Age of Conan Server Shutdowns Coming

Post by trog @ 01:48pm 13/01/09 | 25 Comments

An anonymous user let us know about GamaSutra's post looking at some bad news for Age of Conan fans:

Developer and publisher Funcom will close 31 out of 48 Age of Conan servers this week, likely a result of lower-than-expected subscriptions for the massively multiplayer online role-play game.

The closings are most significant with its North America and Oceania operations, which the company will consolidate from 24 servers to just six. The merged user populations follow the successful combining of two US servers in the previous week.

age of conan

Latest Comments

Link

Fireblood
Posted 01:52pm 13/1/09

Poor Age of Conan....almost feel sorry for them blowing millions of dollars in development banking on the fact they would make x amount per month for the next few years.

Link

paveway
Posted 02:05pm 13/1/09

you'd have to be retarded to make a mmo in the same fantasy type style as WOW

Link

Thundercracker
Posted 02:09pm 13/1/09

you would also have to be retarded to make an MMO like age of conan and to expect people will enjoy it

Link

tequila
Posted 02:10pm 13/1/09

I just can't see how it would save money by shutting down a few servers
they've probably got a f*** tonne of rack space & a f*** tonne of bandwidth already

so if they shut them down and move all the players to just six, all they're saving is the power used for those servers?
i mean if they had 50,000 users before and they still have 50,000 - the bandwidth stays the same

Link

Fireblood
Posted 02:12pm 13/1/09

^ Sell off the servers to keep the company floating?

Link

Templar
Posted 02:32pm 13/1/09

There was some nice things they did with this game but I felt it was like playing a Beta, the game was simply not polished when launched and that's why so many people left this game, myself included.

Link

Saint
Posted 02:38pm 13/1/09

What Templar said, they f***ed themselves over trying to push it out too early.

Link

casa
Posted 02:39pm 13/1/09

I think most people these days are just complete wow f*** heads. Me included.
I stopped playing AOC for the same reason I stopped playing WAR which is the same reason I hate playing WOW but for some other reason continue to play it.

They all have s*** pvp and are complete broken pieces of Beta crap.

Link

typo
Posted 02:54pm 13/1/09

I just can't see how it would save money by shutting down a few servers
they've probably got a f*** tonne of rack space & a f*** tonne of bandwidth already

so if they shut them down and move all the players to just six, all they're saving is the power used for those servers?
i mean if they had 50,000 users before and they still have 50,000 - the bandwidth stays the same

- They probably lease the servers. If not they can still sell them.

- They will most likely be hosting from a data-centre, thus their bandwidth costs are not fixed

- Power is a major consideration for MMOs. CPU and Bandwidth is comparatively cheap in comparison.

- You need a critical mass of people on a server for MMOs to work. They need to reduce the number of servers to push everybody together.

Link

Obes
Posted 02:58pm 13/1/09

I think calling it a beta is kind.

It was still in concept testing phase. Combos weren't combos but more a *spell* with a password that got smashed by lag.

Link

TicMan
Posted 03:04pm 13/1/09

I hear ya casa .. after trying AoC and WAR (and declaring they were the most awesome games ever at the time of logging in for the first time), I'm now back in WoTLK land.

Goddamn crack addiction.

Link

stinky
Posted 03:07pm 13/1/09

You'll also find when they say 'server' they mean a fairly decent cluster of machines. A shard to use the original Ultima Online terminology is usually a group of servers running together.

Link

Phooks
Posted 03:37pm 13/1/09

Here's hoping darkfall works out.

Link

Nathan
Posted 05:16pm 13/1/09

What Obes said. It has nothing to do with cost and everything to do with preventing more users from leaving.

Link

trog
Posted 05:24pm 13/1/09

Seems to me if you're closing 60% of your servers all at once you've left it a bit late, surely?

Link

Jim
Posted 05:30pm 13/1/09

what saint said templar said
really liked this game, the classes, the world, the music but it was released waaaaaaaay too early

Link

Taipan
Posted 05:39pm 13/1/09

Phooks people have been saying that exact thing for the past ...what ... 5-6 years now?

From what I have seen of Darkfall in recent times it's not going to be very carebear forgiving. So that pretty much counts out 10 million wow players ever giving it a fair shot. Sadly MMO players in general are a lot like sheep and even the hardest of the hard will forgo a good pvp game for a game that just has s*** loads of people playing it.

It's kind of pointless going hunting in a world that has a population close to that of the moons.

Link

Thundercracker
Posted 07:32pm 13/1/09

You need a critical mass of people on a server for MMOs to work. They need to reduce the number of servers to push everybody together.

pretty much this. there is nothing worse than an MMO with no people

didnt WAR merge servers recently?

Link

ravn0s
Posted 07:51pm 13/1/09

i dont think so. they have had free server transfers though.

Link

StreX
Posted 10:19pm 13/1/09

i really liked this game when it first came out cos i have never played wow or any other mmo, so my view wansnt tainted and i didnt really know what to expect from this type of game.

got over it in about a month though cos i am a leet fps player for lyfe and nothing beats just jumping on tf2 for a quick slaw that doesnt destroy your life.

Link

ChickenS***
Posted 10:34pm 13/1/09

I think war is going to go down the same path, sadly. It's another game that suffers from EA-syndrome.

EA f**** everything over, apart from one thing... it's self.

Link

Midda
Posted 10:47pm 13/1/09

^^Dead Space and Rock Band seem to be doing okay.

Link

Twisted
Posted 01:03am 14/1/09

Here's hoping darkfall works out.

Yeah....as long as the developers have planned for what to expect. A niche game which is going to appeal to hardcore MMO players.

Link

Term
Posted 10:26am 14/1/09

realistically like others have said if your going to compete in the same genre as wow, you sure as f*** want to be bringing your A game to the table.

Like jim said, this didn't have anywhere near the polish it needed to keep players amused, I've seen single player games with more depth of play.

Link

giririsss
Posted 10:46am 14/1/09

By closing the servers they also reduce administration and maintenance on those servers. etc etc, and yeah, its about keep the population on servers at a minimum level.

Sucks for AOC but tbh, i thought WAR was the more likely of the two to beat out WOW, but neither did.

Commenting has been locked for this item.

25 Comments

Show

News

Features

Reviews

Bravely Default 2

User:
Pass: