IF EA's marketing bods were to do the job of marketing DAOC properly...

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:53 am

Now just been reading the other EA thread and something came to mind when I read one of Croms posts.

IF EA's marketing bods were to do the job of marketing DAOC properly... what would be the likely effect?

We can all agree that DAOC has been great fun for the last 4 and a half years but one of the biggest issues we currently face is the sheer lack of numbers and the influx of new blood.

Think for a minute about the effect of EA's marketing, shop shelves would be stocked to the gills with copies of DAOC, there would be large cardboard cutouts of Trolls, Elves, Brits in HMV, Game and all other outlets for computer games there would be posters on tube station walls, articles in magazines, adverts in magazines and coverage online in more mainstream locations. All of which has been sorely lacking to date.

So next up once the wheels are turning they start selling copies of the game, with nice free trial incentives... 3 months would be an ideal at this stage to encourage a new playerbase to establish themselves and try out different server types/realms and then stick with the game... remember we are talking about new players here so they won't be likely to be staying online nearly as much as the rest of us until they are actually hooked. We now have an influx of players enemies and allies alike... they will not know anything at the start... but the established players will no doubt help them out.. won't they?

So the new players have leveled to 50, gotten TOA'ed and ML'd up, CL's under their belts... and they head into the big bad world of RVR.. what a wake up call that will be... "WTF joo adding nubber" geting warfooked in a milisecond, stealth wars... how many will stay through all that... well hopefully... lots but even an influx of 30K player (being very optimistic) at the start and given a 75% fall off I think we would all be happy to see an additional 7.5K players on the euro servers... then while EA's marketing drive continues... word of mouth from that 7.5K would be an additional resource of recruiting new players.

In the backroom... how cool would it be for EA to work on getting the game onto PS2 and XBOX360... a whole new avenue and type of player available for us to slaughter... erm... I mean welcome to the game. And an additional source of revenue for EA... DAOC becomes an even more attractive cash cow for them to exploit...

Well we can dream.

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:20 am

Thinking on the maths side of the above...

Sales of 30K new copies of the game would generate an instant £600,000 based on a £20/unit price point. So EA makes a reasonable return on investment... now in fairness to get DAOC up to where it should be in terms of marketing it would take a substantial investment... hazard a guess on £100,000 per terratory (thinking euro only here atm) so:

UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Denmark....

say one and a £1.5 million on the intial campaign leaving a debit balance of £900,000 a hole in the balance sheet, but bear in mind the monthly subs...

275 143 chars in europe atm (source http://daoc.pirotess.org/)

Taking that as toons /10 for accounts is 27,500 currently active accounts

Current Subs: £8.00

£220,000 a month from the existing players in europe alone

Add to that (after free trial expires) an additional 7.5K who stay playing and paying... an additional 60K

£280,000 a month income (note not clear profit as all costs have to come out of that but I would hazard a guess that it would comfortably pay for the servers and bodies required for the daoc team... which given EA's infrastructure could be centralised in one location as could the servers providing a more managable and cost effective)

Not sure of the numbers in the US atm... but there are sure to be more than on euro... so lets take it as they have the same for sake of arguement... it makes the numbers easy... so double up on everything...

Just something to think on and discuss... would be nice to see some discussion on this.

Gahn · Post by **Gahn** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:02 pm

Well seeing that Mythic is totally concentrated on WAR i pretty much doubt that EA will do a money effort to advertise the flagship.
Unless ofc some1 thinks that it'll be easier to "ferry" customers from Daoc to War than to "steal" customers directly from WoW.

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:24 pm

Think folks are been way too optimistic.
In fact, I think it would have a negative impact on the game, from the point of view of what's the point in flogging a dead horse?

Edit: Thinking of an analogy from nature... When a challenging Lion takes on the head of a pride of Lions and wins, not only does he claim the lioness as his own, but he kills any cubs who were the offspring of the deposed lion.

Post by **Xest** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:32 pm

Personally I'd like to see them do a dual subscription thing for WAR/DAoC, or even include the DAoC subscription as standard in the WAR subscription perhaps? I think that'd potentially be good for both games although from a business sense it may not work, I guess it'd essentially mean WAR was subsidising the running cost of DAoC servers.

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 12:48 pm

Gandelf wrote:...what's the point in flogging a dead horse?

ever ask yourself that same question about some of your bizarre ideas?

but back on topic... there was nothing optimistic in my post... just an analysis based on a combination of theory, fact and experience of the possible business case for EA keeping DAOC running. In essence it is one of the "Assets" that would have been assessed during the process of deciding if they wanted to merge with/buy out mythic. Please try to see it as objectivity rather than optimism, although the differences are subtle they do exist.

And whats with the necrophilia/beastality fetish anyway?

Xest... aye it could work, subs would be increased I would think but there is certainly an arguement for it.. although would you or I actually want to pay for something that we would not use... i.e. pay for planetside and EQ while only playing EQ? I think people would object... but tbh I for one would keep paying for DAOC if there was a concerted effort on the part of the providers to attract new players. Which I add once again is what should have happened in europe from the outset.

ambera · Post by **ambera** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:21 pm

Will the EA thing make any difference to marketing in Europe anyway? Isn't that GOA's responsibility - a contract that is already in place and no easier for EA Mythic to change than it was for Mythic?

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:27 pm

While Mark Jacobs has siad its still going ahead... every contract has its end date... it could be a much better thing for one company to look after it.... but there is always the possibility that they will let GOA run out the contract and then bring it back in house.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 1:34 pm

Takitothemacs wrote: Xest... aye it could work, subs would be increased I would think but there is certainly an arguement for it.. although would you or I actually want to pay for something that we would not use... i.e. pay for planetside and EQ while only playing EQ? I think people would object... but tbh I for one would keep paying for DAOC if there was a concerted effort on the part of the providers to attract new players. Which I add once again is what should have happened in europe from the outset.

I think it's the one thing that SoE have done well. At various times I have played EQ, EQ2, Planetside & SWG with a combined sub I would almost certainly have tried Matrix Online too.

I think paying 2x subs and getting access to 4+ descent games would be worthwhile, as long as people have the option to pay for only the one they are playing. Unfortunately SoE's treatment of Eu-En players at EQ2 release and the way they butchered SWG on a number of occasions puts me off them completely. (Whatever my feelings towards goa, they are much worse towards SoE

).

Post by **Xest** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 2:06 pm

[quote="Ovi"]I think it's the one thing that SoE have done well. At various times I have played EQ, EQ2, Planetside & SWG with a combined sub I would almost certainly have tried Matrix Online too.

I think paying 2x subs and getting access to 4+ descent games would be worthwhile, as long as people have the option to pay for only the one they are playing. Unfortunately SoE's treatment of Eu-En players at EQ2 release and the way they butchered SWG on a number of occasions puts me off them completely. (Whatever my feelings towards goa, they are much worse towards SoE ]
Agree - I think it depends on the game, historically DAoC hasn't been a very casual game, it's required hours and hours therefore it's all I played. Nowadays I play around maybe 10 hours a month average but when I do it's straight in to have fun and do the things I want to, I then generally play other games too, the past few months I've been playing more single player like Episode one of HL2/SiN's new episodic content stuff, Ghost Recon: AW etc. when I find time to play games. I could easily swap out HL2/SiN/GRAW/Whatever for a second casually playable MMOG.

All this is voided of course if WAR ends up another DAoC - i.e. 8hrs to complete a single ML at ToA release type of idiocy in which case, quite simply I can't be arsed to play at all