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General: The Free Trial
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller writes this short editorial on "the free trial," its importance and whether or not there may be avenues as yet unexplored by game companies.
At a certain point in every MMO life there is the addition of a free trial for players. Whether it comes three months after launch or one year later, eventually every MMO out there lets players in for free, hoping to convert them to subscribers. In an industry that has its true revenue stream in paying subscribers it is amazing recently that we have not heard any numbers from any companies. No one comes out and says, we have "this" amount of players (with very few exceptions). Instead, we have seen a shift to Free 2 Play and alternate subscription plans in order to get players to spend money on a game. The hook to all of this is the Free Trail, and our question here today is, does it work?
Many MMOs offer a ten day free trial. Someone in marketing or management thought this was an adequate time frame to hook players into an MMO. Here is the flaw in the ten day free trial: Most MMOs start small, like Dungeons & Dragons at level one. You fight kobolds, or maybe if you are lucky a hobgoblin chief. The opening zones to most MMOs are not very dynamic and sometimes frustrating. Lord of the Rings Online is an example in how to hook the player in early zones through story. You start out meeting main characters from the books and completing tasks for them. Some scenes in the books are even played out for you as you look on. This example is rare as most MMOs start small with you doing kill quests or collection quests to get your first few levels.
Read The Free Trial.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
With the way things are going in the mmo genre I wouldn't touch a mmo without a trial.
So they better make them work or they wont get my sub and im sure others feel the same after buying 60 dollar game boxes of complete dog shit.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Well, I know it works for Fallen Earth. It's different per game.
Anarchy Online has had F2P with option to upgrade to subscriber status and get the expansions for over 5 years now. What the free players get is the same game that subscribers had to pay for the first 3 years of the game.
~\_/~\_O
Based on the MMO industry of the past 2 years I will never pre-order nor play a game without a free trial. It certainly has worked well for me so far.
I don't purchase any MMOs without playing some kind of trial first... so, the sooner they think about the smart people who won't pay $50 blindly for their game, the better it will be because there will actually be a chance for me to even start playing the game, in an otherwise zero chances scenario (no trials).
Yes, I am aware they mostly rely on the people that purchase the game and stop playing quickly, instead of giving them the option to notice the game is not for them without them spending a single cent, heck, they even rely on people spending $200 on a lifetime subscription of an unreleased game *cough* Cryptic *cough*. This makes my "trial at release is the best for the customer" philosophy merely a dream.
Maybe someday the majority of the gaming community will grow more cautious in what they are purchasing and how solid is that decision, but hey, here I go with another dream, money is not that important for most, while it is for the companies, and giving them money for no solid reason (not having played a trial) is still the best and most expected way to make money at release. A developer will make trials only months or years after release as you mentioned.
Eric, the main reason why there is no trail at release is pretty simple. It would be overkill for the servers.
You really believe that over the money they would be losing from people that would otherwise have purchased the game but didn't because the trial made them notice they didn't like the game enough as the main reason?
There are ways to combat this, such as placing a cap on the number of logged in trial accounts (EVE had this at some point, only a certain percentage of the logged on players could be on trial accounts, or something like that).
A free trial will never be offered at launch.
1- lots of money to be had in people who impulse buy everything.
2- why would anyone just buy the game? Why pay $50 for 30 days of game time when you could do the 10 day free trial then buy the game resulting in 40 days of game time for the same price.
Ive subscribed to MMOs after playing the free trial. Free trials allow people to test games that they normally wouldnt. Reading about an MMO on message boards and in reviews is completely different than actually playing it for yourself.
MMO publishers should start offering free trials soon after launch. About 6 weeks to 2 months after launch. All of the impulse buy people already bought it or didnt and the subscriptions numbers are on the decline because of people not subscribing after the first free month. Hype is still in full swing for the game and there are lots of people that want to see how the game is but dont want to pay $50 and have a chance of being burned.
I've always thought that every MMORPG needs a free-trial, regardless of how successful they are. 3 Months or less for a Free trial is usually the best time to offer a free-trial.
Unfortunately, it seems like companies these days place too hard a restriction on free trials. Placing you in "Trial islands" or restrict you to a single town. This kind of behavior doesn't give one enough room to roam, which is important to a person interested in the game. MMORPGs are as much about exploring as they are getting stronger, and taking that exploring element out of the game just makes people frustrated.
Restricting chat and trade to weed out gold sellers is a obvious step that should be introduced, but restricting one's ability to explore does nothing but annoy your potential buyer.
Also, no where in a trial should you be charged anything. Taking a look at the Darkfall "trial" that was just released, you have to ask yourself what is going on in the heads of their owners? But that's ok, since Darkfall is really just a niche game and very few people will actually get anywhere in Darkifall, so I can see why they'd charge something.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
If i ever build a MMO here's how I would handle the subscription model
- No subscriptions- Buy it and play it, done.
- Expansions- They have to be significant, a whole nother game added to the current game. Anything else is merely an update.
Alright so the game still has to generate some extra money (or does it?)
- Cash Shop- Only items that don't affect the game play.
Now, the free trial... Limit the players level, mobs, rewards, scoreboards, abilities, weapons, and/or area (everything). (not based on time)
Godspeed my fellow gamer
People start caring less and less about a free trial if it takes them 3 days to download a trial that they can play for 7 days.
People start caring less and less about a free trial if it takes them 3 days to download a trial that they can play for 7 days.
that is only partly true..
while people with bandwith limiters do care a great deal about how big a game is to download for a X day trial.. people who do not have that same ISP limition are not as bothered. GRANTED i personally do not enjoy downloading a game that takes me up to a month to download just to play a week trial...
so one would have to expect the company to provide some decent bandwith to give decent download speeds.. i would be pissed if i was downloading AOC and the speed was 20.5kb/s for Xgb of client.... i mean if i want a torrent speed ... id get a torrent.. O-o
BUT trials are important as not everyone is bill gates and want to fork out 30-100 bucks every few days to buy agame they enjoy all of 2 minutes.. im sure many people wished they had trialed STO before getting life subs (going by the hate spam going around)
still.. i would spend the time to download the game IF i thought it was worthwhile and both going to keep me entertained and ill enjoy it, and im sure im not alone in that view.
I'm opposed to free trials, at least the ones that allow the trial accounts to mingle with the paying subscribers. While free trials sound great to someone who doesn't want to buy anything before they try it out, they also open the game environment up to a random assortment of annoying kids, gold spammers, and general asshats, most of whom have no intention of spending a dime. In the long run, I think the marketing scheme can prove to be counterproductive as paying customers grow weary of dealing with players with names like XXXHotSEXXX, Clownshoes, and IEATPOOP who don't realize that they are guests in the game and go out of their way to see how obnoxious they can be.
I recently gave WAR another try and it didn't take long to see why the "Endless Free Trial" is not such a hot idea. The entire Tier 1 Empire / Chaos pairing is a teeming mess of people whose gaming habits consist of running one idiotic "toon" (I can't call some of these "characters") to level 10, then going back and doing it all over again. Paying players are financing the hordes of perpetual freeloaders freeranging all over what was once a fun area of the game. On one occasion, I accepted a group invite in a Public Quest and suddenly found myself grouped with a Warrior Priest name Pedopedo. Not clever or funny. I hastily left the group and went elsewhere. If I'm paying for something, I have no tolerance for immature jackasses trying to be cute.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
It is funny how trials are both a good and a bad thing, as companies deal with trial abuses in one form or another and as players deal with subpar games.
I remember doing more of the beta thing, which worked to an extent as that trial. It does no good after launch, though, obviously. Yet for games without a trial, that you have not played a friend's account or the like - the consumer really risks wasting money and developing a bad taste for a company. Then again, if they play the trial and hate the game - it really does not do much for the company either.
The games that I have played for any period of time either involved playing in beta or playing a trial. I have bought a few games without either and most of those were usually uninstalled within a week with a mental note not to touch anything by that company again.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
There's one area of free trials missed in this article. Trials for former subscribers.
MMOs are dynamic, ever shifting games. What honked me off 6 months ago might have long since been patched out. However, as a former paying subscriber my only method to find out is to pony up a month's subscription.
I never quite understood why these companies always chase the new customer (often at $20 for the box by the time the trial is out) but snub the player who has, in many cases, ponied up $50-$70 for the game, plus 1-3 months of subscription. The latter has proven they are interested. They showed some loyalty. Is 1-2 weeks every 6 months or a year too much to ask to possibly recapture their interest?
For a lot of companies, it is.
Not just another pretty color.
A few times a year I play CoH during a free weekend. Earlier in the year I played Eve again for a free five days. Generally speaking, you see that not much has changed and there is little reason to return to the game you left. Most games have core faults that simply will not be resolved as time passes.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
I have played many MMO over the years, eventually they all come out with free trials.
Some I give another try (DAoC) to see if I can get back into it (no) , and whether the issues that made me leave the game have been resolved.
The ones that target me via email with offers for previous customers (AoC, CoH) are more likely to get me back unless the experience was really bad. (AoC ~ no chance regardless of changes made)
A recent trial (Darkfall) that I very much enjoyed, even though it was not free, but $1, impressed me. I liked the fact I had to cough up a tiny amount of cash for 7 days to try the game. This meant I was safe in the knowledge that a vast majority of people trying the game along with me were in fact at least serious enough about it to hand over a token amount of cash and payment details (less kids, gold farmers, idiots etc). This really cut out on a huge amount of the usual crap you see when taking up a trial. Clever move Darkfall.
Also I found the community very helpful indeed for the most part. (The guidance vids put up with a link from this very website were incredibly useful and very well made, for example)
I have 1 day left of my trial and I will be subscribing to the game...I might have ANYWAY..but today they time it perfectly and bring out a discount if you sub to the game which includes purchase of the game itself and 3 months of game time, OR another discount of 30% off for existing subs for 6 months, so also looking after the existing playerbase. Superb.
This to me shows that a far greater amount of thought has gone into this particular trial than most others. Free is NOT always best. I am looking forward to my time in Darkfall, I simply find it a complete change to all these crappy WoW clone, Themepark types of MMO that bore me so very very fast and never manage to really grip me for long.
Darkfall is the first trial of any MMO I have tried, to actually get me to sub. So yes, they can work. If given enough thought.
I'm trying the free forever trial in Warhammer Online and its ok, every time you lvl a large box pops up to ask you subscribe so its a total spam fest. I think I'll get bored playing the same 2 areas over and over, but atleast I have my WAR fix now and then.
Some work some don't, the ones that require a credit card I stay away from. Like AoC they had you restart your acount with a credit card and didn't tell you that you had to unsubsribe to the game or it would automatically charge you every month. I played through the 14 days and thought well that was ok and didn't log in for a while. Then I noticed that there was a charges on my credit card for a sub. sneaky buggers....
Collector of old minis.
Playing WAR:Age of Rekoning
www.oldtimersguild.com
I agree. Free trial is a must for any MMO. Im not willing to subscribe to something I havent played.
I agree. I am not going to pay to try a game that I may not even like. When Conan came out I was hoping to get into the beta but didn't and since you had to buy it to try it I won't be trying it. Same with Aion. With Aion several of my gaming friends did try it and it is PvP. I like PvE with a mix of PvP if I so choose. So it would have been a waste of my time and money. Even they didn't continue with it.
EQ2 came out with a trial. The days didn't match the level limit though. I mean I had several different classes to max level six and was stuck on this little island with no feel for the crafting or the game. The second EQ2 trail I tried, I was able to go to this town in the limited area but the features they so talked about, the housing, I could not use, of course I probably would not have been able to gain the funds anyway in such a confined area. Can you say uninstall and move on with both. I played EQ for five years and with the things they did that caused me to move on I want to see more than I was able to.
WoW has a really good trail . You get to see the world not just the starting area. You can group and try out most of the things the game has to offer. You can't trade with another player nor speak in one of the chats, sorry forget think it is Yell but don't quote me on that. If memory serves me right I believe you can even use the Auction House. It is not hard to get a toon to level 20 or higher depending on you play time so you will be able to see a great deal and get a feel for the game. You can try out the crafting skills and such as well so yeah you will know if you want to buy or not. Sorry it has been a while for me so I don't remember if they ask for your credit card or not. But you get a month free game play when you convert the trail over.
For me, a trail time should not be limited so harshly. If I can't check out the different crafting or see the whole of the game and what it offers then forget it I am not going to waste my money. If there is no trail at all then forget my hard earned dollars cause you are not going to get them.
These games that limit you to the confines of a starting area/levels and things that prevent you from getting a real feel for the game are just not worth it. I say this because if it is a seasoned gamer you have done nothing to make them feel the game or want to continue and if it is a new comer then they are either gonna purchase then leave soon after if it wasn't what they though or not purchase because it didn't give them a taste to move on.
It seems many MMOs will take that first stab and then loose them in a short time. Do they not stop and think things through? I mean if someone purchases the game and then does not like it that is a dissatisfied customer and they can put out much negative in the world of gaming. Sure you got some money from them but the bad word could cost you getting some from others.
Gikku
I have to agree with this. The first 10 days should hook me, IF it's a good game. I don't need to see the endgame because if the newbie game is dull, too easy or too hard I'm not going to sub to GET to the endgame. Rerolling is vital to the longevity of any mmo, as long as the leveling up experience is fun, I would keep playing and paying.
I tried the Istaria free to play then was planning when I had free time to try the 14 day free trial to see if I liked the game. But Right after I started the free to play the server I started on had 3 days of down time so I created another toon on another server just to see if I liked it. Then I received an email stating that the 14 day free trial started as soon as I created that second character. I may never go back to the game now.