Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, News items
When it comes to character deletions, just about every MMO out there has a clause in their Terms of Service that indicates they have the right to delete your characters at any time and for no reason whatsoever. With that said, there are very few companies that choose to exercise that right.
Up until now it has been Square Enix as part of Final Fantasy XI (even then they occasionally restore characters as part of ‘welcome back’ promotions), and Alganon’s new “trial” which allows you to play for 30 days free before they wipe your character if you don’t subscribe. However, as you can see from the above image, Funcom has opted to join the ranks of “will delete characters” in regards to Age of Conan.
When contacted for comment about whether or not this was true, Erling Ellingsen, Director of Communications for Funcom said, “Yes, that’s correct. It’s a database clean-up. We’re going through all accounts that’s (sic) been inactive for a long period of time, deleting characters under level 20 to free space in the database.“
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Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Subscribe to Age of Conan and receive The Secret World beta access
Filed under: Fantasy, Horror, Age of Conan, News items, The Secret World
Funcom recently announced their plans to get older players back into Age of Conan and boost multi-month subscription rates. Players with inactive subscriptions are invited to retry the game for two weeks and receive a double experience bonus. Those who sign up for multi-month subscriptions will receive these additional bonuses:
- 3-month sub: Beta access to The Secret World
- 6-month sub: Beta access + in-game helmet that boosts experience gain by 10%
- 12-month sub: Beta access + helmet + a free copy of Conan expansion Rise of the Godslayer
Age of Conan has received many updates in the year and a half since its release. However, MMO players can be an unforgiving bunch, so these incentives to give the game another shot are quite necessary. And it’s extra-smart given all the excitement around The Secret World. Considering how many players would be willing to pay for beta access, a subscription to a vastly improved AoC is just icing on the cake.
For those interested in catching up on AoC, check out the most recent game director’s letter, new content, and revised subscription options. Have a burning question for Funcom about this or anything else? Ask it here.
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Having fun in Conan’s homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age! |
Subscribe to Age of Conan and receive The Secret World beta access originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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More Age of Conan subscription incentives coming
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, News items
Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen recently informed Eurogamer about future Age of Conan subscription “initiatives” being planned, which are to follow the new price reduction of multi-month subscriptions . It’s of particular interest that Funcom is planning further pricing specials, as they’ve been doing a lot to bring players back to the game ever since launch. Should their efforts pay off, it’s likely that The Secret World will see a significant development boost, which is something we’d be very happy about as fans of Ragnar Tornquist.
However, nobody knows yet if the current “initiatives” have been helping, as Erling wasn’t able to comment on current numbers. So until some hard numbers come in — hopefully of the positive nature — it’s anybody’s guess on how the game will perform. It’s possible that there’s a free-to-play model in the game’s future, especially since it wouldn’t be the first time a Funcom game has gone that route. However, only time will tell where King Conan and his followers end up.
More Age of Conan subscription incentives coming originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Free to play an option for Age of Conan
Filed under: Age of Conan, Interviews, News items
It would appear that for Funcom, going the way of free-to-play with Age of Conan isn’t entirely off the table. At least so says Erling Ellingson in a recent interview with IncGamers. There’s certainly a precedent with Anarchy Online having gone that route long ago and its director — at that time — was also Craig Morrison. So really, all bets are off on this one.
Still, for the time being subscription remains the primary method of play. Our guess? Funcom is probably waiting for the first expansion or two before opening the original game for free to play access, much like they did with Anarchy Online. So if anything, this probably won’t be happening for a couple more years. That is, unless things rapidly go south for the Norwegian games developer. But with The Secret World looking quite interesting. they’ve got a good chance at making a comeback.
[via MMORPG]
Free to play an option for Age of Conan originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Age of Conan to unveil new expansion at GamesCom
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Events, real-world, Expansions, News items
The first proper expansion for Age of Conan will be unveiled this August at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany. Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen confirmed the news:
“Yes, we will be revealing the first expansion for Age of Conan at the GamesCom show in August. We have lots of exciting stuff to reveal and Conan players and gamers in general are in for a real treat, but for now, our lips are sealed until then!”
The unveil will feature in-game footage and a preview of the quests, monsters, new environments and other additions that will make up the expansion. This news comes not long after the release of a major content patch for AoC, and should help keep that positive momentum going.
Age of Conan to unveil new expansion at GamesCom originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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"No retreat, no surrender" for Age of Conan
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches, PvP, PvE
Age of Conan’s Game Director Craig Morrison recently had an interview at Gamespy to dicuss his game’s future. In the end though, he ended up speaking more about the past, and in particular, past problems and mistakes that have now been seen to. Technical game client issues, a lack of PvE content at certain levels, and an unsatisfying PvP system were all cited as causes of people turning their back on AoC — followers of the game since launch would agree with all of these things being issues — but Morrison went through this list and explained how his team has improved the game on each of these fronts. The embedded video, featuring Erling Ellingsen, shows off some of the current and planned improvements.
As for talk of the future, Morrison reminded us that Xibaluku is coming for the PvE junkies, and mentioned the PvP resource system, which should bring a new level of interaction to PvP gameplay. He believes that the biggest issue still remaining from launch is to do with a shortage of good gear, and an itemization overhaul is in the works to address this. We can also expect some more guild and community functions later in the year. The stage is set for a comeback; now we’ll just have to wait and see if the players come to the party.
“No retreat, no surrender” for Age of Conan originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Funcom reaffirms commitment to AoC on PC and Xbox 360 following layoffs
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, MMO industry, Consoles
After the rumors of staffing cuts at Funcom turned out to be true last week, many of you may have been predicting bad things for the future of Age of Conan — or at least, enough of you to have Erling Ellingsen provide MTV’s Multiplayer blog with a short statement regarding the health of their flagship title:
Our aim is for this to not affect development of ‘Age of Conan,’ or any of our other games, at all. We are sticking firmly to our plans. The Xbox 360 version of the game is still in production, but as before we are not committing to any specific dates. I wish I could give you more information, but I can’t at the time being.
This backs up what Funcom had to say last week, that this is simply “business as usual” and not anything to be concerned about. It is good to hear about the Xbox 360 version once in a while, even if essentially nothing was revealed other than “it’s still coming”. We’re pretty sure, however, that most of our readers that are interested in AoC haven’t been held back due to waiting on the console release, because let’s face it — if you’re an MMO-fan, you’ve got a PC. The 360 release stands to reach a new audience, one which will cause Conan‘s roleplaying-racism to join together with real-life racism through the magic of Xbox Live, and might just make the internets spontaneously combust.
Funcom reaffirms commitment to AoC on PC and Xbox 360 following layoffs originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Daedren pulls no punches on Erling Ellingsen interview
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Business models, Interviews, MMO industry, Opinion
A few weeks ago, we pointed the Massively readers to an article entitled Age of Conan: A post mortem analysis, written by the Daedren over at r1ftgaming. In that lengthy article, Daedren gave his top reasons for AoC’s demise, and even offered it as a lesson learned for future developers. Comments on his site, and here at Massively were quite heated concerning players’ malcontent with Age of Conan.
Since then, Daedren was able to grab the attention of Funcom, and hence an interview with Product Manager Erling Ellingsen. In true Daedren style, he doesn’t beat around the bush and asks the questions plaguing the minds of most former and current AoC subscribers. Where is this PvP system we’ve heard so much about? Why announce a new expansion when the current game still needs so much work?
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Erling Ellingson confirms Age of Conan subscriber numbers, says thankyou
Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan
In another video from onlinewelten.com, again recorded over at the Games Convention in Leipzig, Erling Ellingson addresses the Age of Conan community directly. As we’d noted, there was debate as to whether the figure of 415,000 subscribers mentioned in the Funcom quarterly report presentation referred to August 14th or June 30th, but in this interview Ellingson has now confirmed AoC’s active subscriber numbers as over 400,000. Working from the figure of 800,000 boxes sold, that gives a clear retention figure of around 50% right now.
As well as talking at length about how good the launch was (yes, Erling, we know) Ellingson proceeds to reassure the audience that he and the other developers won’t be resting on their laurels. He’s obviously read the forums between giving these interviews, as two of the biggest issues are mentioned specifically: the PvP patch is due ‘any moment now, cross your fingers‘ and the memory leak (arguably the biggest issue of all as it impacts even those who love the game as it is) is getting plenty of attention. There’s also a flying mention of the new Funcom MMO, The Secret World.
Check out the video after the cut. By the way, at time of writing, the video had been mistakenly captioned as a Warhammer Online interview. Whoops.
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Having fun in Conan’s homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age! |
Continue reading Erling Ellingson confirms Age of Conan subscriber numbers, says thankyou
