General Discussion

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.

THX
EDIT: Link doesn't work
EDIT2: Now it does

The link to the article seems broken.

[Edit]: Fixed fast hehe

You guys are way way too quick for me.

When we put up an article, there's like a 30 second overlap before the link works. I'm always stunned at how fast you guys are able to find it and post about it.

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“Looking back on this I think that if we had called it simply ‘Fileplanet beta’ instead of ‘Open beta’, many would have reacted differently. ”

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As one of the one hundred AoC Fileplanet Beta key winners, I have but one question.  Did I read the article correctly . . . 13 GB client?  Good Lord, it will take me a week to download that sucker!

Originally posted by spriteh

 

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“Looking back on this I think that if we had called it simply ‘Fileplanet beta’ instead of ‘Open beta’, many would have reacted differently. ”

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Indeed. What a difference a word makes

 

~Hairysun~

A bunch of lame excuses from Funcom. Paying to beta test is retarded. I call shenanigans.

"We really wanted to have an open beta, we just didn't care about it".

Which of course means that they really didn't want it.

What still bothers me is the nonsense about being able to patch 600,000 players on opening day (or maybe 400K on opening day and 200K three days later), but not able to support a staggered 'full client' client download for 50,000 people over a period of 2 weeks.  It's not my field of expertise by any means, but it sure sounds like a load.

I assume that you have people in charge of managing this.  What are those people doing right now, since you're so confident that you can handle the load that's 8 times as many IPA's as you would potentially have on launch day?

He's eiher being lied to or lieing himself.  Either way, it doesn't speak well for the company he is fronting.

AO had a horrendous launch as I recall.  We'll see if this is any better. 

Originally posted by cmcmaha

As one of the one hundred AoC Fileplanet Beta key winners, I have but one question.  Did I read the article correctly . . . 13 GB client?  Good Lord, it will take me a week to download that sucker!

As a fileplanet sub (for two weeks at least) you should get 250K-300K downloads. Take 13-15 hours on average.

As far as the article, it wasn't overly interesting. At this point, I am surprised they said anything at all unless they've actually seen pre-order cancels mounting and are attributing it to the way 'OB' is being handled.

The part where FC mentioned previous beta pushes for this game not costing a cent seemed rather silly to me. If he was trying to defend a service requiring payment, mentioning 'other' occasions that didn't cost would only server to alienate people who didn't get a chance to try the earlier attempts.

*shrug*

I hope 'some suprises' includes a patch that takes the level cap off or at least bumps it a little higher once the first crush of players rolls through. In any case, I'll be playing to 13 or whatever with the enjoyment of knowing I can play on the 17th without impedment.