Tag: free trial

Limited 14 Day RuneScape Members Trial


[UPDATE: THE TRIAL APPEARS TO BE UP AND RUNNING AGAIN, CLICK HERE]

Earlier this month, I talked about how now that Jagex has rid the game of the more troublesome bots, a limited members trial sounds far more feasible. After all, while the free version of RuneScape offers an overwhelming amount of content, the two games are segregated at a level where a subscription should be experienced rather than teased. Granted, I didn’t think Jagex would already have had something in the works.

While there hasn’t been an official announcement, players are reporting that newly created free accounts are being offered 14 days free membership with certain limitations. The details right now are foggy, given most of my information is coming from questionable sources, but the trial appears to be limited to new accounts only, and the trial may be region-restricted. My sources in the UK were the only ones to receive the below message upon creating a new account, while those in US, Canada, and Germany were unable to.

Today is Sunday, so it is possible that Jagex will have some sort of formal announcement this week. For now, however, the trial doesn’t seem to be fully rolled out.

Final Fantasy XI Is Crazy On XI-XI-XI: 14-Day Trial?


Do not adjust your monitors, the title of this article has been transmitted as intended: Final Fantasy XI has released a 14 day trial. Still surprised? So am I, but apparently the folks at Square Enix decided to pull down one barrier for entry into the aging-yet-enormous-to-an-almost-intimidating-degree MMO. If you were holding off on trying Final Fantasy XI due to whispers of Play Online and its less than stellar service, you’ll be happy to know that Square Enix patched out PO some time ago.

All you need to sign up is your first name, last name, captcha code, and an email address. And if you do decide to buy the game at the end of your trial period (or any time before), you can enjoy 50% off of the complete package.

Gods & Heroes Trial Extended: 7 Days


Seven days isn’t just enough time for a small Japanese girl to come out of your television and murder you. I’m going to go on a limb and guess that, although appealing to some, the three day Gods and Heroes trial just wasn’t long enough of a sample period for many prospective buyers. As a result, Heatwave Interactive has announced that the trial has been extended to seven days, without the hassle of phone calls or raspy voices predicting your imminent demise.

“We’d like to invite everyone curious about Gods & Heroes to spend a week sampling the brutality and glory of ancient Rome. By extending the trial period from three to seven days, new players will have a chance to really dig into the heart of the game and we know they’ll like what they find.”

If you want to learn a bit more on Gods & Heroes, check out the MMO Fallout “Why Aren’t You Playing,” article.

Everquest II: Now With A Decent Free Trial


Technically Everquest II has the mother of all free trials, however if you’re looking to bud into the subscription-only sector to play with friends, this promotion doesn’t exactly help you. Announced on the Station website, the new free trial offers 14 days of worry-free gaming, with a few perks on the side. Players receive a superior experience potion offering twice the advancement for two hours, and a special cloak that increases run speed by 25%.

If you don’t play the subscription version, you can still obtain the cloak and potion in Everquest II Extended, along with a few other items according to players. For casual players who don’t have anyone playing the subscription version, Extended is still the best deal.

Aion: 10 Day Free Trial And Welcome Back Week


Aion’s 2.5 patch brings a whole lot of sexy to NCsoft’s already big-hitting title. The patch brings with it a new graphics mode, new content, customizations, pets, mentoring, armors, abyss changes, dynamic maps, and more changes than you could legally shake your finger at. In fact, NCsoft is so excited, that they want to welcome back their old players (again) to show them just how well the game has improved…just not for a few weeks. Possibly to give the current subscribers a leg up on the update and work out any kinks before reopening the doors, the welcome back week runs from June 3rd to June 13th.

If you haven’t logged into your NCsoft account since the security update, you may want to get a head start. NCsoft enacted a new security policy, requiring computers to be authenticated before an account can log in from them. In order to authenticate a computer, you will need to enter your password hint answers, and if you don’t know those, go through support to get them changed. Do so soon, because there’s no saying how much NCsoft’s Customer support will be backed up.

Furthermore, those of you who never played Aion will have the opportunity to take part in a ten day trial, experiencing up to level 20. The trial goes live May 26th. Oh NCsoft, why did you have to pick June 3rd and make me choose between Aion, the Hellgate Global beta opening, and the Duke Nukem Forever beta (among other things that week)?

Mortal Online: 14 Day Trial


Fight now, and let spill the dogs of war?

Wanted to try out Mortal Online without the need for purchasing the game? Those of you paying attention will be aware that a free trial has been on the list for a while now, but hampered due to Star Vault’s desire to continue patching the game before advertising it to the general public. The wait, however, is over! Announced via email and through the game’s forums, players may now create a trial account here, download the client here, and soon be experiencing the full frontal nudity that is Mortal Online.

Limitations, you say? There is a limit of 600 skill points and a cap of level 60 for all skills. Other than that, you have 14 days to wreak havoc on your fellow players in the nudist colony. You may want to check up on the servers before you go in, however, as Star Vault’s Henrik Nystrom posted a couple days ago:

Dear community,

Our entire host network in Europe have operation issues at the moment. This is affecting our server at the moment. We got reports that servers running a game called World Of Warcraft is effecting these network at the moment via Frankfurt……

This could affect our server connections and they are working to solve it as we speak.

A game called World of Warcraft…Nope, not ringing a bell. Whatever it is, surely it can’t be big enough to cause lasting server problems.

Final Fantasy XIV: Holy Free Third Month, Batman!


That extension is adorable!

Back in October, Square Enix announced that early adopters of Final Fantasy XIV would receive an additional month of time to try out the game, play through it, and hopefully weather out the storm of issues with the game. This month, Square Enix announced a tentative update coming on the 25th of November, just a few days after most of the free extensions will expire. In response, Square has issued a news article detailing yet another extension to the free time:

Today, we have decided to extend the free trial period an additional 30 days. Please refer to the following for more details.

Players who purchase FFXIV before November 19th can also partake in this free month (giving them 60 days of free game time), while those who adopted early are enjoying their third free month. In addition, Square put out a comprehensive list of updates they have planned for the coming months, which you can find here: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/pl/topics/detail?id=cb4dc09784bc24b4fde2e45de9f018ec5fb504d2

And since the discussion on other forums is already erupting on this subject, yes this is to appease early adopters and get them to stick around until Square can do some much needed maintenance on the game. In case you hadn’t noticed with All Points Bulletin, when a company doesn’t fix glaring issues fast enough, the game dies: fast. Hopefully Square can get the necessary issues fixed before the early adopters disappear.

Any account created before the 19th will be able to take part in the free 30 days. More on Final Fantasy XIV as it appears.

Runescape Free* Membership Trial Coming


Not Free.

In regards to freemium titles, MMOs that offer a small portion of the game for free with the rest at a subscription rate, that the existing free portion of the game technically serves as a trial. It may not be limited by time, but it is limited in content available. With Runescape, Jagex would prefer that the free portion was not referred to as a limited trial, as their goal is to create a fully realized game that free players can indulge themselves in without paying a dime, ever. Other than that, there is no way for players to gain access to the members worlds without actually paying a membership fee.

With the above image leaked from the player moderator forums on Runescape, June 23rd will bring us the first ever limited time trial in Runescape, for Runescape memberships. And that is where the niceties end. Oddly enough, in order to partake in the 7 day trial, you have to provide a credit card that can only be used on one account, and there is a several dollar fee that is taken out as a deposit and returned at the end of the process. In addition to all of that, the player must manually disable their subscription before the seven days are up, otherwise they will be automatically put into the billing system for the full game.

The credit card reason is obvious: To stop real money traders from ravaging members with countless throwaway accounts. The fee, on the other hand, makes little sense. The cost is small enough as it is, but if you have a credit card and those few dollars, why not spend the tiny amount more and experience members for the full 30 days rather than just a week? You don’t get the money back, but if you have the credit card and the few dollars to plop down as a deposit, would you really miss it?

In order to combat abuse, you will only be allowed one account to a credit card, not that the real money traders have ever had much of an issue stealing credit cards before (Hint: The 2007 Runescape anti-rwt updates were in response to rampant credit card theft being used to pay for membership on bot accounts).

More on Runescape as it appears.

Darkfall: Our $1 Free Trial Is Now $0


Kill the carebear!

Aventurine is notably one of the few MMOs to ever attempt to justify a lack of trial program, citing that the game was “not ready for it.” Back in February, Aventurine decided no time was better than the present, and with Darkfall reaching nearly one year in age, opened up a trial for the cost of $1/€1. Due to the reaction to the one dollar/euro trial, Aventurine has decided that it is time for a free fourteen day trial, twice the length of the original trial, for none of the cost!

So what’s been going on in Darkfall lately? Well, if you haven’t been paying attention to the bi-monthly Darkfall articles, the game has become quite a bit fairer. Couple that with a few mass bans, and the upcoming Darkfall 2010 patch, and you have plenty of improvement to a one year old MMO. With new player protection, health balancing. Depending on who you ask, Darkfall has gone down in population recently, so with any luck this new trial program will bring fresh meat…new players into the game for the veterans to kill…care for and introduce into the game.

Accounts from Asia are being throttled with priority to American and European players on American and European servers respectively.

More on Darkfall as it appears.

Global Agenda: Free Trial Now Available


Hopefully we will see much more of this.

Searching “free” on MMO Fallout will net you 97 hits, 98 after this article publishes. Now, MMO Fallout is not just about making sarcastic comments towards developers, talking about Bill Roper, or nagging on Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. I like to think I do my job well of confusing people by one minute talking down a company, while at the next minute advocating for everyone to try out their MMO.

Free trials are the best trials (I’m looking at you, EA Games), and Global Agenda is now offering up the best of the best trials, unlimited free trials. Now, the restrictions for the Global Agenda trial will not do much to deter you if you are truly interested in trying the game out. They are as follows:

  • Level cap of 15
  • Unable to filter match types.
  • Barred from auction house, craft, mail.
  • Cannot join an Agency.
  • Cannot use voice chat.
  • Cannot participate in AvA

The restrictions are pretty standard methods to keep bots from taking the trial system for a ride, and most MMOs, although the lack of AvA, even in a small dose, is disappointing, and is likely one of the big reasons someone would be interested in such a trial. Even a simple segregated AvA system that only includes trial users, but has no effect on the character or account, would be nice.

But, if you’ve been holding out on buying Global Agenda, this demo is the perfect reason to pick up the client, restrictions or not, and give it a go. Even better, your character will be kept, which is more than an anonymous MMO by the name of Alganon can say.

More on Global Agenda as it appears.