[Flight]

Originally Posted by 8ounce

I think AoC will be very polished, decently balanced and have lots of content.............by dec/08. Probably be right around the time it launches for x-box. May 20 is when the real beta starts.

Hehe that said I will still be pre-ordering and playing from day 1, what can I say I'm a sucker for new MMO's on release, a new world the freshness, its a feeling that you'll never get jumping in later.

Originally Posted by Hatorade

My take on what will happen.

EQ2 all over again. HUGE player base at launch they will go down drasticaly after the second month. 8 Months and 4 major patches later its polished and more return but not enough to be called a success.

I wish this wasn't so but thats what it is looking like.

Unreleased Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures somehow topped charts, says X-Play - MMORPG News - QJ.NET That is why.

A few points to underline, that are important :

i) Most importantly, having been in every major games beta, this is THE best, in my opinion, in terms of management of the game, organisation and development.

ii) There are two sets of beta testers. general beta folk get to play the game most of the time. The vast majority of general beta invites going out these days are given to folks who are in the technical beta. If you get a beta invite now you are probably going into the technical beta,

iii) Technical beta testers only get to log on for a couple of hours every week or so, to do specific jobs - eg this weekend everyone is hammering the account creation process. Then Funcom spend time working on the findings of those tests.

iv) The beta client IS well out of date in terms of the dev and bug fixing work. Funcom state this clearly; the 'mythical build' with fixes IS a reality in this case.

v) This is a 'true' beta. They are running a lot of debugging code while you play, so don't judge performance or graphics as a reflection of the live game.



You're used to me, rightly, criticising developers for their management ability and control of their development processes. The opposite is true here. With respect to the companies development and management processes, I find myself turning into a Funcom 'fanboi'. Add that belief to the innovation we saw they are capable of in Anarchy Online and I find myself hyped about the game for the right reasons.