Earlier this week, I wrote a post detailing the early struggles of Funcom's recently launched Age of Conan title.  After reading my article, a few astute readers notified me of some discrepancies in my figures, and I decided to dig a little deeper for the benefit of the public.  My original operative maintains that her numbers are correct, but I cast a wider net this time, and the results were shocking.

Age of Conan Sells Like Hotcakes Around the World

Contrary to my initial reports that as many as 40% of retail copies were going unsold, nearly all retailers are sold out and having trouble meeting the consumer demand for Age of Conan.  A June 2nd press release from Funcom confirms the surprising success as Age of Conan rises to number 1 on the charts:

* #1 on the PC charts
* #1 on PC and All-Format charts in Germany, Sweden, Norway
* #2 on All-Format charts elsewhere (bumped down only by GTA 4)

While it's difficult to get complete figures for North America (a slightly larger market) because there are no major aggregated reports available yet, retailer demand and preorders alone assure that results should be similar.

According to this blog at MMOCrunch, the WoW launch involved initial shipments of 250k units to North America and 280k to Europe.  Compare that with Conan's initial shipments of 700k total to those same markets, and you will realize we have a huge boom on our hands!

Untapped Markets: Much More Room To Grow

We mentioned the initial launch figures from Age of Conan now.  First reports indicated that 700k copies had shipped, and Funcom announced shortly afterward that they had passed the 500k mark for accounts activated in their billing systems.  With this "conversion rate" of nearly 71%, we would expect somewhere near 700k active accounts now that Funcom has reached the One Million Units Shipped milestone.

Asian Market

According to MMOGCharts.com, World of Warcraft currently has over 50% of its subscribers in Asia, where Age of Conan has not yet launched.  Given that WoW and AoC are in similar genres, but AoC has had a much bigger launch, we expect that the AoC population will at least double when Asian penetration occurs.

XBOX360 Market

Age of Conan is slated to be released soon for the XBOX360 platform, and this is a serious "trump card" when it comes to competition against World of Warcraft.  Recent reports from NPD indicate that PC Games account for only 14% of Retail Game Sales, so the ability to start biting into that larger pie will be a huge payoff for Funcom when the XBOX360 launch takes place.  The console market is quite fragmented with different systems, but we would expect the AoC subscriber base to grow at least 25% with exposure to Microsoft's savvy console customers (with over 9 million consoles sold to date).

Gamers Upgrading Their Computers

One point I initially used to criticize Age of Conan was its higher system requirements that limited the potential market.  If I think about this differently, however, I realize it actually means Funcom's title has much more room for growth.   As consumers gradually upgrade their machines over time, more and more of them will be able to play Age of Conan, while there will be no change in the market size for World of Warcraft (since they can already run it on old machines).   In essence, Funcom has serious future growth "built in" to the game at launch!   This initially dampened market makes the huge launch numbers even more impressive.

Age of Conan's Launch Much Smoother Than WoW's

I got input from several players who have experienced the launch phases of both WoW and Age of Conan, and the community clearly agrees that this latest launch from Funcom was much less bumpy than WoW's release nearly 3.5 years ago.  One player offered this particularly telling insight:

"WoW had two hour queues, horrible lag, constant crashing & VERY limited end game content in the beginning"

As a long time WoW player myself, I realized that my perspective had been skewed somewhat by the incremental progress that has been made to the WoW servers since release.  Does anyone remember login queues, loot lag, servers down for multiple days at a time?  These trouble spots tend to fade from our memories after a few years but they were very real at the WoW launch.

By comparison, the Age of Conan developers have responded very quickly to problems, opened additional servers to ease the unprecedented demands, and worked quickly to address exploits and performance hiccups.

Developers Respond Faster in Age of Conan

We've all gotten used to the Blizzard patch situation by now.  In World of Warcraft, we have months of buildup between patches as developers work on content that most of us never see, or balance changes and bugfixes that don't seem to impact anything for the better.  Funcom's developers, on the other hand, seem very committed to addressing the needs of the playerbase as quickly as possible.  We have seen several patches since launch, and continue to see multiple patches within the same week from Funcom; truly a breath of fresh air!  Many have critcized Blizzard for milking their "cash cow" and ignoring customers -- it seems maybe a higher standard of service really is possible!

Age of Conan: The Better Game

I checked out a few review sites mentioned by Funcom in a press release, and I was surprised to see Age of Conan getting higher review scores than World of Warcraft, indicating that, even at this early stage of release, AoC is the better game.

GameZone (US)
World of Warcraft: 9.1 / 10 (official review)
Age of Conan: 9.4 / 10 (official review)

Of course, I am always slightly skeptical of the bias in major media publications, so I checked out Metacritic for a fair "community" score from users who actually play the game rather than writers who are paid to give good scores.

MetaCritic User Reviews
World of Warcraft (Original): 7.4 / 10
World of Warcraft (TBC): 6.5 / 10
Age of Conan: 8.0 / 10

I know that these ratings are constantly changing, so I took pictures of the ratings today for proof.  You can see them below:







This large disparity makes it obvious that gamers are enjoying AoC more than WoW, even though Blizzard has had several years (and an expansion) to polish up the WoW series!

What is perhaps even more telling is the number of reviews given on each of these titles.  While Blizzard's games have been out for much longer, the Funcom title had way more users (509 votes) stop by to mention how much they enjoyed the game.  This is a sign of the healthy, active, and growing community that must exist for a MMORPG to succeed.

In Conclusion

Following this research, I must apologize to my readers.  I realize my last article was somewhat lacking when it comes to references, and I jumped to conclusions based on the information given to me by my inside operative.  I can only thank you guys for pointing me in the right direction, as this new information has really opened my eyes.

I just called my local Gamestop and placed a pre-order for my own copy of Age of Conan today.  They were out of stock (of course!) but they promised me I could get a copy before the end of the month -- I can't wait!