More Trouble in Hyboria

Age of Conan subscriber base drops below 100,000.

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By John Gillooly on 24 February, 2009

Age of Conan (AoC) teaches the games industry many lessons. Its huge launch numbers highlight the potential market for a good MMO, but its subsequent performance shows other MMO developers what not to do. After peaking post-launch with over 700,000 subscribers, it is now estimated that less than 100,000 people are regularly playing the game.

Reasons for this are pretty obvious. Most people who played AoC loved the first 20 levels of the game, losing interest as it became apparent that the game lacked high-level content. Since then, we’ve seen Warhammer Online snatch a lot of the transient players searching for a new MMO experience, and Wrath of the Lich King has been very effective in bringing players back to World of Warcraft.

While Funcom is throwing resources into fixing the gaps in AoC’s content, it is most likely too little, too late. The company has a nasty habit of its executives leaving the industry altogether. Company founder and producer for AoC, Gaute Godager, fell on his sword last year and quit, and now Funcom’s CFO is leaving the industry, too.

It was once alright to launch an MMO and pack in the endgame content later. Unfortunately, the popularity of World of Warcraft has created a hunger for endgame, and a much larger percentage of players rush towards maximum level than before. By having an incredibly polished starting zone and patchy subsequent content, it is unsurprising that, as GamesIndustry.biz puts it:

“Age of Conan was the third best-selling PC game in 2008 in the US market, after World of Warcraft and Spore,” the company explained, saying it was hampered by “shorter average subscription periods than anticipated”.

This lack of subscriber retention has led to cuts in staff numbers, which creates the danger that there is a negative feedback loop. While it seems clear that what AoC needs is more content, the ability to create new content is limited by the amount of staff that are employed. The longer it takes to get the content into the game, the more subscribers will be lost.

Then the issue is getting people back to the game once it is more polished. Thankfully, the massive initial sales of the game mean that it can be done so with free trials for returning subscribers. However, one does wonder whether a lot of AoC’s potential market have ended up finding that Warhammer Online sates their need for something different. Plus, the buzz surrounding EVE Online’s current ‘Delve War’ could lead to a lot of new subscriber’s for CCP’s space opus.

It will be incredibly interesting to watch Funcom’s performance this year. If AoC cannot manage to build a solid subscriber base before the next major MMO wave, it will be in real trouble. If an obscure fantasy universe can generate so many copy sales, then the release of titles like Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Blizzard’s next MMO project could all be potential deathblows for Conan.

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