14 DAY TRIAL // You know one MMO has hit trouble when it announces that it plans to merge servers. Funcom, the developer and operator of Age of Conan: Hyperborian Adventures announces that it plans to merge some of its game servers in an effort to create “healthy” player populations required to make the game progress in an interesting manner.
Servers in both North America and in Europe are being targeted and at the moment it's not clear which servers will get closed up or how the transfer of characters will be handled. This means that Funcom overestimated the number of players its MMO would have.
Craig Morrison, who is now the game director, wrote that “Still, there are many complexities involved in this, and we want to ensure that everything happens as fair and streamlined as possible. That work has now started, and we are naturally making sure that guilds and players can get to new servers in the best possible way. We will come back with more info on this, but I hope that this will serve as a positive injection to the social scene in the game”.
The transition to a lower number of servers also means that DirectX 10 functionality might be implemented quicker than previously thought. Watch out for the next gameplay update.
Earlier in the year, in August, Funcom said that Age of Conan is a success, with more than 800,000 copies sold and more than 400,000 subscriptions active. It appeared to be a solid game, but players started complaining that there's not much to do once you begin to level up. The Player vs. Player aspect has suffered from problems which Funcom sought to address through numerous patches.
The launch of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King are also set to limit the number of players attracted to Age of Conan.