Monthly Development Update – Nov 5th 2012

[Cratertina]

Come on Peku. You nab. Try some gamedesign and then complain.

[Vhab]

So its going to be 2017 or 2018?

Clearly

Or later today.

[Cratertina]

We all Canada is a land of wide distances. Monthly development letter is sent on 30th november by plane to HQ in Oslo, small water plane thingy. It has to refuel on bermudas,.. where sometimes it gets lost. But when it comes late in the evening usually between 3rd to 5th in next month They publish it. That is if nordish winter does not hit them hard.

By the time we get update server merge will already be incoming so we will bearly have time to react. But naturaly all patches are first tested on testlive. And we all know rubi-ka is several lightyears away from earth. AO Dev team is doing a science ficiton defying job of getting it there, tested and shipping it back to earth. So patience fellow Gamers!

[Liwa]

The game code is old, using several generations of devepolment techniques and capabilities. Plus the simple math says it is effectively impossible to test everything. Simple math people. There are 220 levels, 70 researches, 12,000 nanos, tens of thousands of possibilites for IP application, and probablyh 30,000 likely options for armor, 20 for weapons, dozens of playfields, and not sure what else I may have forgotten. By my math, this equates to well over 15 billion possiblities to test. They could test this until eternity freezes over and still not get every possible combination. So lighten up. Yes it needs to be done right, but is if foolish to expect that it will be done perfectly. There are simply too many combinations and the cage/code is too complex for even the most determined and sophisticated testing plan to capture everything. If you look at my posts, you will see I am about as far from being an apologist as there is on the forums. But this is a prime case of paralysis by testing. So it is appropriate to give them some slack on it. It is more important that they try to avoid the major problems and have teams standing by to fix things quickly as they are discovered. I can assure you that having been responsible for major application development and migration in the past, this is a task that is most difficult to do.

it's actually quite easy. duplicate a live db, transfer it over, and check to see iff both are the same. if they are, ez pz, you're done. the problem comes when something doesn't go as planned and picking through the blobs to see what went wrong :P

ha ha

Man-power will come from people not working on the engine, server merge, NPE, and profession rebalance... after these things are done. If we were not doing all those things, an expansion would be pretty straightforward. As it stands, it would be insane (and counter-productive) to start an expansion until we've delivered what's already been promised.

Bump for FC being responsible ... thank you!

Kinnik

[Deemure]

That is simply not true and I challenge you to actually back that up with real figures.

In the past people have said AO is dead, I disagreed, I could ALWAYS find teams at any level range and do what I wanted to get done.

Over the last year the game really has gone dead. Currently leveling yet another alt, now at level 155 I have not been in one single team, not one. I've been playing 5-6 hours a day, checking LFT regulary. Literally I have been lucky to find just ONE other person on LFT the entire time leveling this alt. I check all the leveling spots. Heck spots.. empty, even kite hill FFS..... Borgs..... empty...... ToTW..... empty..... Foremans....... empty. Where are all these players?

No one is playing this game right now, mainly because everyone is waiting for something FC has promised. Be it the engine, the merge, rebalance, whatever, everyone is in stasis waiting. *hint hint* RELEASE SOMETHING!

Again I challenge you to release player numbers over the last year or two, otherwise I'm afraid I must call you a liar....

For the last couple years, I have been playing a bit more and it seems, based on when I play at least, that the numbers of playing ingame have been higher recently. Still there are times where there are not many people on. I don't go around counting them, but for awhile you could run through any town and only seen a few white dots. Now there are more. Our guild has also atracted a few brand new players (paid even) recently. Anecdotal for sure, but enough for me to consider it some very modest improvement. The low point form my perspective was after the disasterous 18.5 debacle. Then the population dropped dramatically. Now that the worst of those problems have been fixed, it seems the population numbers are on the mend. So, I am glad to hear the number are stable. There are a few suggestions on that thread that maybe would help revive more interest and perhaps could be done quickly after the current list is completed to further energize the game.

[Utopian]

One thing I've noticed over my years of playing is that AO players have a tendancy to mainatain payments on their account despite the fact that they don't log in. I know personally that I've probably paid for a good 2+ years worth of game time (out of 8 years) where I never touched the login screen.. on multiple accounts. I'm sure many of us have orgmates and friends that we see every blue moon who log on to say "Figured I'd pop in and say hello since I've been paying for the account all these months." etc.

That being the case, to us as players it appears that the game has lost players/has bled out dry whereas from an accounting standpoint the actual subscriber numbers may not have deviated as much as it 'feels' like they should have based on game population.

This was one of the issues I was hoping to get addressed by FC - if there are X number of "paid up" accounts, but they are not being actively played, then the reality is the game itself is dead (for the active players). This greatly affects the ability to have new players sign-up and stay with the game or to have folks remain/return.

I also would love to see the count of people with multiple accounts and are logging and how that is factored into their metrics. For example, if I quad log my accounts and do content - am I 4 accounts, 4 toons or 1 player to FC?

On RK2 - US East pm times are very, very, very quiet. Most nights LFT is empty or very few toons (most of which are AFK...). As moving to another time zone is not in the cards for me (I tried, the wife said no), I really would like to to see a usage count by hour breakdown of both servers as my only hope is that RK1 is more popluated in my time zone.

[Windguaerd]

This was one of the issues I was hoping to get addressed by FC - if there are X number of "paid up" accounts, but they are not being actively played, then the reality is the game itself is dead (for the active players). This greatly affects the ability to have new players sign-up and stay with the game or to have folks remain/return.

I also would love to see the count of people with multiple accounts and are logging and how that is factored into their metrics. For example, if I quad log my accounts and do content - am I 4 accounts, 4 toons or 1 player to FC?

On RK2 - US East pm times are very, very, very quiet. Most nights LFT is empty or very few toons (most of which are AFK...). As moving to another time zone is not in the cards for me (I tried, the wife said no), I really would like to to see a usage count by hour breakdown of both servers as my only hope is that RK1 is more popluated in my time zone.

RK1 has tons of people on EST. I think most of the euros are in RK2 (the germans pretty much went there).

[Phixalicious]

They just dumped TSW people, not AO people because of the less than stellar sales.

Yeah, that's why Lindelu and Kintaii were both given the boot right after TSW took a dump on FC's financials. Not connected at all.

Have you read the last quarterly report? It's highly entertaining.

[Windguaerd]

Yeah, that's why Lindelu and Kintaii were both given the boot right after TSW took a dump on FC's financials. Not connected at all.

Have you read the last quarterly report? It's highly entertaining.

They left 2 months early, they had already planned to leave and move back to their home countries. They were staying to help the two new devs who were taking their responsibilities (not positions, no replacement GD). Either they left, or the new people had to go and then... they would have left anyways and the AO Dev team would be short 2 people.

[Lheann]

Read the latest quarterly report and kept hearing the guy on the stock show screaming sell sell sell. A perfect example on why AO being cash flow positive means little when they state getting FC cash flow positive will most likely not happen in 2013. And while the we are being told player numbers are stable the report notes that there was drop after mop and gw2 released. If it made the report it was outside the normal flucuations.

You all should read it as it is a hoot and it is one that sell sell sell really does apply to.

[Mastablasta]

If you go play GW2 over AO you have no taste man... what a terrible game O.o

[Lheann]

If you go play GW2 over AO you have no taste man... what a terrible game O.o

I agree with you Masta about GW2. Still that fact it got listed as reason for decreased player numbers in AO and AoC. I am more on about being told numbers are stable and seeing them report a decline over the same period in the official quarterly report. You don't report stuff like this in quarterly reports unless the impact was significant and needs explanation or justification.

So while AO is not bleeding players (which I agree with) as we were told it is also true that of recent there was a decline. In past reports they have stated player numbers remain stable for the period vice this time using slight decline. So what ever the internal metrics that define normal fluctuation (stable range) vice a clear decrease, one thing is certain in that the line between them was crossed.

[Vhab]

I agree with you Masta about GW2. Still that fact it got listed as reason for decreased player numbers in AO and AoC. I am more on about being told numbers are stable and seeing them report a decline over the same period in the official quarterly report. You don't report stuff like this in quarterly reports unless the impact was significant and needs explanation or justification.

Actually, this is not the case.
The decrease was reported for TSW.
However, AoC and AO were reported to be stable throughout the release of GW2.

[Traderjill]

Actually, this is not the case.
The decrease was reported for TSW.
However, AoC and AO were reported to be stable throughout the release of GW2.

From the Q3 report, Page 2

"Player numbers and revenues from Age of Conan and Anarchy Online were fairly stable in 3Q, seeing some additional decline after the launch of Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Pandaria"


Decline.. decrease.. same difference I think and this was in reference to AoC and AO.

[Lheann]

Actually, this is not the case.
The decrease was reported for TSW.
However, AoC and AO were reported to be stable throughout the release of GW2.

From the report:
Player numbers and revenues from Age of Conan
and Anarchy Online were fairly stable in 3Q, seeing
some additional decline after the launch of Guild
Wars 2 and Mists of Pandaria

Link is Here. And you will find that quote on Page 2 of the report in the right side column under the heading "Other large scale MMO’s". The section for TSW is above this section. So unless the report is not correct it seems pretty clear.

And I see TraderJill posted the same quote as well. I invest and also know that when you exceed the expected/routine deviations (reported as stable or flat) it is reported as a incline or decline (increase or decrease to use other words). FC reported it and based on the reporting rules that pretty much every publicly traded company has to follow would indicate that it was listed as it did impact the bottom line or will have impact on the bottom over time.

[Vhab]

It seems I was indeed incorrect on how it was reported in Q3.
My confusion was mostly caused by how we consider TSW being affected by the GW2/MoP launch and how AoC and AO were pretty much not affected.
TSW being affected was a major point in the presentation.

The numbers wobble a bit around the release of other titles, but not very significantly compared current titles.
It certainly doesn't fit the definition of bleeding players.

So, AO is not bleeding players and it's not on a path to "ao is death, death".
As the report says, the numbers were fairly stable. Which again is in line with what Ilaliya and I have been stating so far.

[Gorathon]

Maybe Parsed should come by and comment, ba dum bum.

[Parsed]

Maybe Parsed should come by and comment, ba dum bum.

I could totally do that