Age of Conan always seemed to be the underdog on the MMO market. Why should anybody want to play a game set in the universe of a very aged barbarian out of some 80ies movies (the original Conan books by Robert E. Howard are from the 30ies)? Why should this game be successful with contenders like World of Warcraft, Lord of The Rings Online and Guild Wars, and with Warhammer Online soon to come?

But never underestimate the impact an adult setting (which is not only about nudity and brutal finishing moves) can have on the audience. If it was only for those two aspects of the game, Funcom and Eidos probably wouldn't have been able to announce today that their game has over 700.000 active players by now, approximately six weeks after its release.

There is still a long way to go to beat World of Warcraft which has over 10 million subscribers by now. But then again: WoW has been running for many years already, Age of Conan is only a few weeks old. It being the number two subscription MMO now therefore doesn't mean that the chances are high to beat WoW anytime soon; but Conan's world could certainly turn into a contender over time. Also: when we keep in mind that there are still so many bugs left in Age of Conan (like the somehow amusing fact that female characters do less damage than male characters), that the high-level-content is far from being very satisfactory and that the promising PVP aspects are still in their children's shoes; then the fact that so many people have still not given up on it obviously means that the game world must be pretty much satisfactory nevertheless. It seems to be good enough for the community to forgive its flaws.

Probably that is the magic that contenders in the past (Tabula Rasa, Dungeons&Dragons Online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, to only name a few) were not able to deliver (although they also didn't sport nipples or a general adult atmosphere).

When we interviewed Conan the Cimmerian about this, he replied: "Beginner's mistake."