A bunch of lame excuses from Funcom. Paying to beta test is retarded. I call shenanigans.
Ah bollocks!
Would you rather Funcom concentrate on the game or divert resources to assigning keys and handling distribution? As much as you may hate it, Fileplanet is the best distribution method for something this size. They regularly handle betas distributions and are geared up for it.
Stop being such a tightwad and hand over $5 for one month. So you might have to make a lunch for one day rather than buy it at the local cafe/canteen?
What the hell are all you people whp pay for beta crying about? YOUR NOT BEING FORCED TO PAY. I didn't sign up, I am not in beta. I refuse to pay for a fileplanet account to try a game. I'm not pre-ordering, infact I'm not giving up one cent unless I can try it for free. I have many doubts about this game. Stop whining about paying for beta when you act like lemmings and just go along with it. If your really against it, simply don't support it.
This is exactly what we all should be doing. Cause quite honestly - atm Funcom has delivered nothing but promises - and tales of features that are not even in beta yet - JUST TO SELL SOME EXTRA COPIES.
For true Conan fans - go look at the AO history and what happened at release.
For players playing another MMO atm - don't chancel ur subscritipion.
For players wayting for new MMO game to play. Wait - dont spend anything unless u want countless Vanguards to show up in the MMO future.
Devs of MMOs have been allowed now to talk big words without delivering anything. Does the MMO comunity want that in the future?
I didn't read all the comments, but you guys realize you can get a free subscription to Fileplanet if you have Comcast broadband right? That's how I got into open beta, it's pretty easy actually.
To jimmyman99: If I read what you wrote right, you're claiming that pretty much any kind of public beta testing is more or less useless unless done by professionals. I don't necessarily disagree with you since pretty much everything, besides the heavy traffic load in real world conditions and the unforeseen glitch, can be found by professionals, given time and numbers.
Short answer, Yes.
I think that they had hoped for a "give files and let Fileplanet worry about distribution, while we only reap the results of the open beta". I don't know if it's working as planned. I do know that if it was some other company, they'd bury their heads in the sand and wouldn't talk about it at all.
Exactly! Furthermore, let me add what It looks like to me "give files and let Fileplanet worry about distribution, while we only reap the results of the open beta AND earn a quick buck on a side while claiming this is free and all". While there is nothing wrong in earning a quick buck, the fact that they hide that under the "open beta" cover is that makes other people pissed. If they wanted to earn a quick buck, let them have real open beta, and then have a week of release where only those who pre-paid or bought collectors addition would be able to play. But wait, they already have that! Early access is exactly what it is - an early way to make a buck. So why make a buck of something that is not supposed to be paid? Well... greed basically. And since greed is negative, it calls out negative response from people.
All in all it comes to semantics: most people assume that OPEN BETA is available for everyone who meets the criteria ( valid email, active participation on forums, community leaders, guilds, etc). Financial situation is NOT the criteria that would normally be considered for OPEN BETA selection.
One last thing about torrents. Personally I don' t like them. Given the choice I'd always pick the ftp or http download. Torrent equals low quality download as far as I'm concerned and as far as my own line can sustain. I do understand the need at times. Maybe in a parallel universe where P2P networks did not congest internet traffic forcing providers to limit the speed, it would have been a good choice. As it stands now, it's the lowest quality download method one can provide over the internet.
I respectfully disagree. I do not understand what you mean by "low quality download". BtTorrent is by far the fastest way to distribute large chunks of data between large numbers of clients. While FTPs and HTTPs MAY be better (sometimes) in terms of constant speed - the sheer size of the download multiplied by the number of clients makes distribution very very costly for the developers. And you would have to distribute it in stages too. Imagine one hundred thousand of people simultaneously trying to download 13 gigs of data. That would cause havoc on the server and would overload it or would make speed extremely slow.
Unfortunately ISPs are limiting P2P networks because of the same reason - it is way to effective, traffic is just huge, people are actually USING the service they paid for.
my concern with this Fileplanet beta is that it only goes up to lvl 13. MOST games you dont get a feel for the actual game, since the noobie area is usually the most polished area, trying to entice a person in. This is where my problem comes in. If Conan does well, thats great, but what if the noob area is very polished and great, but once you get out of it, it's buggy, imbalanced, etc? As far as i recall, lvl 13 doesnt even get you out of the starter area (which i remember seeing is up to lvl 20). So by that logic, you basically aren't seeing the game, but an instance which is designed to promote a game. How many games have you played where the noob instance is great...but you get to lvl 20 or 30 and the game just dies? That's my concern atm with the beta (not even mentioning performance issues which may occur in non instance noob zones)
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."
"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.
Good thing I can forget about AOC and their paid "OB" now and wait for better games like Aion. With the amount of new games beeing released , I'm not going to spend any money on good faith alone...jeez the whole interview reeks of arrogance and greed . Every decent mmo until now was able to run an open beta , why not funcom? Seems like all you fanboys with your paid betas und preorders and whatnot just love to throw your money to funcom...pathetic
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.
I don't know why people are so angry about not being able to get into open beta. You gotta remember that Funcom made Anarchy Online, and if you played AO at launch you'll know not to ruin your AoC experience by buying the game at launch.
Just wait for trial and see if this is the MMO for you.
As for the article, this is one of those situations that you're going to like or hate. On one side of the coin you have a solid base in which people will try the beta and for better or worse have a stable server to play on. I say stable because 50k players for a MMO is rather minor. It also keeps kids off the beta that are only trying to play a game for free because for one reason or another, cant play games online with a pay subscription (Think of titles like Cabal or flyff). from that point of view, a fileplanet beta seems VERY nice.
At the same time it also cuts off a huge playerbase, creates oppertunities for the public to create ideas of the game not being up to expectations and a view point that the company has something to hide.
In the end, both sides are right. It's a nice chance for the 50k who are fileplanet members but it still shows that Funcom might not have their act together. After all for those of us (like myself) who played AO during its infancy stage know first hand just how badly Funcom dropped the ball. After all, when promised a huge story arc and all we got was a static dungeon with Pumpkin people with scyths it makes you wonder what the devs were thinking.
What i'm curious about is if Funcom will start toating their next mmo while this one congeals and call this one a failier. That was some classic mmo gaming moment if I must say so myself.
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.
Not wanting to waste personnel is a nice theory, but how many man hours are wasted by having a different client for each event that has to be supported and patched ? Hmmm....
Quoted for truth.
--------------------------------------------------------- Never argue with idiots. They are immune to logic.
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.
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.
You know it doesn't even matter if im mad... as i was planning on going to war in the future, but at least i wanted to buy this game to try it out... but not anymore. When a gaming company makes a stupid move, ill let them know....
You guys HAVE to realize what the hell you all just did to your game. You just killed your game(and every good gamer and good dev knows this) via YOUR BIGGEST FORM OF ADVERTISEMENT (word of mouth anyone?) by limiting it by using fileplanet as a "wheel of chance via paying" method, and then making excuses.. and THEN showing that your beta is limited via levels? huh? how close is launch? I was under the impression that it was soon...
Talk about red flags flying. If i was one of these other dudes that had a pre-order, i'd cancel it right now. Then try it out or research it later... way too many red flags that just flew... but thats just me..
My two cents for what its worth.
Edit and a side note: And what is this about you not letting people that beta tested last phase play?... IF its true, then thats a pretty low thing to do if you ask me.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
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. 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.
You do realize that if you pay for a fileplanet account, you are not guaranteed a beta key right? 50,000 does not equal the total number of people the use thier services I assure you. To me its kinda a shady way to distribute keys. Well, in my opinion.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
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.
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.
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.
THANK YOU! Your wrote very eloquently what I have been thinking as reading this thread.
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.
Comments
What the hell are all you people whp pay for beta crying about?
YOUR NOT BEING FORCED TO PAY.
I didn't sign up, I am not in beta. I refuse to pay for a fileplanet account to try a game.
I'm not pre-ordering, infact I'm not giving up one cent unless I can try it for free. I have many doubts about this game.
Stop whining about paying for beta when you act like lemmings and just go along with it. If your really against it, simply don't support it.
SHOHADAKU
Would you rather Funcom concentrate on the game or divert resources to assigning keys and handling distribution? As much as you may hate it, Fileplanet is the best distribution method for something this size. They regularly handle betas distributions and are geared up for it.
Stop being such a tightwad and hand over $5 for one month. So you might have to make a lunch for one day rather than buy it at the local cafe/canteen?
This is exactly what we all should be doing. Cause quite honestly - atm Funcom has delivered nothing but promises - and tales of features that are not even in beta yet - JUST TO SELL SOME EXTRA COPIES.
For true Conan fans - go look at the AO history and what happened at release.
For players playing another MMO atm - don't chancel ur subscritipion.
For players wayting for new MMO game to play. Wait - dont spend anything unless u want countless Vanguards to show up in the MMO future.
Devs of MMOs have been allowed now to talk big words without delivering anything. Does the MMO comunity want that in the future?
I didn't read all the comments, but you guys realize you can get a free subscription to Fileplanet if you have Comcast broadband right? That's how I got into open beta, it's pretty easy actually.
OMG, this is why I stop going to the official forums ... cry babies all over the place.
I have reason to be very confident that this game will do very well, in spite of all the doom sayers and cry babies out there
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Oh and you guys need to calm down.
In utter dissapointment and disgust for the responses given, I have cancelled my pre-order.
GG Funcom.
Short answer, Yes.
Exactly! Furthermore, let me add what It looks like to me "give files and let Fileplanet worry about distribution, while we only reap the results of the open beta AND earn a quick buck on a side while claiming this is free and all". While there is nothing wrong in earning a quick buck, the fact that they hide that under the "open beta" cover is that makes other people pissed. If they wanted to earn a quick buck, let them have real open beta, and then have a week of release where only those who pre-paid or bought collectors addition would be able to play. But wait, they already have that! Early access is exactly what it is - an early way to make a buck. So why make a buck of something that is not supposed to be paid? Well... greed basically. And since greed is negative, it calls out negative response from people.
All in all it comes to semantics: most people assume that OPEN BETA is available for everyone who meets the criteria ( valid email, active participation on forums, community leaders, guilds, etc). Financial situation is NOT the criteria that would normally be considered for OPEN BETA selection.
I respectfully disagree. I do not understand what you mean by "low quality download". BtTorrent is by far the fastest way to distribute large chunks of data between large numbers of clients. While FTPs and HTTPs MAY be better (sometimes) in terms of constant speed - the sheer size of the download multiplied by the number of clients makes distribution very very costly for the developers. And you would have to distribute it in stages too. Imagine one hundred thousand of people simultaneously trying to download 13 gigs of data. That would cause havoc on the server and would overload it or would make speed extremely slow.
Unfortunately ISPs are limiting P2P networks because of the same reason - it is way to effective, traffic is just huge, people are actually USING the service they paid for.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Not a single question as to why tech testers were passed over when they already have the client installed. The entire "interview" was softball.
Very good point!
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
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."
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
2 Weeks beta is on the 1st mate, thats 2 DAYS
With the amount of new games beeing released , I'm not going to spend any money on good faith alone...jeez the whole interview reeks of arrogance and greed . Every decent mmo until now was able to run an open beta , why not funcom?
Seems like all you fanboys with your paid betas und preorders and whatnot just love to throw your money to funcom...pathetic
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.
Double post.
I don't know why people are so angry about not being able to get into open beta. You gotta remember that Funcom made Anarchy Online, and if you played AO at launch you'll know not to ruin your AoC experience by buying the game at launch.
Just wait for trial and see if this is the MMO for you.
As for the article, this is one of those situations that you're going to like or hate. On one side of the coin you have a solid base in which people will try the beta and for better or worse have a stable server to play on. I say stable because 50k players for a MMO is rather minor. It also keeps kids off the beta that are only trying to play a game for free because for one reason or another, cant play games online with a pay subscription (Think of titles like Cabal or flyff). from that point of view, a fileplanet beta seems VERY nice.
At the same time it also cuts off a huge playerbase, creates oppertunities for the public to create ideas of the game not being up to expectations and a view point that the company has something to hide.
In the end, both sides are right. It's a nice chance for the 50k who are fileplanet members but it still shows that Funcom might not have their act together. After all for those of us (like myself) who played AO during its infancy stage know first hand just how badly Funcom dropped the ball. After all, when promised a huge story arc and all we got was a static dungeon with Pumpkin people with scyths it makes you wonder what the devs were thinking.
What i'm curious about is if Funcom will start toating their next mmo while this one congeals and call this one a failier. That was some classic mmo gaming moment if I must say so myself.
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.
All i will do is wait till the game is launched and wait several weeks/moth until first patches are done! I will not order or even preorder that game.
Let others do the testing.......
Sorry, but whe i read such speaks i really get upset. Damn need to make money quick :-(
Quoted for truth.
---------------------------------------------------------
Never argue with idiots. They are immune to logic.
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.
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.
You know it doesn't even matter if im mad... as i was planning on going to war in the future, but at least i wanted to buy this game to try it out... but not anymore. When a gaming company makes a stupid move, ill let them know....
You guys HAVE to realize what the hell you all just did to your game. You just killed your game(and every good gamer and good dev knows this) via YOUR BIGGEST FORM OF ADVERTISEMENT (word of mouth anyone?) by limiting it by using fileplanet as a "wheel of chance via paying" method, and then making excuses.. and THEN showing that your beta is limited via levels? huh? how close is launch? I was under the impression that it was soon...
Talk about red flags flying. If i was one of these other dudes that had a pre-order, i'd cancel it right now. Then try it out or research it later... way too many red flags that just flew... but thats just me..
My two cents for what its worth.
Edit and a side note: And what is this about you not letting people that beta tested last phase play?... IF its true, then thats a pretty low thing to do if you ask me.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
You do realize that if you pay for a fileplanet account, you are not guaranteed a beta key right? 50,000 does not equal the total number of people the use thier services I assure you. To me its kinda a shady way to distribute keys. Well, in my opinion.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
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.
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