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[Poll] Five Days Early Access Is?
Crazy_Stick
Member Posts: 1,059
I noted that you only get five days of early access play time for preordering TESO. We all know the NDA is dragging awfully long. I can remember getting a lot more early access play time and beta access too for making preorders for other games in recent years. So, I wondered what all of you were thinking and feeling about it? This worthy incentive, stingy, signs of a conspiracy... 
I will note my thoughts on it later as I don't want to color the poll results. Thanks for sharing.
Comments
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I actually consider some people gaining early access good for the community in that you have people on hand that can help with quests, play advice, do some crafting, suffer through the early debugging, and on, in place for when every one else jumps into the fray. The skill system is nothing like EVE online, it's something you will catch up with.
I understand some degree of PVP frustrations at people with an early edge though but that is a ladder that will right itself.
Oh early access was a major bitch fest when it first was done in conjunction with pre ordering or buying a special version of the game. It just shows that these things that people accept now accept it because theyre used to it. The frog in the water analogy.
Just like letting them do what theyre doing here will be common place. Soon it will be you get to pay a sub have the option of 25% of the races or classes but if you pre order or pay a few you can unlock everything.
Thats why there will probably never be a traditional subscription MMO ever again.
rather than give early access do what they used to do and give extended free play. So instead of 30 days you get 60 or 90.
They offer early access to decrease the load on log in servers and the game. Since this is supposedly one big mega server if they had a million people trying to log in at once I can imagine how that will go. Although they might have that many anyway. But I suspect their log in servers will crash first. There will be a few thousand people in the game and tens of thousands all getting error messages.
Going to be an extremely interesting launch thats for sure.
From my perspective they should have included a week's worth of beta for players to get comfortable with a class and ready for PVP (we can't comment on more technical reasons some are aware of) before wiping the test characters followed by a week's worth of actual early launch access play. Hopefully, they will drop NDA by early March. It is what it is.
I am honestly not sure I accept the argument that everyone interested in playing is going to preorder very early in the process. I typically only buy into a game before launch after testing it or if the NDA is dropped soon enough for me to get the low down and see some actual play video. Otherwise, it can wait a few months on my wish list before I decide. I have been burned too many times on MMORPG preorders in recent years by letting myself buy into the hype and excitement to ever do that again.
The NDA will drop Feb 15, the day after the 25% off coupons at ESO site expire.
Just to be clear, early access is not beta.
The primary purpose of early access is to spread out the population to minimize impact on the server on release day. The developers of any mmo want this so they offer it to those willing to pay for early access as a marketing promotion.
You stay sassy!
All of the early access days are workdays except the first day, the 30th of March. That should also help with the evening out before the official launch the following Friday.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I think folks realize that early access and beta are not the same thing and have different expectations of each. Though frankly, there are better ways of handling the server load issues than early access and I am not sure I buy that idea. I think it is mostly intended as preorder incentive for eager fans. I remember RIFT for example actually sending out waves of emails to bring all the buyers into play in groups as they developed capacity to handle the load around launch and it worked wonders. Some people are game fan enough to take a holiday for a new game launch and I wouldn't be surprised to see that with TESO.