MMO News Wrap-Up

20 Nov 2009 at 11:56:02 by Bill Vaughan

Several exciting and noteworthy events occurred in the world of MMO gaming this week. Follow me, dear reader, through the week's big announcements, rumours and revelations which involve Age of Conan, The Secret World, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Star Trek Online and Stargate Worlds.

I can't help feeling sorry for poor old Funcom; When we spoke to Erling Ellingsen, Funcom's director of communications, earlier this week, he was very positive about the company's new studio in Montreal, which has now been fully established. We talked about Funcom's plans, and he confirmed that new staff will be hired for the Canadian studio in the next 18 months to work alongside the staff that have already been relocted there, as stated weeks ago when news of the move was announced. All good so far, but the next day Funcom's Q3 financial report came out to reveal that Age of Conan, which did actually gain subscribers after its summer re-evaluation period, lost them again when two new MMOs were launched later on. I can only assume those MMOs were Aion and Champions Online.

AoC just can't seem to get a break, and its certainly not through lack of effort on Funcom's part. So many changes have been made since the, admittedly bad, launch, not to mention all the new content and features that have been added over the last few months, including the long-awaited Veteran System.

Something else that emerged in the financial report was news that, in Funcom's opinion, player expectations for the upcoming MMO 'The Secret World' are higher than they were for Age of Conan in the same stage of development. Remembering all the excitement surrounding AoC before launch, that's a very good sign for TSW. I must admit, the game looks very interesting indeed. Funcom has the benefit of hindsight now too when it comes to launching an MMO and what players want/expect, so I'll be surprised, no - pretty disgusted, if the company manges to get this new game wrong.

Speaking of getting it wrong, I took a look at Warhammer Online on Monday and pointed out the reasons I feel Mythic failed in delivering the WoW-killing MMO it wanted. A mixture of bad judgement and unlucky timing lead to a 300k userbase, almost half of the minimum number the company was aiming for. So much potential, but was it wise to go up against World of Warcraft when the game still has such a hold over the fantasy MMO community?

That community was, dare I say, a little disappointed at the weekend when it transpired that the annual Blizzard convention, BlizzCon, was not being held in Las Vegas as reports last week suggested. The most annoying part of it is it could have been, but thanks to an over-keen member of staff at the Las Vegas Convention Centre, those chances have been scuppered. Apparently, Blizzard and those in charge of the LVCC discussed the possibility of holding the event in Vegas and a hold was placed on the dates mentioned, but the hold was changed to a confirmed booking in error, leading to the dates being published by the LVCC.

I can't help wondering if Blizzard intended to have the event in Vegas but, due to the leak, cancelled it. This summer, details of WoW's next expansion, Cataclysm, were all over the net before it was officially announced, taking the shine off the grand unveiling at BlizzCon in August, where developers admitted they were mighty cheesed off about being pipped to the post. The news of a Las Vegas BlizzCon coming out before it was meant to must've stung, if that's what was intended.

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