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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?
hahahaha ... great quote ... My wife and I just watched Conan the other day. She rolled her eyes when I popped it into the dvd player, but after the first ten minutes she was hooked. At the end of the movie, she said she was surprised that she liked it. Besides the T&A elements and the horrific lines ("Two or three years ago, there were just another snake cult, but now, they're everywhere") and Arnold's wooden stares, it's a great fantasy flick with a great soundtrack. I mean, how many Hollywood fantasy films hold a philosophical question at the heart (what is the riddle of steel). And James Earl Jones was a kick ass villain, using his charisma as a weapon. Check it out again if you have some time to kill.
I believe most likely that Blizzard isn't going to make any sweeping additions untill they see a proven formula that works. Once they see something that works, then they will jump in, begin development, pump millions to polish it up and resume the top spot.
I pretty sure Blizzard still has their trump card hidden in preparation for the next wave. The 'world pvp' in WoW is a joke, Blizzard is currently just dropping little breadcrumbs in their pvp space to prevent people from defecting too quickly. But right now they still have technical hurdles they have to overcome (how do you have thousands of people in a zone without excessive lag, all the while not causing the servers to die in a fiery mess?), but they have plenty of time, and a good amount of property, and a large enough consumer pool to deliver a desirable product - when the time is right. It's just not at this moment - which sucks for us consumers.
Once WAR comes out and Blizzard sees that they are beginning to lose subscribers, they will release their new world pvp setting beyond just Northrend. Right now they are just waiting for to someone to press the big red button first.