Letter of the Month from game director

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Originally Posted by AoCWaldgeist

The way to make money in MMO business is to be Blizzard and have World of Warcraft. Almost any other company (that includes the crazy huge and rich guys at Bethesda and EA/Bioware) didn't make a lot with their investment. Most of them haven't even made their money back. MMOs are a dead genre in this day and age for the cost they have of running them successfully. Sure, if you completely align your company and you have some angel investors you can build a production system that will churn out content with a very small team etc.. but big bucks? "The money"... nope you won't make "the money" with an MMO anytime soon again.

Even the classics we all love so dearly were never the big money makers. Sure their companies were successful, due to a stable subscription crowd, that didn't have anywhere else to go, but they are far from rich, hence them being sold time and again between different companies.

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Well what you are saying about Bethesda is not exactly right.
ESO is a quite successful game and it sales pretty well , especially after the console release

We all know it's not accurate as much as we all know there isnt a single AAA mmo on the market with less sub than this one :P The problems are well known but for some reason will never be looked at let alone resolved ... :)

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Originally Posted by slackjoint

Well what you are saying about Bethesda is not exactly right.
ESO is a quite successful game and it sales pretty well , especially after the console release

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I'd be curious to have the numbers (expected and actual). The disappointing release, the quick change in sub model and the fact they are trying to attract people with these weird contests ("Play the game and get a chance to win 1 million dollars, come play it's good I swear)" are not exactly what I would call "clues that this is an healthy MMO".

Then again, I have no idea how well it is doing currently with the cash shop, the b2p model, and if Zenimax are making good money out of it. (Bethesda weren't the ones behind TESO, Zenimax Online are)

Thread is almost a month old and still nothing.

Pretty disappointing for a fairly new player of this game, especially coming from games such as EverQuest II where Windstalker (Producer) posts almost daily and Lord of the Rings online where Vyvyanne (Producer) posts every few days. Both of those games are older than this one yet still manage to keep the player base informed and are still releasing new content on a regular basis.

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Originally Posted by Hrulfr

Thread is almost a month old and still nothing.

Pretty disappointing for a fairly new player of this game, especially coming from games such as EverQuest II where Windstalker (Producer) posts almost daily and Lord of the Rings online where Vyvyanne (Producer) posts every few days. Both of those games are older than this one yet still manage to keep the player base informed and are still releasing new content on a regular basis.

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Welcome ~ here on our forums; you'll find the friendliest group of drunkards and keyboard gangsters this side of the .... well ...

Welcome ~ FUNCOM has made no promises and is very open to its community in regards to expectations. "Don't Have Any" . Set your expectations really low and you'll never be disappointed. BUT FOR SOME REASON ~ we all keep on paying these fools and taking it in the bum. So we've no one to blame but ourselves.

Constant restructuring and Holidays are something FUNCOM has to deal with on a constant basis. So sit back, relax & enjoy the ride.

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Place holder for Anzu: ********

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Originally Posted by Jaedelyia

I'd be curious to have the numbers (expected and actual). The disappointing release, the quick change in sub model and the fact they are trying to attract people with these weird contests ("Play the game and get a chance to win 1 million dollars, come play it's good I swear)" are not exactly what I would call "clues that this is an healthy MMO".

Then again, I have no idea how well it is doing currently with the cash shop, the b2p model, and if Zenimax are making good money out of it. (Bethesda weren't the ones behind TESO, Zenimax Online are)

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Well its hard to get exact numbers and ZOS also doesnt really want to tell them except saying "its huge" , but here are a few.
-On the list of top selling PC games of 2014 ESO is ranked on place 4 , Warlords of Draenor is ranked on 5 with more than 3.3 million sold copies , which means ESO did at least the same amount in 2014
http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/upl...Facts-2015.pdf (slider 11)

Since being purchaseable on steam from Mar 17, 2015 , ESO has sold another 500.000 copies (just on steam)
http://steamspy.com/app/306130

So i guess its not unrealistic to say that its already far above the 4million mark only on PC.

Now consoles:
Its even harder to find reliable numbers for it on consoles , but here are a few.
Within its first week after release it sold 100.000x on consoles just in the UK

Unluckily no numbers are given , but it ranks 28th on top sellers list of PS4 games in 2015
http://www.gameware.at/info/space/PS4+-+Top-Seller

For xbox i cant find anything


The release might have been crappy , but it recovered well and there is still people( like myself) who are still subscribers.
The 3rd DLC has just been released and the 4th is coming in around 4 months.
It was voted for the best mmo of 2015
So yea its definitely a healthy game

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Originally Posted by Rathothis

Sure no new MMOs is likely to achieve a similar return on investment as Blizzard did (and do) on WoW. But that's not the point. MMOs can still be profitable - indeed, looking at the financials of your former employer, it is pretty evident that AoC was profitable (though not nearly as much as they had hoped). My point was simply that they would have been better off baking smaller cakes, as we say in German :)

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Exactly! But Waldgeist has a point when it comes to MMO typical design: grind and timesinks are very common. And a human can just invest so much time into one game that focuses on this. I think, if you want to be successfull nowadays in that market you need to offer atmosphere, immersion and player customization options (like ultima did for example). Sure you can offer powerplay and grind too, but not as sole business model anymore (in this case the competition is way too high and people rarely swap from one grind to another once they started and made friends in one game of that kind).
If funcom had put the money invested from the new game at least partly into AoC they could have seen numbers increased, because good crafting and survival would definitely fit in there, too. And the demands for this are higher in an established game, than in a completely new one where you have to establish friends (as player) and a playerbase first...

I hear the monthly letter will be out today !


... April fools' HA

What game director? I thought that Joel left