check out this AoC website for game stats ~

[Mustaine]

Craig Morrison use to talk about checking on server activity, how many players logged in, hours played, class breakdown, level breakdown, activity levels by server etc; quickly showing him if anything was worth investigating that they weren’t expecting...

So unlike many other MMOs out there, we still don't have a site where we can crunch numbers ourselves. Maybe be able to see when peak times are so we can plan our day around THAT. Make an educated decision on what classes are either lacking players or which is over populated ~ and base our next toon on that. Most MMOs I've seen have either the company producing this info organically to show players or have made available; the code to allow fansites to do it.

Will we ever see this? Has it been attempted ? ...

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[Slith]

we have had one fansite (yellowgremlin) several years ago doing some stats pullig. AOC is a very small MMO with even smaller fanbase. When you have beast like WoW with ~10 mill subs you can expect that out of that sheer volume of players few hundrets will be interested in doing things like sites/podcast. We are lucky that we even have things like http://aoc.is-better-than.tv/ and http://joharaoc.eu/feat?link=v7_sin because last time we lost a site with feat builder and had no way to share specs Funcom said "we won't do our feat builder". If they couldn't provide even such a basic thing like feat builder you can safely say we won't see stats outside the game, ever.

[Chillee]

Worst thread title ever....

[Mustaine]

...If they couldn't provide even such a basic thing like feat builder you can safely say we won't see stats outside the game, ever.

With such a "recent" change of the guard; do you think it's totally unlikely to be a revisited?

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[Slith]

With such a "recent" change of the guard; do you think it's totally unlikely to be a revisited?

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I am under the impression that Funcom has LESS resourcess than it used to have. I am basing it on this:

the Company is actively seeking solutions to the repayment of its debt due in June 2016, as revenues generated from all the games are not expected to be sufficient to cover both operational expenses and debt repayment obligations

http://www.funcom.com/investors/func...announcements1

Funcom can't push out even such vital update as crafting revamp (over 3 years in the making now) which would generate subs for sure (many people are waiting for it). This is why I think that oh-not-so-important-feature like stats is very unlikely to be even considered at this point.

[Mustaine]

... This is why I think that oh-not-so-important-feature like stats is very unlikely to be even considered at this point.

I get that they're strapped for cash. Sounds like it's worse and worse each month. But I find it hard to believe that those reports he read on a daily basis (based off an interview you conducted) weren't pumped out by the same software other devs are using; and in turn fans are given login credentials to access similar data to draw their apps from.

What I'm saying; it's not hard to give access to something so low-end. And what YOU may think is unimportant may, very-well, be important to others. You want me to believe that this would be beyond them setting up in less than a week? If that's the case; they need to shut out the lights.

Sure; I'm dying for a crafting update. Expansions and dungeons too. But I get it; development, testing, figuring out how to make subscription players PAY for more content ~ takes time and effort.

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[gcustoms]

So clickbaity you should be expecting a call from buzzfeed.

[slackjoint]

As slith has already mentioned aoc is a very little mmo . Wow has a few milion subs (7milion right now i think) Aoc probably has not even 5 thousand . This game is forgotten , just check how many former fan sites don't exist anymore .

[Radicaltop]

As slith has already mentioned aoc is a very little mmo . Wow has a few milion subs (7milion right now i think) Aoc probably has not even 5 thousand . This game is forgotten , just check how many former fan sites don't exist anymore .

Age of Conan probably has a player population of 150,000 over a rolling three month period and roughly 50,000 subs (I am subscriber). These numbers were released a few years ago from a 3rd party and were discussed on these forums. The numbers have probably improved since then. My own Guild on Crom has almost 1,000 active members and we are ranked 12th on the server. Even Anarchy Online has an estimated population of 12,000 players.

[Mysticblood]

From my understanding, sites like YG used bots in game to transmit any information to their database, and then they created their own APIs to access this information. I was a programmer years ago and I specialized in .NET code, specifically pulling stats from games. I used to write my own APIs and decipher encrypted packets. A first person shooter like Battefield you can extract all of the information you want, unfortunately an MMO works differently and you absolutely need permission to access such information. Which is why the folks at yellow gremlin used bots, because they didn't actually have permission and to my knowledge there isn't anything wrong with that. I was working on such framework years ago after YG was pulled, but after the population dwindled and I stopped playing I didn't see any reward for the time and resources it would have taken to finish it. I think at this point Mustaine and Slith are both right, if we are going to see anything like YG again it will have to be created by Funcom because I dont see it practical that any programmer, even a fan of the game, would attempt it at this phase in the game. You have to look at population and out of that population what percentage of them are actively using the internet and what percentage of them look at game stats and signature generators.

If things happened like complete change of management (or new company took over) and quality content was being released and people were returning to the game it would be a different story.