Speaking with investors in a conference call this week, big wig Mike Morhaime has conceded that Funcom's new MMO, Age of Conan, is taking players off of World of Warcraft. Morhaime is confident these defectors will return to the Blizzard fold, however.

While several players left to try out Conan, Blizzard believe "we've seen about 40 per cent of those players return to World of Warcraft," according to Edge Online, quoting the studio chief.

Conan has garnered around 700,000 user accounts since launching, but it is unclear how many of these will be converted into long-term subscribers to the new persistent world.

"Any massively game that launches today isn't just competing with the amount and breadth of content that we launched with back in 2004," Morhaime reminded the suits - pointing to the frequent updates WoW has garnered.

The new Lich King add-on is also in-bound. More shortly.

By Luke Guttridge