Age of Conan

I dont think the numbers will rise annywhere above 200.000 subscribers in the first few years.  You must remember that this is a next-gen mmorpg and it requires a rather powerfull machine to run it properly without anny hitching. The overwhelming majority of gamers simply aren't lucky anough to own a high-end rig that could run this game smoothly. Check out the steam hardware survey:   

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Only 0.34% have more then 2 gig's of ram

only 11.26% are over the 3.0 Ghz cpu speed (intel)  and 6.46% over 2.3 Ghz with AMD.

And considering the fact that we are talking about mmorpg's here,  i havent even taken client side lag into consideration.

As a matter of fact, i think world of warcraft did só good because of the low system specifications it needed. So i wouldn't be so sure about lot's of wow players swapping over to AOC. I can already hear the the crowds with the medium-specced pc's screaming bloody murder about the so called "bad performance" of AOC when it gets released.

Annyway, for what it's worth... those are my two cents. Please don't flame the crap out of me >.< 

Originally posted by Kimono

How big do you think Age of Conan will be one year after release? Personally I'd be happy to see 500K dedicated players.

Personally I think it may have a million subs if it does live up to expectations and quite possibly more in future, but one honestly can't say. Further more if it does satisfy, I believe it'll draw in many pvp people and perhaps some people who up to now haven't been interested in mmo's, because of the new skill based combat system (for instance CS players). Likewise it should appeal to pve players and graphic fetishists.

But the real question is will it kill WoW, right? Well, I think the answer is no. Not because WoW is better but because WoW is more accessable to a larger amount of people. Your sister, your daddy and your grandma may be playing it, less so with AoC, the skill based combat system will probably appeal more to dedicated players and turn away some casual ones. The gore might also do it's bit in that regard. Overall I believe FC are definitely aware of this and I think it's a good thing not aiming for everyone but trying to please certain groups. Neverless, I do believe it will draw in many WoW players and will give Blizzard the appropriate response for practically annihilating open pvp in WoW and devaluating people's efforts with the TBC addon. Overall though I think the majority of WoW emigrants will probably go to WAR, since it looks more like WoW but will probably have a superior pvp system.

Of course AoC has to compete with WAR aswell and WAR does have some good ideas, like for instance one's char growing and becoming darker via lvl progress. But I for my part will be going to AoC, since the entire world, ambience and ideas appeal more to me than those of WAR.

One last word regarding WoW; I believe people do want to leave WoW, of course there are many who are happy with it but there is quite a large amount of people also for whom the TBC addon ruined it, and those are willing to or have already left and are probably looking for a new refuge. So I think AoC and WAR will both draw in WoW players (LotRO could already have done so, but they messed up in the pvp regard) and this may lead to Blizzard rethinking it's policies. They've really held a monopoly over these past two years and as such pretty much neglected player concerns. With such a large community it's extremely difficult getting one's concerns heard and valued. Oh, you don't like staged bg pvp? Go f* yourself. You don't like it that we wiped away your hundred hours worth of grinding and farming? Go f* yourself. You want classic servers, huh? It's not gonna happen, buy the addon or go...

There's definitely subscriber potential there.

Originally posted by Warblaze

I dont think the numbers will rise annywhere above 200.000 subscribers in the first few years.  You must remember that this is a next-gen mmorpg and it requires a rather powerfull machine to run it properly without anny hitching. The overwhelming majority of gamers simply aren't lucky anough to own a high-end rig that could run this game smoothly. Check out the steam hardware survey:   

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Only 0.34% have more then 2 gig's of ram

only 11.26% are over the 3.0 Ghz cpu speed (intel)  and 6.46% over 2.3 Ghz with AMD.

And considering the fact that we are talking about mmorpg's here,  i havent even taken client side lag into consideration.

As a matter of fact, i think world of warcraft did só good because of the low system specifications it needed. So i wouldn't be so sure about lot's of wow players swapping over to AOC. I can already hear the the crowds with the medium-specced pc's screaming bloody murder about the so called "bad performance" of AOC when it gets released.

Annyway, for what it's worth... those are my two cents. Please don't flame the crap out of me >.< 

Atleast 500,000 the first year. Even the worst of MMO's get more then 200,000 people to begin with. I think this game has alot of potential  but on the otherhand I think you are somewhat correct. The system requirements for this game might just be too demanding for most pcs out there. It would be a shame if this is going to be the case because I atleast give Funcom credit for not being a wow clone type game.

I stand by my 1 million.

It will attract more PvPers then WAR.  But WAR can attract significant amount of PvEers...if they stop playing the blind and freaking give PvE a focus, a goal, a purpose.  The WAR means nothing to a PvEer.

Originally posted by Warblaze

I dont think the numbers will rise annywhere above 200.000 subscribers in the first few years.  You must remember that this is a next-gen mmorpg and it requires a rather powerfull machine to run it properly without anny hitching. The overwhelming majority of gamers simply aren't lucky anough to own a high-end rig that could run this game smoothly. Check out the steam hardware survey:   

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Only 0.34% have more then 2 gig's of ram

only 11.26% are over the 3.0 Ghz cpu speed (intel)  and 6.46% over 2.3 Ghz with AMD.

And considering the fact that we are talking about mmorpg's here,  i havent even taken client side lag into consideration.

As a matter of fact, i think world of warcraft did só good because of the low system specifications it needed. So i wouldn't be so sure about lot's of wow players swapping over to AOC. I can already hear the the crowds with the medium-specced pc's screaming bloody murder about the so called "bad performance" of AOC when it gets released.

Annyway, for what it's worth... those are my two cents. Please don't flame the crap out of me >.< 

Don't worry, am not gonna flame ya. ;)

I think you raised a good point. When I look at my old system or some videos on warcraftmovies.com and all the lag they suffer, it definitely appealed to a large amount of people because they could run it with pretty outdated machines. Neverless that was two years ago and imho FC made the right choice going for top notch graphics. We're somewhat living in a time of transition with the release of Vista, Dx10 and new processors. People will still hang onto XP/Dx9 for quite some time (I for my part am reverting to XP and even bought a Dx9 card for the new system) but with all those improvements AoC could possibly look dated within a year or two had they not incorporated these graphics, and in the longterm this would probably cost them more customers than it would upon release. Another thing is that AoC unlike WoW seems to be aiming for dedicated gamers, it probably won't appeal to everyone like WoW did, and thus I'd assume the target audience may proportionally have better rigs than the mainstream audience WoW was aiming for. Not saying it doesn't have a place for casual gamers or is even a niche game, no, but it will never appeal to the same amount of people as WoW did.

Although this thread is kinda pointless, anything more than 200k after a year will be a success, though 500k would be really good... though I personally would NOT want more than that, let the kiddies go to WAR or whatever..

Originally posted by siresper

Originally posted by Trinitarian

I'm willing to bet the people who voted 'The next Vanguard' either:

- Are basing their opinion based solely on what they have seen on recent gameplay videos;

- Are WoW zealots; or

- Warhammer Online fanboys that have done nothing but vote AoC 1/10 on the hype-meter just because they don't want to see their precious game anywhere else but first on the ranks.

Pathetic, really.

They seem to have a lot in common with the AoC fanboys that vote 1/10 on the WAR polls. Would you agree those people are equally as pathetic?

I think the WAR fanboys are afraid theyll lose many members to AOC and it won't be the game they 10/10 hyped for and made new accounts for just so there game will look better

impossible to say at this point, it may turn out to be a great game or or could just turn out to be like Vanguard and be all hype and no delivery. Unless those graphics are a lot more scalable than they look that will limit the players to the more hard core fans who have systems capable of running SOE style graphics so that would limit it to less than 500K right there even if the game play is good.