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AoC trial
- Thread starter Fliddycent
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PornoSatan
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If there can be gambling addiction, then there can be MMO addiction.
Absolutely wrong...this is the second time I've seen someone saying this nonsense on H. Research has already shown anything addictive like gaming, gambling, excessive need to do anything alters dopamine levels in the brain. Yes there are chemical levels being altered in the brain of an addict. Maybe your confusion is that a chemical altering substance is needed to validate an addiction, as already stated earlier DSM IV does not define an addiction on substance addiction entirely.
Fliddycent
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I was referring more to the chemical "addiction" than a habit or compulsion. I was under the impression that the term "addiction" applied to chemical alteration of the brain brought about by foreign substances, and the consequent drive to replicate that mental state to operate normally. Dopamine levels will be altered by activities that don't involve drugs, but won't qualify as a true addiction since it's a habit or a compulsion rather than the body's dependence on those chemicals to operate normally. That's just a lack of willpower, I'm fairly sure.
I was just being a pedant, really. I don't like seeing words being used out of context and then subsequently being adopted by people thinking they really apply in those situations. I know people become "addicted" to games and gambling and get a dopamine rush from indulging these urges, but it's not equivalent to the medical definition of addiction. It's a compulsion, but one that can be overcome. Calling yourself a "game addict" is basically just passing the buck. Lots of people feel the urge to play games instead of working or going and having a kickaround with your kids, but not everyone actually indulges those urges and puts real life on the sidelines. Trying to call your lack or responsibility an "addiction" is making excuses and dismissing the fact that it's your lack of responsibility or willpower, not a clinical addiction. It's juvenile.
I do it myself. I shirk responsibilities and put real life on the backburner, when I'm working I find myself thinking about whichever game's captured my attention that month and wishing I could play it, there have been times when I've decided not to go out with friends or to the gym or taken a week off work "ill", and I spent the last five years of my time at school doing no work and instead dicking around in games, something that carried on into university and, combined with various other factors, contributed to me dropping out. This was all because it was nowhere near as appealing as staying in and getting some nice gear on AoC or the next rank in CoD4, but I don't claim to have an addiction, I'm just a lazy bastard. I'm not making any excuses for myself. I'm just an idle sod with his priorities in the wrong order. I would almost certainly be classified as an "internet addict", but I wouldn't call myself so because that's just the easy way out. It's not the case, I just have a terrible lack of self-discipline, and so does every one of these other dullards and arseholes making excuses for themselves and not facing up to the fact/admission that they're just as idiotic as me. Grow a pair, stop expecting people to excuse you for everything, and remedy the situation instead and you'll have nothing to want to be excused for.
I was just being a pedant, really. I don't like seeing words being used out of context and then subsequently being adopted by people thinking they really apply in those situations. I know people become "addicted" to games and gambling and get a dopamine rush from indulging these urges, but it's not equivalent to the medical definition of addiction. It's a compulsion, but one that can be overcome. Calling yourself a "game addict" is basically just passing the buck. Lots of people feel the urge to play games instead of working or going and having a kickaround with your kids, but not everyone actually indulges those urges and puts real life on the sidelines. Trying to call your lack or responsibility an "addiction" is making excuses and dismissing the fact that it's your lack of responsibility or willpower, not a clinical addiction. It's juvenile.
I do it myself. I shirk responsibilities and put real life on the backburner, when I'm working I find myself thinking about whichever game's captured my attention that month and wishing I could play it, there have been times when I've decided not to go out with friends or to the gym or taken a week off work "ill", and I spent the last five years of my time at school doing no work and instead dicking around in games, something that carried on into university and, combined with various other factors, contributed to me dropping out. This was all because it was nowhere near as appealing as staying in and getting some nice gear on AoC or the next rank in CoD4, but I don't claim to have an addiction, I'm just a lazy bastard. I'm not making any excuses for myself. I'm just an idle sod with his priorities in the wrong order. I would almost certainly be classified as an "internet addict", but I wouldn't call myself so because that's just the easy way out. It's not the case, I just have a terrible lack of self-discipline, and so does every one of these other dullards and arseholes making excuses for themselves and not facing up to the fact/admission that they're just as idiotic as me. Grow a pair, stop expecting people to excuse you for everything, and remedy the situation instead and you'll have nothing to want to be excused for.
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The Real Spartacus
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What's this game's population like?
As mentioned in the article linked in the second post of this thread, the game is dying and is currently at less than 100k subs.
The oxfard dictonary defines an addict as:
"physically dependent on a particular substance"
In medical terms this is accurate, certain substances are addictive which cause physical changes in the body which cause you to crave them. A substance can be considered addictive if it has this effect.
You cannot call a game addictive because it doesn't have that same effect on people with the same kind of regularity that for example an addictive drug does, some people become attached and other people simply dont give a crap.
There is a very definate fine line with this because it's used in law to describe substances, in the news not too long ago a "clinic" that was there for games "addiciton" were challenged about curing addiction and had to remove the word addiction because it was not legally accurate.
People use the term addicitve incorrectly or as slang quite frequently which causes a more relaxed use of the word in common language but it's not the orginal meaning, using that definition we could claim any substance or activity is addicitive because someone somewhere once became "addicted" to it, it them becomes a meaningless term to describe something when everything is potentially addictive.
Describing whether someone is addicted to something requires a more detailed approach rather than "they play the game a lot". At what point is it addicition, 2 hours per week, 3 hours? Wheres the line, can someone play 50 hours a week but not be addicted because they prefer this task over others, in which case it's a logical choice rather than a dependency.
This is why there is a medical definition for addiction which speaks about specific physical changes such as craving when the addictive substance isn't consumed. Without it, there would be too much ambiguity.
*edit*
Furthermore if doing some activity releases chemicals in your body that effect your brain like an external substance might, then you're not addicted to the activity but rather the chemicals your body produces when you engage in that activity, the same chemicals could be triggered by other activities, and in other people those activities may not trigger those chemicals, this would lead to a very bad definition of what is addictive and what is not. I dont think you could call dopamine addictive anyway, you dont become dependent on it or suffer withdrawel symptoms when you lack it.
"physically dependent on a particular substance"
In medical terms this is accurate, certain substances are addictive which cause physical changes in the body which cause you to crave them. A substance can be considered addictive if it has this effect.
You cannot call a game addictive because it doesn't have that same effect on people with the same kind of regularity that for example an addictive drug does, some people become attached and other people simply dont give a crap.
There is a very definate fine line with this because it's used in law to describe substances, in the news not too long ago a "clinic" that was there for games "addiciton" were challenged about curing addiction and had to remove the word addiction because it was not legally accurate.
People use the term addicitve incorrectly or as slang quite frequently which causes a more relaxed use of the word in common language but it's not the orginal meaning, using that definition we could claim any substance or activity is addicitive because someone somewhere once became "addicted" to it, it them becomes a meaningless term to describe something when everything is potentially addictive.
Describing whether someone is addicted to something requires a more detailed approach rather than "they play the game a lot". At what point is it addicition, 2 hours per week, 3 hours? Wheres the line, can someone play 50 hours a week but not be addicted because they prefer this task over others, in which case it's a logical choice rather than a dependency.
This is why there is a medical definition for addiction which speaks about specific physical changes such as craving when the addictive substance isn't consumed. Without it, there would be too much ambiguity.
*edit*
Furthermore if doing some activity releases chemicals in your body that effect your brain like an external substance might, then you're not addicted to the activity but rather the chemicals your body produces when you engage in that activity, the same chemicals could be triggered by other activities, and in other people those activities may not trigger those chemicals, this would lead to a very bad definition of what is addictive and what is not. I dont think you could call dopamine addictive anyway, you dont become dependent on it or suffer withdrawel symptoms when you lack it.
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Fliddycent
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Could you please give me a source, then? Like I said, this was only the impression I got, if there was some confirmation I'd be all for it, even if it proved me wrong. I didn't mean for my stuff to come across as fact, just as what I knew.
Sorry, are you playing right now?
Check the date on the article. It was correct at one point, but lots of people started resubscribing around Christmas/January, and even more are resubscribing as a result of the free trial. I play on three servers, and two of the three are heaving with people. The only one that isn't is one called Blackscar that was created around the time of the merges and which has only been around for a month and a half, so it' quite empty. Everywhere else seems to be packed.
LOL YER GUYS WHT DO U THINK UR DOING QUOTEN TH OXFERD DICTION TH WORLDS MOST DEFINITV DICTIONERY LOL
IDEOTS
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Azureth
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Some questions:
1. I bought this when it originally released, if I install it now how many patches will I need to get?
2. As someone who got to level 22 in WoW and got bored, would AoC be any different?
3. How easy is it to find teams?
1. I bought this when it originally released, if I install it now how many patches will I need to get?
2. As someone who got to level 22 in WoW and got bored, would AoC be any different?
3. How easy is it to find teams?
Fliddycent
Limp Gawd
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1: Depends on your internet connection, but when I reformatted recently it took about an hour and a half to install and patch in total, but I have a blistering connection. I'd say start the patching in the evening to be safe, and leave like an hour or two. Big patches.
2: Very, very different. You can tear through it in four hours, I got to 22 in a morning, or if you want to take the time and enjoy the ride you can take your time and soak it in. I started WoW a few times and was bored to tears. The AoC starting area is simply stupefyingly pretty, and good fun. I would recommend a PvE server though, the dickhead population has increased dramatically on PvP. The areas after the starting area have been polished a lot too, the noise you hear about them being unfinished were valid at the start but it's been out a long time now and has been tweaked a lot.
3: Fairly easy depending on server population. There are some low-poulation servers that were created recently, but asking a few questions will get you pointed at the main ones.
Ahh the sounds of denial which we see from some players at the dying stages of every mmo.
Even if magically AoC gained 20,000 subs in Jan/Feb it means nothing - they need approx 500,000 more subs (plus the 100k they have now) to break even, and maybe about 900k-1mil subs to be sustainable.
As has been mentioned in articles on mmo development on mmorpg websites, the vast majority of players who leave a mmorpg in the first couple months NEVER return to the game. No matter how much patches, updates, offers, deals, discounts, specials, trials etc. Which is why it is of utmost importance to retain as many people as possible in the first few months of a mmo, which funcom failed at and anyone who knows how MMOs work would have been able to predict AoC's demise when they lost 500k users in the first 30 days of their release, then another 200k in the next 2 months.
Obviously there's no hard/accurate statistic, but it's probably as high as 98%+ of the players who leave in the first couple months never return. The very people who would have made AoC sustainable, the very people who would "give a new mmo a chance" were those very same 800k people who left the game in the first 3 months.
They will NEVER come back to the game, AoC is definitely on it's deathbed. It's actually past it's deathbed considering its losing 80mil a year atm at its current rate.
We don't need to be playing now to predict the future for this game. Even without the financial records, playerbase counts, resignation reports etc it's obvious to anyone who has experience with MMOs the way AoC is headed.
Stop acting like we are happy this game has failed. Most people including me wanted it to succeed so that there would be viable alternatives in the MMO market, however it was blatantly obvious that funcom ruined any chance they had of doing this.
Fliddycent
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Well, I hope we'll see some numbers in the future. You're right that they're bleeding money, but they're also doing a lot of work to patch those wounds, and in the last week alone there've been scores of people resubscribing on my server alone. Fingers crossed that it continues that way. I wouldn't write it off yet, not by a long shot. People seem very happy with the changes that're being made by the new team.
I was one of those people that gave up on it, left is as a lost cause. I resubscribed for one month just to see what the new content was like and how desolate it was, and was pleasantly surprised. Hence the link to this trial. If you're not happy to see it going downhill, give it a click and find out for yourself instead of burbling away on messageboards about how terrible a game you've not played past the first month is. This is largely why I linked it, because 90% of the stuff I read on here in relation to AoC was valid in the first few months with the retarded patches, but is entirely redundant now, but people still cling to it. I don't want to see it die because it is a genuinely good game now, and the only MMO I've ever been able to enjoy, so if you did think it showed promise but cancelled like I did, give the trial a go. Let's be honest, it's not like you paid $40 or whatever so you could have the box sit in your shelf. I was happy to be proved wrong about the game, and it's free, after all. Frosteh/x, that goes for you as well. Lots of people are enjoying your class immensely now.
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Uh why is this? Every healthy MMO has had between 80-200k subs. Why now does an MMO need 1 mil subs to be sustainable?
Azureth
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The CoX games have been out for quite awhile and they have around 200K subs.
Not once have I talked about how terrible the game is. If you wanna flame the people who did, go ahead and quote them, not me. I am talking about statistics.Fliddycent said:
According to the article, they were losing 23 mil per quarter with 100k subs. Feel free to do the math.
Every MMO is different, every business model is different. You cannot compare X mmo subscription base with Y MMO subscription when it comes to sustainability.
I will take the reports of the DnB NOR Markets Statistics over the words of a few players "feelings" about the game. 3-4 packed servers might mean great fun for players on those servers - but it means nothing in terms of financial stability for the developer.
What article?
What players are giving their feelings over the financial stability of the game? I'm just curious as to why all of a sudden a MMO needs 1 million subs to be considered healthy. Personally I thought the game sucked ass, everything about the end game was wrong from city sieges, pvp, class balance, raids, and pve content...but I just fail to see what model they are using that has changed so dramatically from every other MMO model out there that they need 1 million subs when pretty much every other MMO model can maintain stability with say 150k subs.
Age of Conan is Dying: Subscribers Under 100K, $23 Million 4q Loss, CFO Resigns
"The slide continues and Funcom reported a 4th quarter loss of $23.3 million. Subscriber levels for Age of Conan are now estimated to be below one hundred thousand. This is according to DnB NOR Markets."
Full (brief) article.
This really is no surprise, just confirmation of what we already knew.
No one said that about MMOs in general. They said that about AoC.Climber said:
Maybe before WoW and with the older MMOs, but not nowadays with the (relatively) new ones. After WoW's success investors have been pouring billions into countless development of MMOs in the hope of recreating WoW's success.
However they are not using the old business models which are sustainable on 200-400k subs. They are aiming for the big pie of millions of subs and which is why they are falling flat on their faces.
Back when Vanguard was released and critically panned I remember seeing quite a few articles of how WoW was to blame for the sudden influx of cash being pushed unto MMO developers hoping for the next big thing - yet these investors don't take into consideration that Blizzard and the Warcraft universe have had a decade of building a huge fanbase, and a decade of creating plots and stories.
Sigh...Already wrote where you need to look (DSM IV) and no its not published online most likely at your doctors office might be at the local library. Sorry if that came out wrong just got a chuckle picturing a psychologist/physician writing their patients' notes with a dictionary.
Fliddycent
Limp Gawd
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See my previous post, then, instead of continuing to post the same old shite, son.
Haw. Have you looked at any gameplay videos for Aion? I had a BIG perusal the other day hoping that it would succeed in the respects I'd hoped AoC would, and the game is visually stunning, but as far as the actual gameplay it goes it looks just as tepid and uninspired as WoW or any other Korean MMO. Seriously, seriously average.
Climber: all I can say is that "was" is the qualifier to have used. Drexion: your articles on CFOs resigning and losses reported are all valid. However, that CFO has been replaced and people are loving it. That's all I'm saying. I posted a link to a trial in an attempt to quell this nonsense people seem determined to regurgitate based on the initial month/some articles they've read, but unfortunately some people seem more interested in being "right" in one context than disproved to their own advantage in another. So what if your preconceptions are wrong or misguided, you've just found out that you didn't waste $40. Nobody's going to think less of you for admitting that your views are outdated, you simple simons.
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Fliddycent>> funny, your posts in this thread mirror the exact same posts by fans of Hellgate London on their forums, just a couple months before it was shut down suddenly.
I guess you must be new to MMOs or games which rely on subs to remain above water, anyone who claims AoC is in some sort of comeback with potential for long term success is either delusional or just new to subscription based games.
The facts have been posted (24mil Loss per quarter @100k subs suggests they need approx 600k subs to balance their expenditure, and maybe about 900k-1mil subs to remain healthy). This is not "shite", and anyone arguing against this is just trying to argue against the facts.
No one is denying the game is probably fun and awesome right now, but the point is it doesn't matter how awesome the game is NOW, what really mattered was their retention rate of subs in the first 3-4 months - which is the point at which the game was doomed.
I guess you must be new to MMOs or games which rely on subs to remain above water, anyone who claims AoC is in some sort of comeback with potential for long term success is either delusional or just new to subscription based games.
The facts have been posted (24mil Loss per quarter @100k subs suggests they need approx 600k subs to balance their expenditure, and maybe about 900k-1mil subs to remain healthy). This is not "shite", and anyone arguing against this is just trying to argue against the facts.
No one is denying the game is probably fun and awesome right now, but the point is it doesn't matter how awesome the game is NOW, what really mattered was their retention rate of subs in the first 3-4 months - which is the point at which the game was doomed.
Azureth
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Alright, I just resubbed and am about to make a new character, what should I know? And is there a certain server [h] plays at?
Fliddycent
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I'm not arguing against it. Go back and read again. To be fair I can understand your confusion, since "shite" isn't an expression used frequently in the US, but in that context it wasn't being used in a defamatory manner but rather as a replacement for something like "stuff" or "spiel".
They're making a loss. Given. It'll definitely die? Conjecture. It's improving? Fact. Let's just hope that the improvements constitute enough to warrant more people actually exploring it again instead of writing it off with the same old "buhrr broken/no content" shite [stuff]. That's what the link's here for. Calm you down, my chum, you've made yourself heard and have some lovely and pertinent points, but repeating yourself isn't going to change the fact that you're actually missing what I'm getting at.
Depends what you want. PvP servers are a hard time right now, and whitesands is brutal since people have discovered that the most efficient way to get PvP levels is at low levels, but it can be fun. You will get fucked with, however, and possibly quite angry at some of the dirty tricks pulled, if you don't want to pull dirty tricks off your own. It's pretty much dog-eat-dog, you fuck with people or you get fucked with. Simple as. I played away through my PvP server trying to be a decent guy and let people get on with their lives, but it got to the point where I just gave up with that and cracked heads at every opportunity.
PvE is still good fun but you don't have to be as awake as much. Faster levelling, but the only PvP you'll get is through arranged minigames.
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