Is Age of Conan a WoW Killer?

Gaming Today writes:

"I think we can all agree that World of Warcraft is the 800 lb. gorilla of the MMO market. After all, at last count it boasted something along the lines of 10.7 million subscribers. Of course, prior to the release of AoC and Warhammer, I heard lots of people refer to either or both of these games as 'WoW killers.' I want to let you all in on a little secret: There is no WoW killer."

[skynidas]

Nope, because of the system requirements

[CRIMS0N_W0LF]

I agree. AoC requirements are very demanding where WoW requirements...lol you can play it on Pentuim 3.

Also I tried WoW. I can never understand why people say its so good. Its literarly an MMO for kids.

[Silellak]

You are 100% right.

It is, however, the first MMO I've enjoyed in years. All of the launch problem aside, the combat is just FUN - not fun for an MMO, but fun for ANY game.

A player assassin can try to sneak attack me and will miss if *I* am fast enough to move out of the way. Just because he's targeted me doesn't guarantee him a hit.

That alone puts the combat lightyears above any other MMO out there.

AoC won't kill WoW. The only thing that might ever kill WoW is a World of Starcraft. I DO think it will be moderately successful and find its niche, however.

Hell, if Blizzard made a World of Starcraft, and then told people they could pay $20 a month for both WoW and WoS, then every other MMO in development may as well just shut down.

[Tmac]

AoC is no WoW killer by any means. Level 32 Necromancer here and the game is so broken past level 20 it feels more like a chore to play, give this game 6 months to a year to evolve and then it might not feel so demanding, however right now avoid this game like the plague.

[Silellak]

I'm a level 41 Dark Templar and the game has yet to feel like a chore to me. And I typically despise MMO's. I played an hour of a WoW trial and gave up. I played the LOTRO Beta for a couple of days. Last MMO I played seriously was City of Heroes, and even that was half-heartidly.

This is easily the most fun I've had with an MMO since Ultima Online came out over 10 years ago.

[Tmac]

You don't have a broken class perhaps that's why?

Funcom hasn't fixed the core mechanics for the mage type, my rank 1 spells do exactly as much as my rank 2 spells, but get this COST 3 MORE TIMES in mana.

PvPing on a Necromancer is ridiculous they should just get rid of the class all together. Half of my our feat tree doesn't work, Mark of the devourer does nothing past 2/5. I'm happy your enjoying the game but I am obviously pissed I rolled the wrong class.

Not the first time either, Rolled a Druid in WoW, what a mistake that was, thankfully only 1.5 years later they fixed them.

[Silellak]

Actually, DT is considered by many to be underpowered and gimped due to non-working/stupid/broken feats. But that's beside the point.

For the record, Funcom has already made a post about fixing Necromancers and Demonologists ASAP:

http://forums.ageofconan.co...

(If you can't read that, feel free to PM me and I'll send you the list. Just don't want to spam N4G with it.)

[Tmac]

Thanks for the notes, I hope something is released within the next 2 weeks, if you wanna feel necromancer pain just roll one, fun till level 20, then it all goes down hill.

[Baka-akaB]

AOC is a AOC killer period .
The game is getting a success alright , but it will and already get downplayed by the numerous issues and bugs at hands .
Some classes are broken , and not like "it's ok it's a launch they will balance the classes " , but like not working at all .

Its obvious that the 700k pre orders werent aware of the state of things , werent aware of the faulty designs in quests and core mechanics , and technical issues ..
Its also obvious imo that a portion of those will not stay in the game .

On top the usual stuff to fix as usual in the first months of launch , the game itself is quite bugged ... not everyone will stand for that after a rock on solid Wow that had far less issues at launch .

Especially with a few people crashing right when logging on their characters , in some given areas .

[Silellak]

AoC's launch is by no means perfect, but if you think it's BAD, then you haven't been playing MMOs a very long time.

People forget, WoW had bugs at launch, but even more significantly, you couldn't even *log in* to encounter those bugs because of the huge server overload.

[jaja1434]

It's nice to see some upcoming fixes but what kind of irks me is that most of the current issue could have easily been sorted out in Beta.

Feats not working as described/at all. Certain classes or rather group(mage) being completely, well ok not completely, unbalanced.

Lack of content 40+.
Itemization.
Bad UI/mapping when in group.

Now for my personal grief...
Instances!!! God I hate them to death when they are used for anything but dungeons. I know the various reasons they and by they I mean the AoC fans have given and it's all very logical and such. But that does not change the fact that I see no more than 20 people in any given area. It also makes grouping harder than it should be.
*ok I'm at x,y cord*
*so am I*
*No you're not...*
yea that gets old fast.

And my last gripe, although small it just annoys me.
Why can I not /wave? Every MMO to date has a /wave. I know small detail, but grr.

Anyways putting aside all of the bugs and class group imbalances, what really killed it for me was the heavy heavy heavy use of instances. And since this is not something that they can just fix with a patch, my account was canceled about a week ago.

Also PvP was not as fun as I had hopped. Though that's probably because I rolled a Necro.

[Bolts]

People who disagreed with the Bak are clearly console fanboys who have no idea WTF is going on. They read the reviews and think Conan is already golden and set for the Xbox port. Failed!

The first 20 levels, most which are singleplayer is fine but post 40 the game pretty much crumbles. Incomplete classes, broken quests, missing features, the list goes on and on. This game isn't even a threat to LOTRO, nevermind WoW. It would take at least three months before they right the ship, but by then half of the current population would cancel after the free month, and when they leave they rarely come back. With Warhammer Online coming in the 4th quarter Conan doesn't have much time to waste.

[Baka-akaB]

I say Bollocks and denial dude . Wow had you run of the mill launch issues like broken classes and servers issues . AOC is on a far different level .
I have enough experience thank you in that area imo , and right now among serious mmo (dont give me any crappy asian f2p grinding game or free stuff please) , AOC is doing only better than the gold star of those past years , Dark and Light .

AOC might be fun , but there is a limit to the "mmo always launch badly" excuse ... standards evolves over years , and after game like wow and an also full instanced like Guild wars (without subscriptions to boot) who launched quite extraordinary well , AOC is really pushing it .

[Pain]

Conan is going to Nail.
W.A.R is going to be a Bunch.
Conan on RROD2 will Most definitely be a few.
PS3 MMO's will be rest.

But like i say if W.A.R's delay was for Porting to PS3/360 Oh Sh!t its game over WoW

[Lionsguard]

There have been past "WOW killers" and they all came, went and were forgotten. Guild Wars? Vanguard? EQ2? Tabula Rasa? Lord of the Rings Online? no one even remembers these alledged Wow killers anymore. AoC and Warhammer will be just like the other contenders of the past, It'll have it's moments then it'll just fade underneath the dominating black shadow that WoW casts over the entire MMO market. If anyone thinks otherwise you're crazy. No other game even comes close to touching the numbers that WoW pulls on a daily basis.

[Tmac]

I disagree, AoC has a huge shot at taking a cozy second place, which ever way you wanna take that. WAR has a biggest shot but the biggest 3 will definitely be WoW, WAR, AOC in that order.

[Freayr]

Stargate worlds.

AOC has had a good launch, i've been an MMO player for over 13 years now, and there has been some drastic launchs.

But remember, even if they do release a patch in the first month, or even week, it will be rushed and probably cause headaches for some people.

A good example is Legend of Mir. A new update (would have the same impact as the hype behind Wraith of the Lich King.) And i think it was called the prajna patch; new content, island, ect.. However, the update caused the crash of 1 of their main servers, which lasted for nearly a week. The game saw mass migration to the secondary server, and ruined the economy and balance of both servers, and ultimately caused its downfall. The patch which came out a few days later caused even more trouble for most players because it was rushed broke some of the vital game mechnanics even furthur.

So lets hope they take care when introducing patchs and updates!

[Lets-Game]

every mmo has bugs and problems at launch, warlocks were broken and useless class in wow for first half year until they got fixed and that death coil rolled in. give aoc some time and it will be stable.

[Baka-akaB]

Again sorry but outside of class balance and a few things like server overloads WoW went quite fine . AOC's launch might not be the worst (again past titles and "recently" dark and light took the cake) , but it wasnt a good launch .

Numbers of pre orders were good , and the current base is big , great even , the reviews are good , even if most based sadly on the pre lvl 20 experience , but its a quite bad launch that got little to do with servers overload and proper class balance seasoning ... but are closer to what is probably the truth : a really unfinished and unpolished game running late , yet rushing too soon to release .

I think the game will keep selling fine in the long run ( until titles like guild wars 2 , wow addons and others imo) , but i stand by my opinion , wich i think is hardly mine alone when i go around mmo forums and aoc sections , that it was a quite messy launch .

[Baba1906]

you cant kill a 10 million people community. no way. but AoC is so coooooool. Sure it had some problems. but it is worth to wait. it is just way to much fun.
me personaly havent had any big bug problems yet. once i saw a npc floating in the air as if he was possesed but i can live with that.

[sumfood4u]

Blizzard is the Drug Seller!

[Xiru]

AoC is the better game. But the reason WoW is considered such a big success is because of the botting and farming. If you take a look at the chart here:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Ch...

You will see there are about 6 million Chinese accounts. Now I know that there are legitimate Chinese players out there. But the majority of these accounts are farmers. I have had a sour taste for WoW ever since my mage was stolen from my account and moved to someone elses account. Blizzards response was "too bad". The funny thing is, they had the credit card info of the person who stole it. But anyway, there are about 2 mil US subscribers and 2 million from Europe and that region. So a new MMO could be a "WoW Killer", but it would have to pass about 5 million or so accounts. AoC just can't do it because of the hardware requirements and age requirements.

[KatanaSteel]

Will all the quality MMORPGs that have come out or are coming soon (WoW, AoC, GW2, Aion) fans of the genre are really spoilt for choice.

I really, really want this game. I love the graphics, the archetypes (especially the Demonologist since I prefer caster classes), and because it's something different to WoW (I broke my addiction to that long ago). If I see more positive feedback from this game I'll build a PC just to play it, which will also serve for Guild Wars 2.

Any idea of value for money pc specs?

[zagibu]

World of Diablo. I guess it will come on christmas 2010. It will be the next WoW.