Massively^™

I think this is an issue with the game's PUBLISHERS, not the DEVELOPER. The Developers hate having their testing exercise get over-run by more people than they could listen to if they wanted to. Now sure, they want the game to succeed too, but their job is to make a good game first and foremost, and tens of thousands of non-testers isn't the way to get that job done. It's the publisher (or the publishing side of the company, if they have both in house) that's concerned with marketing, with only the slightest testing benefit (i.e. stress testing) to the actual developers.

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It's Funcoms obligation as a business to generate as much revenue as possible - you can't knock them for the Open Beta agreement. The demand for the open beta was enourmous and they only had limited number of spots available. What is a better solution? By going with FilePlanet, Funcom was able to generate some cash, save some cash (by not having to pay for bandwidth to distribute the client themselves), and curbed demand.

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I agree with Mark. I'd also like to add this: by releasing an older client, wouldn't that make the actual RELEASE client look so much better?

Considering that Funcom basically defined the concept of "Bad Launch" with AO back in the day, by performing this "bait and switch" it makes them look like they've worked their asses off in the 11th hour to "fix" all the issues that the beta client had.

All me a conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had a polished client that no one has seen.

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I'd give the conspiracy theory some credence if Funcom hadn't gone and admitted that the open beta code was fubared because they threw in some last minute changes in the hours before the open beta started, and actually delayed the open beta to get those changes shoved into the client.

I think assuming that they released something buggy just to look good in another two weeks, when they release polished final game code, is giving them too much credit. Especially if the buggy open beta code contributes to people not buying the game at launch. We all know that a good launch goes a long way toward overall success of a game. It's the rare mmo that gets a slow start and then picks up steam. It's even more rare for fantasy-themed mmo's.

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I thought we'd squashed this "old client" rumor already?

"And yes, I have seen the same rumors that it’s old, but it’s not entirely true. We tried to include the best we had on a stable approach, but in our eagerness to please we wanted to get a few additional fixes out (hence we pushed the launch back a couple of hours). In order to reach the May 1st date some of those fixes led to unwanted side-effects which weren’t discovered in time."
- Funcom’s Age of Conan Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?GAME=191&FEATURE=1927&bhcp=1

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I thought we'd squashed this "old client" rumor already?

"And yes, I have seen the same rumors that it’s old, but it’s not entirely true. We tried to include the best we had on a stable approach, but in our eagerness to please we wanted to get a few additional fixes out (hence we pushed the launch back a couple of hours). In order to reach the May 1st date some of those fixes led to unwanted side-effects which weren’t discovered in time."
- Funcom’s Age of Conan Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?GAME=191&FEATURE=1927&bhcp=1

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