It is sometimes hard to gauge popularity and to predict sales based on anecdotal evidence, but Funcom is taking comfort in the fact that its upcoming MMO, Age of Conan, seems to be generating web traffic, beta sign-ups and a decent amount of buzz in the media and in fan communities. Does these statistics automatically guarantee success come launch day? Probably not, but it would certainly lead most to agree that the game, at the very minimum, will sell reasonably well.

According to data gather by Funcom, one million accounts have been created for the Age of Conan beta that is currently underway. This doesn't mean that pone million people are playing the beta being served up mostly by FilePlanet, but it does mean that the queue to get into the game is getting longer and longer. I would also assume that this excludes the press beta that is going on independent of the public beta.

Funcom also recorded 5 million unique visitors from 200 different countries in 2008 to its Age of Conan web sites. Again, purely anecdotal evidence that does not guarantee success, but certainly an indicator that MMO fans will be ready to jump into the game when it launches later this month. Last week alone over 725,000 unique visitors came to the Age of Conan sites.

In addition to the beta sign-ups, Funcom also revealed that almost 800.000 gamers have signed up for the Clan of Conan newsletter and last week the company registered over 115.000 posts on the official forums, across four languages. Morten Larssen, VP of Sales and Marketing at Funcom, sees this as the beginning of penetration into the western world: "We believe it represents the largest ever beta sign-up figure in the history of the genre."

While that claim is debatable depending on who you ask, Larsen and company realize they have their work cut out for them: "How all of our strong figures convert into later sales and subscription figures is still unknown, but our pre-order numbers in some important retail chains track as among the highest for any MMO launched."

We'll see how it all works out later this month when the game launches. Age of Conan launches May 20 in North America & Oceania and May 23 in Europe.