I'll not be giving Vileplanet $$ for anything, much less a beta. I mean, the game will be out soon enough, and in the mean time I've got LOTRO, which I will likely play alongside AoC anyway.
EDIT: My mistake, I misread. You do need a subscription.. sigh.
From fileplanet:
Beta Signups Start NEXT WEEK!
All users can register now for the Age of Conan beta event notification list. You do not need to be subscribed to register and get instant email notification when beta signups begin.
Beta signups will require a FilePlanet or Founders' Club subscription and begin next week!
Because of all the questions popping up and the arguments (which are surprisingly calm here yet, compared to the AoC general Forum. ^^), here's a link to a Letter from the FC product Director:
Because of all the questions popping up and the arguments (which are surprisingly calm here yet, compared to the AoC general Forum. ^^), here's a link to a Letter from the FC product Director:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
From the AoC Mini website on fileplanet. ** NOTE: Registration for Instant Notification COMING SOON! You don't need to be subscribed to register for notification of when sign-ups begin. You must be a FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club Member in order to sign-up for the Beta. Sign-ups will begin NEXT WEEK! **
You HAVE to be a PAID member of File Planet to SIGN UP to the beta invites there is still NO guarantee. just being a member does not allow you to sign up for AoC beta
This is just about the worst i ever heard! You have to pay money for beta and even then you aint guaranteed to join in?
Isnt it good enough to get subs for the game? They even have to milk something they call a open beta that to me dont look like a open beta where you can test the game fully?
Gotta say this is looking worse and worse by the day.
Dont want to cool you down lads, but you have to PAY Fileplanet to be in! Payment for a beta yeah? I wonder what those guys are dreaming of in the night! Pft.
Lol, no way i'm paying for open beta : /.... sigh this is a huge let down.
.
WHY FUNCOM ...WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
where are you seeing this? paid members are call the founders club and the freebies are called subscribers....the only thing you have to worry about is downloading it so as hell from fileplanets crappy free servers
FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club Member are two different things
Sounds better now, but the downloader will be hell....the amount of people going to be downloading and all : /
Look at the right that is red THAT is founders club. Now look at the left thats blue THAT is subscribers. The difference between them is founders you pay more and get access to other sites. File planet subscribers which is the left gets full access to only Fileplanet.com and you pay less and if you look at the benefits one of them is "Beta access"
So i guess its bad again : / ...ffs funcom
This is not true guys. I am a free member of fileplanet and I get closed beta keys/open beta keys from there contests all the time. Good grief, people. Relax. We've been thru this with every open beta Fileplanet has hosted for the last five years. You will get a chance, it is just better odds being a paid member!
So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom.
Well the madness proves the interest is great, which is generally good. I dont like this playing around, go there, be special member here... why not just open it up and be done with the scheming! MY guess is, Fileplanet paid a hefty sum to Funcom for the beta and now gets it back via the expected rise of paid subs. Its just what I read from it, I may be wrong, but thats how it looks to me, thus both Fileplanet and Funcom milk the cow ahead.
Aye they hype it max first and then they milk the hype. Such greed.
First, it was the Beta-Prayer Contest which was unfair.
Now it's paying Fileplanet (not FC by the way, if anyone's getting a cut, it's probably Eidos).
The simple solution remains. Wait until it is released.
P.S.: It was known for MONTHS that the beta would be run through fileplanet -and- would be limited in numbers. Why everyone is now acting so surprised is a mystery to me.
P.P.S: That does not mean I condone the way this thing is running, or the way this Open Beta is handled. But the complaints that they FORCE you to do anything are just ridiculous.
A lot of you are starting to sound like nothing more than mooches. Get over yourselves. No one is making you pay for anything. It's your wants and desires making you feel this way. Geez.
You realize that Funcom gets no money from fileplanet right? You realize that the fee includes all services at fileplanet not just the AoC beta right?
The letter posted does a great job of explaining that this is a beta you don't have to participate and the subscriber fees that fileplanet charges go towards their own bandwidth issues. 50k people downloading 10gigs is going to be a fairly large strain.
Actually, i do not believe you have to be a paid member. I have a regular account for fileplanet and when i entered my Email for them for when they send out beta key info they said they would send me it when theres first news of the beta keys.
---------------------------- Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz
"So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom."
Aragon, I assure I don't stock in Funcom. I'm in disbelief that Fileplanet is forcing people to pay for this "open" beta and had the balls to raise the price for paid membership at the same time. From this day forward, I will never use Fileplanet again. Their greed reached a low I never thought I'd see.
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Dont want to cool you down lads, but you have to PAY Fileplanet to be in! Payment for a beta yeah? I wonder what those guys are dreaming of in the night! Pft.
Lol, no way i'm paying for open beta : /.... sigh this is a huge let down.
.
WHY FUNCOM ...WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
where are you seeing this? paid members are call the founders club and the freebies are called subscribers....the only thing you have to worry about is downloading it so as hell from fileplanets crappy free servers
FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club Member are two different things
Sounds better now, but the downloader will be hell....the amount of people going to be downloading and all : /
Look at the right that is red THAT is founders club. Now look at the left thats blue THAT is subscribers. The difference between them is founders you pay more and get access to other sites. File planet subscribers which is the left gets full access to only Fileplanet.com and you pay less and if you look at the benefits one of them is "Beta access"
So i guess its bad again : / ...ffs funcom
This is not true guys. I am a free member of fileplanet and I get closed beta keys/open beta keys from there contests all the time. Good grief, people. Relax. We've been thru this with every open beta Fileplanet has hosted for the last five years. You will get a chance, it is just better odds being a paid member!
So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom.
By definition a beta isn't a free trial, it's a test. It's not a mandatory thing. No one is required to participate, meaning no one is required to pay. The devs want to stress test the servers, it's not necessarily a sneak peak and it's still part of the testing they're running. It's all VOLUNTARY.
By definition a beta isn't a free trial, it's a test. It's not a mandatory thing. No one is required to participate, meaning no one is required to pay. The devs want to stress test the servers, it's not necessarily a sneak peak and it's still part of the testing they're running. It's all VOLUNTARY.
Problem with your logic is, in the letter from Funcom's product director http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69328 you can read for yourself where he says yes, you will have to pay fileplanet to be part of the beta. I've been a long time user and supporter of Fileplanet, but that all ended with this deal of hosting AoC. The sad part is, over the years, the majority of all of my closed beta invites came as a result of being a founding member. The part that I always thought was cool was they never forced you to be a member for anything except if you wanted access to faster bandwidth, no wait downloading, and being first in line for chances at betas. Now, they've turned a corner I never thought I'd see.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Again you aren't paying for the beta you are paying for the fileplanet service if you are already a paying member (subscriber etc.) you don't have to pay anything extra.
By definition a beta isn't a free trial, it's a test. It's not a mandatory thing. No one is required to participate, meaning no one is required to pay. The devs want to stress test the servers, it's not necessarily a sneak peak and it's still part of the testing they're running. It's all VOLUNTARY.
Problem with your logic is, in the letter from Funcom's product director http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69328 you can read for yourself where he says yes, you will have to pay fileplanet to be part of the beta. I've been a long time user and supporter of Fileplanet, but that all ended with this deal of hosting AoC. The sad part is, over the years, the majority of all of my closed beta invites came as a result of being a founding member. The part that I always thought was cool was they never forced you to be a member for anything except if you wanted access to faster bandwidth, no wait downloading, and being first in line for chances at betas. Now, they've turned a corner I never thought I'd see.
In all honesty, what does that have to do with my logic? It doesn't change the fact that what's being offered is completely voluntary and you don't have to pay unless you want to be a part of it. That's like saying, why should I pay 4.00 bucks a gallon of gas to fill my gas hog SUV, when that guy walking doesn't have to pay anything for gas cause he's walking. No one made you buy the gas hog, you wanted it so you have to end up paying regardless. The guy walking didn't want a gas hog SUV so he doesn't have to pay for gas.
This whole issue is about needs and wants. Does anyone need to be in the OB? Nope. A lot of people want to though, and whether or not fileplanet is trying to cash in on that fact doesn't change the fact that people are willing to pay for things they need, but usually are very unwilling in paying for things they want.
Simple solution for not wanting to pay to be in the OB, wait for the game to launch and get a trial key from someone.
Again you aren't paying for the beta you are paying for the fileplanet service if you are already a paying member (subscriber etc.) you don't have to pay anything extra.
Great point!!
The membership you're paying for isn't one time use for AoC.
This isn't me trying to justify paying for a beta, however this fact seems to be overlooked by so many because all they care about is "OMG Open Beta=Free trial before the game is released"!!
Ok well first of all screw fileplanet. This whole trend of paying to beta test games is bullshit. I don't see how a limited pay to beta with a NDA still in place can be called open beta.
Level cap of 13? In a game where the cap is 80? Yeah that's really worth paying for. So what the last 75 percent of the game isn't done yet or what. Why else would you only want your "open beta" testers to test the very first part of the game and that's it. This is going to be interesting to see how this goes next month.
Again you aren't paying for the beta you are paying for the fileplanet service if you are already a paying member (subscriber etc.) you don't have to pay anything extra.
If that was true, then they'd give away the keys for FREE! Funcom could put a seed copy of client on torrent out there for users that didn't want to pay fileplanet. Allow users to torrent the client if they don't want to pay for the download service. If they did that, then YES, I'd say you are right. But no, it is an all or nothing deal so it is all about greed. Greed on those that are willing to pay to play 13 level beta, greed on Funcom's part not have a seed torrent for those not wanting to pay for a faster download service, and greed on Fileplanet's part for raising their subscription fee on the same day they announce the AoC open beta program. It is a bad case of greed all the way around.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
You cant let 50'000 people download a 20g client without asking SOMEONE to help pay the bills now can you?
The 13 lvl cap is kinda cheap. But don't assume that means the other 67 lvls are going untested. Theres 20k or more closed beta testers workin on all that stuff.
If the above two things piss you off. Then don't participate. It's as simple as that.
The thing is, you need to pay for a CHANCE to get a key. If you don't get a key, you don't download. Why should you pay for other people downloading ?
--- And when we got more women on the team, it was like No, no, no. We need puppies and horses in there. John Smedley, SOE
You cant let 50'000 people download a 20g client without asking SOMEONE to help pay the bills now can you?
The 13 lvl cap is kinda cheap. But don't assume that means the other 67 lvls are going untested. Theres 20k or more closed beta testers workin on all that stuff.
If the above two things piss you off. Then don't participate. It's as simple as that.
Problem is, fileplanet has always been you get your beta keys and stuff for FREE if you win. You download for free and all. The only time you paid is if you wanted more of a chance and to get on faster, no wait download servers. That has been their gimmick and way of making money forever. Anyway, I've repeated that alot already today. Point is, how is an OPEN beta open if they still have the NDA intact?
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Comments
EDIT: My mistake, I misread. You do need a subscription.. sigh.
From fileplanet:
Beta Signups Start NEXT WEEK!
All users can register now for the Age of Conan beta event notification list. You do not need to be subscribed to register and get instant email notification when beta signups begin.
Beta signups will require a FilePlanet or Founders' Club subscription and begin next week!
Because of all the questions popping up and the arguments (which are surprisingly calm here yet, compared to the AoC general Forum. ^^), here's a link to a Letter from the FC product Director:
forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
Clears up some questions and talks about reasons behind the decisions. Obviously, there will be many who call it BS, but hey, just FYI here.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
WoW, nice find! I think Jon needs to sticky a link to that page at the top of the AoC forums here.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
As someone pointed out, the words Subscriber and Member are the dividing point for most of the confusion.
You aren't given a slot even if you are a Sub (first 50K based on the AoC site post) but at least you are in the running.
Isnt it good enough to get subs for the game? They even have to milk something they call a open beta that to me dont look like a open beta where you can test the game fully?
Gotta say this is looking worse and worse by the day.
Lol, no way i'm paying for open beta : /.... sigh this is a huge let down.
.
WHY FUNCOM ...WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
where are you seeing this? paid members are call the founders club and the freebies are called subscribers....the only thing you have to worry about is downloading it so as hell from fileplanets crappy free servers
FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club Member are two different things
Sounds better now, but the downloader will be hell....the amount of people going to be downloading and all : /
Except you do have to pay for both of them
http://www.fileplanet.com/subscribe/subscribe_tt_aoc.shtml
Look at the right that is red THAT is founders club. Now look at the left thats blue THAT is subscribers. The difference between them is founders you pay more and get access to other sites. File planet subscribers which is the left gets full access to only Fileplanet.com and you pay less and if you look at the benefits one of them is "Beta access"
So i guess its bad again : / ...ffs funcom
This is not true guys. I am a free member of fileplanet and I get closed beta keys/open beta keys from there contests all the time. Good grief, people. Relax. We've been thru this with every open beta Fileplanet has hosted for the last five years. You will get a chance, it is just better odds being a paid member!
So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom.
Aye they hype it max first and then they milk the hype. Such greed.
Are we going to go over all of this again?
First, it was the Beta-Prayer Contest which was unfair.
Now it's paying Fileplanet (not FC by the way, if anyone's getting a cut, it's probably Eidos).
The simple solution remains. Wait until it is released.
P.S.: It was known for MONTHS that the beta would be run through fileplanet -and- would be limited in numbers. Why everyone is now acting so surprised is a mystery to me.
P.P.S: That does not mean I condone the way this thing is running, or the way this Open Beta is handled. But the complaints that they FORCE you to do anything are just ridiculous.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
A lot of you are starting to sound like nothing more than mooches. Get over yourselves. No one is making you pay for anything. It's your wants and desires making you feel this way. Geez.
You realize that Funcom gets no money from fileplanet right? You realize that the fee includes all services at fileplanet not just the AoC beta right?
The letter posted does a great job of explaining that this is a beta you don't have to participate and the subscriber fees that fileplanet charges go towards their own bandwidth issues. 50k people downloading 10gigs is going to be a fairly large strain.
Actually, i do not believe you have to be a paid member. I have a regular account for fileplanet and when i entered my Email for them for when they send out beta key info they said they would send me it when theres first news of the beta keys.
----------------------------
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz
"So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom."
Aragon, I assure I don't stock in Funcom. I'm in disbelief that Fileplanet is forcing people to pay for this "open" beta and had the balls to raise the price for paid membership at the same time. From this day forward, I will never use Fileplanet again. Their greed reached a low I never thought I'd see.
And then there is this: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69328
You have the product director of Funcom defending the greed at Fileplanet. It is just an all around sad day for gamers everywhere.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Lol, no way i'm paying for open beta : /.... sigh this is a huge let down.
.
WHY FUNCOM ...WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
where are you seeing this? paid members are call the founders club and the freebies are called subscribers....the only thing you have to worry about is downloading it so as hell from fileplanets crappy free servers
FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club Member are two different things
Sounds better now, but the downloader will be hell....the amount of people going to be downloading and all : /
Except you do have to pay for both of them
http://www.fileplanet.com/subscribe/subscribe_tt_aoc.shtml
Look at the right that is red THAT is founders club. Now look at the left thats blue THAT is subscribers. The difference between them is founders you pay more and get access to other sites. File planet subscribers which is the left gets full access to only Fileplanet.com and you pay less and if you look at the benefits one of them is "Beta access"
So i guess its bad again : / ...ffs funcom
This is not true guys. I am a free member of fileplanet and I get closed beta keys/open beta keys from there contests all the time. Good grief, people. Relax. We've been thru this with every open beta Fileplanet has hosted for the last five years. You will get a chance, it is just better odds being a paid member!
So you think its ok to pay for this bad excuse theyre calling open beta? Pay for a small teaser? Are you for real??
Only reason can be that you have lots of stocks in Funcom.
By definition a beta isn't a free trial, it's a test. It's not a mandatory thing. No one is required to participate, meaning no one is required to pay. The devs want to stress test the servers, it's not necessarily a sneak peak and it's still part of the testing they're running. It's all VOLUNTARY.
Problem with your logic is, in the letter from Funcom's product director http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69328 you can read for yourself where he says yes, you will have to pay fileplanet to be part of the beta. I've been a long time user and supporter of Fileplanet, but that all ended with this deal of hosting AoC. The sad part is, over the years, the majority of all of my closed beta invites came as a result of being a founding member. The part that I always thought was cool was they never forced you to be a member for anything except if you wanted access to faster bandwidth, no wait downloading, and being first in line for chances at betas. Now, they've turned a corner I never thought I'd see.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
They actually kept the NDA.
This beta is open i words only. A sad day for FC.
Just another opportunity to sell milk before the customers realize the cow is dead, I guess.
---
And when we got more women on the team, it was like No, no, no. We need puppies and horses in there.
John Smedley, SOE
Again you aren't paying for the beta you are paying for the fileplanet service if you are already a paying member (subscriber etc.) you don't have to pay anything extra.
Problem with your logic is, in the letter from Funcom's product director http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=69328 you can read for yourself where he says yes, you will have to pay fileplanet to be part of the beta. I've been a long time user and supporter of Fileplanet, but that all ended with this deal of hosting AoC. The sad part is, over the years, the majority of all of my closed beta invites came as a result of being a founding member. The part that I always thought was cool was they never forced you to be a member for anything except if you wanted access to faster bandwidth, no wait downloading, and being first in line for chances at betas. Now, they've turned a corner I never thought I'd see.
In all honesty, what does that have to do with my logic? It doesn't change the fact that what's being offered is completely voluntary and you don't have to pay unless you want to be a part of it. That's like saying, why should I pay 4.00 bucks a gallon of gas to fill my gas hog SUV, when that guy walking doesn't have to pay anything for gas cause he's walking. No one made you buy the gas hog, you wanted it so you have to end up paying regardless. The guy walking didn't want a gas hog SUV so he doesn't have to pay for gas.This whole issue is about needs and wants. Does anyone need to be in the OB? Nope. A lot of people want to though, and whether or not fileplanet is trying to cash in on that fact doesn't change the fact that people are willing to pay for things they need, but usually are very unwilling in paying for things they want.
Simple solution for not wanting to pay to be in the OB, wait for the game to launch and get a trial key from someone.
The membership you're paying for isn't one time use for AoC.
This isn't me trying to justify paying for a beta, however this fact seems to be overlooked by so many because all they care about is "OMG Open Beta=Free trial before the game is released"!!
Ok well first of all screw fileplanet. This whole trend of paying to beta test games is bullshit. I don't see how a limited pay to beta with a NDA still in place can be called open beta.
Level cap of 13? In a game where the cap is 80? Yeah that's really worth paying for. So what the last 75 percent of the game isn't done yet or what. Why else would you only want your "open beta" testers to test the very first part of the game and that's it. This is going to be interesting to see how this goes next month.
If that was true, then they'd give away the keys for FREE! Funcom could put a seed copy of client on torrent out there for users that didn't want to pay fileplanet. Allow users to torrent the client if they don't want to pay for the download service. If they did that, then YES, I'd say you are right. But no, it is an all or nothing deal so it is all about greed. Greed on those that are willing to pay to play 13 level beta, greed on Funcom's part not have a seed torrent for those not wanting to pay for a faster download service, and greed on Fileplanet's part for raising their subscription fee on the same day they announce the AoC open beta program. It is a bad case of greed all the way around.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
The thing is, you need to pay for a CHANCE to get a key. If you don't get a key, you don't download. Why should you pay for other people downloading ?
---
And when we got more women on the team, it was like No, no, no. We need puppies and horses in there.
John Smedley, SOE
Problem is, fileplanet has always been you get your beta keys and stuff for FREE if you win. You download for free and all. The only time you paid is if you wanted more of a chance and to get on faster, no wait download servers. That has been their gimmick and way of making money forever. Anyway, I've repeated that alot already today. Point is, how is an OPEN beta open if they still have the NDA intact?
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
How is it greed if you're willing to pay 7 bucks? Why is it such a big issue for those of you that this isn't 100% free?
Btw, it isn't confirmed that they are keeping the NDA intact for this. Read the dev post again.