Age of Conan

Age of Conan
Update
22 April 2008
Funcom Update

The Funcom Group Funcom N.V and subsidiaries

Funcom would like to provide an overview of the status and plans for the launch of the Age of Conan game,
planned to take place on May 20th 2008.

Before launch Funcom will spend the four weeks leading up to the launch to further increase market awareness as well as continue bug fixing, optimizing and preparing for the retail launch:

Maximize market awareness

• A general escalation of PR and marketing oriented Age of Conan news messaging should be expected up until launch

• An exclusive beta weekend with Gamespot.com, one of the world’s most prominent game sites, was conducted successfully during the weekend 18-20 April

• IGN and its partner Gamespy.com, also among the most prominent game sites of the world, will exclusively host an ‘Open Beta’ from May 1st

• Funcom and Eidos will conduct a large scale global marketing campaign in conjunction with the launch. Funcom expects to spend from 12% and upwards of the Company’s anticipated gross revenues from the game on marketing and related activities.

• Age of Conan has received over 20 front covers of gaming magazines across the world and the Company expects this number to reach above 30 by the end of the launch month.

• Funcom has received some pre-order data, but it does not have an aggregated global overview of the number of pre-orders for the game. Different retail chains in various markets follow very different routines with respect to collecting and reporting preorder numbers. The Company interprets the data it has received as positive and is part of the data foundation for the scaling of the server park. The pre-order numbers in some important retail chains track as among the highest for any MMO launched.

• Internal surveys indicate that a large proportion of the players who have tested the game would like to buy it. However, the beta tester segment may not necessarily be representative of the MMO gamer segment. Nevertheless, the Company interprets the survey feedback as positive.

• The Age of Conan community keeps growing and reflects the momentum of the game. There were 475.000 unique visitors at ageofconan.com in the last week (according to Googleanalytics)

Continued bug fixing and technical testing

• The Company will continue to polish and optimize in the final weeks to achieve the desired quality of the game at launch.

• The Company will continue to perform technical testing to reduce risks at launch. Key risk before launch: Unforeseen technical issues that will require more time to correct than is available under current time schedule.

At launch

Funcom has, in the opinion of Management, prepared well for the launch. However, most MMO’s on the PC platform have experienced technical issues of various severities during launch. The investor community should therefore be prepared that Age of Conan may also experience technical issues during the launch.

• Funcom has at present scaled the server park for the Age of Conan game for handling 500.000- 600.000 active 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. Funcom may, in the period before launch, decide to further adjust the server capacity according to the game momentum leading up to launch.

• With the current server capacity projection, Funcom is facilitating for a major success in the MMO market. However, the success of the game will depend first and foremost on the response it receives from players after several hours of playtime of the finished product.

• Funcom would like to underline that this server capacity does not constitute a projection for the subscriber levels some months after the launch. Funcom can add additional server capacity within weeks (2-6 weeks) and will do so if required. However, in a very successful scenario, server capacity may become a constraint to the growth rate. In a less successful scenario, the Company may have to write off parts of the investment made into server capacity.

• The performance of the game before, during and after the launch is also dependent on the quality and the performance of key partners in the areas of hosting, billing, bandwidth, technology and distribution. The Company’s most important partners/suppliers are IPsoft, SCi Entertainment/Eidos, Cisco, Dell and GlobalCollect.

• As for all MMOs, the number of Age of Conan game clients sold through retail and digitally will over time be significantly higher than the number of concurrent subscribers for the game, due to subscriber churn and periods of subscriber inactivity.

• Funcom has passed the Age of Conan Gold master milestone according to plan and the retail DVDs has been delivered for box production. At launch an online update will be available for downloading where additional content, optimizations and bugfixes will be included.

• Key pricing parameters for the game will be:

o The Standard game SKU will have a Suggested Retail Price (SRP) of 59,99 USD in North America and at 49.99 Euro in the European markets. Funcom will receive a share of the wholesale price of the product which is the price selling into the retail-chains, which naturally is lower than the SRP.

o The subscription fee will be priced at 14,99 USD in North America and 12,99 Euro in the European markets (plus VAT where applicable)

• Key risks at 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 stable and will adjust its actions to the reception of the game in the gamer market.

• Funcom will continue online updates with content updates and technical fixes

• Funcom will provide additional guiding before the Second Quarter 2008 reporting

• Key risks after launch of Age of Conan 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 during and after the launch period.

Funcom will not take investor and analyst meetings in the period from May 4 2008 until May 30 2008 due to
the very sensitive nature of that time period.

The Management Board of Funcom N.V. Dübendorf, April 22, 2008

What about NDA? Still active?

Originally posted by Herodes

What about NDA? Still active?

Yes NDA is still in effect.

NDA is now just for the sake of it.  Open beta 1 week away and game has gone gold.  Maybe I should just start spilling the cold hard truths right now.

Lol do it i want to be entertained this morning :) j/k

Nice, they are planning to be able to hold 500-600k users simultaneously at launch.  If you go by the standard 15-20% of possible users active at any given time, thats just under 3 mil subs they are capable of handling.  One of the biggest issues with WoW was the incredible growth early on.  It took them some time to be able to increase server capacity and get rid of the queues.  Funcom looks like they learned from that and have their servers ready to handle a significant load....overly cautious is good. 

Originally posted by oronisi

Nice, they are planning to be able to hold 500-600k users simultaneously at launch.  If you go by the standard 15-20% of possible users active at any given time, thats just under 3 mil subs they are capable of handling.  One of the biggest issues with WoW was the incredible growth early on.  It took them some time to be able to increase server capacity and get rid of the queues.  Funcom looks like they learned from that and have their servers ready to handle a significant load....overly cautious is good. 

Hehe thats VERY overly cautious i would say. Would be nice to see 3 mill subs but i can t see it.

Originally posted by Ahiles

NDA is now just for the sake of it.  Open beta 1 week away and game has gone gold.  Maybe I should just start spilling the cold hard truths right now.

I go in with the mindset that it will be it's own game.  Im not looking for an xyz mmo killer, im looking for a refreshing change which is just what this brings.

Originally posted by Ahiles

NDA is now just for the sake of it.  Open beta 1 week away and game has gone gold.  Maybe I should just start spilling the cold hard truths right now.

Between all the Negitive reviews and beta leaks, it seems we have another Vanguard coming on soon but I have not tested the game myself, all I have seen are Video's so far.

I will be trying it during open beta.  (Waiting on Darkfall Currently)

If you can or would PM about the Necromancer class. (if you have any info).