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Age of Conan - CES Progress Report
MMORPG.com's Carolyn Koh is at CES and yesterday she had the opportunity to talk to the Funcom crew about their upcoming MMORPG, Age of Conan. In this report, Carolyn lets us in on the look of the game and what's coming down the pipe before the game's scheduled launch date in March.
A visit with Funcom Designer Jason Stone and Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen is always a great experience. Jorgen has the most amazing head for numbers and is able tell me things like there are currently over 2,700 animations for female avatars in game. They haven't quite finished them all yet, which is the reason they have not shown female avatars, nor included them in the beta builds as the game play experience is the same with avatars of either gender. On the other hand, Jason Stone will take me through GM tools to show me female avatars and show me an animated emote he created which had Jorgen trying to hide the screen with his hands, crying "Noooo! I can't believe you showed her THAT!"
I am happy to report though, that female avatars are definitely in the game. The GM tool Jason ran me through is what they call a "play field" where I saw literally, hundreds upon hundreds of male and female avatars dressed and undressed in hundreds of different outfits and armor. "We've got more than just the chain mail bikini," he said. "We've got some actual armor in game."
"We learned a lot from Anarchy Online," said Jorgen as he asked Jason to show me the social clothing choices. "We know that players enjoy having more than one set of clothing, more than just wearing armor." They are coordinating the pieces however, and unlike Anarchy Online, we won't be seeing white wedding dresses on hulking male bodies - or in the context of Age of Conan, itty-bitty chain mail bikinis on hulking Cimmerians.
CES 2008 is a technology and buyers show. Hence, for this show, Funcom was showing off the latest Age of Conan build, on their proprietary Dreamworld Engine, an engine they've been developing since 1995. Twelve years after, I am here to report that it is absolutely gorgeous. Jorgen attributes the absolutely smashing graphics and animation to the genius of their Art Director Didrik Tollefsen who also worked on their "Longest Journey" PC game. He also gave credit to a mime who graduated from France's premier pantomime school who they used to do motion capture photography to aid their animation artists.
;)
I am greatly impressed with what Funcom has achieved in their art. It has been six months since I last saw the game at E3, but the game play footage trailer and what I saw in-game as Jason ran me around, literally took my breath away. Mounts in-game are still "pocket" mounts as they are summoned, however, your avatar does not simply appear mounted when your steed shows up. Your avatar actually mounts - puts one foot into the stirrup, swings up and settles into the saddle. The animations are smooth and natural. Man and horse actually moved together. The man's body and limbs reacting to the movement of the horse. We looked at water lapping on shore and water rippling in progressive rings as we swam. Rivers and streams that flowed, excellent running, walking, combat and social animations.
I wanted to look at the horse and how well it was detailed again, so while I marveled at the in-game animation. Jason told me that mounts can be knocked out and damaged, but not killed, I was told, and they will heal up in time. Regular mounts are horses and camels and your siege mounts are Mammoths and Rhinos.
My first reaction to this eye-candy bonanza was not unexpected by Jorgen . "You are asking the exact same questions that everybody asks!" he said, answering proudly that this was indeed rendered in DirectX 9, not 10, and that the computer used was beefy, but not cutting edge. They were demonstrating the game on Dell XPS computers with Core 2 Duo CPUs and 800MHz Graphics cards with 512Mg RAM. Indeed, they were so confident of this latest optimization that they had turned the FPS counter ON.
We "flew" through Conalls Valley - an area just outside Conan's birth place, where many available quests will take us into the valley and beyond. Frames Per Second (FPS) ranged from over 20 in areas crowded with NPCs and environmental features to over 50. Then we ran through it with a character, whacking a few NPCs along the way. Jason spun around and panned the camera across the landscape to show how the FPS never fell under 20. Indeed, it remained above 30 most of the time. If readers will recall, back at E3, I reported that Funcom artists had very creatively used colors and color shading to create the illusion of a texture rich 3-D world in order to keep FPS high to allow for real time combat. With this new engine, it looks even better. Jorgen confirmed that they felt that color was very important to convey the feel of a region; such as Conalls Valley being in Autumnal colors conveying the dying of the year. As it stands currently, the 24 hour day and night cycles are compressed into eight; four real-time hours of light and four hours of darkness. I commented that it seemed a little long to me and both Jorgen and Jason simultaneously mentioned that they are looking at shortening that further.
Avatars, I was told, eat up a lot of resources, and this was an aspect of optimization they were still working on. Jorgen mentioned an insane number of animations and animated emotes in-game. "We wanted to put many, many more in, but had to reluctantly acknowledge that it would take too much time and money." Those animations he mentioned included climbing ropes and giving other characters a hand - literally - by assisting them up a wall for example. Still, Jason illustrated this as Jorgen talked, by scrolling through a seemingly endless list of animations, then showed me the many different drunken emotes, including a friendly drunk, one with his character casting up his accounts and social emotes such as a man rolling dice. Some animations will be gender specific. Curtsey for example, can be performed by both genders, but the male does not actually "curtsey" but performs a nice reverence, bowing from the waist with open arms.
"If you are in the right area, you can start a bar fight," Jorgen reminded us. "You can do drunken brawling." With that, we segued into the retail launch as Jorgen told me about the Drinking Cape, an item included in the collector's edition of the retail box. Jorgen showed me a prototype mock-up of the box. Not a small tin or just a differently presented box, the Age of Conan Collector's Edition looks like (and is the size of) a large, hefty leather bound book with reinforced corners and center medallion embossed to look like metal. Priced at $89.95, it will include: a book of art with selected poems by Robert E. Howard, the creator of the world of Conan, the sound track, a bonus DVD with trailers, behind-the-scene videos, etc. a faux leather map of Hyboria by a famed cartographer and some in-game items. These are all no-drop items: The Ring of Acheronia which is a 2% XP and 3% Stamina modifier and a Drinking Cape which gives you free booze in any tavern in Hyboria. Further, the Rhino siege mount is in the BestBuy box and the Mammoth in the Gamestop box. I was also told that this is not only a special edition, this is a limited edition. Each box will have a numbered holographic sticker. When these are gone, they are gone. Period.
;)
We chatted about many different things in Age of Conan, with quite a bit of "I won't tell you, it will spoil the fun." The new player experience will be the same for all races - you start off on the slave ship - but in Tortage, the PvE experience where you spend your first 20 levels, quests are class but not race specific. At level 20, the player will then go to the home city of their chosen race, in a big finish that Jorgen did not want to spoil.
The UI remains minimalist and although it can be reskinned, no hooks will be allowed. Funcom has deliberately locked their UI down securely to prevent hacking and 3rd party macro programs. I was lucky to get more than a half hour with Funcom as I arrived early and the next appointment arrived late. There was much, much more I wanted to talk about and to ask, but this was all the time we had and all that they were ready to reveal.
Age of Conan will have extreme performance scalability to account for the vast differences in computers out there, but will ship simultaneously with 32 and 64 bit executables and in using either DX9 or 10. Graphics options will also allow you to turn off the blood and gore, although heads will still fall off if you manage a blow that cuts off your opponent's head.
Launch is scheduled for March 25, 2008 and for those hoping for open beta, there won't be one. As Jason said, when they opened beta applications, they got 100,000 applications in a very short time. Right now, they have 15,000 invitations extended and they will simply invite many more players in the next few rounds. So if you want to take a look at this game prior to launch, and haven't put in your beta application, you can still put one in now. This is one beautiful looking game.
Great report! Even more excited about the game now thanks!
No open beta. That might be a good thing. Also, the Rhino mount sounds awesome. It says this will be in the Bestbuy box, so i dont know if you could still get one if you dont buy it from Bestbuy??? It also looks like they are going to go with the March release date, which is great. Roll on March!
Awh...
Can they at least wear the itty bitty bottom pieces?
I'll agree though that not having an open beta *may* be a good thing. I know a lot of people out there who will gladly shell out $50 for a game that gets decent reviews, but won't put the same money into an well-reviewed MMO until they've tried it
Hopefully though not having an open beta pays off... and it's good for us because less people will be whining on the forums about how they won't play the game because *gasp* there were still a few bugs in the beta.
I'm curious about the whole special edition thing. I wonder how that will pan out for EU folks. I've ordered a collector's edition from my local store, so I'm hoping Funcom won't limit SE's to the two companies named.
Yeah im from the EU too. Hope we dont get screwed on that front. I'm looking forward to being a part of an MMO right from the beginning again. I tought that would have been LOTRO last year, but i just didnt get into it. I remember being part of SWG when it was first released, but that was before the dark times...before the CU & NGE! Anyway, i hope that AoC will at the very least run smooth & look good on my pc & that should be enough to keep me with it.
Here is a link to the main forum that has a listing of many places to get CE
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=50409
Heden
I didn't notice any mention of the cost of a monthly subscription fee. Is this still being decided?
Hmmm.... I'm always suspicious when there isn't an open beta. It makes me wonder what they don't want me to see.
I hope this game is good. We've been waiting for a good MMO for a few years now. But, I guess we won't know until release?
IMO they arent doing a full open beta, to prevent the Vanguard effect. The game was still in BETA, which means being polished and optimized, and ppl flooded the foruns with bad reviews for Vanguard, which kind of ruined the launch.
Hopefully, even though they wont have an open beta, they will still have enough people to stress test the game, and deliver it on march 25 08, as promised.
Well, Open Beta is nowadays more a demo thingy to test servers, so the game should be completed by then. So I am also curious about it. Call me a troll, but I really lost my interest.
Have fun with this game
I for one am *very* concerned about the AoC performance. We heard all the same sorts of allocades for Anarchy Online prior to its launch way back when. And when it launched for real, it was a slow, laggy, mess. But the graphics were great (for the time). But you could not play it.
Now, in an empty world (not populated by 2000+ active players), they are getting 20fps (best case) in urban areas and only 50fps out in the wilderness??? These are the same sorts of numbers that EQ2 launched with. And that game failed and really destroyed itself when it launched in that state. I tried to play EQ2 before I ever played WoW. Ended up playing WoW for 3 years and not EQ2.
Now, here comes AoC with more advanced graphics that don't run worth a crap on a decent system. Who is going to put up with that? Some will, of course. And fan-boyze will stick with it till they are the only ones left standing. But normal players?
No. We want decent graphics, decent performance, and decent gameplay. And without those, AoC will be a second rate offering, no matter how fine the graphics are when running in 'slide-show' mode.
My 2c.
I still hope to get a look at it before I have to make the choice whether to buy or not.
I agree. No open beta might actually be a good thing since they can further polish the game in time for launch. I am definetly more excited now about this game! come on March!
well, i do hate to admit it but i'm getting excited about this game
i do try to control it as disappointment tends to hover about the wings of the MMO world
that being said, very disappointed about no open beta - in the past that usually meant that the devs had something to hide - as in, lets sell all the boxes we can before word gets out
so probably no release day purchase for me but it will probably be darn close
There hasn't been any MMOG really that benefited from an open beta, besides the load testing. Even when WoW had it's open beta 'weekends' it got nothing but negative comments about how it wasn't finished, the talents system wasn't in, the game consisted of camping mob spawns (which, in the newbie areas, is totally accurate,) how the quests are generic and stupid. It didn't get good 'player reviews' during these open beta try-outs at all.
IMHO I'd rather see them take that last month to polish instead of trying to appease some spoiled open testers, and just offer a free trial out of the gate, or soon after.
Well, Im pretty stoked about this game. Ashamedly so. Like many others, I try not to get worked up with the fear of being let down. However, SOMETHING NEEDS TO FREAKING RIP ME AWAY FROM WoW!!!
I hope this does it.
we know and they know that open beta is a trial - so "finish" the game and give us a taste before we buy - pretty simple
It's only in these modern days that ANYONE counts any part of beta a 'trial' cause if you asked the devs, they'd tell you flat out it's not. It's a serious part of testing, more specifically, it's load testing. You cannot realistically expect a game to be 100% finished 2 months before release just so YOU can try the game out.
You should expect it Fion.
Don't forget they still have to produce the dvds and ship them all over the world. So the game has to be finished some time prior to launch.
And I played WoW's open beta and it ran great. I saw no bugs and no latency problems :/ Made me buy the game at least.
It is a shame if I don't get to play the beta, but I'm pretty sure that reading several beta testers reports will be almost just as good.
ok - slow as mud in january
in other words - release the game and have a trial and not in that order
there is no stigma or at least there shouldn't be, to having a trial as a game is released - stand alone games have demos well before release
too many people have been burned too many times by paying for the beta
Are there any screen shots of the mammoth and rhino? Do they actually do anything in a seige battle, if so what are the difference between the two?
No open beta, especially with the memories of AO in my mind (continously rubberbanding back into the forefront of my brain!), is slightly worrying. However, a much better indicator of "issues" with the game will be the NDA. When will they drop the NDA... if they do it like SW:G, 2 days before release, you know its a steaming pile of poo. The sooner they drop the NDA, the less worried about a flop at release I'll be. (I cancelled my 2 SW:G boxes I'd preordered when they announced the launch date AND kept the NDA up heh, talk about your red flags).
WoW went a long LONG time without an NDA, but they knew they had a good game that worked fairly well, so there was nothing to 'hide'. Other games.... they use the NDA to hide the problems.... that sounds reasonable, EXCEPT they hide the problems that they don't intend to fix prior to release as well (if ever). Making sure you don't spout off about a buggy game in early beta is one thing, making sure people don't spout off about a horribly designed game that's still buggy and laggy and will be at release is another.
Personally I remember lots of good player reviews during open beta, and after NDA lift.
I'll wait for a 7 day - demo or whatever on this one. However, this game I will definitely try.
QFT
QFT, my thoughts exactly
My sentiments exactly. The mounted combat really intrigues me. Visually screenshots are stunning. Hopefully the final game in motion does justice to the screenshots.
"VENGER:
Are there any screen shots of the mammoth and rhino? Do they actually do anything in a seige battle, if so what are the difference between the two?"
Intertia is taken into consideration in mounted combat, as is size.
A horse can run circles around a mammoth, but a mammoth can withstand more damage. Charging into battle on a mammoth, you better account for the size of the beast and your stopping distance, because the game takes the laws of physics into consideration. All mounts have different characteristics.
Very cool.
No open Beta
20 fps in populated areas ?!
Bad feeling
Excellent point! Dropping the NDA is a good indicator of a game's quality.
With the release date coming up in a couple of months, we should expect Funcom to drop the NDA very soon and let the beta-testers reveal what they think. If they have a good game, they'll have nothing to fear and it will add to the hype.
Funcom never dropped a NDA.
These aren't only my words but those of the current AO game director.
No open beta is a good thing, since when did people -test- in there? right never( to the but i did! congrats you're one in a million again proving that open beta is useless and testing should be limited to a small group)
People are so used to being able to play an unfinished game during open beta and call it a trial or demo which is both false, it's time that trend ends and testing becomes testing and demo's are demo's, if they need more members after release they can always give trials atleast then people can get create a finished game experienced rather then a half finished i want to be unique so i must be in earlier and must let the whole world know how special i am opinion. yes i can hear some people cry that they didn't got a beta invite and i couldn't be happier today.
scougre, there's different kinds of beta testing. Bug reports shouldn't have to be filled out in the later stages, most bugs should have been squashed by that point. Later stages of beta testing are to stress the servers and to test the game itself. 5 people playing a MMO aren't going to reflect what the MMO is going to be like with 2000 people playing together. Can't simulate the PvP aspects, the economy aspects, the crowding issues, the lag issues.
Then there's testing the gameplay itself: Is it fun? What could be improved? How long/hard/tedious is the level climb? Too fast? Too slow? Too boring? What kinds of abuses/cheats can people find? 100,000 people testing a game will find that out a lot faster than 500 (if funcom has 15,000 testers, I'd bet they get concurrency numbers around that mark at max pop, PotBS did).
If I'm invited to a beta early in the process, I submit my bug reports (so I'm one in a million? heh don't think so), if I'm invited to a stress test or open beta, I'm there to test the game itself and stress the servers. I shouldn't HAVE to submit bug reports. Construvtive feedback responses, perhaps, if I find something I think could be improved or something that should be removed to increase fun.
And those testings can only happen during open beta?
Yes they were that selective with beta invites due to them only wanting to have people to fill in bug complaints and not give feedback.
OPEN BETA does NOT aid the game at all it is MARKETING tool nothing more. From my range of experiences all good feedback gets lost when? during 'open beta', ridculous to suggest that closed beta is only for bugs. The best combination is to throw in people you know for sure of what they are throw in some griefers, gankers, carebears, explorers, PvPers, PvPers, achievers and harvest in the feedback don't not big numbers for that.
'Stimulate economy?' my friend the only good game economy that is player run is EVE and that's because they took the time to hire someone with a high degree in economics to do so, it's pen and paper work mixed with some real life economy knowledge and gaming experience that truelly is a 5 man job of all things.
100.000 people in beta to be honest is one big mess, why? majority is there to game(play not test) and due to the big mess on the forums you'll rarely see any developer or coder or content designer clarify themself, also more feedback to go thru which of 90% is rehashed a previous persons opinion, also more players means higher workload on GM's means longer queues means real bad bugs with priority are ignored more often as noone wants to wait several hours on support.
Servers are intended to have 6 to 8k people 15K to stress test zones, instances, servers not enough for you?
Knowing that those servers are split up by region so they will rarely reach their maximum peak of 8k.
Your logic looks nice on paper but reality is one differnt story.
scougre, you're saying that open beta doesn't help the games at all? That's bizarre thinking. I'm sure PotBS got good feedback from its open beta regarding things like Avatar Combat, the newbie mission setup, etc. They wouldn't have gotten this information without it.
Heck, in my own software development, with far few clients (300ish) to work with, we still have 'beta's. Any place (town/city/county government usually) that wants to (and is willing to take the risk) is welcome to test our betas. Betas aren't just about marketing, though that is a factor. WoW had an extremely long open beta and it helped that game through marketing AND making the game better. Other games like TB had a beta that went too big too early, and turned a lot of people off to it prematurely.
Eve's economy isn't good because they hired an economist (they added that guy only recently). Other games, heck, even single player games, have had "good economies" built into them (Railroad tycoon type games spring to mind). But in an MMO, you need thousands of players trying everything under the sun to see how the economy works out. PotBS had a problem with having a tiny beta population for a long time, and the economy worked "okay" for that small of number, but when they started adding beta testers, the problems with the economy became more apparent.
I've been in many closed beta's, and the developers had no idea of what type of player I was. Its the same as open beta for the most part. Just fewer people. The key part for the developer is alpha, get the game working right, mostly bug free, and then start inviting people outside of the core group of known testers.
I know you have to invite people who do weird things and do unusual things even in my business apps. When we deliver up a new app to our support/QC staff who aren't very tech savvy, they find issues that the programmers would never have thought to check for. And even then, we send the app out to the users in a beta so THEY can find the stuff that the support staff couldn't think of.
PotBS had 10,000+ people in the beta towards the end of its closed beta (prior to adding the fileplanet peeps or the stress test 2 peeps). Do you know how many people played the beta any given night? Max pops were about 150 brits, 150 pirates, 80 french, 80 spanish. Out of 10,000+. So if AOC has 15,000, you can bet they're getting 500ish playing. That's not stressing the servers. PotBS had 2 seperate stress tests to get more people to play and to try to crash the servers (both times successfully). Sure people play Open Beta to play. That's what you hope they'd be doing. If they were busy submitting bug reports, you opened your beta too soon.
Server stress I guess would be just like it was with LotRO, certain days each month on going, except by invite only.
PotBS had that kinda stuff too, but it wasn't anywhere near "real" population levels (hence the two fileplanet stress tests).
While I'm sure PotBS learned from their in-beta stress tests, they only discovered several (many) server problems/crashes when they turned on the faucet of outside testers. It comes down to statistics really, 15,000 sounds like a lot of people, except its no where near that many playing at any one time, even if you do schedule events to try to clump them up. Look at Eve, 200K accounts, and they hit 30Kish max pop. 15% or so, and that's a live game people are paying to play. Many of those 15,000 don't even play, and then there's a large chunk that barely play, etc... Its kinda like mass marketing, for every hundred ads you put out, you get 2-3 responses.
No open beta? Only time will tell if they are not having an open beta because the game is like Vanguard or it is so good already that they don't need one. Open beta is really a free trial. If the word is that the game sucks I feel not many will buy the game just to try it.
Well its had 6 months of Non public beta and then it will be nearly a year after that of Beta Testing at various stages. Maybe its pretty decent which is why there have only been a handfull of beta leaks, would be more if the 'word' sucks.
There isn't a need to be so skeptical or cynical in my opinion.
Tens of thousands of people will actually play/ test the game before release.
Why should it have a open beta ? , wait till the game gets released and then wait for a 7 / 14 / buddy pass trial thing if your not willing to buy it and absolutely have to "touch" everything before buying something.
5 of my friends won't have to worry about not be able to try before buy if I can get my hands on Collector's Edition, which features 5 buddy keys
I'm gonna try and get one of those limited edition boxes with the rhino. But push come to shove, mammoth is good too.
I hope the game performs well. I have a 3.6 ghz p4, 3 gb ram, and a raptor drive, but my graphics card is an ati x1950 256mb card. If the game is good I'll upgrade the graphics card, otherwise it runs LOTRO just fine.
Nice job to the writer of the article by the way. Very informative.
Sounds like my system a bit. Im ready to buy another PC and relegate this one to the wife though.
I am with you on the Rhino though!
They say the game will be highly scalable, so if you have a high "high" end system you can get what you paid for, and equally at the other end of the scale I think will suprise ppl too.
As others have pointed out, no open beta usually means developers are hiding something. If they have a fantastic game, they are losing marketing momentum and potential subscribers by not having an open beta. If they have a train wreck of a game, they are misleading their trusting pre-order customers by selling them something that's not ready for release.
Keep in mind, Funcom is the same company that created Anarchy Online, a game with one of the worst MMO launches ever. It wasn't until nearly a year after release that AO became reasonably playable.
I'd shell out the $90 to pre-order a collector's edition if I had a chance to try the game before buying, but without even two weeks of open beta, I'll keep my money and wait for a trial. I'm sure I'm not the only potential subscriber who feels this way.
Fortunately as a potential customer and not the developer, I couldn't care less about whether a studio has benefited from an open beta or not.
While I can forgive graphical glitches and minor bugs and will still probably purchase a MMO that has these issues after testing it in open beta, I definitely will not purchase one on release if I have not had the opportunity to test it. It is a waste of my resources and normally just a frustrating experience.
There is also the relativity of MMO performance across different hardware platforms. Minimum standards are becoming less and less reliable as developers constantly massage their definitions of acceptable performance so that they can lower the minimum standards to get more sales.
If I meet or exceed the minimum standards and have not had an opportunity to actually test the game against my hardware, that standard is meaningless to me until I have actually tested it and found out what the developer considers acceptable performance against their minimum standards.
So while poor open beta reviews may have an impact on initial sales, in my opinion, their initial sales will suffer more because experienced MMO players will hold off on their purchase until they've had a chance to get a broad range of actual player feedback.
That is what the open beta accomplishes.
I so don't care. The review looks great, good to know the female avatars are coming along as well.
Case to case basis, if that game you mentioned benefited so greatly from open beta then it was infested with un-experienced mmo gamers. Pulling random numbers out of your arse isn't really going to prove anyhthing either, i know more then you do and i know enough and therefor open beta is pointless from my opinion. You can keep on stating as if it's a fact that only good and ground breaking feedback is given during open beta, AoC beta works in waves to get the same effect. It has nothing to do with open beta it has everything to do with letting in some fresh air now and then...but please continue with your indirect begging for more free games oh sorry i ment beta's...it is really amusing.
Everywhere you look and see beta's are being handed out thru what? special deals it's all marketing, open beta is nothing but marketing. If they need more members they can always hand out trials at a later date you can't undo the damage done by a open beta.
I almost died laughing reading this..
I don't know if this is sarcasm or genuine questions, but it so touches upon the problem there is with AOC. We have so little information. The devs are putting up smokescreens and their friday updates are hilarious. Text updates rather than videos, screenshots at best.
Though plenty of videos are out, a lot of gameplay issues are not answered, many basic questions like yours. Questions that seem unresolved in the game (they aren't keeping it back to peek our curiousity).
Not having an open Beta is a BAAAAD thing. I doubt highly that Funcom will hire thousands of people to internally test Conan. If you dont pay someone to do it and you dont make it open for anyone to do it, then its not gonna be properly tested. how can you test if Funcom servers can handle 1000 people in one place unless those 1000 people will actually physically login into that area?
Even those only few people actually DO fill bug reports, some actually do. Even if 1 person out of 10 reports a bug, then out of 10000 free testers, a 1000 will report bugs, and thats a huge benefit. And dont forget about passive testing like once u finish a quest, a small window pops up and u choose options whether that quest was too hard or too easy, fun or not, reward is good or bad. It takes several clicks and isnt really intrusive or distracting but it gives developers a general idea on their questing content.
So yes, open beta helps a LOT, whether beta testers actually fill up reports or not. It helps even if players just login. As a software developer, I stay away from ANY software (game or not) that doesnt have some kind of trial after release, or open beta/test before the release. If they dont, chances are, theres a catch. If the game has nothing to worry about (good content, little bugs) then theres nothing to lose and lots to gain if they do have an open beta.
I suspect they have invited 10 odd thousand testers thus far to their Technical beta specifically for load testing.
I dont see why people say not having an open beta means the game sucks.. now im not following AOC but im interested in WAR and that is also not having an open beta.
Closed betas in some ways are better they are more focused and the devs have more control over what they want tested, I tried the LOTRO open beta and im sure many people wre only in there for a free game, closed betas have people who are generally more dedicated to finding bugs and hence closed ebtas are more usefull.
sure open betas could be used for massive stress tests but when were looking at the number of applicants for beta AOC and WAR have they dont need an open beta they have more than enough willing people who want to find as many bugs as they can.
Warhammer is not having an Open Beta either!?
Vanguard's launch ruined it's own launch, the beta reviews were the nail in the coffin, which was Sigil's fault, not the player's. Crappy product = crappy reviews.
Open beta's are critical for stress testing and finding those hard to find bugs that don't show up unless you have lots of people playing the game.
I am glad open beta has been canceled. I beta tested Tabula Rasa and what Richard says in this interview is true.
Specifically, “I think the formal marketing did fine,” he replied. "They let people know the game existed, and was coming out. I actually think the biggest mistake was made not by the marketing department, but by the development team. We invited too many people into the beta when the game was still too broken.”
“We burned out some quantity of our beta-testers when the game wasn’t yet fun," he said, adding, "As we’ve begun to sell the game, the people who hadn’t participated in the beta became our fast early-adopters.”
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16490
Funcom I hope you guys pull this off!!!
It's part single player, they could be hiding the story line
'"We invited too many people into the beta when the game was still too broken.”
“We burned out some quantity of our beta-testers when the game wasn’t yet fun,"'
thats a really good point and makes sense. i believe thats why funcom isn't hosting an "open beta". its the hardcores that beta test, and its the hardcores that make the most noise which can be very influential to the average person.
not having an open beta can be translated into either it sucks and they wanna hide it, or they don't want to show an unfinished game to ppl who don't understand the meaning of "unfinished" and/or burn out influential community members. either way we wont know for a few months. may as well be encouraging to the employees of funcom and stop flamming on unfinished work.
The last MMO I pre-ordered to get into beta was Hellgate, and that didn't turn out nearly as well as expected. Before that, it was EQ2, and the same.
I won't ever pre-order a game specifically to get into it's beta again. Now, that doesn't mean I won't pre-order an MMOG again, but it'll be for different reasons. You bet your arse I'm gonna pre-order the Collectors Edition of AoC. But not in hopes of getting some invite to beta with my pre-order (and so far Funcom hasn't announced such a system) but because from what I am hearing and reading, this game is gonna rock!
Edit: On the subject of TR, I spent some months beta-testing it, and it definitely wasn't fun until pretty close to release. I was to burnt out to play the game after release. The same thing happened to me with LotRO beta. I was in that beta for about 10 months, and was thuroughly burnt out by the time open beta hit, and I haven't tried the game since. I may give both a try in the future, but beta-testing an MMOG for a significant period of time, especially when it's not yet finished and really fun, can burn you out fast.
I wonder if AO will get an engine update since they have a hugely improved engine that they are using for AOC on their hands? So they are inviting 15k beta testers? This will be a interesting new strategy to see how it works out. I hope it all goes very well.
Hmmm- Iceland MMORPG's and European MMORPG's are very interesting to play indeed!
Yea AO is getting a tech and graphic upgrade. It won't bring it up to AoC quality graphics mind, but should improve them greatly. :)
I was excitred about Conan, but no open beta after a history of repeatedly postponing release is usually a very bad sign. This will not be something I try until a lot of good reviews come out or a free trial.
Has anyone looked at the full report...or just saw no open beta and started ranting.
Launch is scheduled for March 25, 2008 and for those hoping for open beta, there won't be one. As Jason said, when they opened beta applications, they got 100,000 applications in a very short time. Right now, they have 15,000 invitations extended and they will simply invite many more players in the next few rounds.
They do not need an open beta....cause they have pretty much as many applications for beta that they will ever need. Most games do not even come close to having 100,000 people in open beta, so why do they need to have one?
I cant think of many games recently aside from WoW that even came close to that number in thier beta.
Do you think WAR will invite all 550,000+ of thier applicants to beta ? unlikely.
They could have a zillion applications for beta and it wouldn't matter.
If they don't invite those 100,000, then the 100,000 apps is a meaningless number. Right now there around 10-15K of invites sent, which means... not a whole lot of people playing at any one time (getting 5% of your beta people online at a time is a feat after a while, people become bored of it, tired of the bugs, or find the game isn't for them, or that they just can't log in all the time.)
So, again, 100K is nice and all that, but until they invite that many... its fluff.
I would advise waiting till the NDA is lifted to pre-order. And that's all I'm gonna say for now.
UPDATE:
Some clarification on the later stages of beta where they will be inviting many, many more players to test their game: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=51002 in a wide-scale beta
Quoting Shannon Drake - Funcom CM:
Looks like there was a miscommunication/misunderstanding at the show.
We are planning to have an open beta for the game as we get closer to launch, however, it will be through specific partners and require an application/registration process, much like most of the other betas for most other games.
We will be limiting the number of keys we release to a manageable number at any given time, rather than subjecting people to queues and loading screens and so on. By "a manageable number," we mean tens of thousands, not just a handful.
We’re also ramping up some of our tech test betas, and, of course, we’ll be doing key giveaways, inviting forum veterans, and inviting more people to the current, closed stage of beta as we ramp up for launch.
So, yes, there will be a wider-scale open beta, but it will require an application/registration process and won’t be as simple as “press button, get key,” which is what we wanted to say.
They are calling it "open" if that helps. ;)
{Edit} Bah, I'm stupid with tags here. hope the color change helps.
Carolyn "Sylvene" Koh
That means Fileplanet members will get a crack at Beta...
to rich for my blood, 89 dollars for a special edition, no way hosea. especially when i have no idea if i will even like the game. then on top of that paying a monthly fee. give mea break guys. i was already sucked in with tabula rasa and found the game sucked.
Well if your unsure if you'll even like the game, then wait for a free trail before you invest $90 on a limited edition game. It's as simple as that.
Hard to be real broken hearted that I won't get to run around in a laggy open beta with my boobs hanging out and immature "adults" puking on me. I just feel sorry for the gals who's significant others are urging them to try this crap fest.
your lack of knowledge of the game and the misinformation in your post astounds me.
If they are worried about losing sales because of what people see in beta it shows a lack of confidence in their product. There should be enough to love in a clean beta to me hooked and anxious for release.
I simply have to try a game before I buy it, especially when it means paying for an additional monthly subscription. Maybe if all I saw were raving user reviews for over a month after release in almost every mmo forum I'd consider buying before trying. So, good luck AOC. You'll need it to get my dollar.
Oh rly Fion? Just what part do you think indicates a lack of knowledge? The naked boobs? (Funcom press releases) The puking? (this article) The lag fest? (That seems to be a matter of opinion per this thread but if you spent much time playing AO post release, you too might be inclined to give weight to Funcom's track record.) The crap fest part? Well that seems to depend on whether or not you consider gratuitous violence and T & A to be "mature" content for over 18 adults, or crap for immature players.