Blizzard: Yes, some players left for AoC

by Kyle Horner Aug 1st 2008 at 12:00PM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, MMO industry, News items

Say whatever you will about Age of Conan, but it's been one of the only games to actually put a tangible dent in Blizzard's ten million ton monster truck of an MMO, World of Warcraft. The news came from Blizzard president Mike Morhaime who recently said on an Activision Blizzard earnings call, "Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft." We know that Age of Conan saw about 700,000 players jumping into the game during its first month on the market. What we don't know is how many of those players were World of Warcraft vets. It must have been fairly substantial though for Morhaime to have even mentioned it at all.

With Warhammer Online purportedly coming out sometime this September we're wondering how many players will go and stay gone this time around, especially with Wrath of the Lich King hot on its heels. It's certainly going to be an interesting holiday season this year.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, blizzard, electronic-arts, funcom, mike-morhaime, mythic-entertainment, war, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Nadril said on 12:13PM 8-01-2008

40% came back? Thats a pretty substantial amount.

And of course there are the guys like me they don't even count who left for AoC, quit (took me a bit) but aren't touching WoW again. Ouch.

Steve_S said on 12:34PM 8-01-2008

I was one. The only reason I'm still not laying AoC is purely due to instability. Memory leaks, crashes, bugs, etc. Why should I continue to pay money for that? I'll come back once they have sorted it out, maybe.

Snafzg said on 12:37PM 8-01-2008

I left WoW to blog about an unreleased MMO, however, I have several RL friends who quit WoW for AoC and two months later 100% of them are returning to WoW until WAR releases.

crsh said on 12:50PM 8-01-2008

I'm not surprised Blizzard has felt the dent, as AoC released in EU/US/Aus and that's where fewer of their 10 million subscribers are from; however, I'm not surprised to see AoC doesn't do too well at retaining their players, especially so early on after launch.

Guess what, Warhammer will also put a temporary dent in Blizzard's numbers, but it may or may not last; it might however kill AoC for good.

Nmaster said on 12:53PM 8-01-2008

Between Guild Wars, Age of Conan (in a few months anyway, with kinks worked out), and Warhammer out soon, I would hope people would graduate from WoW already...

Seriously, WoW is great and all, but I've never quite understood or thought it deserved the popularity it got.

Nadril said on 1:04PM 8-01-2008

No MMO is going to "Kill" WoW until they release in China with the same method that WoW does.

Remember that the majority of WoW's base is in China. I think there are only like, what, a few million players elsewhere? ("only")

I am thinking that WAR if anything will take a major dent out of WoW's PvP fanbase.

Nmaster said on 1:07PM 8-01-2008

I'd like to see the population stats of MMOs sans Chinese Gold Farmers. It'd be funny to discover like 60% of all MMO accounts are sweatshops, LOL.

Nadril said on 1:15PM 8-01-2008

It's not even as much about the gold farmers as it is how Blizzard does their MMO model in China. Most Chinese will play in Computer Cafes which have various MMOs installed on them, so they don't really pay a subscription for WoW but just a small fee for when they go to the cafe.

I don't know of any of the other big name MMOs that do this.

Wjowski said on 1:14PM 8-01-2008

It combined a refined an improved version of the previous big-name MMO's system (Everquest) with low system specs and a popular IP. What's not to understand?

Nmaster said on 1:19PM 8-01-2008

@Nadril: Yeah I know, had to make the gold farmer joke though. :D

@Wjowski: Totally agree, but I've never understood what turned the more casual players onto it. I mean, just look at the screen of a player at a high level. There's shit EVERYWHERE. I as a lifetime hardcore gamer find it a bit intimidating, I can't believe it doesn't scare many of them off.

I just don't see WoW as a casual game, there's a lot to keep up with, how it got the market share it did is still a bit beyond me. If anything, Guild Wars should have that non-hardcore market.

Brian! said on 2:10PM 8-01-2008

It seems if AoC would not have had so many problems, they would have made a much bigger dent in WoW.

I think if Mythic makes a game that is fun and captivating, they will take far more away from WoW - and keep them. Wrath is an interesting expansion, but it is a lot of the "same". Blizzard is borrowing working ideas from other games for Wrath, yet I am unsure if that would be enough for me.

I think a lot of players are ready for a new experience, but one close enough to WoW that they feel comfortable. WAR is looking up to being just that.

Nadril said on 2:21PM 8-01-2008

The funny thing (really) is that Mythic is trying to move away from some of the things in WoW and be different. Still I agree that if Mythic pulls it off the game will peel a lot of WoW players away.

nicholsml said on 2:55PM 8-01-2008

I hope that War kills WoW off in the us, WoW is stale, old and boring and AoC seems to be a total flop.

TwistedBishop said on 3:27PM 8-01-2008

Age of Conan sold as many copies in 1 month as WoW did in an entire holiday season. While we don't know the current subscriber numbers, if even half those people kept a subscription AoC would still be the second highest subscription-based MMO around behind WoW, even if it never sold a single other copy.

In other words: nasty comments from the same three people on Massively do not a failure make.

Tasogare said on 4:50PM 8-01-2008

I think the fact that it is a massive failure makes it that, not that people say it is. AoC was probably one of the most "Wow this gets old fast" games I've ever played. Stunning visuals don't make up for lackluster, gimmicky gameplay, non-existent customer support, and frequently broken and delayed patches.

danarchy said on 3:31PM 8-01-2008

I think a under discussed chunk of prospective WaR customers are the old, grey beard table toppers like me. Out of probably 25 table top warhammer players I know, only 4 have ever played an mmo. But every single one of them is going to play war, at least until the 40k version comes out. That's not a big sampling of people but it is a huge statement about the opportunity mythic has to draw new people to the genre. And who knows, once some of these lead mini elitists get a taste of MMO's it may be that mythic actually brings WoW more customers in the long run!

I left wow to play aoc, got to 80, got incredibly bored and started shopping around for something new. I have discovered more than one really awesome game since that occurred too. One thing to say for aoc, it got me away from wow long enough to realize it wasn't the only game out there!

Jam said on 3:31PM 8-01-2008

I'm one of those players. I played WoW for over a year, only had a lvl 68 character in that time (I'm a very casual player. I must get on average 10 hours of game time a month) and I decided to try Conan.

My first impression was this game is pretty nice, good graphics. But it soon wore off. It had a lot of bugs the client hanged a few times there were issues, the loading screens were just annoying. The UI is unable to scale. Now I play on a 30" Monitor and I have the graphical horse-power to run my games at 2560x1600. I play every game I own at that resolution. But because Age of Conan doesn't allow its UI to scale its like I need a magnifying glass to see the heads up display. Text is unreadable, the mini-map looks like a tiny blob on my screen.. so I have to play it at 1920x1200 which looks a little blurry as its not my monitors native resolution.

And of course once you get out of the lvl 20 starting zone the game changes radically it doesn't have that shine. The NPC's no longer talk to you, no voice acting just text, it feels like a cheaper game at that point.

And yes, I went back to WoW. The addons avalible for WoW are vast, there is a lot of entertaining things to do, theres no loading screens on the continent your on, the UI scales to whatever resolution I want to run it at. And although it doesn't have voice acting it never teased me with it at the start and then take it away.

I look back at my time in Age of Conan and I can really only think of 2 positive things that I liked about it over other MMO's I've played.

1. Quest objective indicators, no need to go to a fan-site which may contain some malicious banner that lifts my login info just to find out where some guy I need to speak to is or some monster I need to slay is spawning.

2. Graphics, they were really nice I hope future MMO's take on this level of graphical quality which I thought you really only see in single player RPG's like Oblivion.

I can't wait for Guild Wars 2 - That will be the 'next' MMO that I try, considering it doesn't have a subscription it may be enough to get me away from WoW for the foreseeable. Not that I hate WoW I've just been playing it for a long time and I'd like another game that I can play to get away from it for a while.

Jack said on 3:51PM 8-01-2008

There is my other point you will not enjoy WARHAMMER like you are a casual player you never will can get the all the RvR crap they come up with.

Jack said on 3:48PM 8-01-2008

Yep and it will be the SAME for WARHAMMER some people will quit WoW for it and sure that like 40% return maybe more like Warhammer does not even have the graphics after gone tru the feeling of where are my friends and I not like this game and so on.

Warhammer will go the same road that AoC did everyone known by known that there is a 1 year rule for jump on the next marketing wagon.

People do not understand its not the people grapics or game that make WoW great its the only MMO that not really is a MMO to start with like WoW got a real low entry level and plays like a beat them up. Most new players do not have to worry about stats and so on and really like 80% of the people that Play WoW do not even like real MMOs they want there things setup for them easy and that is where Warhammer will fail to high entry level and way to hard to understand.