Posts Tagged ‘AoC’

Age of Conan goes free-to-play. At least for the first 20 levels. For now.

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Norwegian games developer Funcom has recently announced that they’ve opened up their MMORPG Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures as a free-to-play game, with caveats, of course. Players that download the client, register, and start playing what Funcom calls a ‘trial’ between now and January 1st, 2010 won’t have to pay a dime. At least not for the first 20 levels, which includes the Island of Tortage, the game’s first starting area. After which point, Funcom is banking on players enjoying the experience so much that they’ll be willing to fork over some cash for the subscription service.

“Our original seven day trial has been very successful so far,” says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. “But with the holiday season coming up this is the perfect time to shake up our trial offer a bit and try out something new. So everyone who downloads the trial before January 1st will be able to play the first part of the game for free, forever. We are confident that many of those taking advantage of this offer will choose to become permanent players, allowing them to experience all of what the game has to offer including all the additions and improvements introduced since launch.”

Ok, not a bad promo. Unless of course, you look at the less than stellar performance Age of Conan has seen since it’s launch. While Funcom bills the title as a “smash hit in retail,” looking at some of AoC’s past ‘achievements’ reveals a slightly different story. Remember, AoC is the same title that saw half of it’s servers shut down at the very beginning of the year. Only a few months later, Funcom’s financial report revealed that AoC was clearly not living up to the company’s expectations. Funcom then moved on to giving away virtual goods as a way to draw in more players, as well as initiating the ‘free trial’ program Larssen’s statement refers to. To top it all off, all of this Age of Conan activity has been taking place post Funcom announcing that they’ve got not one, but two free-to-play titles in the works.

Again, with the talk of free-to-plays in development, combined with the proverbial flogging of the dead horse – calling a play from the Turbine handbook doesn’t seem too far off. Remember Turbine’s flailing Dungeons and Dragons Online? Almost banished to the depths of obscurity, Turbine made the move to convert DDO to a full fledged free-to-play, and has seem massive interest, action, and associated sales and revenue arriving via the in-game shop. Now if I were a betting man….I’d be playing an all in on 2010 seeing Funcom do the very same with Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures.

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Funcom and Turbine give away virtual goods

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

Earlier this week, both Funcom and Turbine started giving away virtual goods within Age of Conan and Asheron’s Call and Dungeons & Dragons Online, respectively.  Funcom hopes to draw new players in and lure back former players with free trials and exclusive virtual items.  Turbine, however is on another path, with their virtual goods giveaway being a bit more of the ‘D’oh!  Our bad – here’s some free stuff’ variety.

Funcom – Age of Conan

aocYesterday marked the kickoff of a new Funcom initiative.  Watching player numbers decline, Funcom’s not about to let their investment simply slip away, and they’ve now opened a free trial program.  This trial lets new users try out the game for 7 days at no cost.  Since Funcom’s announcement of shrinking server populations, the company desperately needs to draw in new players as well as retain current ones.  To this end, Funcom is going 1up on the free trial, and now sweetening the deal with tossing a few virtual goods in Conan’s backpack.

MMORPG.com and Eurogamer.com, Funcom partner sites, are now holding the keys (literally) to these new AoC freebies.  Both sites were issued 20,000 trial keys, one lot to be used for North American gamers, and the other for European gamers.  These are the promo keys needed to obtain the three unique virtual items.  These items are designed to allow for easier and faster early gameplay.  Items include:

  • Totem of Origins – designed to allow players to teleport back to their home city from anywhere in the world after level 20
  • Bag of Holding – an über backpack designed to increase users’ overall inventory space
  • Enruned Kosalan Ring – increases all damage dealt by the wearer

Note: these items are available ONLY through the MMORPG.com and Eurogamer.com keys.  A free trial version of AoC is of course available directly from the Funcom site, but alas, no free stuff.  And if three free virtual goods weren’t enough to get players interested, Funcom is also tossing in the family truckster and roof rack as a bonus if a trial is converted to a fully paid version.  What I mean by that is Funcom is giving new paying customers a Snow Mammoth mount (family truckster) and a Mammoth Bag (roof rack) that are designed to further speed up early to mid level playing.  What’s interesting to note is that these potentially five free virtual goods are not simply cosmetic upgrades, but items that will significantly improve player’s performance and speed through the game.

This raises two interesting points.  First being, I clearly remember Funcom’s AoC presentation at last years Games Convention in Leipzig where they told press members that they’re really struggling with end game content.  Has this end game content been significantly improved (and better yet, tested on a massive scale)?  It would appear so, as Funcom is obviously making a push to move new players through early stages quite quickly and on board to take on the darkest of dungeons.  The second question raised is whether or not Funcom is testing the microtransactions waters with AoC?  Remember, they’ve got at least two free-to-play titles in the works that we know about.  Could Funcom even be considering opening AoC up to an in-game item mall, or do they want to stick to the tried and true method of subscriptions, all the while working on free-to-play in the back room?

Turbine – Asheron’s Call and Dungeons & Dragons Online

pc-dungeondragons-online-stormreach_boxServer migration is never an easy task.  Especially when you’re running an MMO which sees literally no down time what so ever.  So when Turbine recently migrated servers for both Asheron’s Call and Dungeons & Dragons Online things weren’t exactly what you’d call ‘Smooth’.  The migration resulted in a significant amount of downtime, and as is standard industry practice with server downtime, Turbine extended all subscriptions by one day.  But the folks in Mass. didn’t stop there.  Turbine stepped up to the plate and started handing out the virtual goodies to eager MMO players.

This coming weekend all Asheron’s Call and D&D Online players will receive a +25% XP bonus as well as an increased rare item drop rate of virtual goods.  But wait….the Turbine goodness doesn’t stop here, as they’ve managed to turn a faux pas into a virtual goods teaser.  All users of D&D Online with active accounts during the downtime will receive a special in-game item when the next major patch is released later this summer.

Nice guys eh?  Well of course, but what’s more is that by giving away ‘free’ virtual goods within a game, Turbine is giving a ‘behind the curtain’ nod at the real-world financial value of in-game virtual items.  As with all goods and services, naturally distributing a large amount of one particular item immediately decreases it’s value of worth, but to the average player, the ‘Oooo.  Neat!’ factor far outweighs the ‘Aw man, it’s not worth as much anymore, ‘cause everybody has one’ factor.

Turbine has already clearly indicated that they’re interested in microtransactions, hiring a microtransactions manager.  Additionally, yesterday’s rumor mill was in full effect with reports that LotR was more or less ‘ready to go’ to be ported to a console experience (specifically the XboX 360) but had hit a snag as Turbine would like to feature the title as a free-to-play with microtransaction options, causing Gold vs. Silver XboX subscription headaches.

While perhaps not the best of circumstances to introduce players to virtual goods (and the associated advantages and downright cool factor), both Turbine and Funcom are using difficult situations to their advantage.  Both companies have free-to-play/microtransaction based projects in the works – so why not wet the appetites of their current customers through targeted promotions?  Brilliant folks.  Simply brilliant.

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Funcom’s Age of Conan servers to be halved

Thursday, January 15th, 2009
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Funcom has just announced their list of planned server merges, with over half falling by the wayside.  Of the current 49 servers in action, post mergers, funcom’s MMO Age of Conan will be reduced to only 18.

While European servers will see the least drastic of the changes, with 12 servers remaining open due to the language variety (Age of Conan is currently available in English, French, German, and Spanish), the North American and Oceanic regions will be hardest hit.  The current 24 servers operating in these areas will be reduced to six, with only one PvP, and two PvE servers remaining open in the United States.  Each of the 3 servers will combine populations of the six or seven currently operating servers.

Funcom tested this move last week, with a successful merger of the Oceanic servers, and is expected to roll out the US and European mergers this week.

This is a significant point in it’s own right, as this is the first quasi-indication from funcom on how AoC’s numbers have dwindled since launch.  The silver lining in this cloud is that dedicated fans, and even those that may be new to the game will see a much increased server population, thus leading to much player-to-player interactions, and naturally a boosted in-game economy (man, I can’t WAIT to see prices on the Auction House explode).

Funcom says that they’re pushing forward with the high level and end game content (a comment we heard directly from funcom representatives at the Leipzig GC), as well as the first expansion pack.

In some ways I’m a bit taken back by this, in other ways, not.  Funcom’s Age of Conan made a lot of noise prior to the launch, won Voodoo Extreme’s MMORPG of the year 2008, and who could forget Keaira’s playboy appearance?  I personally have only spent a few days with Age of Conan, but found the gameplay and graphics to be stellar.  As noted above, I did hear it directly from funcom reps that the biggest problem they’d experienced with the AoC community were complaints about not enough end-game/epic materials and dungeons.  The last I knew, they were working on this content last summer, but weren’t giving out any definitive dates as to when the content would be released.  Another fact to consider is AoC/funcom’s timing.  When AoC was first released, we knew that Blizzard was rapidly moving forward with the WotLK, but hadn’t given any indications to it’s release date.  Funcom nailed the AoC release date; in so much as WoW players (myself included) had cleared a number of heroic dungeons, collected their purples, and were, well, to be quite honest, a bit bored.  Age of Conan fit the bill and filled the void.  Given the massive numbers that Blizzard is yet again reaching with Lich King success, could many others like me have simply moved AoC down the list again?

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Age of Conan getting some GOOOOOOD updates!

Monday, June 16th, 2008

It looks like Friday the 13th wasn’t so bad. Funcom, publishers of Age of Conan announced that a whole new horsecart is gonna be pulling into the station soon with a booty full of goodies.

You can have a read of AoC’s official newsletter here, or…sit back and let me give you the highlights:

Decent, as we’ve come to expect it, none of this schoolboy baby business, PvP implemented. Yay! For anyone that’s accustomed to playing PvP roles as opposed to PvE has come to realize that AoC is lacking a bit where others make PvP pretty darn close to white knuckled combat.

One tiny little jab at Funcom if I may? There’s one sentence that sticks out like a sore thumb in the newsletter:

“Following the launch of Age of Conan we sat down immediately and started fleshing out some ideas for what we wanted to do with the PvP (player vs. player) features in the game, and now we are ready to reveal it to you.”

Ummmm. Following? I mean, I don’t mean to sound like a jackass here but uhhh…wouldn’t you want to map out the PvP strategy and development BEFORE you launched the game? Call me crazy….

Colors! Yes, color codes. A new fugitive system is being implemented whereby a color coded system will correspond to the appropriate wanted status of each character. This is based on how many lower level players they’ve killed. The basic David v. Goliath scenario is set here, as there are greater PvP rewards for killing a more wanted player. Theft of items and money will be awarded to death of the player with the highest fugitive status.

Awwww yiy….LOOT baby! The AoC loot system is being retooled. In case you haven’t noticed, loot in AoC thus far has been…well…almost insignificant. Funcom is changing this presumably to make loot a more integral part of character progression. The AoC street sweepers union is rather happy about this.

Powerpoint FTW! No, thankfully you’re not going to have to sit through a 32 slide presentation in order to play. Powerpoints refers to the new achievement system being put into place. These are points earned primarily during endgame play, but…you can continue to receive them in a steady influx provided that you keep your subscription status active. Powerpoints are pretty much, more or less similar to WoW’s Marks of Honor, and can be spent on special abilities and/or gear. Fear not…Funcom’s been tracking you, and these Powerpoints will be applied retroactively once launched. In other words, all the time you’ve already spent ingame has been tallied, tabulated, and will be waiting for you once the patch is applied. And in this slide, you’ll see our productivity vs. cost and performance is increasing due to….(sorry, I couldn’t resist)

Chit Chat. Ummm…yeah. Funcom. Funny that the name com (as in communication?) is part of the brand’s name, but yet, communicating ingame should provide an achievement award in itself. A completely new chat interface will be hitting your UI soon.

Strap your seatbelts on riders, as all this a few more improvements are heading your way in late June/early July.

All in all, I’ve been OK with AoC. Funcom’s latest offering gets the OK seal with a bit of trepidation. It’s got a lot of things going for it, and I’m almost pulling for it like the little engine that could. Graphically, the game is stunning, sound is not so bad, but there’s also that nagging suspicion in the back of my head that just keeps saying to me “They rushed it to market, they rushed it to market….”. Does this sound familiar with any of Funcom’s other offerings. Yes. Me too. Ok, I’ll say it: Anarchy Online. Do it with me now….roll eyeballs….groan. Yes, it was bad. Very bad. But…on the other side of the coin, Funcom got their $H@& together might fast, and within a year the game was actually pretty decent. The Shadowlands expansion pack changed the whole face of the game, and if you hadn’t been in on the original release (or lived on rocks and never read forums) it might have even passed as a good game. I have the very same hopes for AoC. It’s got good bones, and hey let’s face it, even market leader World of Warcraft wasn’t perfect when initially released upon the world.

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Funcom puts the F back in effed up

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

Hyboria may look hotter than hell from the screenshots and trailers, but not so with client downloaders. It seems as though the early access offer that allow(ed) players to start playing the new offering on May 17 has sold out, leaving a LOT of fanboys and girls screaming bloody murder. Funcom sites that their servers couldn’t any more peeps downloading the 14GB client. Let me say that again, 14 effing GB?!?! Not being prepared for a release is just bad business. An easy fix would have been to make a patch available whereby users could simply patch the beta version they’d been testing and bring it up to the release version. Instead, users are forced to uninstall the beta and then re-download the 14GB access client again. Ouch.

To add insult to injury, plenty of peeps experienced the “ERROR: Filesize incorrect” message when installing the game. WTF? Granted this can be fixed, but not exactly what I’d call a nice Welcome doormat. To fix the error, you’ll need to go into the AoC directory, find and run the SimpleConfig.exe program, click on “Verify/Repair” button, check the repair checkbox, and start the verification. This repair checker will then download the correct version of the corrupted files. As if I haven’t downloaded enough already?

Ok, so we’ve now spent 22,000 hours downloading a corrupt 14GB client, patched the what should have been correct files in the first place, and are ready to fire up some juicy blood spilling action. Hold the phone boss, we’ve got a few MORE of funcoms eff ups to fix. You’re probably going to launch the game and get nothing more than a black screen now. Be sure to check if you have anything between your teeth with this now very expensive mirror you’re sitting in front of.

To fix the black screen of WTF, head back to ye old SimpleConfig.exe, and give ‘er a run. Now look for the graphics tab and select DirectX 9 (your default may or may not be DirectX10). Restart AoC. If this still doesn’t work, rinse and repeat the above steps, but now set the resolution to something lower than your standard screen rez. Fear not, you’ll be able to change these settings in game mode once you’ve managed to raise Conan from the black screen of WTF.

I wish that I could say after funcom’s last release, Anarchy Online, that they’ve learned a thing or two. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem so. With such a sweet looking game, let’s hope that funcom can fix the flubs and bring on the fury!

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