Early Access has been closed. 100,000s of customers turned away, people arguing over terms stating "limited places"
it goes on and on and on.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=93019&page=125 - 125 pages thread closed.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=2110786#post2110786 - new thread.
http://www.gamestation.co.uk/product.asp?id=101280652972876 - early access still being sold in the uk
Sad bastards. Go and do something else for a few days and just play it when it goes live.
Edit : Its not Funcoms fault by the way, from what I understand the pre-order deals along with gifts like the mammoth, rhino and bow were all sorted by Eidos.
Why is early access still being sold? :P
Seems none of the companies selling the game realise that Early Access is Sold out :P
I got the play email about early access. Had a look at the registration thing. Decided Id rather install the game and use the free time before commiting to a subscription, as it looked (to me anyway) that to get early access you A: needed to pay a small amount, and B: start the subscription (unless it automatically didnt start for 30 days, which it didnt say)
Ill just be happy with my Rhino when I hit 40...
(Plus Id rather not start playing the day before my final final exam...)
Posted today on Official Forums
QuoteFuncom has been working very hard towards setting up gaming server capacity to launch this game comfortably for all the people who want to play Age of Conan. We are estimating that on Day One, a very high number of gamers will want to enter Hyboria.
The Open Beta finished on Sunday and we have been prepping those servers to be used as Live game servers, with the first ones to be used for the Early Access Program. Once those are set up and ready, we're doing final adjustments to the other servers to prepare for full launch.
We measured how much capacity we thought we would need for this program and registrations have been on pace for this capacity – until two days ago. On Monday the registrations spiked and on Tuesday they increased even more. Early on Wednesday the capacity limit was reached and automatically shut off. The entire program is now mostly sold out globally, with some local variation. We had no way of anticipating the spike we saw at the end.
Our goal for Early Access was always to provide the best possible gaming experience for the ones who would get into the program. We scoped servers and download capacity for the 15gb client for a set number, based on our best projections. Those have been soundly surpassed. We are of course extremely humbled by the fact that so many players can't wait to play the game.
We understand that there's been some unfortunate confusion about the pre-order keys in some markets. Early Access has been a special limited offer that was exclusively available through the Age of Conan billing pages once you registered your pre-order key. Just to clarify there are no 'Early Access keys', and all pre-order keys do of course give the exclusive mounts and item benefits to your account as intended.
Now we have few choices. We could shut down the Closed Beta and reformat those servers to set them up for Early Access instead, but the fact is that the Closed Beta is supplying extremely valuable information that we would not want to miss. Quality is always our first goal and we would not want to compromise that but rather focus on the experience for all of you at launch.
Our best course of action is to move as quickly as we can to finalize the adjustments of the full range of launch servers, and to concentrate on being completely prepared for launch. It is only a matter of days even for those who are not in the Early Access program to set foot in Hyboria.
We are looking forward to greet you there!
Yours sincerely,
Funcom Development Team
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=96390
--
Posted april on Funcom Website
QuoteDurham, USA – April 16, 2008 – Funcom and Eidos announce that Age of Conan pre-order programs are now fully available in all major territories, including USA, Germany, France, Spain, UK, Oceania and the Nordic countries. Conan fans and MMO gamers are already raving about the incredible pre-order items, including the War Mammoth and Killer Rhino, and today Funcom ups the ante and confirms that everyone who pre-orders may access Hyboria several days prior to the retail launch.*
http://www.funcom.com/wsp/funcom/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&table=CONTENT&func_id=1272
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So uh do i call Gamestation and try to get back my pre-order??? So confused....
I preordered as I figured I wouldnt be waiting for the price to drop. And the rhino was an added perk. Never intended on early access as I mentioned above :D
(http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/AoC.jpg)
I only preordered a few weeks ago as well :P
Do you reckon that if loads of people are on the preorder etc, that come actual release the servers might be in a better state for normal people?
Im meaning stuff like the LOTRO release, where it took a good day before it would properly connect with all the activity going on...
I love it when people go up in arms becuase they cant get onto betas or there are problems when they do. The game isnt out yet, be happy they even offered it.
I find your comments amusing to say the least Dooms, if you actually knew facts you would have a different opinion.
Personally im not fussed ill be waiting til the 23rd, its a sh*tfest for anyone trying to get early access at the moment.
To make this quick and easy:
April 08 Press release states early access is available to everyone on pre order.
Announcement on official forums states, access is now capped, seems like "Bait and Switch"
And official report stated capacity is set to 500,000, yet pre order codes ran into/over 1 million cards being given out.
Date of pre order early access was upto the 14th, yet companies were still selling early access today, and many companies wont give out
pre codes until tommorow, not just in uk but other countries as well. (pointless as it is, cus early access has stopped)
It seems Funcom knew what they were doing when they oversold access.
This is short version theres a different story for each retailer the globe over, every retailer seems have a different idea, it seems that Eidos have miss communicated the whole "pre order early access"
And hell if i wanted someone to preach to me about how lucky i am i would post on the official forums.... ;)
Pre-order has to be paid for, (a few dollars for the early access I believe, plus 10 days free subscription). If you paid for it then youll get it. If you didnt pay for it youve lost nothing, so no sense crying about things.
Yeah, it sucks, but in the grand scheme of things it really isnt that bad. The game will still go live on the expected date and everyone can play.
The point is people couldnt/ cant pay for it, because of the way the whole "pre order early access" has been miss-communicated between Eidos and Retailers.
15gb download....
over 1,000,000 downloaders.....
they should be using bit torrent !
Knighty the funny thing is, they are using Torrent...
Ill dig the info.
QuoteOur goal for Early Access was always to provide the best possible gaming experience for the ones who would get into the program. We scoped servers and download capacity for the 15gb client for a set number, based on our best projections. Those have been soundly surpassed. We are of course extremely humbled by the fact that so many players can't wait to play the game.
Isnt this irrelevant because its being distributed by Torrent? The more downloading/sharing the better?
Anyway close this thread, i dont want people to think im crying...
I cant recall exactly but I understand that there was a choice of torrent or regular download or something like that. I didnt check to be honest, however it definately whizzed off the funcom servers for me and maxed out my internet connection until the entire thing was done.
Quote from: BaconKnighty the funny thing is, they are using Torrent...
Ill dig the info.
QuoteOur goal for Early Access was always to provide the best possible gaming experience for the ones who would get into the program. We scoped servers and download capacity for the 15gb client for a set number, based on our best projections. Those have been soundly surpassed. We are of course extremely humbled by the fact that so many players can't wait to play the game.
Isnt this irrelevant because its being distributed by Torrent? The more downloading/sharing the better?
Anyway close this thread, i dont want people to think im crying...
/passes hankies to bacon... ;)
Is it a 15gb client for those preordering and thus without a DVD, or is everyone going to have to download it even with the game DVD?
Quote from: zpyderIs it a 15gb client for those preordering and thus without a DVD, or is everyone going to have to download it even with the game DVD?
As far as i understand both the Early Access client and Retail Release client are exactly the same, but i read somewhere there may well be a few content updates on the day of release.
hehe even though I got into early access it looks like Im not going to be able to play on the first day :P
I have a really bad phone line and quite often goes down, sometimes for only a few minutes but always resets my ADSL IP profile to either 135k, 512k or 1 meg, it went down for a couple of hours yesterday and when it came back on my ADSL was set to 512, it will be stuck there until its reset manually, which they wont do it at weekend, I hate BT!!!
I still need 10gigs which Im not gonna get in time at 55kbs :P
So if you did get on early access do they not send you a copy on disk as well???
Shaun, early access people do get a disc but only at retail launch.
Dont be to worried about missing playtime tonight, severs should be up at GMT+1 6PM our time,
its now 9PM in the UK and the servers are still down, im not surprised really -) I just hope they dont come up til the 23rd :P
My IP profile reset itself during the night and I'm currently getting it at around 150Kbs, I'm currently at 90% so should be done in under 3 hours cant wait to start playing tonight 8-)
Dont forget to post some first impression reviews when you do get in...
Well this has possibly been one of the smoothest MMO launches Ive ever seen. Im playing on Aquilonia, the EU PvP-RP server and havent been ganked by idiots once. People seem generally very polite and respectful and there is absolutely none of this ridiculous "if its red its dead" mentality. The game client has come on in leaps and bounds and in one marathon ten hour session I didnt have one crash and it was running as smoothly as when I first started playing.
I think your mileage may vary but as a person who didnt like World of Warcraft but enjoyed Everquest/Everquest II and Star Wars Galaxies a lot I feel right at home in Conan. I wont go into the specifics of the game but needless to say Howards lore provides a great backdrop for a fantasy MMO, especially for those of us who are Tolkien critics and dont get on well with his idea of fantasy and mythology.
The good:
Incredibly smooth client
Stunning graphics
Best sound Ive heard in an MMO (all done in glorious 5.1)
Fun combat system that is more interactive than the usual MMO style clicking
No effeminate looking long eared elves running around everywhere
Leet speaking and ganking at an all time low
Deep, involving storylines
Literally millions of pieces of phat loot
Great character creation and customisation
Huge world with very quick loading between zones
Quite possibly the best MMO on the market in my opinion, and Ive pretty much tried them all
The bad:
Level 1-20 is very linear and doesnt represent the game at large in any way
You have to repeat level 1-20 for every character you will ever roll doing the same quests
Some of the cutscenes are annoying and leave you open to being killed by another player
The UI has a few rough edges
A few bugs have made it over from beta
The chat window is a nightmare to use
Patching can sometimes be slow when the servers are under heavy load
Sounding good Chris 8-)
Well I have the game installed now :) ....but the servers are down for maintenance :gag:
Any chance of an "Official thread" for AoC players? Would be good to get that going with a list of players/characters and which servers theyre on.
That being killed whilst cutscening thing seems a bit annoying. I guess though if they implemented something to make you unkillable during the cutscene, all that would happen is the ganker would wait till its finished and then rape you.
Mighty tempted to go PvE. But if I do that, am I likely to miss a big element of the game?
I'm going to roll on a PVE server tbh 3 years of ganking halfwits in WoW sort of put me off the idea of going onto a PVP server where anybody can kill you :P, but I might re-roll onto one at a later date if I feel I'm missing out.
When The Burning Crusade came out in WoW there was very little ganking to start with, you would quite often see both factions questing and grinding next to each other, as people just wanted to get on and lvl up.
That changed by the time people had started doing alt's and it was quite common for low lvl's to be targeted by much higher lvl's and solo high lvl players to be targeted by groups of 2 or 3 which is just plain ghey to get camped for 30 mins when your trying to grind and you have no friends online :P
There will be areas on PVE servers where it will be PVP free for all so I'm gonna try that first.
Well servers back up and updates running so far downloaded files of 63mb and 13mb and currently downloading one of 410mb!!! :gag:
Really hope I get to play when that ones done :P
Rolled a Demonologist currently lvl 7, loving it so far the game runs great, no lag and not 1 crash except when I exited the game :) Feel's really polished for a new MMO.
Not really played enough to comment much more as it was getting late and I had to be up this morning.... except that the chat system needs serious work!!!!
I had major problems with crashes until I updated my graphic's driver to the latest ( :whoops: had a 12 month old driver installed :P).
The graphic's are bringing my comp to it's knees even with a up to date driver, which I wasn't expecting from a MMO tbh, my 256mb 7800GTX simply isn't up to the job, currently running on lowest settings and only getting around 20-30FPS. Which is a real shame with it being such a pretty game, if I ramp up the eye candy at medium I get 10-15 FPS and at max I only get 5FPS lol
So ordered a http://www.tekheads.co.uk/s/product?product=606796 I did think about ordering 2, but that would mean a new PSU and case as my current one is a bit small for 2 cards of that size.
Gonna take the day off tomorrow and maybe the day after to have a proper play :w00t:
Really enjoying playing few little annoyance mostly regarding the UI and chat interface, really hope they do some work on these pretty soon as they are miles behind WoW on that front.
But thinking back they are miles in front of where WoW where when it had been out a few months!!! The server and game itself seems rock solid, not crashed or had lag once, which couldnt be said for WoW :P
They have made a really good job of the rest of the game by the look of it, hope life at 80 will live up to expectations.
Some screenies:
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture009.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture010.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture012.jpg
(1920x1200 and about 1meg each)
It certainly does look good. The chat interface seems similar from those screenies to the LOTRO one. Was annoying at first but you soon got used to it with filtering all the crap out!
Quote from: ShaunReally enjoying playing few little annoyance mostly regarding the UI and chat interface, really hope they do some work on these pretty soon as they are miles behind WoW on that front.
But thinking back they are miles in front of where WoW where when it had been out a few months!!! The server and game itself seems rock solid, not crashed or had lag once, which couldnt be said for WoW :P
They have made a really good job of the rest of the game by the look of it, hope life at 80 will live up to expectations.
Some screenies:
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture009.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture010.jpg
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k26/bobbins53/Iliena_picture012.jpg
(1920x1200 and about 1meg each)
Things like the UI evolve very quickly when you have a larger player base giving you feedback
Ive played through beta umpteen times with almost every class so Im already a 30 with my Bear Shaman without breaking into a sweat. Ill get him to 40 so I can use my mammoth next weekend and start levelling another character a bit.
Unfortunately being in beta for so long may have spoilt quite a lot of the plot and quests for me, I think Ill try levelling in Stygia next time since it was the only place I never really bothered with before.
yay, play just emailed saying the game has been despatched.
Hopefully itll turn up on thursday, giving me time to reformat windows tomorrow afternoon after I finish uni for good!(hopefully)
New Graphics card has really sorted out my frame rate, have it set on medium to high and getting 35-40FPS instead of the 5-10 FPS I was getting on the screen shots :)