40% of players that left to try out Age of Conan have already returned to WoW.
Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime has revealed that the launch of Funcom's Age of Conan did result in a loss of players from World of Warcraft, but many of the curious MMO players have already gone back to WoW.
"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," Morhaime said in a conference call yesterday.
Morhaime also expects the launch of Wrath of the Lich King to entice even more gamers to return to WoW.
In what could be seen as a warning to all upcoming MMOs, Morhaime added: "Any massively multiplayer online game that launches today isn't just competing with the amount and breadth of content that we launched with back in 2004."
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Comstrike wrote at 14:43 on 01 August 2008
AoC is a disaster and the word is out. Funcom's stock is diving, players are leaving, and if some are going back to WoW, others are returning to LOTRO and other games, and not going back to the "water wings" MMO.
Still, credit where it is due. WoW survives, even thrives. LOTRO does the same. There are very few, large scale success stories. AoC thought it could just give people sex, graphics, and violence. Its not been able to do much of any of it, and there is no sign the entire game will ever work as they promoted it would.
Macason wrote at 02:53 on 22 August 2008
Having achieved all I wanted in WoW. I went to AoC in the hopes something new would be found, for my part AoC was interesting and enjoyable to play but I couldn't feeling I was part of a ALPHA test not a finished product. Lack of content and issues with gear itemization really takes the shine of an otherwise enjoyable experience. When my free month had finished and I had a couple of toon's rolled and time invested, could I justify paying more money. The answer was NO.