Tag Archives: Erling Ellingsen

The Secret World isn’t going free-to-play “anytime soon,” Funcom has reiterated.

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Funcom has released a video, showing the first bit of in-game footage for The Secret World.

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Funcom has announced plans to get lure players back to Age of Conan with not only multi-month subscription rates and the new expansion, but Beta access to The Secret World when it goes live.

Here’s the deal:

• 3-month sub: Beta access to The Secret World
• 6-month sub: Beta access + in-game helmet that boosts experience gain by 10 percent
• 12-month sub: Beta access + helmet + a free copy of Conan expansion Rise of the Godslayer

“We know that coming back to a massively multiplayer online game demands effort, so for us it’s all about making it worthwhile for former players to come back,” Erling Ellingsen told Eurogamer. “With all the improvements having been introduced to the game, we’re eager to have as many former players as possible be exposed to all the updates.

“So for returning players we’re offering two weeks free game time, and the ability to level up twice as fast as normal. It is natural for any subscription business to incentivize longer-term subscriptions in order to ensure a long-term relationship with the player.”

The new expansion, Rise of the Godslayer, will include a new Asian-themed area of Khitai along with its playable race, the Khitan and the chance to raise tigers and wolves from cubs into mounts when it goes live in 2010.

Via Massively.

This was a rather large week in MMOs as far as news went, and not all of it was Halloween related.

Past the break you will hear all about how Ultima Online is still going strong, get familiarized with the new patch for Aion, read up on Cryptic’s Blood Moon event via a dev chat, PvP henchmen and Guild Wars, Alganon’s delay, China’s ban on males playing females in games, and many other bits of stuff that didn’t hit the front page during the week.

Also, we hope everyone who plays MMOs enjoyed the Halloween and Fall festivities that their particular favorites hosted. Loads had celebrations, more than likely every single one of ‘em. If we forgot to mention your particular game, head on over to the list through the link ther and add it in the comments section so that we may give it its proper shout-out.

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Loads of stuff happened this week with MMOs. Bethesda laughed off an Elder Scrolls MMO, APB started the Beta application process, Aion released pretty trailers, Star Wars will be playable at GamesCom and all other sorts of interesting things happened.

What we didn’t tell you about was that Lord of the Rings Online got some new jewelry and bounty quests in Esteldin, Funcom will announce Conan stuff at PAX, and there were some rumored leaks on the upcoming WoW expansion posted all over God’s green earth.

For all of this and more, read on past the break.

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Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen has confirmed to VG247 that the reveal for The Secret World at PAX will be “the biggest thing on TSW yet.”

It was reported this past Tuesday that Funcom would be revealing loads of new information on the title, but unfortunately, we couldn’t squeeze a drop of info out of Ellingsen no matter how hard we tried.

“Yes, we will be doing more reveals on TSW there,” he told us. “Unfortunately I can not go into details, suffice to say it will definitely be the biggest thing on TSW yet.”

PAX starts on September 4 and runs through September 6 in lovely downtown Seattle, WA.

Age of Conan’s first expansion will be revealed during GamesCom in August.

“We will be revealing the first expansion for Age of Conan at the GamesCom show in August,” said Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen.

“We have lots of exciting stuff to reveal and Conan players and gamers in general are in for a real treat, but for now, our lips are sealed until then.”

Attendees can expect to see in-game footage, new quests, monsters, environments and other goodies.

More over on Massively.

Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen revealed at Games Convention today that the company’s Age of Conan MMO will tie in with the new Conan film being produced by Lionsgate, writes Eurogamer.

“The movie is set for release next year, and it’s going to be a huge movie. Lionsgate recently announced that they’re putting a hundred million dollars into it,” said Ellingsen.

“We have a very close relationship with the guys making the movie,” he went on. “I had lunch with the producer just the other day. We’re talking to them all the time.

“Yes, we will tie the two together.”

More through the link.

By Mike Bowden

Kotaku‘s spoken to Erling Ellingsen, product manager for Age of Conan, who answered in “about a month” when asked when the game would be ready for review.

From the piece:

“When will Age of Conan be complete enough for a full review?” His answer? “About a month.”So there you go folks, directly from the product manager. Age of Conan should be review ready in a month, when the PVP portions are firmly in place.

The game has been available at retail since June so we find that comment rather puzzling, but there you go.

By Mike Bowden

Speaking to videogaming247 this morning, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures product manager Erling Ellingsen has confirmed that a raft of new features and content for the MMO is to be announced next week in an effort to pull players past their first free month of game-time and into subscription.

“We have no idea how many people are going to continue subscribing, but we are of course going to make certain efforts to keep as many as possible by introducing new content,” he said. “Next week we’re going to announce what people can expect if they stick with us for another month.

“It’s going to be new areas, it’s going to be new features. There’s going to be a PvP revamp, for instance.”

Funcom announced today that Age of Conan has now passed the million mark for units shipped, claiming the biggest MMO launch since World of Warcraft.

The game released worldwide at the end of May.

There’s a movie on CVG of Age of Conan’s PvP aspects, and it’s all looking very good, if this sort of thing floats your boat. Funcom’s Erling Ellingsen takes us through the various modes in the game, including Capture the Skull and Team Annihilation. There’s also a quick snip of Siege Warfare at the end, which looks mental. Have a gander.

Speaking to videogaming247, Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures product manager Erling Ellingsen has admitted that Activision boss Bobby Kotick’s assertion that it would need $1 billion to successfully compete with World of Warcraft may not be far from the truth.

“It’s hard to imagine a company being able to compete with World of Warcraft any time soon, and yes, it will definitely take a lot of resources to make that happen,” he said when asked if he though Kotick was on the money.

Ellingsen added that he didn’t see Funcom’s upcoming MMO as a WoW competitor and that is was seeking a different audience.

“We have always been very up front about the fact that we are not trying to compete with World of Warcraft, a game that really is a social phenomenon along the lines of Facebook and MySpace,” he said. “We are deliberately trying to do something different. Yes, you will find many similarities as they are both massive online games, but the two games are so fundamentally different that I think they will live very well side by side.”

Age of Conan’s releasing worldwide on May 20. You can find all of Erling’s answers to our questions after the link.

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