Albion Online Will Not Be-Free-To Play At Launch
Sandbox Interactive’s founder revealed today in a forum post that not only is Albion online’s closed beta being extended until at least August of 2016, but that the game will also not be free-to-play at launch. The developer explained the change expressing the need to implement it for the long term success of the game.
Dear Fellow Adventurers,
now that the closed beta test is in full swing, we have a very important announcement to make.
- The closed beta will be extended until at least 1st August 2016
- The game will not be free to play at launch
Our goal is for Albion Online to be a long term success, therefore, we only want to release the game when it is truly up to its potential. The extension of the closed beta period will allow us to make significant improvements to the game.
For this reason, we are putting the free to play plans on hold as well. Making the game ready for a free to play model would take up significant development time which we would much rather use to make a better game. Free to play would also create a lot of risks for the game - spamming, botting, world too small, etc - which we do not want to take if it can be avoided.
When the game goes live, current founder’s packs will be discontinued and replaced with starter packs, which will give full access to the game but offer less value for money than the founder’s packs as this is only fair to all founders who help us in making the game. Of course, all founder's will automatically get full access to the game on release as well.
We are truly overwhelmed by the success of Albion Online thus far and would like to thank all of your for your ongoing support and feedback. Together, we will make sure that Albion Online will be a great game made to last.
Your Albion Online Team
As noted above, this doesn’t mean that the game won’t become free to play at a later date. Just not at launch.
In addition to the delay announcement, the forum post also has a laundry list of changes and features the developers hope to implement during this time.
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That is, if it ever launches and doesn't die before going F2P.
a f2p can make some money if it's decent. i've spent more on f2p games than buying games...why? because i was given an option to try it out for free first and if i liked it, i'd buy stuff in the shop. but i'm not gonna buy it and then it turns out i dont like it...to hell with that.
Good for them. This wont be second Eve online and already population is low.
Let them milk all they can and shut down or play with 100 fan boys who will pay for their salaries and feel OP in game.
Regarding the spammer & gold seller, Aion recently managed to erase almost all of the gold sellers in all of its server, Tera also did a good job by being a F2P without much gold sellers in it. As POWERSLAVER has said, this new P2P/B2P game with almost the same potential as other current and upcoming titles will probably not last longer than several months, a year at most.
Plus B2P is very good at least you know once you own the client you can play as much as you want without monthly sub or in-game store items except if you want cosmetic items then that is a different story. For the F2P players go cry a river somewhere else please. Thank you!
So Poppy Cock to their view on F2P.
They should of re read their announcement before they posted it!! As its terminally Nil and VOID.
=REDUNDANT.
Being free , payer or subbed will have zero effect on spam...it never has, same with botting. i'd have though that the game already has some sort of cosmetic stuff which could easily be sold, add some time savers and months and account features...should be fairly easy and i can't see making a platform to sell stuff in game taking to much time...so i'd see it having almost no effect on the scale of the world.
Just get the feeling that they've shot them selves in the foot before they've even started