Age of Conan - 700,000 accounts

Games
1

“Eidos and Funcom are proud to announce that Age of Conan continues to dominate the PC sales charts in all markets where the game is available. Over the last few weeks it has remained the overall #1 PC game in most European markets, whilst also performing tremendously well on several all-format charts. In the US, Age of Conan impressively conquered the #1 PC spot for the first two weeks of available NPD data. Due to the amazing interest surrounding the game, more than 700,000 gamers have now signed up for an Age of Conan account. In the second month after release it is also clear that Age of Conan has taken the position as the undisputed #2 subscription MMO in the western world.”

I like the game, but I’m not sure it’s good enough to warrant that many accounts that quickly, given the relative performance of games like LotRO. So what is going on? Is AoC that good, or is this a case of the market starved for something new?

I think Lum said he thinks Warhammer can do 1.5M accounts. I thought that was too high, but in light of AoC’s performance, it may very well hit that.

2

I’m really surprised. I hit 77 the other day and really can’t bring myself to grind out the last 3 levels. I’ve been playing mostly because of friends. I wonder how long the honeymoon will last.

3

I dont’ know about 1.5million, especially warhammer online release is around the same time as WOTLK. AOC got lucky because new MMO is pretty dead around it’s release.

4

Any idea how the leveling curve compares to WoW? How many hours of play did that take you roughly?

5

It’s an impressive number overall, and they had a good timing with the release. Still, most of the people I know currently have no intention to play the game past the initial month right now.

-Julian

6

Too many. If you solo, it’s much slower, since there are many level ranges with no viable solo quests. If you’re in a group, it depends on if you can secure a good grind spot (on a pvp server). On a PvE server, I figure it’s worse since you are forced to share.

I think AoC could be faster if you’re lucky. However, with WoW’s XP increase a few patches ago and smoother design, I think it’s easier going from 1-70 in WoW than 1-80 in AoC.

7

Yep, 3 friends and myself picked up the game and all 4 of us quit within the first month. Only one made it to 80th and he said, “There’s not a damn thing to do now, and I’m sure as hell not grinding thru those levels again.”

8

A bunch of friends/guildmates are playing. Couple have hit 80, when you hit 70 the road to 80 looks quite long I understand. I played and enjoyed it a lot but have gotten sucked back into the WAR beta test, and I can’t really play 2 MMOs at the same time, so I haven’t touched AoC in a month or so (my Bear Shaman is 38 or so). As much as I liked it, I don’t see myself going back to it.

9

I know people bitch about WoW being item-centric, but it gives you a lot to do once you hit the level cap.

If they hit 700,000, they can shed a LOT of players and still be very successful, and have a great base to build on as they add endgame content.

What surprises me is how fast its sold given that a game like LotRO is post-WoW also, has a really strong license, and has by most accounts solid gameplay, yet hasn’t come close to matching AoC. Other post-WoW MMOs have performed poorly too, like Pirates of the Burning Seas and Tabula Rasa. If it was just the WoW crowd hungry for something new, I’d think either one of these could have sold 200,000 copies.

10

I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around the numbers that are being reported for this game. Not that it’s bad or anything, but I just don’t sense the kind of buzz these numbers suggest. Is it that most of these accounts are in Europe and I’m just disconnected from it?

11

This does seem a bit curiously worded:

“Due to the amazing interest surrounding the game, more than 700,000 gamers have now signed up for an Age of Conan account.”

What constitutes an account? Is that an active, paying subscription, or something else? Are those trial accounts that come in the game box working now? There could be several hundred thousand of those registered.

12

I didn’t get anywhere near the level cap, but when I finished out the initial month I was done with the game, at least for a little while. It’s not a bad game, by any means, but it is currently lacking in substance, and honestly I’d rather be playing Eve or LoTRO. I’ve seen the WoW content far, far too too often to want to go back until WotLK.

13

The way PR in most companies work its probably all retail copies along with trials. AoC isn’t a bad game but I doubt it has that anywhere near that many continuing subscribers in a few months. Especially after Lich King hits the streets which will pull allot of players back to WoW.

14

I guess most players are still in their free month, so no real subs.

These days MMOs sell in short bursts like other games. What matters isn’t how many play now, but how many will six months from now.

15

Many of my guildmates are former WoW players (though it’s a first MMO for a few as well). But I’d like to address

LotRO

I don’t think this license is as strong as people make out. If you look at the films, Peter Jackson made LotR mainstream by, well, making it mainstream. You had lots of relatively graphic violence, bad comedy, and a cheesy ending. LotRO is made for LotR fans, so it lacks the necessary mainstream elements.

PotBS

I know many people that play the WoW economic game, but don’t play regular economic games (or strategy games). I wasn’t even sure what PotBS would be like until I started playing it and when you’re trying to sell a concept that is uncommon or abstract, that can be difficult. Sword and Sorcery is a genre that’s been done so much that it’s comfortable and familiar.

Tabula Rasa

I think it just had really poor word of mouth. Even compared to AoC, TR felt like an incomplete game when it shipped. Not only was it incomplete mechanically (the class branching system was rather lackluster, the fake fps mechanics, poor crafting), it is conceptually incomplete. The concept was so internally inconsistent (or non-existant) that much of the world, instance, and quest design is bland. You don’t even reach an interesting looking zone until 25-30 (iirc).

AoC

Sex and Violence wrapped in an accessible genre, propelled a bit by celebrity (Arnold helped this game even if he isn’t in it), and overall solid and rewarding combat mechanics. Heck, even the LotR films had limbs being chopped off. Plus, AoC looks nice on a good computer. Personally I love the way LotRO looks, but a few of my friends dislike it’s art style quite a bit.

16

I don’t get this idea I keep hearing that Age of Conan is violent and sexy. Yeah, it’s got blood effects and the occasionally beheading fatality. But as someone who plays a lot of games, I stop seeing this stuff after a while. Does AoC really feel any more violent to you guys that any other MMO just because appendages sometimes separate? It’s an honest question, because it doesn’t do much for me.

As for the sex, good lord, you have to be kidding. Big breasts are a dime a pair. Barely discernible nipples on your de-shirted avatar don’t count for much. And the occasional sultry comment in the dialogue no one’s reading certainly doesn’t count for much.

Finally, I’m not buying the Arnold tie-in. The two Conan movies are draws to those of us who got into them when we were kids. They’re certainly a wider draw than Howard’s stories, but for the most part, I doubt they’re relevant today.

I’m not trying to knock you, Mord, but I just don’t buy that these are major selling points that are going to sustain what I feel is currently a middling me-too MMO.

-Tom

P.S. Disclaimer: Being a (currently inactive) LOTRO fanboi, keep in mind that I R biased.

17

I still think Lord of the Rings is a much stronger license than Conan. I don’t think you can attribute much larger AoC sales to the Conan license. Something else is going on.

My comment about PotBS and TR are more about the idea of 10M or so active WoW players and who knows how many former WoW players being enough to easily sell 200,000 copies of those games if it was just WoW players hungry for a new MMO. That huge WoW player base turned its nose up at those games, though.

I really think it may be the strong marketing emphasis on PvP in AoC that led to the big initial sales.

18

I dunno, Mark, I was in the PotBS beta for a long while, and I also played TR briefly, but neither of those games grabbed me - PotBS because I found ship to ship combat incredibly slow (fire…tack…fire…tack…fire…tack). And when I was on ground I felt like a beached whale running around. The player run economy sounds like a good idea but in practice I found it more frustrating than anything else, since I spent so much time floundering around trying to figure stuff out.

To me TR flopped because it wasn’t engaging. Maybe space marine just doesn’t click with me. As sad as it may seem, I can get more worked up about a Fantasy Orc than about a Space Orc. Maybe the character profession rules were fuzzy in my head, with the clone yourself stuff. I don’t really know why it fizzled. But it did. And there’s no denying that TR’s missing some broader appeal.

AoC, though, it’s pretty - the world looks great, the classes seem sort of interesting and different (I like how the 3 healers all had somewhat healing mechanisms, and how healing was much more proactive due to the heavy reliance on heal over time spells as opposed to the giant heal that characterizes healing in WoW). AoC’s melee combat is also visceral, and I didn’t tune it out like Tom did. While it might be just a gimmick, it’s one that works. The combo system pulled me in more than hitting autoattack did. Ultimately though I was dragged down by the lame implementation of gathering/crafting, and the fact that under that pretty veneer, we’ve done all of this stuff a thousand times before. I liked the single/multiplayer design of Tortage (though I can certainly accept that some others might hate it), but I have to say I wouldn’t want to do it every time I leveled an alt (heck, between the beta, early access, and launch, I did Tortage 3 or 4 times and man, I’m sick of it!).

As for LOTRO, that game has (had) the most beautiful vistas I’ve ever seen in a game. I loved exploring and standing on high points just so I could look at the countryside. But for some reason the game felt too bland. Part of it’s that everyone is on the same side - Monster Play, while a good effort, just doesn’t cut it for me as a mechanism to give somewhat meaningful conflict - and the bar isn’t that high to begin with when you look at WoW’s battlegrounds.

One problem I felt when playing LOTRO after a while was that it seemed like the license is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Yeah, the license gives you lots of players who are drawn to the game, but by the same token you’re really limited in terms of what enemies and conflicts you can establish in the world. But I guess to an extent that’s true in AoC and will be in Warhammer Online. I guess Blizzard was fortunate in that they own their license, and therefore they can mold and change it whenever they want (and I know many who are really into the Blizzard lore who decry every small thing WoW does that doesn’t conform to canon…).

The jury is obviously still out on WAR, but I think it will offer enough different from these above games that it’ll be successful. Certainly nobody thinks it’ll be a WoW-killer, but it seems to me that it’s going to end up comfortably in second place. All they have to do is live down the “wow, Warhammer sure ripped off WOW” PR issue and they should be ok…

19

I can understand that. The fatalities just become a replacement for whatever flashing lights the next MMO uses. However, for whatever reason, fatalities leave a greater impression on me than flashing lights. Each blow of the fatality has an appropriate physical response from my opponent. For example, I have 3 different fatalities which decapitate someone, 2 that remove their arms as well, 2 that force the opponent to the ground, one that almost cleaves their torso in half, and one that leaves them writhing on fire as they fall to the ground. My favorite is one that takes off their head and arms in two strikes while the body stays upright and ends when I nonchalantly push the body aside. Fatalities are doubly satisfying if I happen to get one in pvp. There’s something compelling to me about the physicality of them. Ironically, it’s a bit like gambling with a slot machine, each fight is pulling a lever in hopes of landing that fatality. As an added bonus fatalities make you immune to damage while the animation is playing and increases stam regen.

As for the sex, good lord, you have to be kidding. Big breasts are a dime a pair. Barely discernible nipples on your de-shirted avatar don’t count for much. And the occasional sultry comment in the dialogue no one’s reading certainly doesn’t count for much.

I think it’s more the idea of the sex than what’s actually present. Most of the gear is really conservative. Where’s this awesome looking outfit for my HoX?

Even so, I like the aesthetics more. Maybe it is just nostalgia for the cheesy fantasy (without the slick digital production) I watched as a kid, but visually, I like the two female characters I created in AoC more than any other fantasy MMO yet. They aren’t even wearing skin tight clothing. Heh.

Getting back to the fatalities, the impression of sex and particularly the violence in Conan is more carnal than similar games in the genre. Sure other MMOs have ridiculous playboy or pinup fantasy women and beefy action heroes, but there’s something very modern about their presentation that contrasts with Conan’s limited celebration of the body.

Edit: I mean, the first area is your character stranded on a beach basically naked with the discovery a helpless whore tied up by pirates (or well slavers). It doesn’t always have to be graphic to get the idea across. Heh.

Finally, I’m not buying the Arnold tie-in. The two Conan movies are draws to those of us who got into them when we were kids. They’re certainly a wider draw than Howard’s stories, but for the most part, I doubt they’re relevant today.

You’re probably right. Not all of us have fond memories of Arnold turning that wheel of death or whatever it was.

I’m not trying to knock you, Mord, but I just don’t buy that these are major selling points that are going to sustain what I feel is currently a middling me-too MMO.

-Tom

Oh, I don’t think these will sustain it, but I could see them prompting interest. It’ll have to become a more complete experience if it wants to keep these numbers.

20

Well, it’s not really that big a deal for me, but the combat certainly does seem quite a bit more gory than most MMOs. Not more than other games per se - certainly shooters and stuff feel just as violent to me. But most MMOs have some generic falling down animations and not really and blood splatter per se. AoC has blood and some brutal combat moves, and then on fatalities some beheadings, stabbing in the neck, and other nasty moves with blood splatting on the screen. That’s considerably gory for the MMO space.

As for the sex, good lord, you have to be kidding. Big breasts are a dime a pair. Barely discernible nipples on your de-shirted avatar don’t count for much. And the occasional sultry comment in the dialogue no one’s reading certainly doesn’t count for much.

That’s fore sure. But again, consider the MMO competition and the “relative sexiness” factor goes up a notch. You don’t have to look far to find big breasts and low-cut tops in other games, but not many other MMOs have relatively detailed female character models together with an abundance of cleavage.

I think AoC has been making some pretty good progress with its patch-tastic weeks since release. But it’s getting old. I’m thinking I should drop out and come back in six months.

I was breaking from it to go back to WoW, but my account is held hostage by the Account Admins who haven’t deigned to get back to me on how I can prove my ownership and re-take control of it.

How active is the LOTRO guild, anyway? Are people actually on most nights?