Age of Conan – Interesting Facts And Numbers

I just (minutes ago) discovered a PDF which included a lot of interesting facts/numbers for the stockbrokers of Funcom – the producer of Age of Conan. For players really interested in the game, I’d recommend reading this post (or PDF).

There ain’t much to do here but to quote what’s on the PDF, which I got off from Newsweb. It was published at 08:17 this morning:

Status of the launch

Market update

• The Collector’s Edition of the Age of Conan game is now sold out in all markets. Over 110.000 copies were produced. The CE edition is also sold out in most retail chains, but the CE version may still be found on shelves in some stores.
• Funcom estimates the day-one ship in (the number of boxes sent to retail) of the Age of Conan game to be around 700.000. The Company underlines that there is high uncertainty regarding the sell through speed of this day-one shipment.
• The pre-order program has continued to develop very positively. Based on input from some major retail-chains and combined with the simultaneous multi-language launch in both Europe and North America, Funcom has reason to believe that the game is on track to at launch have the highest pre-order number for any MMO ever. The pre-orders will represent a significant proportion of the day 1 ship-in.
• Funcom has made an additional order for servers, increasing the size of the server park for the Age of Conan game, to cater for 100.000 more subscribers for the launch period, under a set of assumptions for playtime per subscriber, number of subscribers per server, number of subscribers per game clients sold etc. The server parks will now be dimensioned to handle 600.000-700.000 subscribers (Not concurrent users).
• Since January 2008 the Age of Conan site had more than six million unique visitors according to Google Analytics. During last week the site had 1.1 million unique visitors.
• The first review for the game gives it a 9 out of 10 score, and it is Game Reactor, the Nordic region’s largest gaming magazine, which gives the score.

Launch update

• Funcom has successfully launched the Age of Conan game for around 100.000 early access players on May 17th. Almost all the early access players logged in during the first night. The launch was conducted without major technical issues.
• The full US launch is planned for May 20th and the full European launch is planned for May 23rd.
• The DirectX 10 version of the game will not ship with the initial launch. The DirectX 10 version of the game will be premiered at the German Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, August 20 – 24.

Launch risk update

• Key risks for the remaining parts of the launch will be technical issues related to network and servers and to client performance such as stability and frame rate for different hardware configurations.

After launch

In the period after launch, Funcom will focus on ensuring that the game is as stable as possible and will adjust its actions to the reception of the game in the gamer market.

• Funcom expects a number of game reviews from the press in the coming days. Review scores may impact the sales success of the game.
• Funcom will continue to update the Age of Conan game with technical fixes as well as content updates.
• Funcom will not report subscriber numbers on a regular basis after launch, for marketing reasons, but will provide additional financial guidance before the Second Quarter 2008 reporting.
• Key risks after launch will be the quality of gameplay, and thereby the longevity of the average subscription, and the ability of the Company to quickly address potential technical issues. Another key risk will be Funcom’s ability to optimize the game’s performance for PC’s with medium to low end specifications.

Funcom is not taking investor and analyst meetings in the period from May 4th 2008 until May 30th 2008 due to the very sensitive nature of this time period.
The Management Board of Funcom N.V. Dübendorf, May 18, 2008

If you don’t believe the facts posted here, you can read the PDF yourself. Funcom have gained a +8.40% value on the stocks’ price from this morning. If I’m right, we’ll see a rise from now on till a week after release in Europe (23rd.).

Update: I’ve also put it up on Digg, and if you want to, you can dig the story here. Also, I’ve highlighted and formatted some of the interesting facts, numbers and words.