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More than 500,000 gamers join the Age of Conan community
AmazingAvery
Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
Funcom has announced that they have had 500,000 people sign up to participate in the Age of Conan Beta test. Of couse, not all are actually in the Beta at this time, but the percentages will surely rise as they approach launch.
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Feb 06, 2008 Massive interest for Age of Conan massively multiplayer online game. |
In other news:
JeuxOnline Users Pick Age of Conan As Most Anticipated - Feb 05, 2008 People of France and French-speakers worldwide, we adore you! Word comes in today that we've won the Most Anticipated for 2008 award based on user voting at JeuxOnline. You'll soon see a snazzy award graphic over there on the right and, if you want to check out the results, you can click here. Thanks to everyone who voted (and extra special thanks to everyone that voted for us!) |
So for nearly one year Funcom hasnt even said or promoted beta numbers, it doesnt have a ticker on its website, it doesnt promote it in your face. Now release is not too far off, announcements like this are only natural.
Personally I think its great they have introduced different language forums and made announcements that the game will be localised in those areas. This is how you have a proper community, not spread all over the inter-web..
How the game plays is a measure of its success, not the amount of people in my eyes. Still for those who are solely interested in numbers hope this helps. AoC = Win.
Comments
They can do better than 500k! They just need to stick to the original plan - if you delay long enough, eventually you get more beta subscriptions.
I personally, have 5 or so subscriptions (different names and emails), just because they cannot send Clan of Conan updates properly and you cannot figure out if they registered your account or not.
Well I think if a game has huge numbers over a long period of time when there are other choices available, that would, to me, indicate that the game is more "fun" than the others.
I still enjoy playing Pong and Freecell
, as many millions do too 
So if AoC can get 500K people playing and keep playing for a year, that says to me that the game is "fun" and successful, at least "artistically" (financially it can be a different story).
If I'm the only person on a planet that thinks a game is fun.... well... I hope that never happens because it means either I've flaked out, or the rest of the world has, and neither of those options is a good one
.
I was kind of expecting this marketing trick. I'm sure that it means "something" to some people out there that beta test sign ups reach big numbers. I was also expecting that something like this would follow the WAR marketing campaign.
What does this marketing campaign mean for us the players? Pretty much nothing. It certainly means that the company involved will have the potential to make good money. They "might" invest on the game more cash and bring updates or expansions more often. However I wouldn't hold my breath on that. It seems that updates, either free or boxed, are again dictated by marketing for the majority of companies (two exceptions I can think of is EVE and LOTR). Updates and improvements are, so far, not directly proportional to the amount of profit gained by the MMO companies.
As far as the players are concerned, we don't even have to expect empty servers unless the game is in dying phase or they overestimate the amount of people, and hence the amount of servers.
Bottom line, good vibes for the company when they seem to generate beta subscriptions of equal size than the other potential new release. No real effect for the rest of us that will eventually play the game. The game needs XXX amount of servers to make huge cash. I, as a player, just need one.
The above are not meant as a bashing towards AoC, but rather as a bashing towards game companies in general that are trying to create hype via number announcements.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist