Could trions plan involve openly testing the unanounced expansion

Alyvian

The trialservers, many they are, but a thought arose.

 

What if it isnt a total PR spin, what if its a devious ploy to get people to massively try the expansion to get them hooked?

 

or even better, the whole pre expansion game going f2p

 

it would sound like something trion could pull out of its top hat.

watchawatcha

while I wouldn't put it past them to be planning something like this, i wouldn't count on it.

I think the truth is a mass amount of people have either left or are taking a break from the game.  They are doing the only thing they can do and server merge.  Every MMO has had to deal with it with the exception of WoW.

Zippy

When they test the expansion I assume they will do the same as they did for testing prior to release.  Have one server of 1k-2k people and limit it to that.  Notice how effective that was.   Alpha server was able to test the entire game for 7 months and the endgame for 5 months prior to release and there were almost no leaks.

If they do a marketing open beta like they did with the pre-release open beta weekends they may use the trial servrs again for that.  I do not recall any game doing mass marketing open beta of an expansion.  But for real testing I would expect they would do the same thing they did pre-release and limit it to a small group of expereinced players that they can trust.