Despite the initial 'buzz' that surrounded the release and honeymoon stage last year, Age of Conan seems to be going downhill and does not have any brakes. The games publishers and developers Funcom have recently announced that they will be closing down 31 of the 48 servers. The most obvious reason for this is that they just are not being used by enough players and are unprofitable to keep up and running.

By Dean Sherwin

Most expected the game to be major competition for WoW, (Which has been at the top of the market for the last 4-5 years) but it just never caught on as expected with the gaming community. The game offers a host of intriguing and well-developed features such as property owning system, not to mention the storyline. However, because of the lack of interest in the game and thus the knock-on effect of severely under populated servers, the game has gone downhill with many users complaining of boredom within the game.

The issue of keeping servers adequately populated is an issue with all developers as social interaction and busy town are necessary but cramped servers can often lead to much activity on screen, overwhelming the player, not to mention the lag caused my so many characters.

Funcom have stated that by reducing he numbers of servers, they hope to increase player enjoyment and interaction. However, it is more likely that they are simply trying to cut-costs while keeping a steady income flow coming their way during the development and testing of their future release 'The Secret World', which is though to be due for release sometime in 2010.

This news has come as many other free games such ad Bounty Bay Online, are preparing to expand servers and begin beta testing. In such economic times, perhaps the free MMO scene will take the upper hand.