Funcom have announced that recently launched MMO Age of Conan has already shipped 1 million units.
"Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft," says Funcom Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Morten Larssen. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proud to be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month and the biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history."
I always mention WoW when interviewing MMO developers. In reply they invariably spin the PR line that Blizzard's classic game is a market-opening opportunity rather than a competitive threat. These figures prove they may have been right. Would Conan have done so well in the pre-WoW days of say 2003? How many of these 1 million - or thereabouts - players are high level WoW players taking a break from Azeroth?
Of course, shipping a million units is one thing, getting players to subscribe for more than a month or two is the real success metric. I've been playing Conan for a couple of weeks now and while the more involved combat and character physicality are welcome MMO innovations I won't be subscribing just yet. For a start my laptop - a decent ram-packed high-end one bought about a year ago - may have finally met its match with Conan. Unlike WoW, which could probably run on an Atari ST* Age of Conan demands the latest hardware to play smoothly at any kind of decent resolution. More importantly Conan is full of zoning. These loading screens between areas, buildings and cities are hugely annoying immersion-breakers. WoW, and the increasingly impressive Lord of the Rings Online, restrict zoning to a minimum, and so create the feeling of being in a coherent world. Despite this Conan has a stack of promise. It looks great - assuming you have a sexy PC - and has had a relatively smooth launch. I will definitely be back. Anyone here playing?
*Ok, maybe an Amiga
