Guild Wars 2

I have a lot of friends that might want to buy the game, but they don’t know if they
will like it. I suggest to implement a permanent free demo or trial that allows people
to download a demo client for free with a trial account.

Let people make two characters, restrict them to their home city and starting area,
and let them advance up until level 15. Disable mailing gold and items, disable the
BLT auction house, and watch your subscriptions rise.

This game is amazing, right now, in spite of its flaws, it is the best MMORPG that is
available on the internet. The physics, the skills, the PvP.. I think you might somewhat
be underestimating how huge this game could be with a free trial, a promise of more
expansions (to buy), and simply continuing the great patch updating so far.

The graphics of this game won’t become outdated for at least five more years to come,
and the game has got so many things right, compared to other MMOs, that I really
think it will be a good idea to implement this suggestion.

great idea, simple and already working in many other popular MMO’s

Was totally ready to bash this, but that’s actually not a bad idea.

There probably needs to be a few other things determined for restriction, whatnot, like acheivements and PvP, but yeah, this is something that could be good.

Pretty pretty pretty please? It would only help improve sales if people could try it, and that system would prevent any exploitation, besides if you(anet) really wanted to stop any and all exploitation, put the trials on a separate server.

I have the same problem – I keep telling people to give GW a try and my only option would be to let them play on my account which obviously is the worst idea ever.

Zsymon.8457:

Let people make two characters, restrict them to their home city and starting area,
and let them advance up until level 15. Disable mailing gold and items, disable the
BLT auction house

Only allow other players to mail them items, otherwise it would be silly.

AntiGw.9367:

Zsymon.8457:

Let people make two characters, restrict them to their home city and starting area,
and let them advance up until level 15. Disable mailing gold and items, disable the
BLT auction house

Only allow other players to mail them items, otherwise it would be silly.

That is fine by me, I don’t care much about the specifics, that is up to Anet, as long as
there comes a proper free demo or free trial, it would attract a LOT more people, and
more people means more money means more content, expansions and quality.

I’d restrict to 20 or 25 not 15. I don’t know I don’t think you get a lot out of the traits with 15… though traits are one of the most important in the game as it determines your play style.

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

I’d restrict to 20 or 25 not 15. I don’t know I don’t think you get a lot out of the traits with 15… though traits are one of the most important in the game as it determines your play style.

Makes sense…

I go for level 20 so you can get access to your first major trait.

I’m sure spamming bots will love this idea.

Phoenix.7845:

I’m sure spamming bots will love this idea.

Don’t let them use /m, solved.

Phoenix.7845:

I’m sure spamming bots will love this idea.

Only allow bots to message players who they have added and who have them added as well, this way friends are able to communicate with each other and it prevents the risk of having bots spam the place.

This also would be great for my girlfriend, she would love to play the game, but she’s on the edge about buying it, she can’t effectively play it at my house, because there’s a fair distance between us, so gaming is what keeps us close, if she could trial GW2, there’s a higher probability that she’ll end up buying it, she doesn’t want to pay £50+ for something that she might not like or might not even run on her computer.

I really hope we could get a reaction from a dev on this idea, or at least tell us why
it would (not) be a good idea from Anet’s point of view.

I really want to play together with my friends, but they just aren’t going to buy it if
they cannot try it out first. I would gift them a copy from my own pocket, but that
would be pointless if they start playing and don’t like the game, just to quit again &
waste my money.

Arena net ever said anything about trial possibility?

My friends want to start playing, but are hesitating due to the price. Trial would be very helpful in determining either they will like this game enough to buy it or not.

There have been 2 trial weekends, I believe, but that’s where it ends… Not sure why.

It took YEARS before Guild Wars 1 had a trial, and I hope it’s years before GW2 does. Unfortunately having free trials gets you a lot of bots in the game and even with preventative measures they still manage to kitten things up, they use program’s that allow them to not play by the rules, how else do your explain their ability to transport magically between resource nodes and enemies.

The game is not expensive and it doesn’t have a subscription fee, they can get a good feel of the game from videos, screenshots and blog posts.

that actually might work for them since the make most of their money off game sales and boxes. It would allow people to experience the game without making it crazy or allowing those people to do more than what they should. They’d probably have to restrict the dailies and the achievements when the rewards patch hits to keep farmers from using this to their advantage.

A free trial is welcomed with some restrictions that won’t frustrate the real players too much but will do it with most botters

I second the OP, great idea to bolster the head count.

Restrictions:
- 5 characters, 5 racial cities, 5 starter zones, No Lion’s Arch
- no zone chat /m
- no Trade Post activity (buying-selling) other than viewing
- no mail sending
- max level 20
- max inventory 1 gold
- max bank 1 gold
- max tier 1 in all possible achievements

I think this sounds great! ^ Ronah, I have to disagree about the first restriction. Five characters all leveled up to 20 is sort of the equivalent of leveling a character to 80 (and twenty “levels” after that), though not as much difficulty as the later levels. You can get a LOT of time & enjoyment out of five maps, cities, and characters, and I think a lot of people who would do the trial (even if they loved the game) would be rather satisfied after all five characters and zones and might be over their brief fun and thus not buy the game. If ANet were to do this, realistically, they’d probably limit it to one or two characters (two would be ideal because they could try out different professions) to simply pique the player’s interest and get them to buy the full thing. If they wanted to level five characters to 20 after that and stop playing, at least they paid the $50 for the game anyway. :P

I have a noobish question… How would this attract bots/what would the bots DO in the free trial? I don’t know enough about the idea to know how it would effect the game/trial for other people.

I can agree with 2 characters which will be bound to their starter zone.
Having no access to Lion’s Arch, the players won’t be able to experiment festivals but will have a taste of what they are like seeing the festival things dropping in their zone.

Having people into the starter zones will benefit the game even if they wont buy the game because they will fill up these zones and anyone can see how awesome GW2 is when there are players around.

Also, if you have friends with trials you can always come to them in the starter zones and have fun

“No TP activity” and" No mail sending" and “No zone chat” + "1 gold max will pretty much eliminate all farming/ spamming bots

Zsymon.8457:

…and watch your subscriptions rise.

…
…
…
Um…..huh?

Almost there Ronah! It would be much better like this:

- 2 characters only (limited to their starting area/city, ex: Human in Kryta + DR), no Lion’s Arch
- no zone chat /m
- no Trade Post activity (buying-selling) other than viewing
- no mail sending
- max level 20
- max inventory 1 gold
- max bank 1 gold
- max tier 1 in all possible achievements

and I think we’re good. Would be just enough to get people to buy it!

@Goddess, I find that unfair as the only permanent Activity is in Hoelbrak. Perhaps if they are in Lion’s Arch, they’re limited to the Gate Hub Plaza…?

I wouldn’t mind if they had access to Lion’s Arch, but wouldn’t be able to leave the map through the Asura Gates (to other cities) or to the top or bottom map.

Since the only Mystic Forge in PvE is in LA, I think that would be better.

Oh and while we’re at it, also add :
- No WvW and sPvP progress for trial accounts (or maybe a limit of time/matches you can play with a trial account)

Well, the thing is, I think they should have access to Keg Brawl.

Good Idea,

but I suggest that your friends spend 50 Euro/USD for every Free Trail Account.

Arenanet devs, some great idea here. Make it happen

I remember reading somewhere that ANet will not personally respond to any suggestion threads, mainly because there are a lot of ideas to be shared, or for some other reasons. I’m sure ANet will add this in the future, it’s absolutely one of the most obviously important and logical things to do. I guess they don’t have the resources to spend on developing this (even though for some reason they have the time to toss us a few bones every month to chew on for a couple of weeks…)

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

- no mail sending

I’m sorry to say, but this would really, really get in the way of people trying to lure their friends into GW2 fair and square. When someone lures ME into a new game, the FIRST thing I do is message them for instructions.

The restriction should rather be that you cannot send or receive items and gold in mails. Text mails should be okay!

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

- no mail sending

I’m sorry to say, but this would really, really get in the way of people trying to lure their friends into GW2 fair and square. When someone lures ME into a new game, the FIRST thing I do is message them for instructions.

The restriction should rather be that you cannot send or receive items and gold in mails. Text mails should be okay!

You as a veteran player can mail to them instructions if you don’t want to join their party to talk freely.
They can’t send you any mail as response but they can whisper to you.
This is for the new free botter accounts who would send the gold to amaster account or to buyers.
If you want to send your friends instructions, you can do it through the real life mail too
Besides, if they are your real life friends, you are supposed to use voice chat programs so no mails needed

I wouldn’t care if they put up a special “Free Trial Server”, that would be cool with me.

However,
I would NOT want for a bunch of free account rift-raft in my home server, NO WAY been there done that.

I’ve seen the result of that before with AO years back, they called them Froobies (Free Noobies) and they talk crap, put the game down, start problems in chat (like racist comments and slurs), training mobs onto players and getting them killed, cause lag and generally just detract from the rest of the community.

And what do they care? What is Anet gonna do? Ban their Free Account, they’ll just make a new one. But put up a Free Account Server “separate” from those of us that paid for the game, and I’d be in support of that.

Ronah.2869:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

- no mail sending

I’m sorry to say, but this would really, really get in the way of people trying to lure their friends into GW2 fair and square. When someone lures ME into a new game, the FIRST thing I do is message them for instructions.

The restriction should rather be that you cannot send or receive items and gold in mails. Text mails should be okay!

You as a veteran player can mail to them instructions if you don’t want to join their party to talk freely.
They can’t send you any mail as response but they can whisper to you.
This is for the new free botter accounts who would send the gold to amaster account or to buyers.
If you want to send your friends instructions, you can do it through the real life mail too
Besides, if they are your real life friends, you are supposed to use voice chat programs so no mails needed

“You are supposed to use voice chat programs” —> I’m sorry, is that a written rule that I’ve missed somehow? Many players have reasons for not using voice chat programs. But this is really besides the point.

I’ve directed quite a few friends (RL or gaming ones) towards GW2. They don’t sign up immediately. They sign up when they have some time to spare, weeks or months later. They know MY account name, but I don’t know theirs. So the first thing they do is message me. (I just got one of those messages from a buddy from Australia, less than 2 weeks ago.) I genuinely fear that if they can’t easily (and in game!) get in touch with me, it would turn them off the game immediately.

As for your own concerns and worries: If you, on a trial account, cannot send or receive gold, cannot send or receive items, and cannot send URLs (easy to remove from messages), then how are botters or gold vendors supposed to do any harm at all? I can’t imagine how they could, but if you can construct any examples, I would like to hear them.

The biggest problem would be the invasion of “free to play” characters in World vs World, since you’re automatically up-leveled to 80. They can’t allow that, or freeloaders would just get the best possible gear for a level 20 (or whatever level limit the free trials have) and play WvW for free.

Please have a little sense.
Free trial for a game that is almost free?

You buy once and play forever.
Games with any sort of free trials are usually subcription based.

If GW2 was to have a permanent free trial, it should be extremely limited:
- 1 character slot.
- Only have access to starter zone (no capital, nothing)
- No form of communication or trading with other players whatsoever.
Exception: if a player whispers you, you can reply
- Level 20 max.
- You can NOT upgrade your account from trial to normal account. So whatever you gain in trial account is NEVER carried over if you decide to get the game.
What this means is that Bots would have NO way to use trial accounts to influence the game.

This seems harsh, but dealing with bots for the players who pay/paid, is more important than giving players a free trial.

That being said, I think all MMOs should have a free software to create characters. that can later be imported to the game during character creation.
This application would be sort of a showroom, where you can test some skills, check environments, play with character creator, and thus get a feel of the game, without actually playing the game.

Korrigan.4837:

The biggest problem would be the invasion of “free to play” characters in World vs World, since you’re automatically up-leveled to 80. They can’t allow that, or freeloaders would just get the best possible gear for a level 20 (or whatever level limit the free trials have) and play WvW for free.

Is that a bad thing?

AntiGw.9367:

Korrigan.4837:

The biggest problem would be the invasion of “free to play” characters in World vs World, since you’re automatically up-leveled to 80. They can’t allow that, or freeloaders would just get the best possible gear for a level 20 (or whatever level limit the free trials have) and play WvW for free.

Is that a bad thing?

Definitely. Freeloaders who can play the game forever without paying a cent to participate in its improvement are bad. It’s the upscaling to 80 which is a problem in WvW. Or maybe they can simply forbid siege engine usage and don’t give any kind of loot to “free” accounts, and/or limit the time they can spend in WvW every day. But some harsh limits must be added to encourage people to buy the full version.
And sPvP should also be forbidden to any permanent trial, or at least severely limited (like only 1 or 2 matches per day maximum).

Nurvus.2891:

- You can NOT upgrade your account from trial to normal account. So whatever you gain in trial account is NEVER carried over if you decide to get the game.

Not necessary. Just make it so that resources you can store on a free trial are limited. You can’t buy bank slots or additional bags, you can only store a limited amount of crafting resources (like 25 of each instead of 250), and you can only have a few gold maximum (1 or 2 gold). Since you can’t use mail or auction house, the accounts would be useless for gold farmers. WoW works that way, and it works just fine.
People who decide to move to the full version should not be punished for it, but rewarded.

Korrigan.4837:

AntiGw.9367:

Korrigan.4837:

The biggest problem would be the invasion of “free to play” characters in World vs World, since you’re automatically up-leveled to 80. They can’t allow that, or freeloaders would just get the best possible gear for a level 20 (or whatever level limit the free trials have) and play WvW for free.

Is that a bad thing?

Definitely. Freeloaders who can play the game forever without paying a cent to participate in its improvement are bad. It’s the upscaling to 80 which is a problem in WvW. Or maybe they can simply forbid siege engine usage and don’t give any kind of loot to “free” accounts, and/or limit the time they can spend in WvW every day. But some harsh limits must be added to encourage people to buy the full version.
And sPvP should also be forbidden to any permanent trial, or at least severely limited (like only 1 or 2 matches per day maximum).

Oh no, free players don’t deserve to play the game!

NOT.

There are plenty of things Arena.net could do to prevent abuse, without implementing draconian restrictions that would defeat the purpose of a free trial

Free players don’t deserve to play full parts of the game without ever having to buy anything.
The idea of a trial is to try, not to play for free forever with all features enabled.

But please, list the “things” arena.net could do to prevent abuse without restrictions, I’m eager to read them.

I personally think that for GW2, a time limited trial counting IN GAME TIME so that people with limited time to log on would have the same trial duration than more hardcore players, with restrictions (chat/trading/auctions) and max gold limit is what would work best… just like the GW1 trial.
Make the total duration like 12 hours in game (logged in) time and limit max level to 20. That’s plenty enough time to try everything in the game without being able to play forever for free.

Every MMO should have a permanent free trial system. Customers like to try a product before they buy it.

Give it a time limit, say… one or two weeks. There is no reason someone should be able to permanently play the game for free.
Trial – good
Trial without timelimit (no matter how limited otherwise) -> Bad marketing, there would be people just keeping their trial accounts and causing more pressure on the server. After all its not “free 25% of the game”. Its supposed to be a trial attracting customers who have fun and get sad the trial is over. Then they can buy the game and have an option like “add key to existing trial account” to continue their little heroes journey.
With all the trading limitations keeping the character wont be a issue.

Map limitations should be like in early BWE´s. Best ending in a cliffhanger in the personal story to maximize the pain of not being able to march on.
Sounds evil, but that would be good marketing i think.

Edit: I nearly cried when my 1st beta character had done the last personal story quest in the beta. I would have paid once more just to be able to go on.

@Blimm
If you put a “real life” time limit, some people who can e.g. only play a few hours on week ends won’t have much game time. That’s why I think it’s better to put an “in game” (logged in) time limit.

Just give it some kind of time limit.

Oh how I miss the betas… So intense, so sad when the beta was over. And I swear outside of dungeons, at least in starting areas the mobs were 2-3 times as strong as they are today. I remember having real fights with equal-level normal mobs. That can´t ONLY have been player skill… time for a new suggestion i guess

My Idea for Perma-Free Trial Restrictions
PVE
Max level 15
Cannot send/receive mail to/from players.
Cannot use guild vaults.

sPvP
Can play hot join only.

WvW
Restricted to servers own borderlands.
Can only carry 5 supply.
Will also always be upleveled and missing utilities/elite, side effect of PvE cap level 15.

No WvW, every single free trial weekend so far has allowed for so many spy accounts that playing that weekend was pointless…

Sorry for again bumping this thread, but i think this needs Arenanet opinion here. It’s a wasted opportunity to gain new players.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

It took YEARS before Guild Wars 1 had a trial, and I hope it’s years before GW2 does. Unfortunately having free trials gets you a lot of bots in the game and even with preventative measures they still manage to kitten things up, they use program’s that allow them to not play by the rules, how else do your explain their ability to transport magically between resource nodes and enemies.

The game is not expensive and it doesn’t have a subscription fee, they can get a good feel of the game from videos, screenshots and blog posts.

Yes it is expensive, atleast for some countries. I received it as a birthday gift, otherwise i would not pay 150-200PLN for this game at that point of time. Maybe it’s only 60$ for you, but 200PLN in Poland is pretty much.

And no, videos and screenshots ain’t worth anything. You might thing “Oh, this looks nice” but in the end if you try it yourself you might get bored after 1 week. It’s like buying cat in the bag, you can’t be sure enough if the game is for you before you try it, and not everyone had the opportunity to test game during 2 free weekends.

Many other MMOs are using Trial system and it’s working fine, it’s actually standard and should be implemented. I’m quite sure many people are not buying this game due to lack of possibility testing it beforehand. It’s good opportunity for Arenanet to gain new players.

If the trial players would have some restrictions (matter of discussing and figuring out what would fit the best, like for example not being able to play on WvW or something) I am certain it would not create any problem with botters while many players would have the opportunity to test the game and eventually buy it.

Right now I have a break from GW2 cause i simply do not have anyone to play with. But, few friends of mine are considering playing in GW2, BUT as mentioned – they are not going to buyt cat in the bag. Desriptions are subjective, videos are not enough. I myself bought few times a game that looked nice on videos, had good reviews but ended up being terribly boring for me in very short time so i know how it’s like.

Massacrul.2016:

Yes it is expensive, atleast for some countries. I received it as a birthday gift, otherwise i would not pay 150-200PLN for this game at that point of time. Maybe it’s only 60$ for you, but 200PLN in Poland is pretty much.

200PLN = 60.42USD

but ur right, that 42 cents…