Yep, either this is a typo or Funcom (or gamespot) has joined the ranks of other greedy and money hungry MMO publishers looking to make an extra buck up front. For $5, you get early access to Age of Conan, even though you shelled out $49.95 already for the game, something that usually comes for FREE with pre-orders of MMORPG's. You do get 10 days of additional time, but this move seems unprecedented.
Here's the gamespot disclaimer:
3-Day Early Access Program
With your pre-order Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, you will be able to participate in the 3-day Early Access Program. Early access period starts on May 17, 3 days before the commercial release on May 20, 2008. You may begin downloading the game client files and installing as early as May 14. With early access, there is a nominal fee of $5, which covers the cost of the download and includes 10 days of additional game time."
This tidbit comes way of Massively.Com
User Comments
yes... you get 10 days of gameplay, then you buy the game and get 30 days... so 40 days game time.
You pay 15 for 30 or 5 for 10... makes sense you know...
It makes sense in a 1+1=2.01 sort of way, yes.
I wonder how the overly sensitive MMO masses will feel about having to pre-pay for early access when they're used to not paying any kind of access fees until after their 1 month free trial on new games.
Well, really you're paying 5$ for 13 and their bandwidth to downloading the game.
The monthly fee will almost certainly be 15$.
15/30=.50$ per day.
5/13=.38$ per day.
You are actually getting quite a deal with this, so how the hell are they greedy or money hungry?
5 dollars, if you work you can make that back in an hour or less.
I think its great myself. I usually stay away from games that dont have a good model to make money as they usually suck due to the fact that very few people are willing to work lots of hours for free. The best people usually cost the most and go where the money is.
I know its a hard concept for a lot of people who play games to grasp but working for a profit is the absolute best motivator to make something of excellence. No matter how famous or cool you are for making a good game your name and history will eventually fade into the background of everything else.
Whats next an item shop?
I can actually understand why they might want to do this. I've heard that the game client is huge (a couple of gigs, compressed.) With that in mind, you have to consider the amount of people who are anxious to play this game as well as those who have a renewed interest in it after hearing all of the fantastic reviews of the open pvp weekend. With all that in mind, there is probably several thousand people who are going to flock to the game the day of release and that adds up to several terabytes of information. Suddenly, 5 bucks isn't too much to ask for from people.
I haven't played the game yet so I can't comment on whether or not it's good but I can say is that they have done an excellent marketing job.
Sounds to me like they are having a hard time with estimating numbers and the ammount of servers they will need, that or they are lacking money at this stage and they want it asap, who knows.
$5....for 3 days and a 10 day bonus, or $10 for a pos romantic comedy and 2 hours of dribble. No brainer i would have thought.
What a company charging you to provide a service??? Scandalous!!!
/sarcasm off
Seriously, get used to it. It is rare to get something for nothing.
Most games I can think of that offered a head start for those who pre-ordered their game did not charge an extra fee to do so. The issue isn't the money but the principal of it all.
Thing is you are playing for beta. as in not ready from prime time. They shouldn't charge for an unfinshed game that is still being tested. Also you aren't playing for Dl'ing you are buying a membership. Its a small difference, but annoying. Plus you can't go past 14 lvl be beta, so how much of the game can you really see?
Five bucks. Screw the principals (its just a game) and it certainly seem fairly ready, at least from this weekend. Won't have any objection to paying it.
One of the stores gives a $5 discount on the pre-order, stop whining.
I think it's a little strange to charge just to download the game early, but at least they're making up for the difference with the 10 days. So while you do pay a little more upfront, it balances out in the end.
It has nothing to do with the actual cost, but the precedent it is setting. MMO's have traditionally given early access for free.
I could care less either way though, I probably won't be playing AoC, was just an interesting tidbit I found that I thought i'd share.
This is not a new precedent. SWG charged the user for Beta CD's back during its development. Why? Not to profit but to cover costs of having to print CD's at the time due to the client being too large to download.
As stated by others I think
a) its not unreasonable since it means that Funcom is incurring a cost associated with the digital download as well as the box. and
b) it will help us get the numbers right for having enough hardware to support the fans.
Even if this was a flat out consumer grab, 5 bucks to get a game early and not be camping my mailbox waiting for the stupid thing so I can get it installed and be ready to play? Hell yes I'll pay it.
I paid $5 for a pre-order to TR which gave me beta access. Based on that I didn't play the game, so it saved me $45.
AoC isn't the first, and if you can pay $5 for the pre-order rather than $55 , and play for 3 days without having to buy the game it's a great deal.
Assuming this access gives you a head start on leveling your toon, I will gladly pay $5 to get ahead of the mob scene.
I dunno, it just sounds like an early access gate to me. Hopefully AoC isn't using SWG as a model of any sort :)
I've been torqued off about how they handled their 'open' beta, but frankly the $5 head start move I'm ok with. There's no feasible way they could handle the thousands of people downloading the 30gig file (cept torrent, but that's another story). They use that $5 to rent a server farm for the 13-20th so people can get the game downloaded and they don't beat the hell out of their servers.
If they weren't giving 10 days game time with it I'd be upset, but the fact that they are is good.
People need to get over it. Those of you saying "In the past game developers bla bla bla bla." Well you know what? When I got my first car I paid .97/gallon for gas. Filled up my entire tank on less than 10 bucks. No amount of bitching, moaning, or whining is going to get gas to go down from 3.33/gallon to .97/gallon.
These are different times we live in, no longer are the games we play 125 mbs. No longer are the monster high production games 1 gb. The new MMOs these days are going to be 10+ gbs, easy. Even with all this fancy new technology moving 10+ gbs to over 10k people is not a cheap process. With the rise in costs in everything it was only a matter of time before a gaming studio did this.
In fact I was wondering how much longer gaming studios would be able to do things like this for free. Quite simply these very "perks" are one of the reasons that massive corporate publishers are able to dominate the marketplace so well. Giving out free samples is easier when your walmart and not a local mom and pop. Works the same way with developers/publishers.
As other people have already stated, it is quite a deal for money/time ratio. So either grow up and realize this is the real world, or mature and realize this is the real world.
This is a horrible precedent to set, and I can't believe that gamers are actually defending this shameless attempt to nickel & dime the playerbase. How embarrassing.
Protest, you beat me to it. I in a previous post I defended the integrity and savy of the silent majority of gamers stating that websites like this give a skewed view of the overall mindset of the masses, but to see this display of indifference to yet such a boldfaced attempt of a mmo company to "nickel & dime" you is what in my mind is unprecedented. It used to be, at one time, gamers were considered counter culture, introverts with an adventurer's soul and computer scientist's mind, but if this blog is any evidence, the current crop are nothing more than mindless sheep in whose chests beat a coward's heart. I think its posts like these that have so many talking about fake comments being posted by corporate lackies to manufacture consent and shape opinion. I hope all these posts are a function of the latter instead of the former.
I was annoyed when they announced this and I hadn't read about the 10 days. There are no issues now as far as I am concerned. You are compensated in time equaling what you would get paying a normal monthly subscription. And you get the 'bonus' of playing 3 days early.
I agree with Digna here. I don't honestly understand what the huge issue is with this whole subject, and I have to even pay 5 euros for the download ( 8 dollars ). I think in general people are getting too sensitive, and WoW in particular has given rise to a generation of whiners, who basically are never content with anything. And reborn17, you dont have to pay for the download and earlier chance of logging on, you can just buy the box, and join us later, if you want to....
If you don't like it or are a bum and can't afford it.. then don't pay it! I'm all over something that costs a couple cups of coffee that allows me to play this game I've wanted for so long 3 days earlier.
Nobody is forcing anything.. they are giving you a choice.. stop your fn crying already.
Well if there's people stupid enough to pay for it, that would be sillier to not make them pay for it.
Login or Register to post a comment