Free to play an option for Age of Conan

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]

Reader Comments (24)

I learnt my lesson with AO, which Funcom apparently did not. Disastrous release and arrogance toward the player base coupled with ridiculous hype which turned out to be blatant lies.

I said before release AoC was sounding horribly like an AO vibe and got called a troll...so many heads in the sand with that one.

It took Craig to rescue Gaute's nonsense back then and they eventually had a respectable game on their hands. Looks like the exact same thing will probably happen this time again and at least Funcom won't have to put up with Gaute's incompetence for their next game.

One thing Funcom don't seem to have worked out is they need to keep their marketing people (I'm looking at you Erling) to handing out branded pens and squishy stress relievers.

I hope AoC works out for the devs who have put so much work into it but I don't think FC really deserve it.

'Free to play' Jeezus,

I've done my anti free to play rants before, it being welfare for failed games and stuff, but this thing just doesn't need it. Maybe in a few years when it becomes a tired old washed up title (Think AO, yup, what an amazing good avertisement for free to play that was) then yeah, but let the game grow as it only just seems to be coming to life. I don't think I've seen a game so well populated for some time, don't screw it up now for gods sake.

Free to play is just getting up peoples hopes, free games for the players, lots of player numbers to show off to potential investors and a shop for the items that you used to play the game to earn. Great. No real substance though. Like all bandwagons it'll burn taking a lot of good things with it, as well as a few greedy fools who really do deserve it for being such idiots. It will be a shame if this is a causality of greed and delusion after all the hard work that's obviously gone into it.

intrinsically, the idea of F2P interacting with paid players would be, at best, akward. i.e. how would you deal with griefing by random, anonymous players, who weren't going to be handled by unpaid staff, GM's etc. to intervene. it would turn chaotic.

i think perhaps that if they do want to bring new players or resurrect older players into the AoC experience again, they can do something similar to the runescape model, free vs premium/members.

i.e. perhaps set up a crippled free2play server for pvp, hobble the XP and chance to roll for items, leave all the regular social aspect, but push free players into doing more work, i.e. 1/5th quest XP, and you pay a bit of money if you want to migrate to a regular server with the same monthly fees, better drop chances, etc, you pay for a block of time, etc.

i think it would have to be desperate for AoC to consider doing this though, it's a bit late to change the fundamental gameplay, but again, it's probably not. SWG did so, and look how successful that turned out.... oh.

it would likely feel like a complete and utter waste of time to choose the free account i suppose, but it could be an option for players who want to quit the monthly fees, but park their accounts somewhere for the occasional pvp match or something.

i still have an AoC account, and a WAR account, but i'm not going back to either if i have to pay the subs, they weren't that much fun, that i would return voluntarily. funcom would really have to bring something unique to the table to get me to pay again.

Hey people, did you realise that some games, millions away from WOW's subscription numbers, like Lotro or EQ2 are ecomically successfull? Those are solid and important games. Do you think that not having WOW's numbers is a failure? I don't think so. Not a single company is in the market to loose money. Is RMT the future? Hah! I've been playing MMOs since 1998, i have a lot of friends that play aswell and i know tons of players from all over the world: not a single one likes RMT, that i know. We have been suffering gold sellers for years, spaming, molesting, feeding their greed tempting weak players or kids in the games. The companies tried to ban them because that was bad for their economy, but remember they always told us that was bad for the game aswell, for game balancing, hah! Now they try to fight gold sellers having their own "pay for that shiny item... but legaly, dude"

People, companies gives us what we suposely want, so don't get them wrong. What we would like to see is good games even if we have to pay a monthly fee for playing, as always.

Greetings.

Free to play an option for Age of Conan

Reader Comments (24)

Posted: Jul 15th 2009 4:34AM nevin said

Posted: Jul 15th 2009 5:48AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 16th 2009 4:27AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 19th 2009 6:07AM (Unverified) said

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