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AoC Hurt = WAR Hurt?

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Posted July 10th, 2008 by Morvelaira

Will the pain felt in AoC keep skittish gamers tied to WoW?

Age of Conan is hurting. While it may not be so gloom and doom as to predict failure, they're definitely hitting the pains of growing too fast before they were truly ready for it. All this has the Greenskin - an avid Warhammer Fanboy - worried. Now seeing what's happened to AoC, and the similarity in buildup for the two games, he's concerned the same thing might happen to WAR.

However, I’ve been wondering lately if the failures of AoC will have any negative impacts on WAR’s future launch. Here’s what’s been on my mind:

1. Collector’s Edition Pre-orders - Several commentors on this site have brought this up, and I’m starting to believe that a potential reason for why the WAR CE hasn’t sold out yet is because people feel burned by getting the AoC CE and quitting shortly afterward. It’s an expensive mistake to make…

I have to admit I'm concerned as well, but more about the points brought up in the editorial controversy of the last couple days than I am about any after effects from AoC. Even as I say that though, it looks like some of the Greenskin's fears have already been confirmed, as other bloggers express their concerns about WAR in the same breath as they say goodbye to AoC.

Being an optimist, I'm sure all the concerns will be smoothed out by the end of convention season this summer, for both games. And if they're not... well. We'll still have Wrath of the Lich King.


Comments

My bet is that the AoC hubbub will die down in the following months as the convention season ramps up.

Every one will forget about AoC's bad launch when they have glimpses of SC2/DIII/WAR/Spore/Etc dangled in front of them at E3 et all.

As Mark Jacob said, their PR machine still has a lot of tricks of their sleeves for the summer and the months leading up to WAR.

I'm inclined to think that this is the hangover from the big party that was AoC's launch. Funcom had to set up for a party and they weren't sure who all was going to attend, but they set up as best they could. Then a ton more people showed up than they expected and some of the attendees got a little rowdier than they should (maybe some heirlooms and valuables were broken). And just like a party, there are the ones who show up early and leave before the action starts, and those who show up ...

Much of AoC's hurt is exactly what most logical people expected it to be.

AoC was carried on a wave of hype that really wasn't founded. Lets be honest, their smartest move was launching AoC before WoTLK and WAR. If they had tried to directly compete with either title they would have been painfully dismantled.

I mean... just look at what you got... a low fantasy, Barbarian themed game with high system reqs, a lot of bugs, and bad blood swirling around the fringes of their testing groups....

So now that WAR's released their annoucement on the cutting of cities and classes, do you all feel the same way? They have the same problem as AoC (not delivering on the hype) but they're doing it in a different way (warning us beforehand).

Thoughts?

AoC bad launch? Sorry but come again? they made an error however and released several things prematurely there's no denial in that and they seriously underestimated the demand for the game.

AoC was turned into something by many people that it was not and the hype got a life of it's own as i did not see one new piece of information for almost a year from funcom or eidos.


Also your final statement implies that funcom tried to hide and cover up things and kept every change indoors, having fol...

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