Why is there NO advertising for AO at all?

Has anyone ever stopped to thinking about actually promoting AO to draw in new customers? I mean, in the entire 11 years I have known about AO I have never seen anything anywhere about this game unless I searched for it myself and the only reason I knew about it in the first place was because my brother had a friend who played and thought I would enjoy it. Then I thought, hmm maybe they are waiting for the new engine before drawing in new players.. But if they havn't bothered in all the years of the life of AO, why would they bother now?

I want to return to AO, I really do. I have always loved the game and it always sucks me back in when I quit for a short while, but until they pull their fingers out their behinds and actually do something about increasing the population through marketing then my money stays in my pocket.. How about you?

AO had some advertising like 3 years ago. There was this voting contest for this one guy on some major gaming website to play the MMO that got the most votes. The contest happened twice and AO came in 2nd place. Around this time the NPE was in the beginning stages of internal development if I recall correctly. I do remember saying "this guy should not play AO until the NPE is out".

Then 2 game directors ago or something, when Kintaii was still here, they had this one fat guy they streamed AO with. They ran around at level 30 or something doing stuff. Think it was called Way back Wednesday or something like that.

What I said wasn't necessarily advertising in the classical sense but more so marketing and getting the name out there. In hindsight, what FC has done to spread the word of AO wasn't thought out very well. Their minor marketing campaigns were done so prematurely to the actual release times of said content (engine, steam, NPE) that it was basically all for nothing. Now, if they could guarantee themselves that all 3 of those things will be released within 30 days, then for the next 30 days go out and market all that then I could see some sort of success in advertising and maybe some prolonged advertising of the game itself.

For me as a vet, those 3 things being released wont make other vets be prolonged subscribers. AO needs some major overhauls and additions to the game to do that, which wont ever happen. Enjoy maintenance mode after the 3 things are released.

I'm actually curious to hear how you would even go about promoting AO, considering it's current state.

It makes me wonder what is going on in FC offices. To be honest I think they could be losing interest in keeping the game alive, they have been talking about huge updates this and that, new engine and player experience bla bla bla but they never stick to their word. You only have to read the monthly development updates to know they are always taking vacation. As a businessman myself it is so strange to see them sit around doing what appears to be nothing to push AO forward. It's been running for a good amount of years and definately has the potential to live for alot more, if only they would keep their eye on the ball!

Even tho its 'current state' is probably not the best of all the modern games out there, but take into account that there are hundreds of million potential new players that arent being reached at all... Even if this game only sees a growth of a 1000 players a year... it would still be beneficial, and how much would it actually cost to promote a game like this on the net... I'm sure with just a few simple links with images and whatnot and probably a lower cost on playtime... it wouldnt be too hard to pull some new members in

AO is old.

To it's investors and board members Funcom's projects are likley rated as "profitable" and "not".

AO remains profitable, so they do not axe it. But being 13 years old, and a bit neglected - the aspect of investing in it seems like a low yield option. So they choose to invest in higher yield options. (New games).

Since AO is still running on a stop watch with a few dev monkeys to keep it breathing, they let it make them some money.

But also, since it is a low player base game... they do not allow many devs to work on it or it becomes unprofitable. Instead, they put their dev's to work on new projects and have them baby-sit AO on the side.

And staff strictly dedicated to AO are likley fewer and fewer, (if any). I do not know the current state of it tbh. But most any company atm is going through this atm.

AO is lucky to be alive.

The game appealed to people 13 years ago when it was small and flawed, why would it at this time not appeal to people?
Even tho modern games are more advanced (but alot more simplistic), the only reason why its not appealing atm is because of the low population and for the modern standards, not graphically enhanced enough
But even tho thats all true, ... people can still like the complexity of the game, which is compaired to most games nowadays, alot more complex
So why not give it a shot? There's probably free ways to advertise the game to a larger public

Before advertising FC needs to actually roll out NPE and some version of the engine. (At least the lighting/shadow stuff to make it look more up-to-date)
Also, sub price needs to be lowered and maybe the game simplified a bit. (If not nerfing on complexity, maybe add more guides / info even at 220 on how to build an average character. Vocal guides could make a difference also)
As much as I hate some of the above, it is the only way AO will survive, and this is when advertising will actually work.
P2Win can also be implemented in a way that you'll be able to buy some endgame gear. But only stuff that can also be raided for. Maybe add a "Start at lvl 220" item or something...

On an other note, what happened to Steam release?

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Originally Posted by Khrystanna

On an other note, what happened to Steam release?

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Steam isn't compatible with the ancient DirectX version that AO is built with, it needs the new engine.

If you ever played a f2p game with an item store, and i mean a true f2p game. Paying $15 a month is nothing.. honestly. I've always been surprised mmo's never raised the price higher.

That being said, they should advertise and do more promo's. I get at least 1 a week for Aion, Neverwinter, STO, even everquest sends me emails. I get a rare one for TSW occasionally and I think I might of seen 1 from AO. Doesnt take much to do a bit of marketing. Email is essentially free to send.

In my opinion we need to stand together as a community, if we wish this game to continue to live and "expand".

How?

We make our own advertisements! Talk to people tell them what you do like about Anarchy Online, if there's something you don't like don't post it in the public forum or go around ranting about it that will only be received as bad PR for any eventual new customers or returning players. Everyone needs to remember; money talks.

Bad PR = Lower income which leads to less development.

This also applies in-game, a lot of new players probably turn down Anarchy Online when they constantly have to read people bashing on game all day long, we could argue that these players could ignore people who do that but lets be realistic here they don't do that, because they get curious "why is everyone so negative about the game all the time".

maybe multiboxing isnt ppossible with steam? i dunno, just asking cause i dont care :D

I multilog in other games that run through Steam. It can get hella confused when tracking 'time played' and often if you shut down the first client you launched it won't notice the other client processes and will show you as having logged off from that game. Other than that, it works just fine :p

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Originally Posted by Kenzor

Why is there NO advertising for AO at all?

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Because there's no point in advertising a product that has 10 year old bugs, a 15 year old engine, broken leveling, broken ingame economy, horrible pvm, no pvp, and considering the lack of an actual development team no bright future.

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Originally Posted by Dochere

Talk to people tell them what you do like about Anarchy Online, if there's something you don't like don't post it in the public forum or go around ranting about it that will only be received as bad PR for any eventual new customers or returning players. Everyone needs to remember; money talks.

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Though I play Anarchy Online, I couldn't imagine recommending it to anyone I know that hasn't played it in the past.

When friends of AO's past ask me about the current state of the game there are the same few topics that "they" want me to update them on:

- New engine out yet?
- How's the population?
- You guys still do tara and TL7 towers?
- How's battlestations?
- Any new raids?
- Any new professions?

I have nothing positive or complimentary that I could say for any of those categories. And since historically, the information provided to us as players tends not to be accurate I definitely don't say "Coming Soon" because even I don't believe that. So my willingness to recommend is pretty much at a 0 at this time. I wish it was higher because I'd like more people to play with but I'm not going to lie to anyone in order to get them to subscribe.

Like many, I would like to see this game expand but I'm at a loss. What exactly are you saying to people you know when you recommend AO to them? I'm at a loss of anything I could communicate that wouldn't be a half-truth outside of some sort of mentioning of a stat based system for putting on equipment.

Well its not like I'm walking around and promoting the game, however I don't start a rant whenever people ask either. Opposed to what many of the players of this game do on a daily bases on these forums.

Sure I have many things I hope I will get to see in this game like everyone else, but when people come on these forums we don't need to tell every veteran or person asking how is the game "Go away its dead" by doing that we enforce that trail and before we know it that's the actual reality of where we are heading.

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Originally Posted by Dochere

Well its not like I'm walking around and promoting the game, however I don't start a rant whenever people ask either. Opposed to what many of the players of this game do on a daily bases on these forums.

Sure I have many things I hope I will get to see in this game like everyone else, but when people come on these forums we don't need to tell every veteran or person asking how is the game "Go away its dead" by doing that we enforce that trail and before we know it that's the actual reality of where we are heading.

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Well you're the one that, 5 posts up, recommended that we talk to people and tell them what we like about AO. I guess I figured you were recommending something that you do yourself and thus why I asked that question.. wasn't trying to put you on the spot.

Anyway, here's my view of people posting "should I come back?" threads: We've all heard the old saying "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." While on the surface that might seem to be the way to go, I don't think it is helpful. Someone posting on the forums asking about the state of the game is not likely looking to hear that its all candy and cupcakes. That's someone that knows that the game has issues and wants to understand where it stands today before they resub. If you tell them the truth, they may resub anyway. If you lie or simply don't say anything at all and they resub thinking there's been some improvement then they'll likely cancel after that first month and possibly never return again. The same applies to new players. You'll get one month out of them (at most) if they have expectations that this game simply is incapable of meeting.

Everytime I've come back to game I've done so with full knowledge of its state. I know my own limitations in terms of what I'm willing to tolerate. I definitely don't need someone distorting reality in some lame attempt to get me to resub under false pretenses. And for the record.. this was my response when someone asked about the game being dead. I feel it was detailed and honest.

Anyway to get closer to the original topic: I don't think now is the time to advertise the game. There are too many things that I believe are close to being finished. You only have one chance to make a first impression so they should make that one chance count.

There's more things to dislike about AO than like at the moment, that's why the population is at an all time low and content development has almost ground to a resounding halt. It's a vicious circle of low interest leading to low development priority and will only ever be broken if FC invest money into AO (which will never happen btw).

By the time the new engine is complete and any new content is added, it's likely there will be almost nobody to experience and promote it.

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Originally Posted by Dochere

Sure I have many things I hope I will get to see in this game like everyone else, but when people come on these forums we don't need to tell every veteran or person asking how is the game "Go away its dead" by doing that we enforce that trail and before we know it that's the actual reality of where we are heading.

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It's better to tell people the truth than to lie (or omit information) in a lame attempt to get them playing again. It's not like they won't figure out how things are on their own anyway, just as soon as they try to actually play.

Don't ever recall saying that I was lying to get people to play or saying that people should lie. My point is that this game still has it's qualities, why not talk about those for a change? Sure we could all be sitting around and moping all day long every day but see where that have gotten us.

Oh and ofc I will tell people about the current situations, but that's not going to be my main topic when I talk to people. And sure as hell not going to word myself like "Go away" "Its dead" as I personally don't believe that, but w/e call me a dreamer.