Age of Conan's "Kinda" Launch and Massive Pre-Orders

While some are already enjoying the joys of Age of Conan via the early launch, many more will soon be enjoying the fruits of Funcom's labor. An amazing 700,000 copies of the game are being shipped to retailers for day one sales and in some locations pre-orders will not be filled due to server limitations. Between this and the new Warhammer game on the way, should Blizzard be worried, or will Wrath of the Lich King continue to hold their competitive edge?

Comments

WoW's peaked.

[SatanicPuppy]

I think there is definitely room for something new; a lot of people have been talking about WoW's mass market appeal and it's true that it has a great mass market appeal. It's definitely brought the cult of MMORPG to a much wider audience. I wonder how many people though, have really thought through the implications of that?

The most common implication I've seen tossed about is the whole "WoW has dumbed down MMO's forever, and oh, how I long for the EQ/UO good old days." There is something to that; certainly WoW showed MMO publishers how to make a product that's friendly to the masses. In this case, it's "defer all the annoying repetitive grind until the endgame", rather than forcing you to do it during the leveling process.

What it also did was pull a huge number of non-MMO players into the mix...Players who've picked up the basic skills, and maxed out a half dozen characters, and are now bored to tears with WoW's pointless and repetitive endgame grindfest. For all that it's different from what came before, it's still pretty typical, and lessons learned in WoW will transfer quickly to other MMOs.

Basically, they created the ultimate MMO gateway drug. Now a lot of new products are hitting the market, and I think WoW will see a lot of defections as players who've hit the upper limit and gotten everything it's possible to get in the game, start looking for a new challenge and a less happy candy colored world.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[SatanicPuppy]

Too much leisure time is one thing, but most people blow some time on pursuits that are purely pleasure, and WoW is no better or worse than most of those. I used to play WoW; I played a lot during a period where I was freelancing and doing contract work. Played a lot less when I started in on a full time job. Less still when my first kid came along.

If I can find time to play WoW, have a full time job, a kid, and a social life, what's the problem? People always treat it like there is some character flaw in playing an MMO, but they ignore the fact that the person'd be playing some other game, reading a trashy novel, or slacking in front of the TV.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[MBGMorden]

Totally agree. People need to learn to let others live the way they want to. To too many people someone spending 3 hours bored out of their mind at a local bar is somehow fundamentally better than that same person having fun for 3 hours in an MMORPG. Sure YOU might prefer one or the other, but why worry about others who happen to take pleasure from different activities than yourself?

Re:WoW's peaked.

[MBGMorden]

Why is it that 2 trips to the movies, lasting MAYBE 6 hours tops, is treated as worth $14.95, but a game needs to be played "several hours per day every day" to meet the same value? We'll assume 30 hours per week as a nice approximation of "several hours per day every day". What you're then saying is that an entertainment venue is too expensive to you until it gets below $0.50 per hour. Just how broke are you?

Understand that I'm not questioning whether or not you want to play the game in the first place - that's a fine and legitimate reason. But you've taken a different stand that it's not worth it to people who DO want to play a limited amount of time.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Ephemeriis]

Unless you are playing quite often, it's simply not worth the subscription fee. That is assuming it's worth the price to begin with, which may be debatable given the continuous expansion packs that eventually become necessity. That's how I see it at least. If I had no life and could play it for several hours a day almost every single day, then the subscription price might be justified (assuming the combat wasn't of the boring click-n-wait variety). But since that isn't the case, it's essentially just a waste of money. Obviously, to the folks who do pay the subscription fee and do play the game, it is worth the fee. Regardless of how much/little they play.

There are folks out there who pay multiple hundreds of dollars for a bottle of wine or a cigar. There are folks spending $100+ a month just for cable television. What's wrong with spending $15 a month on WoW, even if you only play for an hour or two?

Worth is highly subjective.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Fozzyuw]

I think WoW will see a lot of defections as players who've hit the upper limit and gotten everything it's possible to get in the game, start looking for a new challenge and a less happy candy colored world.

I think this really sums up WoW right now. It's not that AoC is "better" than WoW, it's that WoW is killing itself with a nearly 2-year release between expansions and game progression.

MMOers want to continue to progress their character(s). 2 years is FAR too long to give people really something to progress with besides horizontal progression with a couple new dungeons thrown in once in a while.

Having Beta tested AoC, I think it's an ok game, but I do not see anything in there that I think is "better" than WoW. Except that it's "new". That means new classes, new lands to explore, new quests to do, more levels to grind. That's what people are really going to be leaving WoW for. Progression. If WotLK came out today, AoC wouldn't be so "big" in the news right now, nor would people be "leaving in droves" to play something else.

I'm sure most of the people who will leave for AoC will be back for WotLK. Until then, I think it's great to eat up the new stuff as well as it being particularly fun to be apart of an MMO launch. Given that a lot of new people start MMOing with WoW, this will be their first major chance to play an MMO from launch. I'm just waiting for the servers to crash at the stress and all the kiddies to come out in droves to forums and start flaming funcom for being worthless programmers. hehe It happens in ever MMO launch.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[mc900ftjesus]

A bar? That would even be considered "doing something."

People, somehow, will tell you you're wasting time playing video games and that it's dumb and childish or whatever. You've heard it before. That same person will sit down and watch 3-4 hours of TV every night of the week. Probably some riveting stuff like American Idol, House, CSI:Junk Science Theater, some manner of home makeover show even though they don't own a single power tool, or some other crap.

Yet, if you sit and do something that requires some logic, reasoning, and reading, you're the one wasting time playing video games. I won't say games aren't a waste of time, but TV is a much bigger waste of time than pretty much anything you can legally do.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[MBGMorden]

And if you go to a see a major rock band, you can expect to pay several hundred dollars for a couple hours of entertainment. Why these major price differences?

How about: supply and demand? and cost of the product? Maybe I'm just seeing different bands, but I've been to quite a few concerts and NEVER paid more than $75 for a ticket. That's beside the point though except to establish an even higher upper limit of what entertainment can be worth.

As to supply and demand, that only applies to physical goods. For services, particularly access services such as cable, satellite tv, or membership to a gym, you're looking simply at demand. We're talking about an access issue here. There is no "supply and demand" on a monthly access fee to a game. The price is simply set at what people are willing to pay.

Lets compare WoW to other video games, because that actually makes sense. It only makes sense to compare it to video games in the same genre. IE, MMORPG's. All of those charge a monthly access fee because they have to facilitate running their servers to power the infrastructure. About the only similiar game that DOESN'T follow a similar pricing model is Guild Wars.

For the price of WoW+expansions you could buy buy a new game every couple months. If you are only playing a few hours here and there this is probably better value. If nothing else, at the end of a year you've got half a dozen different games to play whenever you get the itch. Only if you're into those type of games instead. You have to think though: how much play time do you get out of those games? I get between 6 and 15 hours out of most games these days. 40 hours for some huge RPG. At $60 a pop, that's 4 months of WoW time in which one can play a lot longer if they wish.

Plus, if you are only playing a game like WoW sporadically, its almost impossible to accomplish things, you are perpetually miles behind your friends, you are left out of the social element, its hard to get into a worthwhile guild or group when you do login... so now you are paying $15/month for a much poorer experience than the game has to offer. That's a personal opinion, and you are free to rationalize that WoW might not be worth playing if you don't play it a lot. Many people do play pretty sporadically though and are just fine. In my guild, pretty much hang out and have fun. Our raiding these days has been whittled down to 1 ZA run per week (that is sometimes canceled) on Tuesday nights, and various 5 mans/heroics whenever guildies feel like it. Sure we're not going to go whup up on anything in the Sunwell, but we have a lot of fun together playing.

My basic point is not that "WoW is OMG teh awesomeness and every1 should play it!", it's that "it's too expensive" is a pretty poor excuse unless you're living in a straw hut. Saying "I don't like the game so I'm not willing to pay for it" is one thing. Saying that "I'm not playing it because it costs too much" is something else.

On top of that, relativism kicks in. The people gettin the most out of the game, playing 60 hours a week, are paying 0.6 cents per hour. And sees FAR more of the game for that price. Me, on the other hand, averaging 10 hours a month, was paying 1.50 per hour for a much reduced experience... I was paying 25x times as much per hour as the hard core player to futz around in crappy neglected parts of the game struggling to find groups to go into crappy instances, while he explored the end game content that was actually interesting. That's a tough pill to swallow. That's the same with ANY unlimited access venue though. The guy who goes to the gym for 4 hours every day compared to you going twice per week is paying less per hour than you. The guy who eats 6 plates of food at the local buffet compared to your 1 is playing much less for his food than you. The guy who downloads 250gb of files per month compared to you downloading 15gb is paying much less for his bandwidth than you. It only makes a difference if you let it bother you. If you discount what other people are doing, and simply justify it to yourself whether or not you wish to partake in the service to begin with, then it works out much better.

PvP games

[shawnmchorse]

Just based on the fact that it's a PvP oriented game, I know I'm not really going to be interested in it. Same goes for Warhammer. As someone who has much more fun in PvE play, I appreciate games where I can expect that there won't be huge changes made based on PvP concerns.

Re:PvP games

[Ephemeriis]

People are looing for the next wow killer. People are always looking for the next -whatever- killer. Folks were waiting for the EQ killer, folks were waiting for the DAoC killer, and now folks are waiting for the WoW killer. It seems to me that a lot of people just don't really understand how MMOGs work...

They're all very similar. They'll have different settings, different themes, different gameplay dynamics... But in the end it's all the same kind of stuff. Kill critters to get better gear and more experience, so you can kill bigger critters to get better gear and more experience, so you can kill the biggest critters to get better gear and more experience... It's all grinding, all of it. It doesn't matter what game or how they try to hide it - all MMOGs boil down to grinding eventually.

What really makes or breaks a MMOG is the community. The setting/gameplay/quests/whatever will keep people interested for a while... But once you've hit the level cap with a character or two and you're at the point where you're raiding 'til your eyes bleed, what keeps you coming back is the people around you. Either friends that you enjoy playing with or competition to be the best. Take away the community and you just aren't going to have a game that is worth playing.

There will certainly be some folks who leave WoW (and all the other MMOGs out there) to play these new games. And they'll race through the content to see everything that's there. And they'll raid and get some nice gear and level up some alts. But unless there's a reason to keep playing they'll quickly get bored and go play something newer and shinier as soon as it is available.

Conan hardly competes....

[ivan256]

WoW fills an enormous niche. A game like Conan, no matter how great, will likely find it isn't even competing in the same market.

WoW runs on crap hardware. When something like 95% of your customer base is a "casual" player, that's an important (of not the important) feature. The shitty $400 Laptop or $300 PC you bought from WalMart will probably give you a satisfactory experience playing WoW, and it's likely that the vast, vast majority of WoW's customer's are running on low-end machines. Conan doesn't even have a shot at those customers. They can't even run the game if they wanted to.

If you want to de-throne WoW, you've got to build a well marketed, feature and content rich MMO that runs on today's low-end machines. Otherwise you are selling to a much smaller market than Blizzard.

This is nothing new for Blizzard, either. All their games have always been targeted at low-end (mainstream) machines. And they always sell like crazy. This isn't a coincidence.

I think WoW will be many peoples last MMO game...

[bleh-of-the-huns]

I know this was a factor for myself, atleast in the late 20's early 30's age category.

I played EQ for 7+ years from early beta, I played EQ2 for abit too, but ended up playing DAoC for abit before moving to WoW. I spend years, thousands of hours, played in the lead horde guild for that time, and got completely burnt out just before the first expansion pack came along.. with multi characters all at level 60....

Once I quit, I have not started a new game, and do not plan to, and I am sure I am not the only one... Those of us who started playing in our late teens early 20's, have probably had enough, especially those of us who finally have families or significant others who demand our attentions, and real life things like going out, playing sports (I mountain Bike) and hobbies (I woodwork), I would just not have time for a game, hell I barely play my Wii or Xbox (original) anymore, I just do not have the time.

What's the appeal?

[drsquare]

OK, I downloaded the trial of World of Warcraft a few days ago to see what all the fuss is about. The game seems to work as thus:

1. You see a mob walking around.
2. You right click on it, you fire a few arrows at it, it runs towards you, you automatically fight it.
3. It dies, you get some xp.
4. Do it a few more times and level.
5. Goto 1.

I got up to level 6, and that seems to be all the game really has. You get more powerful with each level, and better equipment, and can fight more dangerous things, but the game's still exactly the same. Instead of clicking on a level 1 boar, you click on a level 6 scorpion or something. Does it actually get more fun when you get to the really high levels? The combat system is awful, worse than Golden Axe which is like twenty years old. All this modern technology and it's like playing an old text-based MUD: "you hit the boar for 10 points of damage, the boar hits you for 5 points of damage etc."

It's very slow walking around, and there isn't much of interest to look at. There are a couple of small villages, some dirt tracks, and not much else.

Quests seem to be either:
1. Kill ten things, bring its drops back.
2. Carry something from one place to another.

Apparently this is the greatest ever MMO, ten million players, bigger than Jesus etc. and I was completely underwhelmed. The graphics are pretty uninspiring, the world is a bland orange with no real features or vegetation: you sort of expect roadrunner to go past at any moment. NPCs just stand around doing nothing other than giving you quests, other players don't even talk to you, it's like playing a single player game.

I tried Everquest 2, which is pretty much exactly the same game but with better graphics and a worse interface. Are all MMOs like this? If so I really don't see why they carry so much interest.

Considering I can play WoW on a 6-yr-old laptop...

[mdm-adph]

...I don't think Blizzard has anything to worry about (1.7Mhz P4, 512MB RAM, 32MB Geforce 2 -- 20-30 FPS). WoW plays wonderfully on integrated video -- it's one of the few games that does.

System Requirements Indicate WoW will Remain King

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't think it likely either of these will dethrone WoW. First, the system requirements for both seem to be missing the "midrange computer from two years ago" that is the normal target for mainstream games. As such, they're only hitting the relatively small "extreme gamer" market. Next, there is no support for the Mac, which cuts out 14% of the total US market and much more of the game buying market. Third, losing a small portion of the market because of requirements can lose you much bigger portions of the market because these are networked games. If just one person in a group of friends has a Mac or a lower end PC, the entire group may well decide to stick with WoW or some other game that they can all play (especially if that one player is the cute co-ed gamer in the dorm).

Really, there is nothing wrong with either of these games, but they just aren't targeted at the same demographic as WoW, or if they are they are very poorly targeted. Some day someone will come out with a WoW-killer but I don't think either of these are even viable candidates.

This is what will kill WoW...

[Digital Vomit]

What will kill WoW, in the MMORPG market, is a game where much the content is generated three ways: carefully designed by the developers, randomly generated by the game, and created by the players themselves.

Imagine a game where you can design you own swords and armor, or build your own houses. Players can build their own cities, running markets and shops (perhaps the shopkeep can be one of their 'alts', or their player when they are not online) -- even set up their own questgivers (perhaps you need some number of rare items to build your own magic device). Toss in the random spawning of troll villages in the boonies, or brigands on well travelled roads, and combine that with an epic main storyline created by the game designers with the usual castles and quests.

Until we get a game with more dynamic content -- mainly, random and user generated -- I can't really see anything displacing WoW. That game just does to many things right, and not one of its competitors appears to be building on that.