Age of Conan Downsizing, Bigtime

While Blizzard is amazingly still setting record subscriber numbers four years after World of Warcraft's release, Gamesindustry.biz has reported that Funcom is shutting down the majority of servers for its own massive swords-and-sorcery romp, Age of Conan. The global number of servers will be dropping from 49 to a scant 18, and here's the specific breakdown.

The reduction is more dramatic in North America and the Oceanic regions, where 24 servers are being merged into just six. In the US, only one player-versus-player server and two player-versus-environment servers will remain, with each combining the populations of six or seven existing servers.

In Europe, 12 servers will remain, due to the need to provide a variety of server types in each of four languages. English-language European servers are being cut from 13 to four.

(A quick glance at the number of servers on the WOW Realm Status page provides a disturbingly stark contrast to this sizable reduction.)

This news comes just a month after Funcom said it's still working on an Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan. I wonder if that's still true in light of this serious reduction? You have to admit, the climate for online games that aren't WOW has become decidedly unfriendly of late.

Anecdotally, the most common complaint I heard about Conan was a dearth of content at higher levels, though Jeff said it only held his interest for a couple of hours even at the beginning. Are you still playing the game, and why did you stop, if not?