Tencent Seeks to Acquire Full Ownership of Funcom

http://pr.funcom.com/pressreleases/tencent-seeks-to-acquire-full-ownership-of-funcom-2963077?

This does not bode well for AO or AO2 imo.

Hahahaha AO2, thats the funniest thing I have heard today. I literally laughed out loud.

Ok, jokes aside. The end seems near. If AO generates money we can hope it will stay online, if Tencent believe that AO isn’t worth keeping online regardless if it is cash flow positive then so be it. This mindset can be applied to FC other MMOs as well.

AO should be put down, no one at FC really cares about it. There is no monthly updates, no interaction with the community, a lot of silence. We all know its on life support, AO is like an old dog that has cancer, is fed through a feeding tube and cant walk, just let it die.

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I assume that you dont play this game anymore, since you are asking to put the game down. So why do you even reply on forums? If you dont like the game, go play something else.

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You fail to see where AO is going. It went from a semi-popular engaging and unique game, to a low populated, deserted, niche game. No updates, no quality of life improvements, no direction or interaction from FC to the community. The legacy server was something the community asked for 10 years ago, if not more, and now they release it? If that doesn’t sound like a cash grab then I dont know what is.

A company should make money, bottom line. As I said in my original post, that I guess I have to reiterate, that if AO is cash flow positive and the powers that be (Tencent CEOs, FC CEOs, whoever) deem it to be appropriate to keep AO (and other FC titles) online then so be it. But, if they dont deem it worthy then expect something to happen.

And I said AO should go offline because they have just shat all over this game and treated it like a red headed step child. I understand that AO is old and has archaic code and continued development is not worth the time, effort and money. It is for these reasons that a third party would buy the company, consider these things and make the decision to shut it down or not. Maybe I didn’t make that point clear originally, so hopefully I did now.

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This is horrible news. The chinese will destroy this game. They will fill it with micro transactions and ads. Better to see it closed than turned into a horror beyond belief. If you think this will improve ao or keep it going you are insane. The chinese will devour ao. You won’t be able to open a bag without paying cash.

What do you mean destroy this game? Do you have any idea how this game was back in the early 2000’s? This game has already been destroyed. Wake up

AO is a milking machine with no development, and AO2 will never happen under Funcom.

The reality is that Funcom hasn’t cared about AO in well over a decade. Literally nothing Tencent could would be worse for AO than what FC has already done. FC, broadly speaking, has severe issues with ongoing development and it’s clearly a systemic issue.

Funcom’s cycle of creation is to develop a new game, have it be bug ridden and incomplete, work out a small number of the kinks, immediately proclaim the game such a success that they’re already working on their next game, and then forget about the title forever. This happened with AoC for AO and it hasn’t been on their radar ever since.

Funcom has had endless opportunities to revive Anarchy Online when it was a realistic goal, but the simple reality is that there’s nobody at FC who has influence over the company’s direction who cares an ounce about AO. The ‘new engine’ was supposed to be a huge revival for the game and draw its players back in, and yet, it wasn’t give the resources needed to succeed and the ‘new engine’ took nearly a decade to release.

The Steam release was a huge opportunity to revive the game with some meaningful imrpovements to the new player exeperience - and instead it was rolled out without any ceremony, announcement, or any meaningful additions other than new expensive store items to bleed dry whatever few idiots decided to play - I use the term idiots, because it’s clear that’s how FC views their customers.

RK2019 was meant to be a huge opportunity for a revival of the game - after all, how could Funcom screw up the re-release and nostalgia that comes with it which was virtually guaranteed to bring players rolling back in? And yet, Funcom didn’t miss a single opportunity for failure. There was clearly no actual effort put into their big project for the twilight years of AO. Funcom not only doesn’t care about AO players, they simply don’t care about their customers period.

You’re holding your breath if you expect anything from Funcom these days, well - anything other than disappointment and mistreatment.

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however this whole thing ends up shaking out, tencent can NOT possibly treat AO any worse than funcom does short of shutting the servers down.

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Even that would just be a mercy killing, hardly worse than what Funcom has done with AO or any of its other games.

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So, has Ten Cent fully acquired FC? I did see a news article on 1/24 saying it was a done deal then…but nothing from FC and/or 10 Cent since then.

Today’s Anniversary Announcement says to me that they are keeping 2019 going.

You wont hear anything from FC about any sort of internal workings nor how will it impact their portfolio of games.

I could not agree with Ryahask more. I recently came back to try the game out for like the 5th time since it started…I played most of the first year but not a lot since. After getting a 3 man group up into the 80’s I realized why I never stuck with this game. Incredibly poor game design…terrible aggro mechanics…game built only for twinks…etc. Funcom has never made a good or popular game and they need to be put out to pasture. Would be nice to see what another company might be able to do with an AO2 but doubt that will happen.

The stock owners have until March 16th to say yes or no to the offer. Owners of at least 90% of the stocks has to say yes. If it is a no, we might see another offer from TC to pay more (The premium offered atm isn’t that high).

Anyway, we will know more mid-March.

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https://massivelyop.com/2020/07/14/tencent-now-completely-owns-funcom-purveyor-of-conan-exiles-and-secret-world-legends/

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I heard AO is now gonna be run by 50 cent, the rapper.

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