Age of Conan: 400,000 in 10 Days

According to a press notice released today, Age of Conan has already scored 400,000 subscribers and lays claim to "one of the best selling PC games of all time":

Age of Conan one of the fastest selling PC games of all time

Over 400,000 gamers have entered game - First 20 reviews with an average review score above 90%

Durham, USA - May 26th, 2008 - Funcom is proud to announce that Age of Conan is one of the fastest selling PC games of all time. More than 400.000 gamers have entered Hyboria over the last few days, with almost half coming from the North American market. This amazing figure for a PC game shows that the positive pre-order trend has transferred into actual sales, and people from all over the world are now flocking to the most savage, sexy and brutal MMO ever created.

Over the weekend an astounding amount of concurrent gamers were logged on to the game, making Age of Conan one of the busiest MMOs in the western hemisphere. With stock flying out of several retail chains, Funcom expects the number to increase in the days to come. In addition to the many gamers logging in, there was also substantial traffic to the Age of Conan websites, with more than 2,2 million unique visitors during the last ten days.

As a result of the great launch, players and press have been raving about the unique qualities of the game, and the first 20 reviews give Age of Conan an average score above 90%. The first US reviews are also live, with Gamezone.com giving the game an Editor's Choice Award, a 9.4 of 10 score, while heralding Age of Conan as a "Benchmark MMO". Sci-Fi.com was also an early mover and gave the game a straight A, stating that "If Robert E. Howard had been a game designer.., this is the Conan he would have invented."

"The initial sales and reviews are very encouraging, and it's great to see that so many are enjoying Age of Conan," said Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. "This is just the beginning, and we already look forward to massive updates and cool new features. We believe our focus on making Conan unique and groundbreaking is a key reason for the initial success. This is a focus we will keep and reinforce, and players can expect continued quality and innovation as we enter a new era for the game."

For more information about the game, please visit http://www.ageofconan.com.

Sounds like a surefire hit!

Permalink

Isn't the 30-day free trial still going? Why would 400k people start paying when they still have 24 free days left?

LOL...I don't know! Good question. :P

Oh, it's 400k players, not subscribers.

Those numbers will change soon, the tech support forum on the official US boards is flooded with posts; 48,000 posts from early release to the time of this post, and growing at a phenomenal rate. There are severe issues with the game client, which makes the game practically unplayable on some machines that are well above the recommended specifications.

Funcom shouldn't count their chickens before they hatch, as I doubt they will maintain that 400,000 player count when everyone's first payment is due on their subscription.

Lol. Played for about 4 days and uninstalled(30GB WTF?). I want to see an article on how many "subscribers" are left after the first month.

As a "paying" member of the official forums(you are not allowed to even view them unless you have a retail code,nice bit of damage control.) I can tell you there is a HUGE swell of dissapointed players. So much so that there is a stickied post telling new players "Don't let reading the forums get you down", and constant deleting of post that critsize the lack of basic game elements that were promised. Such as NO crafting, NO mounts, NO email,NO trading,etc. the economy will take forever to get established unti the ability to craft and trade is available.

I actually bought the retail box and was very dissapointed. The game is HEAVILY instanced. I know that they said it would have instancing, but take my word for it. Its insane how much instancing there is. If you even remotely dislike instanced/zoned play you will not like this game. It is a griefer/gankers wet dream. And if you try to retaliate they just jump to the next instance and you have no chance of ever catching them unless you happen to be spawned in to the instance they entered, which is based on population.

The combat system consists of pressing 1,2,3 and following the yellow on-screen arrow like a game of simon says. I seems fun...for about an hour. Then you realize you are just button mashing like on a console game, oh wait thats right its due to come out for XBox. To be honest, I think alot of the games problems which are design based, not the bugs/glitches/etc., are because of the intention to realease it for the 360. Can you imagine the uber-pwnzor-joo-R-TA-NoOb pukes that are going to infest this game at that point?

One other thing...DO NOT BELIEVE PLAYERS WHEN THEY TELL YOU AFTER LEVEL 20 "IT GETS BETTER". It does not, you end up in another town doing the same crap you were doing in the starter town. I got to 40 and gave up, there are players at level 80 already. So end game should be reached in about, oh 45 minutes. Lol. Lame. As far as being brutal? lol it is the most carebear game I have ever played. I never died ONCE from combat. It is extrememly easy to kill boss monsters 2-3 levels above you with your P.O.S weapon. The only time I would die(on purpose mind you) was to spawn at the entrance to the instance I was in for faster travel. That alone should tell you how bad the death penalty is lol.

Feel free to try it, but you have been warned. If you enjoy a seemless world, a PVP system where the ganker that jumped you can't just jump to new instance, and items that look cool(not the bums ass-rag that passes for armor in AoC) then I am sorry to say that Age of Conan is not what you're looking for.

I had hoped it was. And judging by the numbers of people who initialy bought into it, so did they. There has been a poor showing from the MMO community this last year *cough*LOTRO/Tabula Rasa/Vanguard*cough* and alot of hope was put into AoC to be the "One".

Please, please, please EA Mythic...don't screw up Warhammer Online! In the words of Princess Lea "...you're our only hope".

As for me, well, back to Lineage 2...AGAIN.

It's been strange to watch this whole massive event unfold.

Sort of like throwing a lit match into a mountain of fireworks... you don't know if it will end good or bad, but things are definitely going to get interesting.

Hemi,

THANK YOU for your review. It's intelligent and well-thought out and you make a lot of very good points. I had only lightly considered playing AoC but after reading your (and others) review, I've decided to wait awhile.

Back to Mythos (beta) and my ever present standby, Guild Wars. :)

I played for four days too, and only some appreciations:

Is instanced but no very heavy instanced how GW or other, I dont play in FFA servers because the game is not designed for FFA imo. In end, I dont have problems with instances and I like very much the graphics that AoC have thanks to that. Also I dont have any problems with my machine -AMD64 mononucleus, 8800GT and 3GB ram-, game run smooth in Totage in middle setting and 1024x768 resolution, thanks too to instances.

I liked combat system, is very active and brutal, I have lvl 40+ friend and they are fighting with some hard mobs, game was designated for soloing or small groups. Also I died three o four times in Tortage. I have played 10h and have a lvl 11 char, 45 min? WTF? perhaps die hard gamers can reach lvl 80 very quickly, but average players not.

Cities and crafting, ARE in game, bugged but are in. Mount too. The banks and trade NPCs are turned down due to a exploit, but in the first day and in preorder days were active.

I have since been banned from the AoC forums for questioning the censorship of posts that had to do with the games shortcomings. One PM warning I recieved had to do with my signature...I didn't even have one, let alone one that was offensive.

Maybe they confused me with someone else, either way I don't really care. I had cancelled my subscription to the game days ago, there was no real reason for me to troll the forum at that point.

Kalia:
Hemi,

THANK YOU for your review. It's intelligent and well-thought out and you make a lot of very good points. I had only lightly considered playing AoC but after reading your (and others) review, I've decided to wait awhile.

Back to Mythos (beta) and my ever present standby, Guild Wars. :)

Kalia, sorry to bring you down but the game is really broken and not from a "just-released-bug-server crash" stand point. I just want people to know what they are getting into, maybe the game will get better, but alot of the issues have to do with the design of the game, not bugs/glitches.

And fixing inherent design problems is very difficult/expensive at best.

It's interesting to me that AoC is going down the same forum path that Hellgate: London did, namely no access to the official forums -unless- one had a CDKey. Limiting access in such a way indicates to me that devs know their game isn't finished and, for whatever reason, button up the forums for damage control.

Hellgate: London started out with so many problems, such as are being reported about AoC, that have since been 'cleaned up' via the patching system. I'm sure AoC will travel the same road.

In all fairness, however, it's impossible for devs to divine every known computer configuration so bugs are bound to show up no matter how long the beta process is. Missing or incomplete features are a whole 'nother ballgame.

The press should come to all AoC forums europe and US and see how game is:P

But im affraid most press are not objective they just go with hype flow or been paid to give it a high score.

Launch was far from perfect and its still very bugged and avarage.

6/10 score and then im positive:P

I lolled at -Hemi-'s post.

He doesn't even understand the basics of the combat system. Follow the yellow arrow? Wtf?

Did you even play the game?

-Hemi-:
As a "paying" member of the official forums(you are not allowed to even view them unless you have a retail code,nice bit of damage control.) I can tell you there is a HUGE swell of dissapointed players. So much so that there is a stickied post telling new players "Don't let reading the forums get you down", and constant deleting of post that critsize the lack of basic game elements that were promised. Such as NO crafting, NO mounts, NO email,NO trading,etc. the economy will take forever to get established unti the ability to craft and trade is available.

I actually bought the retail box and was very dissapointed. The game is HEAVILY instanced. I know that they said it would have instancing, but take my word for it. Its insane how much instancing there is. If you even remotely dislike instanced/zoned play you will not like this game. It is a griefer/gankers wet dream. And if you try to retaliate they just jump to the next instance and you have no chance of ever catching them unless you happen to be spawned in to the instance they entered, which is based on population.

The combat system consists of pressing 1,2,3 and following the yellow on-screen arrow like a game of simon says. I seems fun...for about an hour. Then you realize you are just button mashing like on a console game, oh wait thats right its due to come out for XBox. To be honest, I think alot of the games problems which are design based, not the bugs/glitches/etc., are because of the intention to realease it for the 360. Can you imagine the uber-pwnzor-joo-R-TA-NoOb pukes that are going to infest this game at that point?

One other thing...DO NOT BELIEVE PLAYERS WHEN THEY TELL YOU AFTER LEVEL 20 "IT GETS BETTER". It does not, you end up in another town doing the same crap you were doing in the starter town. I got to 40 and gave up, there are players past level 80 already. So end game should be reached in about, oh 45 minutes. Lol. Lame. As far as being brutal? lol it is the most carebear game I have ever played. I never died ONCE from combat. It is extrememly easy to kill boss monsters 2-3 levels above you with your P.O.S weapon. The only time I would die(on purpose mind you) was to spawn at the entrance to the instance I was in for faster travel. That alone should tell you how bad the death penalty is lol.

Feel free to try it, but you have been warned. If you enjoy a seemless world, a PVP system where the ganker that jumped you can't just jump to new instance, and items that look cool(not the bums ass-rag that passes for armor in AoC) then I am sorry to say that Age of Conan is not what you're looking for.

I had hoped it was. And judging by the numbers of people who initialy bought into it, so did they. There has been a poor showing from the MMO community this last year *cough*LOTRO/Tabula Rasa/Vanguard*cough* and alot of hope was put into AoC to be the "One".

Please, please, please EA Mythic...don't screw up Warhammer Online! In the words of Princess Lea "...you're our only hope".

As for me, well, back to Lineage 2...AGAIN.

I don't agree, at all.

I've been playing AoC since release (and closed beta) and there are crafting, there are mounts too, I'm not sure what you mean by email but there's a mail system in game and trading too, I don't know where you've heard that all this doesn't exist.

It's not simon says, the arrows indicate on which side the foe has most defense, also, tell me a MMORPG that isn't button mashing, 1 5 5 5 6 3 every fight. In AoC you atleast need half a brain to play, and if you got more than that then you have possibility to be better than the half brained ones in PvP (Which can be called skill I guess, which doesn't even exist in mmorpgs like WoW).

Well ofcourse you do the same thing! It's a freaking MMORPG! That's what all MMORPGs is like. And people can't be past 80 since that's the level cap, and it does not take 45 minutes to reach it, don't be ridiculous. And by being brutal, I think they refer to the decapitations, all the blood and gore y'know?...
And I've never played a MMORPG that was hardcore, and in AoC it depends on your class, obviously.

For me, AoC is the ONE! For all my friends too, and it doesn't get better after 20, because it's nothing bad before then! You're not even judging AoC but all MMOs when you complain about repeating similar quests.
And about the items, not everyone enjoy the gigantic burning swords in WoW , that's double your characters size, the items in AoC are realistic and in my opinion "cool", that includes weapons and armor both.

From what I've read from you, it seems you haven't even played the game.
So I just want to say to Kalia and other alike, that AoC is the best MMORPG I've ever played, for sure. It makes the combat fun, it's a great cool world, including player built cities, large PvP battlefield where you can as a guild, take over a Keep and defend it from other guilds. In other words, Age of Conan is great, it's freaking awesome.
So there you got another opinion.

This game is a bug ridden peice of $#!t

DO NOT BUY IT!

Trikk:
I lolled at -Hemi-'s post.

He doesn't even understand the basics of the combat system. Follow the yellow arrow? Wtf?

Did you even play the game?

Yea, I played that P.O.S. If I'm so funny, go read the official forums...you won't be laughing then. Your turd game is headed down the toilet already.

All of you who have access to the official forums, go there. I candy-coated my experience. There are people that are PISSED-OFF.

I can't really bring myself to get angry at a game. After all, I'm the sucker that fell for Funcom's hype. Should have known better, they put out such gems.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Won't get my $ for another month.