FSU: Reaction to Industry News - Age of Conan Has Gone Free-To-Play

Earlier today Age of Conan announced that it is adopting a Free-to-Play subscription model this summer. As an existing, and past, subscriber I immediately wondered what this would mean for me. Considering the announcement was a whole 15 minutes old when I read it, I knew I’d have to wait a bit for real, concrete answers. I’m pretty sure that companies release news like this in advance to gauge the community’s reaction and adjust the upcoming changes accordingly.


My primary concern was that my main characters would still be accessible for me to play under the Free-to-Play model. After reading the Free-to-Play FAQ I found that they would not be. Their classes were included in the Premium only list of content. This was disappointing because I’ve spent 3 years working on them. I had 3 years of blood, sweat, and tears, and AoC took it away with a flip of the F2P switch. How unfair!

So, I sent a tweet out to Funcom, AoC, and Craig Morrison (Game Director and Executive Producer of AoC) stating I felt like the only one who was unhappy that AoC was going F2P because my Tempest of Set and Bear Shaman would be held hostage by the F2P model. Mr. Morrison responded that if I had ever previously subscribed then I would have access to my characters even though they will be premium classes. What a relief that was.

It turned out that the effects of the transition from Pay to Free-to-Play on veteran players had not been completely thought through. The community brought up the issue of character class restrictions in the F2P model effecting veteran players and the development team not only listened but quickly responded with a viable solution. Plus, the development team is still listening. They’re taking the feedback received on the forum and on Twitter and analyzing it to see where the F2P transition needs to be tweaked.

Credit where credit is due:
Balogh, Krystina. (2011, May 25). My twitter account. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/klbalogh (Tweet unretrievable as of February 2023.)

Various. (2011, May 25). ‘age of conan’ goes free and unrated. Retrieved from http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=233503 (Forum still exists but thread not found as of February 2023.)