malkav11
1561
I don’t think there’s currently any evidence that CoH’s closure was because of financial difficulties on the part of the game or the developers.
I have the same opinion and it based on nearly every post you make where you offer your opinion on a game or film. Can you appreciate that?
Nesrie
1563
Why would a company close a profitable game with relatively little notice at that. They could have kept the game going with a skeleton crew if all they wanted was to shift resources.
I don’t know, but the available evidence suggests they did exactly that.
The scuttlebutt is that they wanted to shift all available hardware resources to the Guild Wars 2 launch. I have no idea if that’s true or not.
Nesrie
1566
I forgot to mention that the state of the game post seems completely opposite to the tell us anything, anything! that would make you buy this game survey some of us received. If the intention is to…
And that’s why we’re not about to change
why even ask?
Well, I think you’re just being overly generous with your praise.
I suspect there’s a bit of desperation in their morning coffee at Funcom. The Pandas are coming too.
I wish they’d somehow go F2P with Secret World. I’d gladly pay for new adventure packs. I just don’t want to be on the monthly payment timer. I don’t feel like that fits my lifestyle these days.
Miramon
1570
Yes, the coffee is no doubt very bitter indeed these days in Oslo.
I prefer subscriptions, myself. If I only play 6 hours a month for $15, that’s still a pretty good deal, after all. But I don’t mind a graceful and modest free-to-play or micropayment system that doesn’t try to exploit players for more than a subscription would cost.
The key design problem for games like this is that if they manage to interest the player in the world they’ve created, then the player will run out of content and gameplay and leveling and so on in a month, or maybe two.
I expect to also run into this issue with GW2 very soon, but what the heck, the game will have provided some reasonable fun and interest for the money. And while GW2 business planners may have some inflated expectations of micropayments for “gems”, at least they don’t have totally bogus notions of subscription payments sustaining them for years to come.
From the player point of view, there’s no problem with running out of content in a MMO; you play a fun game for a month or two, and then you quit or if you really really want to, you can enter the instance grind, though I can’t imagine why people do that.
But from the point of view of financial planners who can’t possibly pay for the game’s initial development without 12 months of recurring revenue, and who can’t possibly afford to provide enough content to keep players exploring new things for 12 months in a row, the whole MMO business concept seems to be very screwy indeed.
Nephrinn
1571
More bad news for TSW/Funcom with the lead designer (and staff) being laid off:
Revealing the news on Twitter, Martin Bruusgaard said he was no longer with the developer, and had been put on forced leave along with most of the Oslo office.
He suggested that the studio’s Norway headquarters had been hit much harder than other offices as it was expensive to run, and suggested that it was “cheaper to hire someone abroad”.
“Unfortunately, I’m not with Funcom anymore,” said Bruusgaard.
“Got put on forced leave along with most of our Oslo Office, a week ago.”
Razgon
1572
Dammit! thats so sad! I LOVED Age of Conan and really liked how The Secret World was shaping up but all these news doesnt seem to bode well for Funcom.
Best wishes to any who was laid off!
stusser
1573
I expect it’ll go F2P sooner than later and be run out of the Montreal offices.
This might signify the end of game development in Norway.
The trailer for Digging Deeper, tomorrow’s update, is out. And I have to say it looks good. Lots of rocket launcher action.
Yes, TSW is not doing as well as they hoped. But when I see those scenes, I remember why I enjoy the game. I love the setting and the way the conspiracies are handled.
I just hope they were not silly enough to make the rocket launcher mission another solo only one. :/
Wendelius
Razgon
1575
There’s an interesting interviewwith Funcom’s new CEO out today which you can find here.
Of particular note may be this:
That said we definitely have the tools to turn The Secret World into a free-to-play game - or even hybrid - should we decide to do that somewhere down the line. We did that with Age of Conan with significant success. We all know that trends and expectations in the gaming business, and perhaps particularly the MMO genre, is evolving quickly, and we’re regularly re-evaluating our business model against the changing currents of the marketplace and our own player base as well. Not only in terms of The Secret World, but also our future games.
I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t go F2P. They’d sell me a client today if I didn’t have to pay a sub. If they make each new content issue meaty enough I’d pay $10 for them.
They’ve released the update and no one has commented on it yet? Poor Secret World…
I started the rocket launcher quest but after getting beaten down a few times I ended up playing Guild Wars 2. I’ll need to burn a bit of GW2 out of me before I can come back and give it the concentration it deserves.
barstein
1578
Loved the world, hated the user interface and couldn’t bring myself to renew. I’ll dabble more if/when they go FTP.
Razgon
1579
So, new Game Director, the previous Lead Designer, on Secret World and Ragnar Tørnquist continues as Creative Director on the game.
No idea if that means anything, or if its normal practice for when the game is out to change who is in charge of the game.
Funcom is working on some other IP, a Lego MMO or something like that. Ragnar may be getting ready to work on that.
