Respect ?

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Trgeorge
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Respect ?

Post by Trgeorge » Sat Jun 23, 2007 12:39 am

Those of you that follow official forums know that recent "money for credits" survey kicked up quite a fuss. Alongside this, some 3rd party company was constantly spamming shop channels in neutral cities with links to their site. Thing heated so much, players started to spam that site back, as well as sent emails to it's host provider. In that tread a comment caught my attention:
Diemex wrote:(as long as you dont all do something in FC's name that would be a discredit to them...)
Wit the approaching 6th anniversary celebrations (should start on 29th) I have asked myself : "Does FC do anything that discredits us, players?". With a disastreus launch, game outlasted initial plans. FC funded several other games from it's income (both paying players as well as income from adds&froobs). Of course they got funds from other sources as well, but players supported this game (and FC in turn) with other means as well. Just think of ARKs (volunters), testers (volunters), GSP (volunters), several sites with helpfull information,...the list could go on.

Yes, there is a flip side to playerbase as well. There are exploiters, troublemakers and so on. Unfortunatly there is very little average player can do against those, so it's really a FC's job to deal with them.

So what's your take on this? Do you get respect and do you return it (be that FC or other players)?
"War may be Hell....but it's good for business!"
-The Association for Merchants,Manufacturers, and Morticians

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Jozef
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Post by Jozef » Sat Jun 23, 2007 2:39 am

MMORPGs are a very peculiar beast. On one hand, they greatly depend on the players, but if the player base turns out to be large, they can be much more profitable than single player games. As such, a company needs to tread very lightly on a very thin line between being as supportive to the players as possible and not ruining the game or their revenue flow. Remember, FC is still a company, and as such it needs at least to break even. If it makes any money it reinvests it to other projects that can yield a higher rate of return than existing projects. Funcom is still a young company, and still operating at a heavy loss, even though their sales doubled las year (the fact that they show an after-tax profit is only attributable to the fact that they realized some deferred tax revenues, a non-cash item). As such, I don't really blame them if they put AO on an afterburner and focused on newer projects. In fact, I'm very pleasantly surprised by the amount of time and attention they spend on AO.

AO, as a MMORPG, will be successful only as long as it has a sizable player base. It does have a very strong community, and the new updates keep this community active. AO has given the players a lot of freedom to fend for themselves, and all the volunteer work you mentioned only strengthened the sense of ownership in many players. The downside to this is, though, that new players face relatively high barriers to entry: they are unfamiliar with the finer points of the game, they find it harder to join existing groups, and they are often ostracized by other players if they don't behave according to the unwritten social rules that developed over the past six years. As such, I'm not against new players being able to purchase credits. What I am much more afraid is that some veteran players may feel too strong a sense of ownership of the game, and ultimatelly chase away new players through their behavior.
Hiding behind a beach towel so all anyone remembers about him is a bunch of orange stripes.

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Stillian
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Post by Stillian » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:54 am

I believe, usually, the Anarchy-Online division is good to us, i.e. the Dev's and FC Staff who are on the AO team.

To Funcom as a whole, I feel they have treated us badly, but they have simply, been a business. Used AO income to fund other things, well, it's not our business to say what they do with the money.
Stillian, 217/19 Doctor of Hells Heroes

former AOU Researcher

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Wila
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Post by Wila » Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:25 pm

Yeah. They're a business, and you make a business to make money. What happens in the game is in their control greatly, but involving yourself in a poll or sending an idea to funcom can really make the game ours. To make a game, you need 40% technology, 30% imagination and the rest is to be able to work WITH your players, not for them.
i solely live on Destruction. If destruction leaves me, i become a lone soul, only to fall 'til the world comes crashing down on me. Destruction. I will hunt, and i will destroy.

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