I posted it in the CE forums but want to post it here too and just hear the opinion of the AoC veterans.
My idea is since the game Conan Exiles plays in a time before Conan was king of Aquillonia, Funcom could adjust the storyline of Conan Exiles a little bit. For example… You are the exiled one who after beating the game and leaving the exiled lands where he was sent by Thoth Amon, ends up caught by Thoths soldiers on a slave ship. And here Age of Conan begins.
Funcom could make some kind of promotion. Every Conan Exiles Player who beats CE and successfully leaves the exiled lands, gets Age of Conan and all the DLCs for free + 1 month free premium membership. This would motivate many Conan Exiles player who never played Age of Conan, to try it. And many of them would stay paying premium members.
Conan Exiles sold over a million copies. If even 1% of the CE player start playing Age of Conan, we would have at least 10.000 new player. And the game needs new player if Funcom wants it to survive.
Getting all the AoC expansion/DLC content free would be pretty serious. Also, “beating the game” in CE could be done in very, very quickly if done using Admin powers in Singleplayer or on a dedicated server.
So if someone could pick up CE really cheap, that would be a stupidly easy way to get the more costly AoC DLC free.
For reasons such as these, I don’t think it a viable promotion. One month free though would probably be much more in reason, plus maybe a vanity item or two.
At this point basically any idea targeted at reviving AOC is a good one, it won’t get any worse at least.
Plus, OP’s idea is targeted at promoting the new game well. Might be somewhat effective.
Technical details to prevent abuse etc could be solved.
They already got the money from these players for Conan Exiles and if they can get some to buy a premium account in Age of Conan, this would already be a win situatuin for Funcom. We are talking about a 11 years old game.
I meet a lot of gamers that play or have played Conan Exiles and the one thing that always comes up is wouldn’t it be great if Conan was an MMO and I respond with ummm it is, it is called Age of Conan and they have not heard of it. this is the younger crowed I speak of.
Many Like Conan Exiles but do not play because it is not an MMO just a bunch of servers with a small player cap.
So promoting this game would be a +
I am at work right now and the guy next to me is in a guild with 175 people so playing a game like Conan Exiles is out of the question unless they split up between multiple servers.
Too many ways to ‘cheat’ the system in Conan Exiles to be able to gauge ‘winning’ it, but if they could put a ‘no admin / mod mode’ set kind of like what some steam games do with the achievements you can get (mods turn off the achievement system) than pointing them towards Age of Conan at the end with 1 month of VIP wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I know that when they first sold Conan Exiles they had that one version that gave CE players a mount in AoC and that brought a number of new players over, if nothing else just for the free mount and some ended up staying.
If you play Official Server’s it should be a wee bit easier to manage. You’re going to always have the cheating element, but I’m sure there are admins out there who can come up with nifty ways to prevent most of the naughtyness. Even if you have to implement a CD on chapter progress, harsh for someone who knows CE, but the end game is to prevent more exploitation and you get freebies for AoC.
Maybe instead of all expansion (I hate the term DLC…) for content, chuck in a free L80 with some AA’s to get started on top of the usual F2P slots (is it still 2?)
In the other hand we can have quite a few accounts if we want them … so if a f2p person does not want any expansions at all they can make additional accounts.
If they do want expansions but not pay a sub then they can purchase additional character slots on their account outright to use.
OR, FunCom could just reinstate more characters for F2P…seems ridiculous to force people to use the same email address to make another account to skirt something they originally had anyway.
Well I said you start out with 1, not that you’re stuck with it. I have a post-2016 F2p test account I made just so I’d be able to talk about the restrictions. That account now has 3 slots; the original, one we all got for an anniversary and the PvE saga slot. Could have had another, but I didn’t do the Pvp Saga.
So it is possible to get more without buying them.
Having the two slots at account creation gives a little bit of freedom, not much, but a little, for new players to engage a while from differant perspectives and get their head around the game, keep it fresh, without being forced in to anything. We all know a Magic is not Melee.
Two slots with all the restrictions in place is hardly game-breaking, regardless of future events.