Play Age of Conan For Free Forever

not a bad way to attract new players...

although i imagine it's hard to compete with other established MMOs and upcoming for Star Trek and Star Wars which have many following already...

Yeah, I tried it out when it came out. Liked: violence not found in other MMORPGS, Did not like: everything else. I'll pass, stick with runes of magic.

Eventually they are going to need to switch to "We'll pay you to try it!"

Age of Conan sucked hard when it came out. Even if it got better with age, at best it could simply suck less but still suck.

No public chat channels? It looks like they're offering a trial of the game as single player only, completely ignoring any MMO type stuff. I'm sure that will work, I mean it's better than any single player game already, right, right? No? It sounds like Funcom simply don't get what an MMO is about and how it is fun.

+1... you hit the nail on the head! MMOs are entirely about socialization. I've played some pretty cool MMOs (like Neocron, Jumpgate, etc.) which suffered because of a lack of players. Of course, content is important too; but above all, you need a critical mass of players or the game is doomed. I play WoW not because it is the best MMO out there, but because there are always plenty of people online. People to raid with, people in the BGs, people to gank, people trading their wares and skills, etc. It's all about the interaction with other people. If that is missing, you might as well be playing a stand-alone RPG or shooter, or whatever. In fact, you'd be better off because those games are DESIGNED to be entertaining as a solo endeavor.

Funcom should be offering a free-forever account like what is described above, but for the first half-month or month, it should be completely unrestricted. Then, after the unlimited trial expires, start deactivating stuff one at a time over the next few days until you get to the situation described in the article. THAT is how you get people to whip out their credit card.

the problem with unrestricted access by free accounts is the gold spammers would soon takeover the public chat and you would have Age of GoldSpam instead

Its set up that way so botters can't take advantage of the free accounts.

Same thing with warhammer.

No thanks. I've read enough good about this game (along with the bad) that I'd like to try it, but not until / unless it switches to the Guild Wars model of no ongoing pay to play.

Hmm sounds like game company's have started to take after Runescape's creator Jagex. They have had a free version for a long time. Although this does appear to have many differences.

Not a bad move and no current MMO can beat levels 1-20. Those first 20 level are the best. After that it all starts to unravel. With better leadership and a clue it could have been a great game for years. It was never going to beat WoW in subscriptions. This is how they should have opened the game after the first three mouths.

I signed up, and uninstalled after 10 minutes of gameplay...I can see why they would need to coax people to even try it out...But then again I am not a fan of MMO's in general, but at least WoW will continuously attack when you tell your guy to attack, instead of having to click over and over again...and also hit the guy you click on, that was another nice issue i had. Nothing like clicking on a guy to attack, then having to click the attack type, then watching your guy turn away from the enemy to swing the weapon and end up swinging at air...yeah, fun times...

LAME!!!
I played this game when it first came out the first 20 levels were completely AWSOME!!! Then after 20 there was no more voice acting, world looked boring, dungeons were blah etc..... I saw the title for this acticle and thought hey maybe I will go reinstall it and check out the changes they made, but NO! only to the first 20 levels and a buncth of other restrictions

I played this game on release. The starting Island of Tortage and the first 20 levels of the game were the only polished part of the game. Everything else was a complete mess. I cannot imagine the game has improved that much, I gave it 3 months and they would provide the community with false promises every week (this, this, and this will be resolved next week). Perhaps I'm spiteful for the 50 bucks I felt was wasted on an incomplete game. But I still think it's fair warning to tell people that the experiance after tortage (lvl 20) is completely different and that's what they are making you pay for.

Also there are 80 levels in the game, I'm sure you can hit 20 in probably 8 hours or less. WoW offers 2 week trials with a lvl 20 cap and similar restrictions. This looks like pretty much the same thing except the took out the 2 week restriction. The difference is WoW's 1-20 experience isn't false advertisement for what you should expect from 20+.

That said it has some great concepts, it was just rushed and I strongly feel the development staff lack the mathematical skills that are needed to create a balanced game that makes sense. Case in point: On release item values did not work, people who ran around naked were the same as fully geared players. Jewel Crafting was not released until a couple months into it, when it was released it was completely broken and over powered to an extreme.

Take it from me, don't waste your time like I did.

/end long post+rant

You can't get to L100 with a paid account either...... Just so you know, for any future articles.

That's a very good point. Well, an easy solution would be to allow the paying customers to silence the free players. Some sort of report spam function. Make it so that if a player gets like 50 or 100 (or whatever reasonable number to allow it to work but prevent undeserved harassment) reports, their communications is terminated.

Another way of doing it is to require a credit card for the free unrestricted trial portion, but emphesize that the card will only be validated, not charged.

Disney did this with their Pirates of the Caribbean game. You can play up to level 20, you only get a limited selection of abilities and items, and you can only play in windowed-mode (so they can display banners around the window), but hey, its free. Of course, I dumped that game, too childish and simple, but no surprise seeing it was Disney.

The stats, mechanics, and gems have all been reworked. Gear actually matters now, but not so much that a better geared noob will be able to take a lesser geared player who is more knowledgeable and skilled with their class.

Played this game at launch and also periodically over the past couple years. I do think that this is the best MMO on the market. It has a lot to offer and they HAVE fixed most of the glaring problems that harried it's launch. The have added a lot to the game to fill it out nicely. It may not have the content and community of WoW.. but it beats War, Aion, and CO hands down.

Link?

The age of pay to play is coming to an end there are many free to play games that have unrestricted play such as atlantica online free to play to max level they have an in game store you can buy scrolls and potions, mounts everything but armor and weapons.
It has many contests and events more than any other pay to play game more things to do, after playing darkfall which has very little content and is pay to play.

I have played age of conan the game is full of bugs that have been in game since day one ie crashing zone on demand to prevent single players from attacking a keep.


Look what happened to dungeons and dragons online this will be the norm players would rather pay real money to get ahead than spend five million hours camping mobs for ultra rare gear drops.

I played Anarchy Online for a couple of years.

Quit because I was tired of the funcom line.

"This is on the way!!", "We will fix this!!", "Watch out for improvements soon!!"

They have been talking about advancing the engine form DX7 to DX9 for about 5 years now. And all we have to show for it is a couple of youtube clips.

Funcom doesn't give a damn about anything but leaching money out of unsuspecting players for as long as they can before you leave the game.

never played this game, but I did try the trial of wow (similar conditions to this one, except 10 or 14 days or so instead of 7) ... and after the trial I was sure that wow was a rubbish game. I don't think this model of their will work. In wow all the 'fun' parts were out of reach because of the no trading and no chatting stuff, so I'm guessing from the similarities, that people on free/trial use won't experience the same game as paying customers. Thus it won't actually lure them into paying in the long run - they'll just try, find it boring, and spread that word.

This is the death rattle for Conan. Seems to happen to every mmo that goes this route.

Link:

Link: http://www.ageofconan.com/trial/index.html

I was going to buy AoC, but based on reviews, I decided not to.
This however seems like a great trial, so I guess I'll finally try it.

I played AoC to level 20 on the island, got the screen to upgrade when I tried to leave the island, and let the game go. There are FAR too many free MMO's out there that are better than AoC. Everquest 2 recently went free to play, they just limit chat, guild interaction, bag space, etc. Sony has it figured out fairly well. AoC just gave people that might have bought the game a way to try it out and decide they're better off keeping their money.

Fyi, Age of Conan is NOW FREE TO PLAY!! THATS RIGHT FREEEEEE

www.ageofconan.com

My review of aoc.

Qualifications lvl 70 ranger in less than 2 weeks.

Combat system
Combo on a rail - no freeform here. About all you can do is execute either a preprogrammed combo LOOKING attack or a set combo attack. Set combo = specific keys must be pressed or the combo fizzles, no chance to enter a different combo once started.

The combat is, plant your feet and deal with long durations between attacks. Use crowd control effects to pin players/mobs in place. The only thing that can attack while moving is something waving a sword. And even then they have to plant a little bit. No fast paced action here. It really doesn't matter what class or path you pick, while soloing, yer gonnah be the tank. Enemies with way too many hp and way to low damage will be the norm.

Stealth aspect is pretty subpar. No matter how well you have your hiding trained, you're going to get spotted quite quickly except for certain times of day you may be able to slip past enemies well below what would pose any combat challenge to you anyway.

Customer service
Customer service will answer the first question they want to answer regardless of whether or not it was even a question you asked and abruptly close the session in your face. Honestly though, this is pretty common among games.

Payment options, recently most banks have taken a stand against fraudulent charges originating overseas. Mostly due to commonly used online payment option companies such as PayPal etc losing or selling all of your personal data. Funcom is a Norwegian company. While the bulk of the fraud is coming from the UK, Norway is still firmly on the blacklist. You’ll have to pay with time cards from best buy. Major, major, hassle. Customer service was pretty displeased when it was suggested that they should do business with more secure companies such as Google checkout.

Documentation and guides
Aoc guides and loot tables are ridiculously limited. The few players they have left, really couldn't care less than to build any sort of databases.

The player base has almost completely died out on a number of servers. So bad was it that they had to combine servers just to have enough people to happen along and find someone at random. If you weren’t specifically looking for anyone, you surly would not see anyone. And even if you were looking for someone, only one class can track that someone down. On the bright side... that one class really can't do anything to them once they found them anyway.

Graphics
They are okay but still do not compare with other more enjoyable and true free to play games out there. There are nipples and completely naked succubae and it is extremely refreshing to be out of the crib, so to speak. it's honestly the only selling point: murder, nudity, fatality animation sequences and bonuses for them that can really change the tide of a skirmish, outright criminality of every sort stopping only just short of pedoviolence(full grown women and men are equally fair game), all the children live.

Parental control type oversight by game operators.
No.

Oversight of cheating and or hacking
nah.

My advice
Hit the free pron site for a minute and then go back to whatever else you were doing. stop before you try to beat the hacker that's been paying for his subscription with money he's gotten by selling duplicated gold to the people who're trying to beat him.