if you cant afford 15 bucks on a game you enjoy…maybe sell your pc for food or something?
Well, my argument is simple: AO should cost less than 15 USD/EUR/GBP because there a lot of BETTER GAMES of MMORPG genre that ask such price.
By “better games” I mean:
- Better quality in scope of graphics, optimization (compliance with system requirements), bugs, exploits etc. etc.
- Better customer support. That is all.
That is why such games like Ultima Online, Everquest1/2, AO are struggling and SWG, DAOC are oficcially dead. Because they’ve lost free market competition!
BECAUSE MOST OF GAMERS IN THE WORLD GIVE THEIR MONEY (15$) TO BETTER GAMES!
Remember I asked you not to compare WoW and AO? Because it is one of that better games.
By the way, EVE Online is 2 years younger than AO asks 15$/month and has ~30k players average online excluding China server. And still sets and breaks world records. That is the game of healthy person.
Many people in many topics of that forum proved the fault of your opinion. If you buy overpriced stuff that doesn’t mean that you are rich one. How do we call that people? Come on! Plz, answer! 
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when I was a kid in the 80’s I could raise 10 bucks for the arcades and that was a few hours of entertainment…….15 bucks for a month, should not be expensive to the average person.
AO launched at 12.95 and is now 14.99, so it has gone up 2.04 in 18 years.
it can also be stated that 14.99 is also supporting froobs.
and which is a better game is subjective. theres a reason you are posting here after all.
Come on! 80’s are over! Leave 80’s alone! Deal with it!
And I am here only because I’ve been baited on “Rubi-Ka 2k19” theme! I’ve never said I am perfect man.
And the only subjective criteria of “better game” mentioned above is graphics and those “etc. etc.”. You can throw away them at your will. But this doesn’t change the picture at all.
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I didn’t compare WoW, just stated that I’ve played it, at release, and off and on up through Legion.
I stopped playing it once it was no longer fun. I’ll try it again, once I have reason to believe they’ve made it more fun.
Eve Online I’ve played too. Stopped being interesting when it was no longer fun.
Neither of their graphics are even good, but graphics don’t matter to me.
I’d call Anthem’s graphics good. But it wasn’t at all fun.
Notice a pattern here?
I’m willing to give a game money, only if it’s fun. Nothing else matters to me wrt games, as long as it’s fun.
Poor customer support issues for sure can impact fun, and while I’ve had more than my fair share of bad customer support from Funcom, it has not yet reached the level where the game is no longer fun.
I was actually very impressed with the support I received due to returning after the time when items needing to be reclaimed after death, which I failed to do with a 2001 era toon, and the mechanism for being able to reclaim no longer exists.
Of course, that occurred when customer support was not slammed as they are now.
15 dollars a month is not asking too much. It is not FC that is greedy, it is PEOPLE. You lot who are complaining about the 15 dollar price tag are doing so due to your very own ignorance. You ALL know the quote “In life, nothing is free”. It is one that is true, but that you aren’t reminded of very often. And you don’t give a rats a** about what it is that makes the “gears go around”. You think running these servers has no operating cost? Why don’t you all just call your ISP’s instead and have them knock off 15 bucks off your monthly internet fee? I mean why not, in other parts of the world people pay less than you do for the same speed, or perhaps just a bit more for twice the speed or higher.
Anyways, FunCom is NOT a thriving, successful company. And it hasn’t been that for many, many years, it’s been struggling like hell and I quote, LIKE HELL(!!!) to stay afloat and relied fully on investor money as well as loans to develop it’s more recent games. Now this game is old but to many of us OLDER players though it is still gold. And I’m happy they still keep the game running in spite of all it’s flaws and the company’s financial struggles.
The game has by far passed it’s visual expiration date. To those of a newer generation, this game looks visually disgusting (my 16 year old nephew can attest to that and his mind represents the newer generation of gamers) and it is THE biggest reason the game isn’t pulling players, especially the younger ones. First impressions matter and visually AO is nowhere close to meeting the bar that has been set by modern day games. So what does all of this mean?
*FC has little to no money.
*Doing an ad campaign to pull in new players is wasting money they don’t have.
*Not big enough of a player base to be able to financially rely on an item mall due to inability to draw enough new players.
*All of the above = low dev priority for the game as such resources are needed elsewhere on projects with a chance of actual profit.
*15 bucks monthly fee to cover operating fees and the little work that gets done to the game.
Are things starting to make sense yet? Sheesh.
This back and forth has been going on for YEARS. We may be supporting this game, but let’s face it, we have had absolutely no impact on the subscriber cost of this game.
It’s all subjective. What you’re willing to pay for AO. What you’re comparing AO to. In the end it makes no difference. Either you find the game is worth it and pay it, or you don’t and you move on to one of those “better” games. I find it worth it, so I pay for it. When I get annoyed with it, I cancel (4 paid accounts). It’s never made an impact on Funcom’s bottom line and the 50 Forum discussions about how outrageous their monthly fee is hasn’t either.
C’mon people, talk nice to each other. You don’t have to agree.
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Depends on the product. In the case of AO, it’s overpriced. It’s dated and doesn’t get much development. Such a thing should be cheaper than the market average. It isn’t.
Ah, you must have access to a different set of financial reports than everybody else.
Fun quote from Q3/2018
“The Company is free of any interest-bearing debt as of 4 October 2018”
From Q4/2018
“2018 is the most profitable year in Funcom history”
“Revenues for the quarter increased by 166%” (4th quarter)
“Revenues increased by 46%” (whole 2018)
If that’s not “thriving”, then what is ?
(Yes, I’m fully aware that little or none of this gets reinvested into AO or SWL, but Funcom is doing well.)
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$15 gets you a movie ticket, for 1 movie. That’s it. I haven’t heard anyone complain about that cost. $15 for ~2 hours of entertainment.
Meanwhile a game charges $15 a MONTH to access their game as MUCH AS YOU WANT in that month.
If you’re complaining about $15/month to play a game, you don’t need to be playing games. You need to be getting yourself out of poverty.
Tired of whiny children.
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Yeah, I think you wanna read that over. Your clue is RIGHT there where it says “The Company is free of any interest-bearing debt as of 4 October 2018”.
All you did was looking at the “impressive” (sarcasm) revenue % for 4th quarter of 2018 and the revenue increase for the very same year. Let’s read that first section again, free of any interest-bearing debt as of 4th of October 2018". That is a staggering (sarcasm) five months ago.
So where do you think most if not all money they made up until 2019 has gone? YES, to pay off the interest-bearing debt. Does this mean they are free of ALL and ANY kind of debt? Nope. Does that make FunCom a thriving company? Hell no, it doesn’t!
Thriving companies has something called a budget pool. How big do you think FC’s current available budget is?
Try again.
Page seven 0 zero debt (total), 19.9m USD in cash, equity is listed on page 5.
Do you have anything else besides “they only thrive if I say so” ?
See those little fonts on the bottom left that says “face value of interest bearing debt”?
Think they would put that “catch” there if there wasn’t other forms of debt that they have? Now sit the eff back down and stop keeping making a fool out of yourself!
And btw, in the gaming industry 20 million usd really isn’t a lot. So there’s that. They are still just keeping afloat.
Btw2. No, a company doesn’t thrive when I say so, it thrives when it’s stock value history says so by maintaining a steady climb.
There is no reason to pay a subscription for a game with little/no customer support, which is absent of GM activity, which does not receive updates, is not being advertised for, and only has one playable server. These are the reasons why I do not pay for a subscription. Not because I cannot afford $15.
What does this $15 get me? at the moment, paying a sub for AO just feels like im paying for extra power on my character. I’m paying-to-win. The game is currently free to play…the monthly fee for extra power just feels like a rip-off to me. Sure your 220 character is extra powerful. but is any of the content you are paying for actually any more fun than the free game? Hardly. Its really all the same stuff when you boil it down, twinking, gearing, killing bosses for loot, using your professions mechanics to defeat encounters, doing countless daily missions… The only difference is that you are paying $15 a month to win extra hard at that stuff.
maybe if I were really interested in being competitive in the pvp scene, I would consider subscribing to create a powerful pvp monster. but of all of the games to choose from… why would anybody in their right mind want to be competitive in anarchy online? the game is far from balanced, everything has been so power crept that pvp and pve are both broken. The developers have no intention of fixing this.
think about this point: The game has not received even a minor content update in almost five years, and yet in that time, a loyal subscriber with one active account, using funcoms most “generous” deal, would have paid $500 to the company.
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and another note: I dont care about the welfare of funcom the company. I don’t care if funcom is doing well, has $19.9m in assets, or if they are struggling to stay alive. I don’t care if Funcom has to lay off every GM and developer. All I care about is the longevity of anarchy online. Despite its age and its flaws, it is a good game, and I adamantly believe that if Funcom were to close today, development on an Anarchy Online private server would begin the same week.
Not that I want that to happen, but as it stands, $15 a month is hurting the game more than it benefits it, in terms of fun. More players would be more fun. nobody wants to pay $15 a month for absolute garbage, which is what this game looks like to new gamers in the current market.
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There is so much flawed thought processing behind everything you have said that I don’t even know where to start with it. BUT.
FC announced long, LONG time ago that any and all development of the game would stop, but that the servers would be kept running for as long as there are enough players who still are interested in playing the FULL game (with expansions).
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If the game is so bad why do you even play it and beg for a lower/free subscription?
I would suggest not even reading his posts any more, he is clearly a troll and/or has some strange hang up about this “horrible” game that he just can’t quit but does not want to pay for. His options are to pay the sub, play froob for free, or stop playing.
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You’re confusing value, as you value it as consumer (and what an awful term that is, isn’t it? Like we’re vampires or something, but we’re conditioned to accept it), and what a corporation believes is best for its bottom line.
The fact that Funcom is doing well with its other games has absolutely no correlation to giving us a break on AO. That’s equivalent to arguing that just because someone has a lot of money, they must give you some.
When in fact, to a profit making entity, it’s a reason to abandon unprofitable enterprises to devote more resources to enterprises that are more profitable.
I glanced at your link, and most of their profits are from Conan, a game of no interest to me since I play Ark Survival Evolved, which has no subscription cost. You only pay to buy the game/expansions, and nothing I’ve read about Conan has persuaded me to switch.
MMO’s are dying across the board. My hours logged in EQ, EQ2, WOW, both Final Fantasy MMO’s exceed my hours spent in AO by a wide margin and a plethora of MMOs that either no longer exist or I don’t bother with anymore. Asheron’s Call, which I would dearly love to play again, Dark Ages of Camelot, City of Heros, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, Star Wars Galaxies, Earth and Beyond, Eve Online, Horizons, Earth and Beyond, all come to mind.
TSW/SWL ranks high among my favorites though I haven’t spent as much time playing them as AO.
What worries me is that there are no new MMO’s currently in production that I’m remotely interested in playing except for Pantheon. Led by Brad McQuaid of EQ infamy.
Which I’ll probably get sucked into unless something better occurs, since I really like non-easy mode MMO’s (but not the endless grinding of esoteric stuff that EQ2 and WoW have become - EQ gets a bye since it’s always been that way), so I want to keep AO alive.
So I value AO higher than you do, and hence $15 a month is ok with me, because I’m treating the RK2019 server as a charity event to keep AO alive.
please, start with it. I updated my posts to remove any inflammatory language. my points remain the same, please refute. Why is the price of $100 a year to play anarchy online good for the longevity of the game? In my opinion, the AAA price tag turns potential new players off, and Anarchy Online would benefit from a broader playerbase.
I never said the game was bad. I play the froob game. I find the sub cost to be a rip-off. In the past, I have purchased yearly subs. New players look at the graphics, and then at the price tag, and see that something doesn’t quite add up. Also, I’m not begging for anything. I’m telling Funcom, and the rest of the forums, they are making a mistake by keeping the sub cost high.
Why do you put the word “horrible” in quotes, as if it’s something I said? As I said in my previous post, I play froob. However, the game suffers from low population in both froob and paid content. Stop calling me a troll if you aren’t even going to read my post and them dismiss me with your petty ad hominem logical fallacy attack on my character lmao. Get real. We’re having a discussion not a mud slinging contest.
It is so much more than just the monthly fee. Actually, I would say that the monthly fee doesn’t really have anything to do with the poor attraction of new players. Outside of the fact that few people knows about the game (especially with younger audiences) It’s the 2001 graphics, the art style, the “complicated” skill system, the dark and gritty setting, and last but not least, the current player base which will turn most people off of playing the game.
The game is out there on steam. On STEAM. And according to steam charts, the game had a player peak of 5 within the last 24 hours and a all time record peak of 22 players. Those numbers should tell you ALL you need to know. Reducing the monthly fee won’t change NOTHING in regards of attracting new players. I mean the game IS already free to play (froob) and as shown by steams numbers, even getting to play for free doesn’t help in sparking new player interest.
I am telling you again, dropping the monthly fee is not gonna pull a significant amount of new players. I know it, and Funcom sure as heck knows it.
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