Trouble Comes to Funcom

[felixader]

This better not effect the development of The Longest Journey: Dreamfall Chapters. God damn, someone is determined to see that I never live to witness the ending of that story!

Ragnar is no longer a part of Funcom, he's working on TLJ with his own small company, so Funcom's woes can't influence the game he's promised us all for years.

On topic, I'm saddened by this. Funcom have made some of my favourite time-wasters over the years, Anarchy Online is retrospectively where I had the most fun playing an MMO, it was a great game for it's time and TSW was (and is) so impressive for the journey. The problem was that journey had a steep entrance fee and it only took a couple of weeks to get the end. If TSW had the same level of quality with 4x the content, it would of been amazing. They could of aspired to that over time, yet with the state of their finances now, I'm doubtful it'll see much development beyond patches and fluff.

What do you mean no end to that story? Didn't the PC Release have a ending as opposed to the XBoxRelaease?
Cause that's why i a playing the collection right now.

 

[NightmareWarden]

I do not understand why most MMORPGs have, as far as I can tell, gone the subscription route with the price of $15 per month. I am sure that some people will immediately look away when the word "subscription" comes up, however $75 (for the first month or for the first two months if the first month is "free") is a large barrier to entry. Why do companies tend to follow what appears to be the standard that World of Warcraft set when it comes to subscription models? Why not have a fee of $5 per month or $2.50 per week? If the subscription fee is tiny, then I doubt people would complain about the existence of a subscription fee AND a microtransaction setup. I understand that the subscription price would differ from region to region, however I think that that would be a minor complication compared to the potential growth a game could receive.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Combining an up front cost and a subscription fee together is a mistake. A reasonable one, $10-15 to cover account setup and first 30-days maybe, but if a company wants to charge a subscription, they need to offer some way for people to try it without a massive up front cost. People aren't willing to spend £30 on a subscription game with no history. Offer a free trial and make damn sure there is an optional tutorial route which is rich, engrossing, informative, exciting and well-paced. If character creation is deep and highly personisable, so much the better; it adds a tremendous amount to a game though I think many devs seem to forget this.

Also, as Warden mentioned, it never ceases to make me wonder why fees need to be so high as they are. If they were halved, the barrier to entry would be significantly lower. A lot of people don't mind throwing $5-10 a month at something they might not even be that bothered about playing.