The highly anticipated MMORPG from Funcom, Age of Conan, went into beta status as of today. However, would be testers shouldn't get too excited. Beta phase 1 will only consist of Funcom employees and a few select professional testers. This is what is usually done during an Alpha test, so I'm not sure what's going on here. The game is expected to hit shelves this fall, so they had better pick up the pace...or else we may not see this game on shelves until next year.

Source: http://www.ageofconan.com/