Another One Bites the Dust

Funcom's Age of Conan is shutting down 18 of their 24 servers in light of the dwindling number of subscribers. Like all the would be World of Warcraft killers of the last few years, it didn't quite have the muscle to de-throne the reigning king of genre, and this isn't just due to the inherent futility of that task. The game shipped with a promising combat engine, but was plagued with a lot of game-breaking bugs and a severe lack of end-game content. Just about everyone I knew was bored a few weeks into playing, and the ones that did try to stick it out ended up getting frustrated by the game's constant hiccups.

Funcom put enough effort into trying to make the game unique (and creating a decent licensed title at that), so I hope they maintain enough users to keep the remaining servers running, but these kind of mass server merges are rarely a good sign.

Flagship Studios recently closed down shortly after making a similar move with their Hellgate London servers and shutting down their Mythos beta completely.

We'll see if WaR follows a similar fate in the coming months.

Source: http://www.tumeroks.com/age-of-conan-closes-more-than-half-of-their-server/