Age of Conan early access sold out? Yep

Posted May 15th 2008 8:00AM by John Callaham
Filed under: MMO, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

One of the big selling points of getting a pre-order for an MMO is the possibility of getting early access to the game before the general public. Funcom promoted that with its pre-order offer for its fantasy title Age of Conan. If you paid in full for the game prior to its release on May 20, you could download the full client and play the game three days beforehand.

At least that was the theory. The cold reality came crashing hard on the game's official forums this week as Funcom has now said that it has now "sold out" of registrations for its early access time period. The developer tried to explain that this was something they had planned on doing all along. However, they added, "That the registrations would reach that set limit as fast as they did we didn't quite expect but that doesn't change the fact that the number was limited." On the one hand that means sales of the game prior to its release have been high. On the other hand, you have to think this doesn't make the game's customer service system look very good.

Tags: age-of-conan, early-access, eidos, funcom

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I'm one of those who have been done over by this. I was looking forward to early access as I'm on holiday when the game comes out officially. Now I might as well cancel my preorder, which was made several days ago, and I probably won't bother with the game at all.

This may seem a little OTT, however I had selfishly been wanting to carve out a name for myself on the RP server, now I'll be a minimum of 3 weeks behind everyone.

As for the customer service being bad, I have sent numerous e-mails to FC asking them questions regarding the game and not a single one has been answered. To say I'm not pleased would be an understatement.Posted at 8:33AM on May 15th 2008 by Daniel

^ No offense bud but did you register for Early Access right after you got the code? I think the bigger problem is just that it wasn't clearly explained that there were a limited number of seats beforehand. I'm sure that early pre-ordering customers such as yourself would have registered and reserved your seat right away if you knew how limited it would be.

That said, and I don't mean to 'rub it in' or anything, but I'm pre-loaded, patched up, and ready to rock. It even let's you launch the game and view the intro. You just can't connect to the authentication server.

...bysmittyPosted at 12:11PM on May 15th 2008 by bysmitty

"This may seem a little OTT, however I had selfishly been wanting to carve out a name for myself on the RP server, now I'll be a minimum of 3 weeks behind everyone."

Since when did missing out on the 3 days earlier access become akin to three weeks? I'm trying to understand...really I am.
Let's see:
3 days = 72 hours
3 weeks = 21 days = 504
72 = 504 nope, nope, that is definately not it.

Stupid math, I was never very good at it.
Posted at 3:50PM on May 16th 2008 by Dave

Dave:

"...as I'm on holiday when the game comes out officially."

Thanks for reading my post before flaming me.

Also its 6 days in Europe.

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Bysmithy:

It hasn't arrived. I don't know if Play.com forgot to stamp it or something but I did get a letter from Royal Mail saying there was unpaid postage on an item and they were holding it ransom until I ponyed up.

I mean there are other reasons I've given up on this, not all to do with the Early Access fiasco (and if you don't think it was a fiasco check out the 108 pages of complaints on the forum thread that was closed within 24hrs of being opened). I guess in the end it now seems like a lot of effort, and money when I already have lots friends, lots of fun and a whole lot more to discover in Anarchy Online. Not to mention that AO is free and has decent Customer Support in the form of the Advisors of Rubi-Ka (ARK) who don't work for FC.

Meh I'm whining again. Back to playing games and chilling out. :pPosted at 4:35PM on May 16th 2008 by Daniel

okay... the servers to early access have opened and all the patches are downloaded. I just have one little problem... "unable to connect to the authentication server"... WHY?!Posted at 5:18AM on May 17th 2008 by Crathes

i also can't log in due to "unable to connect to authentication server" someone please help!!! i've been trying to get on since early this morning... 6 hours ago??? and i pre ordered, registered, downloaded and installed everything... any ideas??? or is this some kind of sick joke :(Posted at 2:54PM on May 17th 2008 by cyan