Tag: Age of Conan

Funcom Q4 Finances: Project A Unveiled


In their third quarter finances, Funcom predicted a lower revenue for quarter four on account of the initial fervor over Age of Conan’s free to play ending. In the presentation, released today, Funcom reaffirmed this by posting a revenue loss of 11% quarter over quarter.

While Age of Conan remains Funcom’s primary source of income, revenue for the title was down compared to the previous quarter when Funcom launched free to play. Bloodline Champions, Funcom’s MOBA, saw an increase in profits thanks in part to the launch in Russia.

Quarter 1 2012 revenues are expected to be even lower due to a further decreased revenue from Age of Conan. Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and Bloodline Champions continue to generate a positive cash flow for Funcom, brought down by the costs of developing several titles.

The finances also make reference to “Project A,” an MMO in the conceptual stage.

(Source: Funcom)

Yes, There Are Boobs In Age of Conan


Play Age of Conan now my lord, free forever. Instead of going into my usual rant about boobs and promoting negative stereotypes about the demographic, I’ll let the search results speak for themselves:

Age of Conan Naked: 79
Age of Coman Women: 75
Conan Nude: 50
Age of Conan Nude: 20

Age of Conan 3.1 Brings Headaches, Patches, Server Downtime


Earlier this week Funcom updated Age of Conan to version 3.1, adding some arguably much needed back end maintenance and optimizations to the game as well as the Dreamworld engine that Age of Conan runs on. You can read the patch notes here, as the list of changes are truly massive, but despite how many times the word “performance” appears (six times), the update found players foaming at the mouth toward Funcom.

Players were experiencing the rather generic list of issues: Crashing to desktop, crippling lag, bugs with instances, custom preferences not saving, but boy does it get worse. Developers dread when this bug appears, but players began reporting item attachments in mail being lost in transit. As a result of all of these issues, Funcom took down the Age of Conan servers at 7pm EST last night to implement bug fixes, once again at 2pm this afternoon which also disabled the in-game traders and mailing system, and yet again at 10pm tonight to implement even more fixes. The servers should be down until 4:30am tomorrow morning. The patching of the European servers has also apparently been delayed due to the number of issues present.

Since Age of Conan will be offline all night, we won’t be able to see until tomorrow morning if the fix does any good. Best of luck to the Funcom team, and hopefully the programmers pulling an all-night’er have plenty of coffee in the office.

Funcom Q3 2011 Finances


Because most of you probably don’t care to read up on it yourself, MMO Fallout is committed to bringing you the important information from each quarter’s financial reports. Yesterday, Funcom revealed its third quarter finances to investors, and there is plenty to boast about. Revenues increased 55% in the third quarter compared to the second, but Funcom expects the fervor to somewhat die out, and has predicted a loss in revenue in the upcoming fourth quarter due to a foreseen diminished interest in Age of Conan.

The Secret World is “progressing well,” and the team is putting the final touches on squashing bugs, improving optimization, and balancing content. The game is still set for an April 2012 launch. Funcom’s final figures are rather low due to the development costs of The Secret World and a number of free to play games. In their “target scenario,” The Secret World will sell 30% more clients, and a healthy retention is around 490,000 subscribers. In their “Conan prediction,” Funcom expects only slightly better retention than Age of Conan (280,000) and one million sales in the first year.

Some more interesting information:

  • The cost of hosting Age of Conan since launch has been 18 million, excluding bandwidth costs.
  • The Secret World will cost approximately 4-8 million over the same time span, reducing costs greatly.

Funcom Q2 2011 Finances


It’s August, and that can only mean plenty of Q2 financial reports to read. Funcom has released its financial reports for the second quarter of 2011, with just enough time to factor in Age of Conan: Unchained. Here are some points of interest:

  • Age of Conan: Unchained has more than doubled revenue for the title, although we already knew that.
  • Bloodline Champions is being localized in Russia.
  • Funcom believes that the Secret World will be a less risky launch, given the stability of its engine (Dreamworld 2.0)
  • Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, and Bloodline Champions are all bringing positive cash flow, but the development costs for The Secret World, Pets Vs Monsters, Fashion Week, and My Kingdom are putting serious hurt on Funcom’s money.
  • Funcom sees The Secret World as selling more in its first year than Age of Conan did, as well as significantly better retention.
  • A “healthy retention” for The Secret World is considered 490,000 subscribers. “Conan-like scenario” is listed as 280,000 subscribers.
Unfortunately, unlike NCsoft, Funcom does not offer as detailed sales figures on a per-game basis or per-region. So Funcom is bleeding money, but such an outcome is expected with so many projects on the table.

Unsurprisingly: F2P Raises Population, Revenue In Age of Conan


In case you haven’t been following the pattern, when subscription games add free to play aspects the population tends to increase, as well as revenue. Following this trend, Age of Conan opened up its servers to free players over a month ago, and has since seen the related spike in population. How many? 300,000 according to Funcom. The revenues have more than doubled over the first month.

If you take the announcement that activity has more than quadrupled, this gives Age of Conan somewhere around 75,000 active players prior to the free to play transition. At $15 a pop, that counts for around $1.1 million in income per month, meaning Age of Conan is worth over $2.2 million now in revenue, even more since we’re only counting minimum.

This is just a very side thought, but is there even a conceivable future for a game moving from subscription to free to play and still shutting down due to low population? I don’t think there’s been a notable case so far of an MMO going free and managing to continue losing revenue.

Then again I could be wrong.

Age of Conan: Free To Play Comes Today


Age of Conan’s anticipated romp into the free to play world goes live today with the release of Age of Conan: Unchained. Heading over to the Age of Conan website will greet you with the above splash page. The game servers came down approximately two hours ago, and will be offline for another six (estimated). When the game comes back online, players both free and paid will be able to log in and see the new changes, not the least controversial will be what Funcom decides to stick in the cash shop.

You can see the trailer below. Blood and Glory, Funcom’s attempt at hardcore PvP (with looting players) does not go live with this update.

To those of you still confused about what is being offered for free, read this. Yes, I am aware that the Free to Play update was originally called Unrated.

Age of Conan Going Free To Play This Summer!


Crom, I don’t normally pray to you. I don’t have the time, what with writing all those forum posts making jokes like “Funcom? More like… not… so… funcom!” If you will grant me one thing, make it Age of Conan free to play. I’m playing in the welcome back week, and I’m very much enjoying the game, but I need to see more. And if you don’t, then to hell with you.

At least that’s what I imagine some Age of Conan player somewhere prayed before he went to bed last night, because Funcom delivered. Formally announced on the forums, Funcom is launching Age of Conan: Unrated this summer, allowing free players access to the majority of the original game, and a little bit of Rise of the Godslayer, absolutely free. Free players are limited from certain dungeons, Alternative Advancement points, offline levels, and veteran rewards, as well as specific raids, certain classes, and sieges altogether. Still, there is a lot to see in new Age of Conan free…for free.

You can check out the free/members perks here. Age of Conan free to play goes live this summer.

Age of Conan Film/Game Tie-In


Craig Morrison strikes me as the kind of guy who would immerse himself deeply enough in his work that he’d require the Funcom employees to pray to Crom every morning before work begins:

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That’s what’s important! Valor pleases you, Crom… so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!

A good few people are asking: Will the upcoming Conan movie save Age of Conan? According to Craig Morrison, the game doesn’t need saving.

First of all I’m not sure we need saving! We wouldn’t still be running the game with the size of team and the operation that we have if the game wasn’t perfectly viable, profitable and doing well. We still have a sizeable team working on the game, we are still adding new content – we’ve added as much new content this year already as any of our other competitors and we’re only going to do more for the rest of the year.

If Funcom is as happy with the current state of Age of Conan as Morrison wants us to believe, Age of Conan has a healthy future ahead of it. According to the Eurogamer interview, not only did last year’s Rise of the Godslayer maintain the population, it actually brought players back.

You can read the entire interview at the link above, which goes into detail on the new content that is appearing in Age of Conan to tie in with the film.

Age Of Conan Wants You Back: Almost Two Weeks Free


Former player of Age of Conan? Promised yourself you’d never go back to Funcom after they [insert reason here]? Well, even if you don’t hold a grudge against the company, they are willing to have you back. In fact, starting today Funcom has taken the liberty of reactivating your account for you, until the end of May. While current players are receiving a handful of potions and experience boosts, former players can return for the next week and a half and see what they’ve been missing in the land of Hyboria.

Check out the announcement here.