Living Hyboria

Craig Morrison is the new producer and game director for Age of Conan, after Funcom founder Gaute Godage have chosen to leave the company. This from a press release, regarding the Morrison appointment:

“Taking on the position as Producer and Game Director on Age of Conan is a great challenge but also one I welcome. I have a clear conviction I can lead the further development in a good way, evolving Age of Conan into something even better. My main priority now is therefore to listen to, and act on, player concerns, while ensuring we add additional great content to the game,” said Craig Morrison. “At heart I will always be a gamer, and the coming changes and additions to Conan will always be done with the gamers in mind. Together I am certain we will shape an amazing future for Age of Conan.”

Godager commented in the same press release, as to why he’s stepping down and leaving the company:

“I have done my very best making this fabulous game, but I have concluded there are elements which I am dissatisfied with. I have decided to act on this, and as a result I have chosen to leave Funcom. It is time to get new, fresh eyes on Age of Conan, and I wholeheartedly support the appointment of Craig. I have had a fantastic time these last 16 years, and I am very proud of the many things Funcom has achieved. Funcom and Conan will always be a big part of me, but as I now look to new ventures outside the gaming industry I am certain Age of Conan’s future is in the best of hands.”

I wonder if there’s something else behind this as well?

Remember the Games Convention event in Leipzig that we wrote about some two weeks ago? For those of you who couldn’t attend, here’s a video tour of some of the new content in the game, presented by Funcom’s Erling Ellingson. Enjoy!

You just gotto love Norwenglish.

Funcom’s Q2 financial papers reveals that Age of Conan has got 415,000 subscribers, and have sold over 800,000 copies. Not too shabby. The same papers points to World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, and Warhammer Online, as the major competition. The latter looks really good, by the way.

At Games Convention in Leipzig a couple of days from now Funcom will present a lot of new stuff, both for press as well as consumers. New features, locations and content will be brought to the table together with tons of swag like trial accounts and limited edition game DVDs for some of the lucky visitors and Conan fans.

All of this will be presented by Funcom live on the stage and you can have a chat with the developers afterwards or in between. Plus you’ll also see a demonstration by Blue Orb Inc. on how to use a regular control pad for the game with their software.

And for press only, there will be an exclusive behind-closed-doors display of coming DirectX10 features.

Funcom’s Morten Larssen sums it up:

We are very pleased with the tremendously successful launch that we had, but this is where the real journey starts for Age of Conan. In the months ahead we will be putting a lot of effort into expanding and improving on the game, and we look forward to using the Games Convention to unveil some of the locations, content and features we have in the pipeline.

Interesting, to say the least. You’ll find them in Hall 5 at stand B10. If you’re in Germany, that is.

Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, president Mike Morhaime, said the following to Edge in a conference call the other day:

Age of Conan released with some initial success a couple of months ago, and we did see some of our players leave to try the game. However, we’ve seen about 40 percent of those players return to World of Warcraft.

He then goes on talking about how huge World of Warcraft is, their service and such.

However, the key is this: 60 percent of the players coming to Age of Conan from World of Warcraft stays. Since this is from the Blizzard head honcho himself, and no Funcom PR machine, I’d say those a pretty reliable figures.

World of Warcraft is still the dominating MMORPG however, with 10.9 million subscribers. Funcom reported 700,000 a month after launch.

Funcom and Russian game company 1C Games have signed an agreement to bring a localized version of Age of Conan to Russia in Q4.

According to the agreement 1C will fully localize voice and text and operate local customer service, communities, websites and in-game support for Age of Conan in Russian, while Funcom takes care of back-end technology, server infrastructure and continuous development of the game. A dedicated Russian realm is to be created, giving the Russian community an opportunity to stay together and communicate with each other in their native language.

Read the press release for more, but beware of the PR hype machine, it’s a nasty beast hiding in texts like this…

The short answer is no, they are not. However, WoW Riot is claiming it is, trying to tell us that Funcom is desperate, that they dropped the ball on Age of Conan, and whatnot. The news is also reported by Rawcool, who shared the link in a comment to a previous post here on Living Hyboria.

While I’m certainly interesting to know how Age of Conan really fares, and I am wondering about the attachment rate, I believe the whole presumption of the story reported to be wrong. The stock decline, which we’ve covered previously, is what is backing up the whole “Funcom goes bankrupt” argument, but that decline is really the result of a temporary high after the games release, and the impressive sales. All in all, the Funcom stock more or less doubled what it was traded for, and then it went back to normal. This isn’t all that uncommon with games companies having a small portfolio, them being very dependent on a few key titles.

It appears that Funcom investors show lack of faith when it comes to the stickyness of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. The stock, traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange (Funcom is a Norwegian company), reached an equivalent of $54 on launch day (May 20 this year, people), is now at $24, Massively reports. I think this is the key though:

On the flip side, it should be noted that the price of Funcom stock had been fairly steady, around $25, for several months prior to March of this year. A sharp increase in price coincided with the release of X-Play pre-order statistics for AoC about two months before boxes hit the shelves. That was followed by a distinct downturn just a few weeks after the game’s drop date and the slide has continued since, returning it back to familiar price territory just this past week.

In other words, no need to fret, especially if the game keeps its players around, as I’m sure it will. After all, I’m still here aren’t I?

So this is cool, 700,000 player accounts is massive. Eurogamer compares:

To put that in perspective: long-running space-trading cult EVE Online is known to have around 250,000 active player accounts, while World of Warcraft famously has 10 million. Korean hits Lineage and Lineage II are thought to have around a million subscribers apiece.

However, although Funcom can celebrate, I think it is a bit premature. Trial accounts are still numerous, if the game’s sales are anything to go by (and it is, of course), and the true attachment rate after 30-90 days is a much more interesting number. Still, nice to see.