Subscribe to Age of Conan and receive The Secret World beta access

Boy are they desperate.

This is another game that should go F2P with a store.

Pretty good deal. if you sign up for a year you get the x-pac free. thats a good discount.

It's a pretty good deal, free expansion, 10% XP boost, and beta access to a different game that sounds very cool.

Plus ROTGS looks freaking amazing.

This just proves to me that The secret world will be crap and can't stand on it's own merits.

I left AoC a while ago and am thinking it is time to give it another shot. They appear to have come a long ways since then but my concern is current server populations. Anyone care to comment on that? Is it still relatively easy to get pick-up groups for elite content?

ps. Even if WAR survives another 3 months or so they better have some epic-level changes before I would reconsider revisiting it.

Everyone who pays to get into beta is an idiot. And of top of that everybody who pays to get into beta by _funcom_ (really can't stop laughing) is an hopeless idiot.

The Secret World is one of only two MMOs I'm looking forward to in the coming years, but I still wouldn't subscribe to AoC. Regardless of any changes made to the gameplay, it still has the worst visual style and I couldn't stand looking at it for 3 hours, let alone 3 months.

It's great to see these games providing more and more and fighting to keep customers.

That only serves to benefit us, the players.

Have people learned nothing from Cryptic?!?! Don't resub in hopes for beta access. That is a sad road to take.

Beta is always a limited volume and limited time event. By use beta access to help sell their game, they are selling you something that says "guaranteed" but really means: "At some point in the beta process, perhaps even the last day of open beta, you will get in. But you may not even get in then, because our servers might not handle you or you might in a login queue that is too long for you to wait. We might even run our beta servers for 3 hours from 8am to 11am that happens to be when you are working/sleeping/schooling or whatever"

Just head on over to the Star Trek Online forums and you can find thousands and thousands of posts from people who are still upset that they don't have their beta access they paid into.

@Funcom - you just signed up for a major PR mess. Way to go. You could have just blocked off a special month and called it something magical "supporter month" where you use a perk and let everyone in all at once then. Maybe even let the people keep their characters to the live servers.

Some people think this is desperation. ...

...I think FC are being smart. They are offering deals ahead of others and with a level head AoC truely is a great game now - no argument. don;t listen to the previously burnt player (who DID have a vlaid point) but AoC is a really fantastic game now!!! :)


AOC ROCKS! :)

With the greatest respect to those who think this is a non-sensical choice on behalf of both Funcom and those parties interested I would have to disagree. Yes, one has to take into account when making a choice whether or not to participate in any one of the three offers that AoC had one the worst launches in recent memory, akin only to Anarchy Online. However, much like AO, the development team fought it out, replaced people who were only holding the game back, and molded a product that is now really quite well done even if it still does not deliver on everything the original promotions indicated it would have.

Now, for the record, I can not play AoC on my own gaming PC, as it was specifically designed for World of Warcraft and can not handle Conan's graphical and memory requirements even with all the improvements made to the client. None the less, I have played the game on again off again on the Rigs of one friend or another who have either continued their subscription or attempted the free trials at one point. Having given the game a solid try at release via equal circumstances I can say the AoC has indeed come along way, and one need only read Massively's recents posts and even the Funcom AoC forums to see evidence of this. Though please take note that there are still people unhappy with the product, sometimes in verbally abusive capacities.

Funcom has done a great deal to not only deliver as much as was promised, but also to provide a game people can and do enjoy, and for those on the fence as whether or not to give it a go, I would humbly suggest that you at least give the trial a go if you have a PC that can handle it. You may be surprised to discover that you will acutally enjoy the experiance, and should you chose to continue on into a paid sub format, picking one of the offered special deals is only, as the primary post states, 'icing on the cake.' It is my sincere hope that AoC can get a helping hand in these difficult times of the MMO genre, as it was and is a game that tried something new and in some cases succeded but in others sadly did not, a fault who's blame can be placed at the feet of people who are now, thankfully, no longer involved with the project directly.

As to the Secret World. This is a game that is, essentially, the future of Funcom. If the game fails, there is little doubt in the minds of many that Funcom will cease to exsist or be swallowed up by a European or US company of greater mass and profit. As such, one can not blindly assume that Funcom will permit the game to suffer the same mistakes as AoC before and directly after launch. The game's creator, Ragnar Tornquist (creator of The Longest Journey series and the man responsible for AO pulling itself out of the gutter) has essentially stated, bluntly in some cases, that he will not permit Funcom to either A) Make the same mistakes they made with Conan's development, or B) Keep gamers out of the loop as to the status of the game. This Beta offer is one of several plans to ensure TSW has a strong base, so as to make sure the game gets the attention it will likely need before launch given it's scope. At the same time, Funcom has to attempt to garner some measure of profit. To close, AoC has come a long way, and deserves, even with the number of bitter gamers who felt burned, a chance to prove its worth once more and find at least a quasi solid foot hold in the modern market. If you are looking forward to the TSW, and you want it to succede, helping keep AoC, and in turn Funcom, on it's feet would not be a poor course of action. However, these are my observations, and I would never demand these actions of anyone or question the depth of their collective intelligence if they chose not to. The choice is yours.