It seems that the latest attempts to crack into the MMO market and steal some of the customers away from World of Warcraft has failed. With games like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan, there were some thoughts that World of Warcraft may loose some subscribers, but that doesn’t seem to be the fact.

The first game to be released, Age of Conan, in May 2008, seemed to have a reasonably good start, with 400,000 subscribers, which then rose up to 700,000 within the first few months. However, it has gone down hill slightly. In January, Funcom, announced that they would be shutting down over half of the Conan servers, and recently, there have been rumors that Conan’s subscriber level is down to 100,000. Not great. I personally think that this is because of 3 reasons. First being the price, the monthly cost of the game is slightly more expensive than World of Warcraft, also, the age rating of the game is 18+, this can turn off younger customers who are not allowed to play the game. The final reason is the specification, it did require some power to play the game well.

The second game to be released was Warhammer Online in September 2008. Like Age of Conan, Warhammer Online had a good start, with over 750,000 subscribers within the first couple of months, however, it is now around 300,000. I am not entirely sure why it’s failed as I haven’t played it, but I have heard that it takes some time to level, it has a low level cap, and there was not a huge amount of Player Vs Environment content.

Although there are some good reasons above why these games have failed, I don’t think it’s entirely their fault. With the release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in November 2008, it couldn’t have helped the other MMO’s. With new content, higher level cap, new classes, many MMO players either moved back to Warcraft, or just stayed where they were. Overall, it seems that other MMO’s just can’t compete with the MMO giant, World of Warcraft, however, you can’t blame these companies from trying. With the amount of money that’s on offer, 11.5 million subscribers each paying £9 each month, that’s a hell of alot of cash. Obviously there are maintenance costs and worker pay, they must still be raking it in.

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