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.

[morari]

To be fair, I rarely go out to the theater in part because movie tickets are horrendously priced. I don't have any sort of television subscription for similar reasons. Just because something is of comparative value doesn't necessarily mean that it's a deal.

The other thing is that you must first go out and purchase the game before you are even hit with the subscription fee. The game is probably cheaper now than it was originally to purchase in store, but that's still an initial investment on top of a monthly subscription fee. Add to that the growing number of expansion packs that are needed for the entire experience and you could have already bought one or two games that don't require a monthly fee. Furthermore, everyone I know that plays an MMO pays for two accounts so that they can play with their wife or husband.

This is just how I see it however. I'm more than willing to accept that many people see it as just another competitively priced form of entertainment. I just wouldn't be able to think of it in that light myself if I were considering a purchase. I'd much rather pursue something along the lines of Morrowind or Oblivion, which can easily provide hundreds of hours of gameplay with room for even further expansion byway of user created mods. The only thing you would really be missing is multiplayer (which is a shame, the Elder Scrolls would be great with two or four person LAN play).

Perhaps I am just more value orientated than most? It's hard to tell. I have a NetFlix subscription, but that's $15 for two (or more) hours of entertainment a day. I get "three at a time" and send them back pretty quickly, which results in six discs per week. That's is a time and price range pretty on par with what I was originally talking about as far as MMOs go.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Thrymm]

I had played EQ a long time before skipping off that train for Dark Age of Camelot since I loved the Realm vs. Realm for a time. When WoW came out, I bought it, and it was fun, however eventhough the graphics were awesome, I didnt like the cartoonish look of the toons. That alone didnt turn me off, the fact it was rather easy to race to 60, and when questing people wanted to do green quests more than trying for the red quests for a challenge.

I went back to EQ 2 years ago when they opened the progression server and outdated graphics aside I don't know how I ever left, gameplay and challenges still meet my needs there.

But to be more on point, theres always room for a new comer, if they fail, they fail. How many have come and gone already? Many.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Talderas]

You can download the game for free, along with the Burning Crusade expansion for free, then just start paying the subscription. I don't recall whether when the new expansion comes out if they require you to buy the game or provide the expansion for free for download, though most people buy the game anyway just so they have the hardcopy of the disks for reinstallation.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Daimanta]

I'm sociophobic you insensitive clod!

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the real world? Nah. Too much grind.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[cHiphead]

I agree, once I started playing Real Life (TM), suddenly I was getting paid real money to work and do repetitive actions for hours at a time, and with that money I could afford women and drink, and I went forth and drank and hath women.

But watch out how fast you level, now I'm married with a kid + 1 on the way, and I suddenly find myself needing to work exponentially more hours to have any of the glorious monies, and have started thinking about paying money to play games again cuz its cheaper than drinking. ;)

Cheers.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[SatanicPuppy]

Not compared to UO or EQ...You have all the same problems, but add to that the hefty death penalties, and the larger time sinks, and you understand the true meaning of futility.

There were times when I played EQ where I was tired, logged on, and then got killed, and sat there staring at the screen while the realization that, if I just hadn't played, I'd have saved myself hours of extra meaningless work.

The WoW endgame is amazingly tiresome. You have to have a guild, which means guild politics, guild drama. You have to run big instances, which is hours and hours of work for occasional payouts, and it's HUGELY repetitive; you'll run the same instances dozens and dozens of times.

And all for what? Incremental equipment upgrades? Lot of people here are complaining about the long upgrade cycles in WoW...They'd lose all their hardcore players if their upgrade cycle was quicker, because you'd just get your full set of top-tier gear when the expansion would come out and it would all be replaced with crappy quest greens.

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.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Z34107]

Sigh. It's fine if it's not exactly your cup of thistle tea, but you don't have "no life" or "play it for several hours a day almost every single day" in order to enjoy World of Warcraft.

$13 a month isn't all that expensive of a hobby. For someone with a healthy BMI, that's, what, 3 fast food meals you gave up to afford your WoW fix? And, it's easy to quit, because they'll keep your account and characters around nigh indefinitely should you ever return. (Of course that makes it easy to return, too, but that's the point.)

Although WoW isn't exactly CounterStrike, it's more than just point and click - especially in Arena games, or any other kind of player versus player. You need some mastery of your class in order to be able to do well against other teams - you can't just right-click and wait for the player to die.

Blizzard's also been good about keeping down the cost/value ratio. New dungeons? Quest chains? Islands? Neutral cities? World events? What EverQuest or The Sims would release as an expansion, they release as a free patch to all subscribers. To date (the game's been around 4 years, hasn't it?), they've released one expansion pack - and that added 2 races, 10 levels, easily a dozen new dungeons, and a planet.

Now, what do you do with your spare time? Because I can guarantee you that that's a "waste of money," too.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[t0qer]

Less still when my first kid came along.

Heh it was the exact opposite for me. My wife isn't exactly a night owl, so the first few months when the baby had to be fed every two hours I'd stay up till dawn playing WoW with my daughter parked by my side.

Only problem with this playstyle is it limited what I could do in WoW. No more 4 hour grinds, let alone trying to find players to raid with at the later hours. Eventually I just gave up on WoW and went back to FPS gaming. I got so bored with FPS gaming that I went back and started cleaning some of the CSS on some of my old websites.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[SL Baur]

Add to that the growing number of expansion packs that are needed for the entire experience and you could have already bought one or two games that don't require a monthly fee. Furthermore, everyone I know that plays an MMO pays for two accounts so that they can play with their wife or husband. That's still not a big deal. Movies tend to bore me. I've got said 2 family accounts. I'll be in line to purchase WotLK when it is released.

In no particular order:

1. I like grinding games. What makes or breaks a game for me is how long it takes to get bored. I've been bored with WoW at times, I didn't play at all between Christmas and April, for example. The boredom has never lasted and I'm back to leveling my second level 70.

2. Blizzard is unusually responsive to real criticism of game mechanics. I started playing about a month before the BC expansion. In that time, there has been a steady improvement on all the issues of the game that have irritated me the most. I'm sorely displeased with what they did to boar pets in the last patch, but I guess that just means I'll have to change specs on my hunter. The other changes they made, the new island, etc. were all positive, welcome additions.

3. It's a computer game that works on systems I use. I play on a Mac Powerbook Pro. WoW is also a platinum Wine application. Will Age of Conan or Warhammer support Mac OS X?

Basically, the cost is negligable compared to the amount of enjoyment I've gotten out of playing it. That's me and apparently to many others as well because the subscription base keeps growing.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Anonymous Coward]

upper limit of what entertainment can be worth Have you people never met a girl before? You could easily spend several hundred dollars on dinner and light shopping with most of them.

Oh wait, this is /.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[smbarbour]

Have you tried playing an MMO that doesn't require you to play every possible hour you can to keep up, such as EVE Online?

There are no levels, only skills, and they continue to train even when you are offline. It costs about $20 to start a subscription and $14.95 thereafter. If you devote enough time, you can even pay in-game currency for game time, which results in free play.

The game is constantly being updated with expansions that cost nothing to the player.

Of course, if you wanted to stick to the Internet swords motif, there are several free-to-play MMOs available.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Qetu]

[..] another quest sequence in Nagrand has you running around picking up monster droppings.[..] That quest is shit.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[smbarbour]

It's a common misconception that someone with fewer skill points is always at a disadvantage. Skill points only get you so far, you have to know what you are doing and how to handle every unique situation. For instance, the largest alliance in the game, "GoonSwarm", has a massive amount of members, and a fair percentage of them don't have a clue what they are doing (though there are plenty of them that do). Throw a bunch of them at an experienced player, and the experienced player is going to die.

Additionally, there are a number of people that buy an experienced account (expressly forbidden, but it does happen). These people are completely clueless, and will die easily.

It's all a matter of what you are bringing to the fight. A sniper with 20 years of experience is no match against a guy with a suitcase nuke that was trained yesterday to hold the button until it's time to detonate. If the sniper shoots, he's dead. If he doesn't shoot, he's still dead.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Kagami001]

I like happy, candy-colored worlds.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[Opportunist]

WoW simply did a few things right that went wrong in other MMORPGs. First, they already had a good franchise name, Warcraft. It's been an established name in the game world, already drawing in a lot of people just simply for the name. This created a sizable basic userbase that included old MMORPG players as well as people who played the Warcraft series so far and decided it's cool to try an MMORPG in that world.

But what really let WoW take off was that it managed what other MMORPGs didn't get to: Pull your girlfriends in. Let's be blunt here, the number one reason why people stopped playing was their SOs being pissed off by it. Or their parents. Now guess what, WoW managed to get these people on board.

That's what makes the success of this game. It convinced non players to play. Now, the question is why. How did it do that? My personal guess is that it has a VERY low learning curve and is VERY heavy on the reward buttons of the human brains. It gives you a fair lot in the beginning, makes you pretty powerful right from the start, and leveling is quite easy, while at the same time offering you the feeling you achived something. Most MMORPGs of the time when WoW started were grindfests from end to end, starting at lv 1 and ending long after you reached the max. It was one of the first MMORPGs, at least that I know of, that spoonfed you quests from beginning to end, you could literally level constantly with quests, and the quests led you from one to the next, slipping you easily into the next continent or "level area".

Being also fairly single player friendly, it did certainly also appeal to people who were used to single player games, who often discovered the chance to play together with other players as a pleasant surprise rather than the necessity it was in earlier MMORPGs. Having a fairly easy to use trading and delivery system (i.e. auctioneers and ingame mail) only faciliated that. It made the transition from single play to group play very, very smooth for people who were new to the genre.

That's what made WoWs success where others struggled to survive. It catered to the needs of "new" players. Whether repeating something like this also means instant success is debatable. I don't know a single "old hardcore" MMORPG player that deemed WoW worthwhile. Too carebear, too dumbed and watered down, not enough challenge. And yes, I include all those oh-so-challenging high level heroic instances.

It is likely that those who started their MMORPG experience with WoW might want something with a bit more bite now, too.

Re:WoW's peaked.

[ichigo 2.0]

There are two big differences between WoW and Eve. Firstly, Eve is much more PVP oriented. If you're the kind of guy who frowns upon ganking low level players in WoW, then stay far away from Eve. You need to be ruthless to get ahead in Eve and I suspect most of the top players would sell their own mothers for a few ISK.

Secondly, Eve is not for solo gaming (ok this is pretty much point 1 rehashed, so sue me). The only things that are feasible alone are mining shitty ore in empire space and doing crappy low-level missions. Both are akin to staying in uncontested territories in WoW and mining copper. Except you don't need full epics and 50 level 70 guildmates to cover your ass if you want to go to STV and mine some iron.

In conclusion, WoW is to Eve as swimming in a pool is to bungee jumping with a broken bungee cord and your hands tied behind your back naked into an acid-filled pool with piranhas and sharks with laser beams on their heads.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Just based on the fact that it's a PvP oriented game, I know I'm not really going to be interested in it. Actually AoC is not heavily PvP driven if you don't want it to be. Both PvP and PvE servers have a huge amount of PvE content. The only difference between the two are the PvP servers have open world PvP and the PvE servers do not. Their is raiding, dungeons and quests and you could very easily never PvP in the game at all and still have a huge amount of things to do.

If you like PvP then the game has a lot to offer, with world PvP, PvP minigames, and larger scale seige warfare. If your looking for only PvE you won't be disappointed. I've been playing the beta for several weeks without doing any PvP and have had no lack of stuff to do. From what I've seen stated even the seige warfare will be open to PvE only players, with your enemy being played by NPC's instead of other players.

Re:PvP games

[KevMar]

People are looing for the next wow killer. The new products know they can not fight with Blizzard directly. But what they can do is make more targeted MMORPGs that can pick up where wow leaves off. WoW can be the gateway drug that gets people addicted.

AoC and War focus on the PvP side and look to build a solid base that wants that. They will have PvE elements, but if you are a real PvE'r keep looking. AoC does have a good quest system and pulls you into the story. The shinning element is the seige PvP for AoC. If that fails, the game will die. If AoC fails at raid PvE content, few people will care and will be willing to wait for them to get it right.

WoW does alot and it reaches alot of people. These other games can target a select group and shift the game to their needs. WoW has PvP, but it is forced and added on late in the game. Thats why AoC and War are targeting those parts of the game. WoW has a lot of players asking for more when it comes to PvP.

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.

Re:PvP games

[CodeBuster]

I find that people who claim to dislike PvP have very often not tried it for themselves. You say that you enjoy PvE play, but for me there is nothing like going head to head against other players in a free-for-all type world where anyone can attack anyone else at anytime, anywhere, and for whatever reason. It really brings out the realistic and dangerous aspect when there is completely open PvP and that is what makes the games fun and challenging in ways that no AI can presently match. Also, there are not nearly as many problems with item farmers or spawn campers in open PvP games (among other benefits) because you can attack them for being lame.

Re:PvP games

[bidule]

OTOH, you have graveyard trolls who just sit on your body to deny you play time. Their only pleasure is to stop others from having a good time.

I find that people who claim to enjoy PvP have not experienced that. They have enough play time that losing an hour doesn't bother them, they'll level fast enough that griefers can't catch them and/or they spend so much time in-game that their skills are too good to be an easy prey.

I was on vent with someone trying the PvP realms in AoC, he couldn't even log off because some graveyard troll was ganking & camping him.

In PvP, item farmers or spawn campers can deny you the resource even better by keeping you dead. I never had problems stealing what I needed off spawn campers, and even if my raiding gear is good enough to win PvP I'd much rather have fun playing *my* game than someone else's.

Early Launch went well

[Anonymous Coward]

I played under early launch, and the experience was surprisingly smooth. I had zero server or client crashes. A number of minor graphical glitches, and one bugged quest. Other than that, it was a great experience. Oh, and I was playing on a Mac, running Vista, via Bootcamp.

Yes, probably a problem for Blizzard

[HomerJ]

As good as World of Warcraft is for some people, a lot of people I know that used to play it just had enough of it. You play the same game for years, you tend to get bored of it, new content or not.

World of Warcraft won't be going anywhere for at least another couple years, but I'd expect at least either AoC or Warhammer to get into the millions of users and take a chunk out of WoW's userbase.

Re:Yes, probably a problem for Blizzard

[Achoi77]

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.

Conan will...

[Mr. Beatdown]

Conan will crush it's enemies, see WoW driven before it, and to hear the lamentations of its (very few) women.

Re:Conan will...

[Capt James McCarthy]

Conan will crush it's enemies, see WoW driven before it, and to hear the lamentations of both its women.

Fixed.

Re:Conan will...

[WankersRevenge]

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.

Re:Conan will...

[everphilski]

That's not the Conan I know and love.

Conan the Librarian: Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System?

I played AoC's beta...

[HerculesMO]

And it's a decent game, very buggy (although it was beta) and ran very choppy on my reasonably good machine (4GB ram, 8800GTS 320MB, Core2 Duo).

For others it ran well.

The PvP is pretty good -- think of it as a type of "Guild Wars" game. The classes are EXTREMELY imbalanced, where the ones that can 'stun' can stun you for a half hour. You can get DoTs that last a long time, and all you do is cast it, and run away -- eventually the other guy dies.

World of Warcraft will not be unseated or even touched by this game. It's going to be a rush to try it out, and you'll see everybody go back to WoW. WoW is simple to play (not a lot to figure out, it gets more advanced as you level), it takes a very little power machine, the classes are VERY balanced, and every instance and dungeon is well thought out. It's not to say that the game is that great either -- but the social aspect of WoW is a lot nicer than AoC will ever offer, and it's why they have 9 million subscribers. Because it's easy to group, easy to socialize, and easy to play.

AoC is a good game for those looking for a 'hardcore' experience, or Guild Wars on steroids. I don't know about WAR, but I'm patiently waiting for beta access (fingers crossed!) to see how it plays out.

Right now though, I am sticking to WoW.

My take...

[Drakin020]

I got in on the early release. Managed to get to Lv 9.

I was not impressed. The combat system is cool for about an hour or 2 then it's somewhat annoying. Mages are overpowered in that you cast one spell and the enemy dies.

Also everyone has Hide (AKA Stealth) yeah...everyone. There are some limitations but the ability is still there.

I think it needs a bit more tweaking, but again I'm not to thrilled with it.

Re:My take...

[XanC]

Everyone should have some basic idea about how not to be seen. All I know is not to stand up. Is that the trick is this game?

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.

Re:REMEMBER BNETD!

[loafula]

I bet your WoW toon is a Troll, too.

From what I've seen of Conan...

[Skuld-Chan]

I don't think it will make much of a dent sadly. The game is still too unrefined, and the animations are pretty horrible.

WoW didn't just get mass market appeal overnight - they actually did it by giving gamers a very polished MMO. WoW players complain about bugs all the time, but really its small potatoes to what came before - and none of these bugs are what I'd call critical.

Fancy MMO's MEH...

[hyperz69]

Give me my Red Dragon and Exiled. The old BBS days. We had Ansi Colored Text... and we LIKED IT like that.

Re:Fancy MMO's MEH...

[oodaloop]

You and your fancy colored text. Back in my day we had Pong!

Greetings!

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new Barbarian Overlords!

Linux and Mac compatible??

[Foofoobar]

I dumped City of Heroes after I got my MAC. I was tired of having to log out of Linux to play COH and decided I was just going to dump it entirely and just install WOW on my Mac. I can also play it on Linux via Cedega/WINE really well. Yes this is maybe 10% of the desktop market total but WOW caters to it and as a result is the dominant MORPG for Linux and MAC players. Windows players have a million options to choose from for MORPG's and tons of people fighting for their dollars while 40% of college students are all purchasing Macs and nobody is fighting for this disposable income market.

Seems like someone other than Blizzard would see the wisdom in supporting OpenGL and this expanding market

AoC has come a long way in just the last two weeks

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the complaints about the client, animations, and performance have been resolved in just the last few weeks of the beta. The difference in performance is astounding.

There are many players using mid-range to even lower range systems that are getting very decent performance with the client. As with any MMO of course there are bugs, and as with any MMO they will be corrected in time.

If you haven't actually played the game in the last week of beta or as part of the early access then whatever opinion you have about it is most likely based on very flawed and incorrect information.

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.

Re:What's the appeal?

[Endo13]

Congrats, you played an Orc hunter to level 6. That's like reading the title on the cover of a music CD and deciding you know all about their music and that it sucks.

Re:What's the appeal?

[Endo13]

Whoops, sorry for mistakenly assuming your hunter was an Orc. Clearly it was a Troll.

Re:What's the appeal?

[Kildjean]

The main appeal of a game like World of Warcraft is the story behind every nook, character or issue in the game. Back when wow was just "the old world" it was a different blend of graphics, an interesting story that by the time you get to lvl 70, you see why the alliance is fighting the horde and why the horde is not at all that much "evil". I play a game for the story and background it had. Vanguard had all the uuuuh ooooh ahhh a game can have... better graphics, a world so huge you would get lost... in the end it sucked. Not all games are made to satisfy everybody, and while wow is not perfect, its a damn good example of what to do in order to become #1 (or achieve 10 million subscribers). I bought AoC for my GF to play. For the hecvk of it... but i dont think its going to take our attention from wow. I dont knopw yet because we havent played it. But I doubt it. I think WAR is going to be more of a challenge for WoW than it is AoC. The other thing I like about Blizzard Games is that they all run natively on macs. Why can't other mmo companies develop their games in OpenGL like Blizzard does, and to have that tiny 10% nook of the mac market is anyways like 1 mill or 2 mill players in the pocket. I think if you only played till level 6, you missed about 99.9% of the world wow has to offer. When you get to lvl 65 or 68, lay out your critics, and it will be more balanced and objective, till then, you are just criticizing a book by its cover.

Re:What's the appeal?

[brkello]

Yeah, if you read 10 pages a book and stop you probably won't get it either. The first part of the game starts very slow for casual people to get the hang of playing. Getting to level 6 takes about an hour so you really don't have much of an idea what is going on after playing so little. The higher level you get, the more skills your learn and the more interesting combat becomes. Some classes are more interesting than others and some suit different types of play styles.

I don't think everyone has to like WoW but your analysis after barely playing it is a waste. But you know, all RPGs are going to be about killing, leveling, and doing it again. The people you meet and the combat make it fun (and you aren't qualified to talk about the combat since you haven't even scratched the surface). Essentially, people just modded you up because they dislike WoW, not because you said anything new or insightful. It's like reviewing a movie when you only saw the trailer...just silly. Or, you are a troll...if so, good job.

Re:What's the appeal?

[EQ]

Does it actually get more fun when you get to the really high levels? 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. Are all MMOs like this? If so I really don't see why they carry so much interest. Its like sex.

Yeah, you can do it by yourself like you did. But its repetitive and boring, as you found out.

Its a lot more fun with someone else. Especially if they really know how to play well.

And you saw only the beginner area. You missed all the exciting advanced content, plus as you get better at it, its a lot more enjoyable. ;-)

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.

Age of Conan Does Look Interesting...

[morari]

I don't like MMOs and never will. The very fact that I have to pay to play the games keeps me from caring. Outside of that however, I find that Age of Conan (in theory) fixes a lot of the problems inherent within popular MMOs. The most obvious of these problems being the ridiculously dumbeddown combat. Clicking on an enemy and watching as your character takes turns attacking it is not fun. I don't know how well Conan's system works, but real time, actual skill-based combat is sure a step in the right direction anyway you slice it.

Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age" is the perfect setting if done correctly. It certainly puts to shame all of the weak "high fantasy" out there. It's just a shame that it's being relegated to an MMO which may or may not even catch on with the population.

Re:Beat WoW? What?

[Endo13]

You're absolutely right. I myself finally quit playing WoW, but it's a pretty safe bet they got 10 new subs at the same time to replace mine. Their number of subs is still increasing. Ten million and counting (if not 11 mil by now). I wish there were another better MMO coming soon to replace WoW, but there's not. Nothing anywhere on the radar will even make a dent. AoC and Warhammer will both have less than 500K subs at the end of this year, and WoW's number will still be going up as well.

The Answer is No

[moore.dustin]

...and it is an emphatic No.

WoW brought non-gamers into the fray and can boast 10 million users as a direct result of tapping a new market of non-gamers(Non PC Gamers at least). Wow did not turn these people onto PC gaming on a larger scale though, it isn't opening doors for others genres (or games in this case) to get these users. These users playing WoW, that would have otherwise not be playing anything on a PC are, 1) Not looking for another a new PC game and more importantly 2) are still very happy with what WoW is giving them given the longevity of its sustained user base. If a company wishes to tap the same users that made WoW wildly successful, they have to earn it! Blizzard created its new market by drawing people to their game and other companies will have to do the same. The point here is that a company cannot just make a game and sell a bunch of copies early on and claim to be challenging WoW. Instead they have to start well, sustain growth AND THEN they may be able to draw the new coveted market Blizzard has cornered at present. Let us not forget that WoW did not really take off with the Average Joe for a good 12+ months after it went gold(at least).

These other games may get some of the gamers that knew the genre's(MMO) landscape before WoW and actually care to try other MMO's. They will not eat into WoW's new bread and butter - in fact, they are all just scurrying around for the crumbs.

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.

End Game...

[SoylentRed]

There are a few things I find myself hoping for in AoC.

1st - as I've gotten a bit older (Yay... 30 in a week... And yes I know - 30 isn't old... I said older...) I have far less time to play MMOs. From what I understand the leveling time in AoC (when compared to other MMOs) is far less to get to top level. (Last I heard from beta was about 3 days of /played time to get from first to last level... and this didn't change for release.)

2nd - raiding for me isn't an end game solution. Yeah - I played WoW - did the grind to level 60 - went on a few raids to MC - then quickly realized the amount of time I would need to devote to sitting in the same dungeon OVER AND OVER AND OVER to get the gear I wanted. Only to find myself signing up for raid nights in the next tier dungeon to do that over and over and over. (And yes - I understand they system has changed now that BC is out and it is better - but what do you do...)

That being said - raiding dungeons cannot be the only end game for an MMO... And if that is - all you get is a group of people who max out their gear then sit in the big cities doing /flex over and over for people to see how cool they are. I am waiting anxiously to see if AoC will pull through on the city siege aspects of the game.

Having a player city you and your fellow players get to build up and have to defend against attacks is something I would love to rally around...

Re:REMEMBER BNETD!

[Lunatrik]

> Blizzard does not allow mods like Valve does.
Additionally, you must be using a fairly narrow definition for "mods". I played a number of incredibly clever maps for both Starcraft and Warcraft 3 - while not total conversions like Valve allows for, I would certainly define some of the upper tier maps as "mods".
Not to say Blizzard isn't evil.. they nerfed my priest!

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.

Two years wasn't an issue

[Shivetya]

You have to compare your thought about waiting even two years between expansions because it gives a false impression about the game. WOW released a lot of content between opening day and TBC and is doing the same between TBC and WOTLK. Is progression restricted to leveling? If releasing expansions at a regular clip was all it took to be a success then how do we explain the lack of population for EQ and EQ2 now? Yes they are both big but not on the scale of WOW.

AoC is coming out way way too early. It just isn't ready. What Blizzard did that was more important than being friendly to all players was to raise the bar in perceived quality. They may have actually raised it too high as most gamers no longer tolerate buggy and unbalanced software that we used to accept for granted. WOW presents a polish. Yeah it covers some major dings underneath but the overall effect is that looking at it most players never encounter anything game breaking. The same can't be said for some major releases post WOW or even post TBC. Blizzard also allows for an incredible amount of interface customization, beyond what many other games can even conceive. Don't like a certain display - change it. If not you then hundreds of others have and it all is "protected" by the fact the game client knows what it can do so you don't have to worry about your password/account being mailed to china for installing a plug in

Hell Turbine came down with two of the biggest and storied names in Fantasy and flubbed them both. D&D Online and LOTR Online. What was the difference? Polish and usability. Those two games should never had an issue yet they failed to hold onto any significant numbers. Turbine likes to use the line that they don't release numbers on their servers because of "professionalism" but the simple fact is they are embarrassed.

I am quite sure that most people playing WOW won't even notice AoC's effect on the population of their favorite server for very long if at all. I bet a sizable portion doesn't even know it exists. Simply put they don't care to look. That is a magic you can't buy. I am very sure AoC or any other MMORPG would love to just have WOW's churn as their account numbers!

No it didn't dumb down MMORPGs, the closest comparison I would make is what Apple did for Unix based operating systems when they released OS X. They took a good, known to work system, and made it easy to use, understand, and accessible. That isn't dumbing down, thats doing it right.

Re:you are forgetting

[unity100]

Because the cult of Star Wars, which far far surpasses that of Conan, made SWG a huge success among the crowd in question right? The answer is no. Also, it is not a small fraction of 10 Million subscriptions, in fact Blizzard defines the term to avoid this confusion. hahahahahaahahaaa.

well, actually the answer is YES, until soe screwed it over.

swg was stellar in the first 3-4 months, when it was filled with many sw fans. the atmosphere was so good that, i could just log in and wander around for hours, enjoying star wars atmosphere, created by that many fans in the game. (and im coming from starcraft background, note that, its hard for me to stay around without hard action).

then it started. in order to pull in people from other games, sony started to pour in crap. first, there was the creature handling horror. it was done so that, you HAD to have at least 1 pet behind you in order to be able to do missions. soon everyone had 1 or more pets running behind them, many had gruul maulers. it looked not like star wars, but some kind of f@cked up zoo.

this eliminated the first wave of star wars fans.

then came the horrible 'lets attract people from ad&d games' phase. to get gamers from other medieval and ad&d style games, soe boosted up the stupid SWORDSMAN, PIKEMAN, FENCER, TERAS KASI (this one is basically karate) classes they put into the game SO much that, entire game turned into a medieval fest rather than star wars. blasters meant nothing. some zygote with bare hands was able to knock you down from 30 m range, and kill you without you being able get up even once. people with PIKES, TWO HANDER swords were running everywhere.

this has been the major blow. at this phase we lost SO many star wars fans that game didnt look like what it was 2-3 months before that time.

then it all went downhill. then they alienated powergamers by changing the skill system, combat upgrade, then giving jedi thing to everyone, and lost the single segment of gamers they had left. soe did its crap, game went downhill and that.

so its irrelevant. had soe been HALFway decent with the game, swg would still be running. now its a flying fart.

So you seem to have you facts confused here. The cartoonish graphics didnt draw people to the game, instead like you said, peoples friends and colleagues got them playing. That is exactly why Wow is so successful, people can easily recommend the game to friends knowing how the game plays for new users themselves. Wow succeeds because of this line of thinking among its users: "Hey you should play this game I got a while ago, it is pretty cool. If you want to play I can start a new character with you and we can pay together if you want." thats exactly why im saying that 10 m userbase is hot air. many people come in, being dragged in by people like me, just cancel out in a few months. they dont stay. i'd wager paying numbers are 2 to 3 million.

Age of Conan

[initialE]

It says here that Conan is 61. But then again it says here that Conan is 45. So I guess I have to shell out a few bucks and play the game to find out what is the age of Conan.

They rope you in

[Brain-Fu]

MMO games are dangerous. At first they are fun, and if you don't have addiction problems you can balance your play time with your real life quite easily (though some may have the nagging feeling that they aren't getting their money's worth if they don't play very often).

However, eventually, you join a guild (or equivalent). And they raid with you. And your availability becomes an issue for them. Suddenly, every time you don't play, nine or more of your friends can't run they dungeon they want to run, and it is YOUR fault.

That is the real killer...the sense of importance you get from being so relied-upon, combined with the pride you get from towering over your peers due to your uber raid gear, make the end game destructively addictive.

Sure, you can quit any time, so long as you don't mind disappointing and/or pissing off a whole bunch of friends who have been relying on you, and supporting you, and sacrificing for you, for quite a long time.

Has anyone actually read a review of AOC? CRAP!

[plasmacutter]

from what I read, it's utter crap.

It certainly does not qualify as an RPG.

Particularly: it combines the twitchy experience of an fps with the annoyingly complex button combos of a fighting engine.

This game is for the CS/Halo3 crowd and the DOA version X crowd.