Uh, those are website rankings.

[lamaros]

With finance theory like that, I hope none of you ever try running a business.  All that matters right now if is the cash flow from the subscriptions will cover operating and development expenses.

You're going to correct basic finance theory by saying "if it covers its running costs now it's a success"? Good luck running a business champ. Just because you cover current costs at one specific point does not mean the enterprise is ultimatly successful one.

"We lost three mil last week, and looks like we'll lose three mil next week, but this week we made 100k profit! We've done great!"

The answer to that is clearly yes.  Whatever it cost to develop the game is now irrelevant. The money is gone so you ignore it for any evaluation of Funcom as an ongoing operation. Investors will certainly look at Funcom's track record of delivering returns before financing future projects.

The answer is clearly yes? Please point me to the figures that back up this statement.

Investing $40 million over three years to get a $10 million income stream is a good investment. If that investment stream is only $5 million, not so much.

Again, provide the figures to back up the $10million scenario. And back up the strength of the expected investment stream (will it last 1 year, 2 years? 10 years?), et cetera.

Funcom is a public company, as many of you know. It has a market value of about $525 million. That implies they will earn about $40 million a year for the forseeable future (using an 8% discount rate [40/0.08=500]).  That is an optimistic expectation at this point, but not insane.

So basicly you have no idea what you're talking about and are just as stupid in saying "it'll be a success!" as others are in saying "if it can't hold or improve these numbers for a good while it'll fail".

The fact is that Funcom's development costs, running costs, and expected return (number of subs over a certain timeframe) should be considered, not the fact that another company might be able to survive over the long term with similar sub numbers. Given the assumption that all these costs are much higher in Funcom's case than in the other exmaples provided (EQ1 has how many subs over it's life? UO cost how much to make and is still running? Both these cost how much to maintain now?)--which may or may not be unreasonable--you're in jhust as silly, or worse, a position in saying it'll make a go of it.

BTW: I didn't say LotRO was a failure. My reference was to similar sub numbers in the future: If AoC cannot get it's shit together by the time WotLK and WAR come out that it is likely that it's subs will drop to LotRO numbers. This does not mean failure, but it would seem very likely to be much less of a success, and closer to failure, than LotRO was because it seems (and this is an assumption) that AoC cost more.

[WindupAtheist]

A lot of people in eve have 2 or more  accounts (they even have a deal where you can get a second account at a lower price for x months) so you can take EVEs "subscription" numbers and slash them by half

No, you can't.  Subscriptions equal income, regardless of who owns how many of them.  And the reduced price of a second account probably doesn't even faze CCP, since the guy who owns them is still only using one person's worth of bandwidth.

Basically, my solution to the "Well we don't know how many people own those X number of accounts!" problem is to not give a shit.  Subscriptions are money, and money is what the industry pays attention to.  If some game can double it's sub count by getting everyone to buy two subscriptions, that's what they'll do, and that's what others will look to copy if they can.

[Nerf]

I havn't seen this discount for multiple accounts anywhere, or any way to link accounts for that matter.

You CAN pay for your subscription with in-game money though, through Eves brilliant RMT system.  Buying money from farmers is illegal and it gets taken away (and CCP is quite adept at finding everyone who buys and taking it away, though it may take a few months), however you can buy a game time card, and then securely sell it through the forums and a tool in the account section for in game money.  This motivates people to play 2, 3, sometimes 4 or 5 accounts, as -they- don't have to pay in $$, some other schmuck who can't earn ISK at even 1% of their efficiency spends their hard earned money on a timecode, and sells it.  Fucking brilliant, and kudos to CCP to doing it.

However, WUA is correct in that it doesn't matter if it's 200,000 seperate people, or 50,000 people with 4 accounts, they're still getting paid, and that's all that fucking matters.

[Calantus]

From the perspective of the bottom line yes, but if you're using it to guage popularity or market penetration or even just number of players you can expect to be playing the game, it's not accurate.

[Merusk]

I havn't seen this discount for multiple accounts anywhere, or any way to link accounts for that matter.

It's an offer they run every once in a while not a permanent thing, as far as I remember.  I can't even remember what the damn program is called, though. 

[shiznitz]

stuff

I am not asserting any facts about Funcom's business model. I did not claim that losing money one week and making it the next is a good business model. All I wrote is that if Funcom has sufficient revenue from subscriptions to maintain a profitable existence, then the company will be fine regardless of how much they spent on initial development. Then I laid out a very simplistic mathematical test of what current investors expect as an earnings stream.

Then you got ornery and started demanding sources.

[Hellinar]

You're going to correct basic finance theory by saying "if it covers its running costs now it's a success"?
 

If it is more than covering its running costs, it should keep going. Which is a success from the point of view of the players and the employees. Only the investors are getting the shaft. Which doesn’t matter as long as there are enough investment successes to keep the gamblers laying the bets.

Amount invested is irrelevant when it comes to deciding if you should pull the plug on a MMORPG. If you invest $50 mil in a factory and it is barely breaking even, you should pull the plug. Because you can sell the building, machines, office desks etc to get a good chunk of your money back.

But in a MMORPG, most of the investment has gone into art and code specific to that game. Typically, that stuff has zero market value. So pulling the plug won’t get you your money back. A MMORPG investment is a bet, the house doesn’t give you your money back. The gamblers know that.

[tazelbain]

Investor opinion is important.  They are deciding which MMO's get funded.  If they think your pet MMO is failure you are less likely to more games like your pet MMO.

I wonder which business school teaches that "keeping the lights on" is success.

[Oban]

I wonder which business school teaches that "keeping the lights on" is success.

http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/

[shiznitz]

I wonder which business school teaches that "keeping the lights on" is success.

It wasn't mine. I didn't assert that. I apparently failed to make my point that in judging Funcom on a going forward basis one should ignore the cost of initial development of AoC. That was all I was trying to point out.