J�rgen Tharaldsen explains the Age of Conan open beta

by Kyle Horner Apr 30th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Age of Conan, New titles, News items

A lot of Age of Conan fans have felt slighted over the recent Fileplanet "Open Beta" happening on May 1st. The reason? You have to be a Fileplanet subscriber to have access to the beta, which means you have to pony up some cash. We feel it's important for Funcom to explain the reasoning behind the Fileplanet beta and apparently, so does Jørgen Tharaldsen, Funcom's product director.

Jørgen begins his explanation by citing the fact that up until this point, nobody has been charged in any way for beta access. It's true, in fact thousands of players have participated in the Age of Conan beta without paying a cent. The reason being that these players are supposed to be helping Funcom out with testing and not only playing the game for their enjoyment.

On the topic of why they went with Fileplanet Jørgen says they needed to, "focus on the game, the closed beta and the launch, and not on the infrastructure related to the Fileplanet Open beta." which makes a lot of sense, really. The problem people have is largely with the beta not actually being open. This is something Jørgen also realizes as he says, "Looking back on this I think that if we had called it simply 'Fileplanet beta' instead of 'Open beta', many would have reacted differently."

We agree. The problem is not that Funcom decided to let Fileplanet handle the final beta process, but that they're calling it an open beta when it certainly is not. There are only 50,000 beta keys available through Fileplanet and while that number is big, it certainly isn't the amount of players Funcom would have if they went completely open.

Another issue lies with the level 13 cap on the "Fileplanet beta" causing some players to wonder if Funcom has something to hide content-wise. We can see how this would be true of many other MMOs, but you have to remember that the first 20 levels in AoC are almost entirely story-driven. So it would seem that Funcom is just trying to prevent people from spoiling the destiny story (there are four: one for each class archetype), but we won't know until launch day arrives.

They could be hiding something beyond level 20, but that something could be a good or a bad thing. Jørgen himself says, "in fact, I have heard from so many testers that the game gets even better as you move beyond Tortage." So for all we know, there's plenty of awesome content between level 20 and 80.

Open betas are nice, but we'd much rather let Funcom focus on making the game the best it can be for launch. Hopefully, by the time the three-day-start beings our 5 bucks to try that out will be worth the early admission-plus-ten extra days of subscription.

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, eidos, fileplanet, funcom, open-beta

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Poxus said on 9:35AM 4-30-2008

The main problems with Open Betas are the fact that people like to get into the game and cram as much time as they can into leveling to be the first to post "spoiler" about the content in the game.

Having a level cap prevents this so I see nothing wrong with AoC wanting to keep some of the surprises they have surprises for their games launch.

Mercerfy said on 9:36AM 4-30-2008

I am really getting excited about this one...Jorgen and company better not let us down. Any beta testers out there have some insight for us lying in wait? Was the beta version of this game fun or is the controls difficult and frustrating? It looks simply amazing and I really want it to work.

Green Armadillo said on 9:43AM 4-30-2008

Ironically, I would otherwise support their decision to go FP (do people forget that Blizzard did some early testing for WoW via Fileplanet?), until they decided to frame it as a question of "oh, we haven't been charging our closed beta testers". This from the company that jacked the price of the initial game box through the roof, and charges extra for a CE pre-order early start that anyone else would figure would have been INCLUDED in the extra $30 that the box cost.

Ordinarily, I'd like any and all other games to succeed so that there's more competition to keep Blizzard off their tail ends, but these guys are so cavalier with their customers' money that I'm half hoping it bites them in the tail end as a matter of principle.

Scopique said on 9:46AM 4-30-2008

I think that Funcom is very wise in their decision, all around.

Open beta encourages EVERYONE with even a passing interest in the title to try it out. More often then not, I'm sure, all of these people treat it like a fully released game that they get to play for free. People pass judgment on the game when they should be reporting bugs, and complain when something isn't working.

By putting the limit on the number of testers, they keep it from becoming a free-for-all. By putting it behind FilePlanet's subscription, it scares away those who don't want to suffer the indignation of being asked to pay to play during beta. And by only allowing advancement to level 13 means that people won't be judging the majority of the game before the game is released to the public.

Some have said that open beta testing has hurt perceptions of Tabula Rasa by bringing a lot of it's issues to the public. While I'm sure some of these things were a result of questionable design decisions, I'd be willing to bet that a lot (if not most) of the open beta testers weren't actually BETA TESTING.

007deadlysins said on 10:42AM 4-30-2008

I want Funcom to be focused on the release of AOC and not Open Beta because how the release goes is how people will judge this game for the first couple of months. On the issue of FilePlanet running Open Beta and only allow their subscribers access, why do we as gamers think we are entitled to so much from our MMO games, being in beta (closed or open) is a privilege, not a right. Yes, I would love to be part of Open Beta but I can wait and start playing for real on May 17th and I do think my $5 will be well spent.

easybakeevan said on 1:00PM 4-30-2008

"This from the company that jacked the price of the initial game box through the roof, and charges extra for a CE pre-order early start that anyone else would figure would have been INCLUDED in the extra $30 that the box cost."

Statements like this is part of the reason why we have yet to see (released) a good MMO to play other than maybe WoW (which is just a korean style sack of shit). These companies need money to make these games. Our perceptions are blind to what it actually takes to make these games a success. Slapping on extra costs are better to start with than to say a game is 50 and then make it 60 down the road. Cook the steak then cut the fat FFS. Furthermore, if you are not willing to pay the money the product is marketed for then just don't buy the product. There is a common theme here and that is: 'Money Makes Product'.

MMO fans just do not appreciate the products at hand. If you need something to relate this too just check out all the bit torrent downloaders who are getting entire albums in seconds. They gorge themselves on massive amounts of albums but have no connection to the actual painstaking work of the artist. It's an essentially egotistical viewpoint where the listener actually believes (subconsciously) this album was put on this earth just for their listening pleasure or for their banhammer to be brought down upon it. Bringing it back to how this relates to the dev. of the current Gen MMO the ideas are simple: appreciate whats being given to you as a work of art and not simply something for you to sink your bored, materializing teeth into. These are games that seem to mean more than life itself to MMO gamers (as seen by the countless hours you put into them) yet all you want to do is bitch piss and moan about them to the point where the game just can not healthily grow and flourish.

If you don't see the point here than my SR-71 Blackbird of a post just flew over your fat head.