Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
If you cannot afford $15, what are the chances you would have a computer / connection able to run a game like this anyways?
If the staff are going to do a "free weekend", they should announce that one month before they do it
Most people here are MMO vets anyway so they know what to expect
Yup, that is my point. If you are a player, you probably wouldn't have an issue. If you are so strapped for cash that $15 makes a difference, you shouldn't be playing these games...
Nowadays you have youtube and 1000 billions videos on how the game plays. The information is out there. If people try the game just for the lolz, it will create unnecessary expenses for Intrepid, possible scams, spammers and impact the world without any real consequences.
Low levels can still do quest and contribute to node, this will create imbalance.
Also, if you put 15 dollars in, you're at least going to try the game seriously, because you have a monetary commitment to it, if something is free, people either don't value it enough or just trash it for no reason.
edit. Oh, i see i wrote something similar to what noaani wrote
Agree with @BlackBrony that some YouTube research usually gives you a good enough idea of whether to try a game.
Free trial? You got your bots selling AoC gold already??
@Jude New games generally don't give free trials... because they don't have to. Free trials are something that games introduce when they're not doing so well, and need to boost the population in general, and hopefully convert some of those players to paying customers. Consider the problems that free trials bring, most notably gold selling accounts, and it's just not worth a game studios time to give free trials. That is, until it needs to.
We talked in general of ways to demo an mmo and we thought it might be not the worst idea to actually make a demo. Something like a weekly event or something where you have a raid with a decked out group of simplified character templates.
A scrippted bossbattle or even a full raid with like 30 AI characters and 10 players or something where you can look at the general feel of how combat might flow and a class might feel.
For Ashes itself you could just as well make it into a scripted siege defense/attack were you work with your AI group completing objectives and such.
It could rotate weekly or every other day that you can sign up for and look at different classes/templates and see if the general feel of the game hits you.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
I see unneeded expenses on Intrepid's side of things, but an alive game is an alive game. More player movement will give that feeling of a living breathing world.
With this, you can't infinitely farm resources to amass money before using credit card fraud to pawn off the accounts resources gained from free trial, and with restrictions, will allow real people to try the game and decide if it's for them, vs trying to get their measly $15 back. You can think of other things that could limit a trial account, and I agree with both sides. $15 not alot of money lol.
In WoW, the spammers use trial accounts to have their freebie characters spell out spam with their bodies. No, seriously.
It’s not rare, I’ve seen it in Ironforge. The first time I saw it, at first I was confused, then horrified. If you let in trial accounts, that’s the crap you’re going to get. Don’t even think about it.
Correct. Said it in my earlier reply, and now boosting the signal on this reply. Freebie accounts are bad news, both in the sense they usually indicate a game's not doing so well (and I don't need to explain why that's bad news, surely?), plus all the potential downsides with spammers, gold farmers, etc. Agree 110% @Atama.
And that's fine. That's your call. But what I think you would find more broadly is that when people are paying a $15/month fee for a game, it's precisely to lock that sort of stuff away - as much as possible at least.
There aren’t any plans for a free trial from anything mentioned to date. The awesome thing about this game is there is no box price. WoW has a box price you have to pay to play the game which is why they added (after many years) a free to play to 20 service. Originally you had to pay the $50 to buy the game box and it came with a 30 day sub. That was your trial time unless someone gave you a 7 day free trial code. With ashes you pay $15 play for 30 days if you don’t like it don’t sub again. There won’t ever be expansions you have to buy or anything like that it’s always available if you pay your subscription