It's easy to get swept up in beta frenzy here at FilePlanet, we've helped our loyal fans get into many of the lot. Just to name a few: World of Warcraft, World in Conflict, Frontlines, and Age of Conan. But like many of you, we look forward with lusty eyes to some of the coming titles and dream. Please NOTE, this is not confirmation of the beta taking place - merely our wish list. These are the Top 5 betas we'd like to be apart of even if they may never happen.

----Massivly Multiplayer Online Winner: Warhammer Online

Next to the already released beta of Age of Conan, Warhammer Online stands out among the massive of MMORPG's that flood our consciousness every waking second. We look forward to jumping into the Realm vs. Realm combat and seizing an enemy capital city, torching it to the ground. The Warhammer world is immensely popular and fleshed out with fantasy lore.

Runner-up: World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King

----First-Person Shooter Winner: Half-Life Episode 3

Let's be honest, everybody wants a peek at the final installment of Half-Life 2. Fans of the series have traveled with Gordon Freeman for quite some time now and are eager to find out a little more about the strange bugs and mysterious G-man. Maybe a beta would spoil a bit of the story for us, and honestly - the engine is perfectly fine. But we don't care, we just want to play.

Runner-up: Duke Nukem Forever

----Role-Playing Game Winner: Fallout 3

Ok first, before you send off that e-mail - we are VERY aware there won't be a beta or demo for Fallout 3. We really don't care; this is our dream list damnit so stop being such a killjoy. Being hardcore fans of the original series and Oblivion, we're happy to see them merge into one happy union. We still mentally replay the trailer over and over again. Its love we tell you.

Runner-Up: Final Fantasy XIII

----Strategy Game Winner: StarCraft 2

I don't know what excites me more, the upcoming single-player campaign of StarCraft 2, the multiplayer frenzy with old-school vibes, or all the tower defense and DOTA maps that will inevitably come with its release. Any way you slice it though, this game would be a beta for the ages. I can hardly wait to see one of those little zerglings eating my SCV.

Runner-Up: Dawn of War 2

----Other Winner: Spore

Spore had to be included; we even made its own category. A lot of us are enthralled with the thought of creating our own world in appears to be a mixture of many different gameplay types. It would be an awesome Beta; miniature ferret-like creatures would likely take over the universe. Including your apartment, so please be out by Monday.

 

By Crom!

Key delivery for the beta of Age of Conan kicked off yesterday and things are progressing full steam. Key batches will continue to be released over the next few days in regular intervals, so stay tuned for information and a chance to get your own key! Gameplay will begin on May 1st and all of us here at FilePlanet HQ just can't wait to play! You must be a FilePlanet Subscriber / Founders' Club member in order to sign-up for the Beta and get a key.



Once you get a key and the client, there is one more step you must take before you can start playing the beta next week. You need to set up an account through Funcom here so that you can log in when the beta begins.

So, you have your key and have downloaded the gargantuan client, but with a few days between you and the actual start date of the beta, now what? While waiting for the beta to begin next week you should familiarize yourself with the game a bit, and we’ve got plenty of resources for you. IGN and GameSpy’s Age of Conan info pages each have tons of previews, interviews, screenshots, videos and more for you to catch up with.
IGN Age of Conan Page
GameSpy Age of Conan Page



We also have several dedicated Vault and Mini Sites dedicated solely to Age of Conan info where you can get up to the minute game and beta info. Then again you can never go wrong with getting info straight from the horse’s mouth at Funcom’s official Age of Conan website.
Age of Conan Vault
FilePlanet Age of Conan Mini Site
The Official Age of Conan Website



Get a key, download the client, familiarize yourself with the world of the Hyborian Age of myth, magic, and barbarism and then get ready for battle! The bells of war are sounding and the kingdom of Aquilonia is surrounded by evil on all sides, will you raise arms and crush your enemies in the name of Aquilonia and Conan its King, or conspire against it?



P.S. If you are interested in just general information about the Conan universe outside of the game remember that Wikipedia is your friend.
Conan Wikipedia Page

Just recently here at FilePlanet we did something that we've never done before. We helped EA launch a console beta, and a very high profile one at that. March 25th marked the official start of the Battlefield: Bad Company beta and tens of thousands of frothing gamers worldwide were off to the proverbial races with a meaty taste of the latest in the venerated Battlefield franchise. Promotion and key rollout for the beta went smoothly on all fronts, but now that the beta is in full swing what do gamers think of the actual game itself?

Those of you that have played a Battlefield game in the past will be familiar with Bad Company's class based play mechanics, where each class is useful for specific functions in the field dependent on their load-outs, though a few important changes have been made. The most important of these changes being that some of the classes have been completely cut with their functions absorbed into other classes or combined into completely new classes to better round out and balance the game-play making each class more useful and fun with a wider range of functions in the field. Gone are the medic and engineer classes because they have been replaced with the universal support class which can heal friendlies as well as repair vehicles. The assault class now has the ability to heal themselves with a quick hypo injection allowing them to last longer in the field, which is important seeing as they generally comprise the more hazardous main thrust force of a team in battle, and more.

As you gain levels in the game your rank increases and you are given points to unlock weapons and support items such as the previously mentioned health hypo, binoculars to call in mortar launches, laser designators to call in missile strikes, and more. Some extra weapons are available with the Special Edition of the game while others are available on Live Marketplace. EA promises that all of these weapons will be highly balanced so that gamers can't just buy their way into the best gear. As you complete various tasks and objectives you also gain badges and dog tags that list your assorted accomplishments such as gaining X number of kills with weapon Y, or healing Z number of people, all of which can be seen on the unlocks screen. There are a large number of these awards, and while they serve no practical purpose they are good for charting your past experiences and progress through the game or just inflating one's ego. I wonder if these will tie in with the Xbox 360's achievement system or if they will be extra bonus awards on top of it.

Bad Company plays a lot like previous titles in the series, but even experienced players can be somewhat disoriented at first, part of witch can be attributed to the fact that voice chat is heavily restricted for the beta. There is a definite learning curve, even for BF vets that can take a couple of hours to fully overcome. Weapons are more complex than they have been in previous games and have a wider array of variables attached to them. No longer is it just accuracy, damage, and clip size that you have to worry about, but also handling and rate of fire. Handling is the biggest cause of the learning curve because, depending on their rating in handling, the weapons can feel very unwieldy and take time to adjust to.

The most touted feature of Bad Company is the environmental destruction, and while full environmental destruction is not available, what is included is enjoyable and appreciated. You can blow up, shoot down, or even cut open doors and fences, make small craters in the ground, level foliage, and blow out the walls of nearly every building leaving naught more than a bombed out husk behind. Building supports and floors/ceilings are not destructible, but that is a very important design choice, because if you were able to completely flatten a level, matches would stop being fun after 5 minutes when you were left fighting in an empty field of rubble. While it may seem like fluff to some, besides just being all kinds of fun, the destructibility actually makes up a very important part of the game on a tactical level. If you are being pinned by a sniper from an upper story window of a building, no longer do you have to make vain attempts at sniping back up at him or trying to sneak up behind him, now you can just blow out his entire rats nest either killing him in the process or leaving him completely exposed. If you are running through a building and need to find an exit you don't have to run around in circles if you get lost, just aim your grenade launcher at a wall and make one. One instance that I greatly enjoyed was a match that I decided to play a sniper, I found suitably high ground on a balcony that overlooked a courtyard that would serve as a large chokepoint as the match progressed, but as I tucked in to wait for the attack I noticed that there were several trees blocking my sight from getting any kind of shots into the courtyard. Normally if you were in this situation, you'd be screwed, but after nearly giving up thinking, "Aww crap, time to find another spot..." I remembered that this game was different, you could blow things up, and I proceeded to lob three grenades into the courtyard. As the smoke settled all three of the trees that had been blocking my view were gone. It was a great moment for myself in a game full of destruction fueled set piece moments.

Once players get comfortable the game really starts to come together, even in hectic battles involving infantry, tanks, choppers, and light attack boats, with explosions everywhere. People will find their roles and push forward on the map working together to complete objectives. The two maps available in the beta show off the environmental variety that will be present in the final game, one map being set in a small European village set into a hillside capped off with a stronghold at the top. The other is set in what appears to be a Middle Eastern or African desert punctuated by several small bases peppered along a riverbank.

The game is not perfect though, seeing as this is a beta bugs can be expected and there are a fair number of them, but with a June 08 release date EA has plenty of time to squash them all. There are other minor issues that are already being looked into such as hit detection, explosion damage and blast range, enemy identification, etc. As it stands now, Battlefield: Bad Company is tremendous fun, but feels like an unpolished diamond, though with months before release EA and Dice have plenty of time to polish it to a brilliant shine making it stand along side past games in the series with the same level of quality we have come to expect from a game bearing the Battlefield name.