General Discussion

Originally posted by Stradden

Funcom Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen speaks to MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood about the Fileplanet Open Beta. In this interview, Tharaldsen addresses a number of the rumors that have circulated since the Open Beta announcement.

Ever since their open beta was announced, Norwegian development company Funcom has come under fire from fans of their upcoming MMORPG, Age of Conan, and the criticism has had very little to do with the content of their game.

The complaints stem from a decision to partner with IGN’s Fileplanet for distribution of keys to their beta. In order for players to qualify for an AoC beta key, they have to be the proud owners of a premium membership at Fileplanet (which costs $5 per month for a year). While many has applauded a beta through Fileplanet, is has  also led players to feel as though they are paying to participate in a beta and that Funcom has done this in an attempt to a) draw in extra funds for the game and b) to disguise some kind of failing in the game itself.

Read more here.

After I read that ” He went on to tell us that download speed was a consideration in the decision. After all, the client itself is a hefty 13Gb in size I skim read the rest ...... yup I was right  they wanted to make some money off of the beta.

Originally posted by Ananais

I think that what this really comes down to is a miscommunication.  I agree that this largely comes down to player expectation of what an Open Beta means colliding with tremendous excitment for the launch of this game.  I know that my girlfriend and I are so stoked on Conan that we can hardly wait to play it.  Knowing that other people are playing it right now in closed beta and that other people will be playing it soon in open beta kills us.  The 17th seems like an eternity away.  But what Funcom owes us is not the opportunity to play now, but the opportunity to get their game right at launch, in whatever form that takes.

The product we paid for, or will be paying for, doesn't come out for another 2.5 weeks.  Just because we preordered, just because we want to play now, just because we feel like we'd make good testers, doesn't mean that we deserve to be playing the game in some form of beta right now.  And that goes for any of us.  They already have a group testing mid and end-game content called closed beta that they're hosting 100% internally.  As a result open beta through Fileplanet going farther than early levels would start being redundant.  The game needs to test their launch capabilities, which means maintaining a massive number of Tortage instances being created as people make and remake characters that they plan to take up to high levels.  The download has to be the full client because building and testing something they won't be using for launch doesn't do them a bit of good in catching and fixing potential bugs.

As for having to pay for the beta, well, yeah, it's frustrating.  Like I said, I want to play now too!  But while it would be easy to call foul play on Funcom for using a term that has historically not required payment in many of our experiences, it actually does make sense.  Having Fileplanet host the download means that Funcom's customer service and network staff can focus on in-game problems rather than dowload problems specific to the open-beta.  For Funcom, the difference comes down to whether they get 50,000 testers and don't have to worry about managing the distribution, or getting 50,000 testers and having to dedicate a team to focus on in-house distribution, a team that would otherwise be working on improving the game.  From the perspective of a company trying to make the best product they can make by the 17th, it's a no-brainer.

For those of you who would truly be willing to give up on AoC altogether simply because, like the majority of us who will have to bide or time with other activities until the 17th or the 20th, we didn't get selected to play 13 levels of a pre-release, unfinished, version of the game, you might want to take a step back, take a deep breath, and try to deflate your egos a bit.  Funcom is a business, and they've done what they felt made the most business sense to create a product that people will want to play and involved as many potential players as they felt was necessary in the process.  Hosting the beta through FilePlanet is not about you, it's not an attack on you, it's not disrespecting you, your wants, or your needs.  This is about Age of Conan and what is right for Funcom to make it a good game by launch.  I would love to see more people show the ability to be grown-up enough to accept that.

I am a fileplanet subscriber and have been for a long time. It allowed me to get various demo/files/etc much faster than other sites and so on. AoC Beta Key is simply a perk as are the other beta invites I have gotten just for being part of fileplanet. I have found it to be worth the subscription. *Shrug* I personally believe the company has every right to distribute 50k keys however they please. Course they could always just let everyone in, and servers crash, game is laggy.... and then everyone runs away whining about how bad the game is. The point here is they want stress testing on a controlled level.

xXSeraphielX

I'll play because there is nothing else out right now that is worth a damn and LoTRO is getting boring. Also I had a lot of fun at the PvP weekend and want some more. Sorry for those of you who don't want to play a 60 dollar game anymore. If its totally horrible I lose around 75 dollars for the game and first month. I make more than that in a couple days and I am a student  lol!

Originally posted by KoSPr0

Originally posted by jimmyman99

 

Originally posted by yugo

i just cant get it into my big thick skull why people keep complaining about they "have" to pay for the beta.

You are not paying for the Beta your paying for a faster way to download patches,games,stuff thingy ect.

it just happens that inclued into all this there is a chance that you might be lucky enough to also enter the beta of certains games, In this case AOC.

if it is so bad to pay for that service then...dont? noone is forcing anyone to pay for the beta, your buying a service that inclued the chance of beta testing games, not AOC specific.

Also the gaming studios are not required to make an open beta, it is just an "easy" and simple way to quickly get 10.000+ people to stress test your network, just be happy that they do give us a chance of helping them and for us a chance to get a sneakpeak at a game.

so in the end: Quit whining about paying for a beta because your not, and quit whining about this not being an open beta because they are not required to give us one.

Its just a little bit too convenient. yes, technically FC isn't charging for beta. Somebody else does. And that somebody would just make a donation into FC development fund.

 

If FC really wanted to distribute their client and really did want to get the BEST help to test their product, they would hire those who CARED about AoC - fans, active posters, guilds, people who actually WILL play and test, and not someone who paid for FP premium account, who never heard about AOC but who got a key to join in and who may never actually get passed the login screen or even download it (13 gigs anyone?)

Its just unfair to the fans. Its sneaky and hypocritical and greedy. That about sums it up how I feel about all these shenanigans. Some may call this "whining", I call this "WTF, some trying to trick us and lie to us. We are not idiots."

  If they really cared about the beta, they wouldn't take advice from a bunch of upset F2P open beta kiddies.

Its not about advice, its about testing. OB is for testing unfinished/unpolished product. Its a paid (usually) process, paid TO the testers... except in a gaming world, where OBs seem to turn around and testers pay to the developers to test their games.... WTF??? Its like going to a clinic to be a blood donor and pay for it. Or getting your nuts hit with a baseball bat and.. paying for it!

Originally posted by nikoliath

Holy crap, I haven't seen like this for a long time. Some of you really need to just sit back and reflect upon how childish you are behaving

 

How is this such a big deal? I was all set to sit back and wait for release/pre-order day and let those who choose to subscribe to FP carry on. As it turns out I was lucky enough to win the comp.

I dont see much going on here. I see mature arguments and counter-arguments. I am actually very pleasantly surprised at the low number of flames or childish behavior about FC and their OB decision.

Originally posted by Gnazon

The way I see it the reason for 13 level cap for open beta trial is geography: You are not able to leave Tortage, so you do (or at least should) not need the content that comes after Tortage. So basically what we are getting is the pvp weekend client with full Tortage and no autolevel-to-20-script. (Whether or not there is more content in the client is a whole other thing.) A client like that will let Funcom stress test a zone without having to worry about people spreading too thin. First part of destiny quest should give one a good taste for the AoC story and character development, after all this is beta and not free trial.

As for the whole Fileplanet angle... it is silly. If you do not have Fileplanet subscription and do not wish to pay for one do not take part in open beta. How hard can that be? Yes it could have been handled differently, but it is Funcom's game and they are allowed to handle the beta as they see fit. Again, learn live with it.

Ok, imagine you are an avid fan of a football club. You go to their plays, you even attend their trainings. They notice you. You help them by getting coffee, drinks, moving furniture... small stuff. They know you by name now, and they promise you to give you all season ticket (theres only one ticket available).

Now, how would you feel if you would see some hotshot rich boy who just happend to have a grand in his wallet paying for their uniforms and grabbing that ticket you dreamed about? Unless of course the coach told you if you were to give 1500$, then the ticked would still be yours. Would you just shrug off and go home? Or would you rather be pissed? Sure, they didnt do anything wrong. They needed uniforms. And technically, you arent being FORCED to pay for it. Its your choice. How would you feel?

The only bad thing about the Fileplanet beta I can agree on is the horrible way Fileplanet chose to distribute the keys. Forcing people to either run their faulty comrade program or camp the signup page is just too much and I have expected much better from them. So my disappointment (even though I did get my key) is fully on Fileplanet side.

Ok for all the people saying why  didn't Funcom just host the file themself its only 50k people, they say they are ready for 600k to patch on launch day.... Currently the patch will be 400mb. the full client is 13gigs

13 gigs divided by 400mb comes out to like 32.5.... 32.5x50000= 1625000

For all those who don't see what i am getting at here... 50k people downloading a 13 gig file is like 1.6 million people at launch day... it would be a mess on there servers with the addition of people they have in beta downloading the patches and trying to actually play the game.  They sent the file out to a server farm that could handle the load, that server farm decided to charge for its useage... that isn't really funcom doing that, its fileplanet.

I understand alot of folks wana play the game, but tell me how is the fileplanets beta at 5 dollars different then preordering a game and canceling it cuz you didn't like it? Costs you money either way.... Gaming companys do not HAVE to have an open beta they do it cuz its a nice look for the public... Do not try to say things like "they owe it to us" or "this is crap we shouldn't have to pay to play a beta" cuz honestly.... would you guys just prefer there was no public beta at all?