Age of Conan hits 1 million

Funcom have announced that recently launched MMO Age of Conan has already shipped 1 million units.
"Sales data shows that Age of Conan is the biggest MMO launch sinceWorld of Warcraft," says Funcom Vice President of Sales and Marketing,Morten Larssen. "The numbers are very promising, and we are very proudto be one of the fastest selling PC games ever in a launch month andthe biggest simultaneous Europe/US MMO launch in history."
I always mention WoW when interviewing MMO developers. In reply theyinvariably spin the PR line that Blizzard's classic game is amarket-opening opportunity rather than a competitive threat. Thesefigures prove they may have been right. Would Conan have done so wellin the pre-WoW days of say 2003? How many of these 1 million - orthereabouts - players are high level WoW players taking a break fromAzeroth?

Of course, shipping a million units is one thing, gettingplayers to subscribe for more than a month or two is the real successmetric. I've been playing Conan for a couple of weeks now and while themore involved combat and character physicality are welcome MMOinnovations I won't be subscribing just yet. For a start my laptop - adecent ram-packed high-end one bought about a year ago - may havefinally met its match with Conan. Unlike WoW, which could probably runon an Atari ST* Age of Conan demands the latest hardware to playsmoothly at any kind of decent resolution. More importantly Conan isfull of zoning. These loading screens between areas, buildings andcities are hugely annoying immersion-breakers. WoW, and theincreasingly impressive Lord of the Rings Online, restrict zoning to aminimum, and so create the feeling of being in a coherent world.Despite this Conan has a stack of promise. It looks great - assumingyou have a sexy PC - and has had a relatively smooth launch. I willdefinitely be back. Anyone here playing?