All's looking good for next week's public launch, as Funcom and Eidos proclaimed that over 1 million people have signed up for the Age of Conan beta, a figure shadowed only by the 5 million unique visitors tracked on the game's official website during 2008. They even believe this represents "the largest ever beta sign-up figure in the [Western] history of the genre", thought admitedly they're still not sure how these figures will convert into sales and, most importantly, subscriptions. I know plenty of people are going to give it a try, at the very least.

And if that's no clear indication of the game's short-term success, World of Warcraft's population is already starting to take a hit, as half of my betraying guildies will tell you. As far as I can tell, no other MMO has triggered such a large exodus of WoW players, over the past three years since Blizzard launched it. LotR Online came close in 2007, but it was a very, very short-lived distraction. The question is, will Age of Conan last long enough to threaten WoW's undisputed reign?

I still have my doubts.

P.S. We have a new Age of Conan 'femme fatale' trailer added yesterday, in case you didn't notice.

Tags:  PC, fantasy, mmo, mythology, role-playing, Eidos, Funcom