Age of Conan Stole World of Warcraft Subscribers

After listening in on Activision Blizzard's earnings conference call today, Edge Online has learned that Age of Conan was able to swipe a considerable number of World of Warcraft subscribers. However, nearly half of them are already back exploring Azeroth:
Blizzard president Mike Morhaime said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call on Thursday, "Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we've seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft."

In about a month's worth of time, Funcom's Age of Conan garnered 700,000 subscribers, according to the developer.

Morhaime said that players that leave WoW are often drawn back because of the content and service that Blizzard provides.

"Any massively multiplayer online game that launches today isn't just competing with the amount and breadth of content that we launched with back in 2004," Morhaime stated.

My prediction of the first game to truly go toe-to-toe with World of Warcraft? Blizzard's next MMORPG.