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?

Seems none of the companies selling the game realise that Early Access is Sold out

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

-

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

I only preordered a few weeks ago as well

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.