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If you were wondering if AoC was going to be a hit, wonder no more. Funcom has announce that it has shipped 700,000 units world wide for its May 20th launch date, which includes 110,000 units of the special edition box. To put that in perspective, World of Warcraft, which didn’t do a global launch, launched with 250,000 units in North America then a few months later in Europe with 280,000. Even if you add that up, that still puts AoC 170,000 units over WOW. This makes Age of Conan the highest pre-order number for any global launch of an original PC game, ever.
Although Funcom has stated their servers are up to the challenge to handle all these players, there will no doubt be some hickups on launch day considering the huge numbers. Since I’m waiting on some reviews, hopefully by the time I get it everything will be running smoothly.
For those of you that pre-order the game and are already playing, please let us know what you think of it so far.
Liking it very much! Love the more hands-on nature of combat and the environment is beautiful. Character creation is absolutely fantastic. So much choice and variation, but very hard to screw up!
My biggest gripe is that they could have worked on the implementation of “mature content” (i.e. nipples) a bit more–there are clipping issues involving shirted NPCs displaying a little more than they probably intended to, and on the character screen bodies seem to like to load before clothing. Bug or feature, you decide! (Personally, I find it more humorous than irritating or… anything else).
Well they will mention nipples lol
With the comparison to WoW (which I loathed from day one lol) – lot more players online and have online payment options sorted now – probably down to that damn WoW :)
Come play MMORTS – AoC isn’t different enough – time for a change…
I’m participating in the Age of Conan early access right now – and it’s great! Both graphics and performance are better than they were in open beta and it’s so stable you’d think they had an extra month of development time, when they really only had a week. During the open beta I experienced many glitches and crashes in gameplay and I’ve seen none of that in early access so far.
Granted I am level 16 and still in the Tortage (single/multiplayer) area, but that’s where most of the glitching and crashing of the open beta took place too. The area is surprisingly huge, I got to see parts of it during open beta, but now that I’ve explored most of the surrounding questing zones as well I think it’s safe to say that it’s about as large as 4-5x the Barrens in WoW. One thing to note in that estimate however is that the zones aren’t as open as WoW zones. Some are seriously linear (the tutorial instance), whereas others actually provide a great illusion of an open environment but in the end aren’t quite as open as say WoW or LotRO. Personally I don’t mind, because I prefer the incredibly beautiful handcrafted environments, but I’m sure some other people will mind the more linear approach. I didn’t mind Guild Wars’ linear zones too much either for example.
Anyway – the gameplay is great and it really grows on you. Once your skill bar starts filling up with combo’s and you get some awesome 1 vs 4 fights going – that’s when you find that combat really shines in this game. Aside from the combat I also love the questing, because the story is incredibly well presented and the dialogues are actually engaging. Blood and tits may be what FunCom claims is mature about this game, but it certainly shines through in the dialogue and the storyline as well. A twelve year old kid probably wouldn’t make much sense of most of the lines you hear NPCs utter in this game. It’s reminiscent of singleplayer RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights – and that’s good.
It may not be a huge revolution over WoW, it even has the XML editing of the UI, but I definitely like it. WoW never really was my cup of tea – what made that game interesting was playing with my friends. AoC is a game none of my friends play, but it’s interesting regardless. That says enough in my book – and I’m glad I purchased a 2-month prepaid card with my copy, which should be arriving the 23rd. I’ll definitely be playing this for at least three months – and quite probably longer than that.
Okay, that’s enough for now – back to AoC!
What are the actual retail sales though? That’s not 700,000 shipped pre-orders, that’s 700,000 shipped units, total. For all we know, retailers everywhere could have piles of boxes not selling and AoC only really has 200,000 sales (which is still quite good).
Anyone know of any sales figures?
“Funcom is shipping around 700.000 copies of Age of Conan on day one”
This means -sold- units that were pre-ordered. Not boxes sent to retailers that may or may not be bought. Units distributed to retailers prior to day 1are not part of this number, obviously.
I’m bored with it from the start. I was really expecting more given the hype that was generated but I just don’t see it in general or the details. I’m happy that they shipped so many orders but how many will stay with the game and for how long?
I’m happy that I get 30 days free cause I’m gonna need them to determine if the game gets better as I continue to level up. I was incredibly happy when I got to play WoW and LOTRO when they launched but the same isn’t true for AoC…oh well.
I’m guessing that it’ll take them at least 3-6 months for a patch to address balance and bug issues if they’re like other MMOs. I would prefer if they have the sheer number of fixes like WoW versus LOTRO’s mediocre few patches for each class over a year…what a drag!
Went to Best Buy to pick up a copy and they were sold out. :( I was bummed…
It is unfair to compare the number of unit AoC has sold today to the number of units WoW sold 4 years ago as they are competing in different markets. The online gaming industry and internet use has grown exponentially over those years and thus more people are exposed, allowing for a larger potential customer base.
700,000 shipped. The Frys’ near me at 200 boxes just sitting on the shelves.
This is new, i have not seen this game before. but 700,000 pre order, this game must be really good.