Shares in Norwegian computer game company Funcom jumped as much as 16 percent Monday morning, a day ahead of the planned launch of online game "Age of Conan" in North America.
The multi-player online role-playing game, which has seen its birth postponed several times, was getting lots of attention over the weekend. While its Norwegian founders celebrated the country's national day on the 17th of May, Funcom allowed 100,000 users to check out the game for the first time.
Funcom reported that the number of players was enormous, and on some game forums, players were irritated because they didn't get a chance to be among the early thousands.
Official play begins May 20 for American users and May 23 for European users. Funcom was expecting as many as 700,000 would subscribe to the game, and said it had ordered more servers to handle demand during the launch period.
"The server parks will now be dimensioned to handle 600,000 to 700,000 subscribers," Funcom said in a statement. It said the collector's edition of the game had been sold out in all markets, adding over 110,000 copies had been produced.
It repeated that advance enrollment for the game was positive, having earlier said more than a million fans had signed up for the test phase.
Funcom shares leapt as high as NOK 47 but then fell back to trade up 10.1 percent at NOK 44.60, valuing the group at about USD 425.3 million. The stock outpaced a 0.8 percent rise in the Oslo bourse benchmark index .
