Age of Conan tops sales charts despite being unreleased?

At this point, nothing can beat WOW. I'll be impressed if any mmo just stays afloat

I may be over thinking this but if I was a programmer or an artist or in some way working on the game this would get me excited. Sure most of their work is probably been finished for a while but they've got bug fixes and little touches to add so maybe this news will help improve the games final polish?

Or maybe not, I'm at a crossroads.

Nothing, really.

There's just a huge void in MMORPG land if you don't want to play WoW. The competitors are all getting pretty old (Dark Age of Camelot, Everquests, Eve Online, etc) and nothing new has seemed to grab much attention.

Who preorders games, anyway? Idiots? I've not heard of any PC game selling out, and there is almost always digital distribution. Why would you buy a game even if there is some swag or small discount, if you don't even know if it sucks yet?

@Rucksack
that does make sense
but, the show has gotten a lot worse

Your mom DID say that!

erm, I don't see how this can't be an error. They haven't ramped up marketing yet, so there's no real reason for them to get any more preorders than usual, aside from releasing info about the preorders somewhat recently... but that was like a couple months ago at least.

shrug?

Well, there's 100.000 people who signed up for the closed beta near the end of 2007. And there's about 500.000 in total who's signed up at the forums. So this game is definetly anticipated...
Also, by pre-ordering the game you'll get certain bonuses, in addition to getting the game 3 days before release.
And no, it will most likely not beat WOW, but it will very likely get over 1 million subscribers wich is still very impressive for an MMO.
Also consider that WOW is aimed towards the casual market.

What is so special about this MMO you ask? Well, what is so special about WOW then? You level up to &0-70 and then what? Endless grind! Not to mention the crappy PVP.
In Age of Conan, PVP will be a focus! One of the main feature in this game is that you can do siege battles with your guild.
And equipment wont such a big focus as in WOW. So you probably wont have to grind for a month just to be able to raid a dungeon. Skills will be most important in this game.

I thought about writing a blog post wich sums up the features in this game. Perhaps I will soon.

the game is fun to play (i have been in the beta for a while) tho the only issue i had was that it seems to run shitty with my system and likes to crash a lot. but chances are i might buy it later too

I have a pre-order of the CE version, but that's typical of me with MMOs I'm interested in trying out. I can see it being in the top five for sales charts since there isn't much else out there to compete with it and it's an M-rated online game. I mean, who doesn't like hearing a developer say, during a demo of the game, "...don't worry, there will be nipples at release."

I think you either like MMOs or you don't, like all other genres of games. I doubt most console gamers have any want to pay to play an MMO, which is most people who post here.

stupid that they count pre-orders with the sales...

Always has been this way. Otherwise you'd have a large surge of sales history upon release, but that wouldn't be representative of when the sales were initiated, which is the point of the weekly sales charts. Sure, people can cancel, but people can also return games after release as well.

The game looks pretty decent, but not good enough to top charts unreleased.

i think people are preordering because everywhere ive seen says its coming out march 25th!

I'm really hoping this game will be good enough to make me disregard the whole oiled-up, burly men in panties thing.