Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve been playing this game and loving how it legitimately sets a new standard as to what to expect in MMO’s, and with any Multiplayer game, it’s more fun to play with friends than by yourself. As such I’ve been trying to recruit some of my friends (who are new to MMO’s) into this game just to show them how different and how lovely this game is.

Sadly my descriptions of how it alone are not enough, to convince them to just out-right buy the game, so we’ve settled at “when a free trial comes out, you guys have to play with me.”

I’ve searched the whole forum and to my knowledge there are no free trials available, nor are their talk of any, so my question is.

Will there be free trial’s available in the future?
If so is there an ETA on when they will be available?
And for the sake of discussion, are any of you in a similar position with your friends?

Unfortunately free trials may be a long way away, as such accounts are typically quickly used by gold sellers to spam their services as well as serve as mule accounts to transfer gold. These problems can be closed, but it will probably take some time to build an iron-clad free trial that can’t be abused.

Same here, Ive got alot of guildmates from another game I play that Id love to play GW2 with, but they want to try the game before they buy it.

I do think there will eventually be a free trial, but I hope its coming sometime soon-ish.

Edit: And about gold spammers.. Couldnt they just disable the abillity to chat with a trial account?

No way, not thanks, not ever. How much spamming Gold Sellers do you want in your game?

Anet already has a method for doing free periods, typically over a weekend during certain special periods (going by my experiences in GW1’s first 2 years from release).

Yeah, I figured that “Gold Sellers” would be the biggest issue at the moment for a lot of things, but i’m sure there are ways to prevent them from abusing a trail period. But with that said, I’d love to introduce my friends to the world of Tyria.

Let’s face it, doing what most other MMORPGs that employ free trials (namely disabling chat, removing trading – here it would be disabling item sending via mail, and possibly TP) would block you out of the economy and prevent you from advertising any kind of RMT.

However, the problems I do see are with the actual game content, meaning sPVP and WvW, and just mere server resources.

Most servers are decently populated already, leading to Queues on WvW and popular zones like LA. Free trials would mean a massive influx of additional players, costing server resources, while not getting any additional revenue to provide for more hardware to actually deal with that.

The sPvP problem (people could be playing sPvP for all eternity without buying GW2) or WvW problem (same difference – condition necromancers whether they are level 1 or 80 in full exotics, through their condition control alone can have full effect no matter what for example) could be solved by simply blocking that content as well.

So I just see money + available hardware resources as the main issue. A trial does not create revenue – it’s actually a deficit. Yes, you could argue that free trials ultimately lead to more buyers, but you’ll always have a lot more trialees who will either cost you money on buying additional server resources, or waste the pre-existing server resources.

And until we come at a point where we have numerous servers with low population, I don’t see trials happening.

They wouldn’t earn as much money if they did a free trial at this point.

I can’t remember the name but there is this video explaining “Demos” and why game companies do them less and less. I think it was those Penny Arcade guys.

NO just buy the game !
it still to early for free trials LOL !
besides there’s no stupid sub attached to the game !

its $43.50 at green man gaming right now. tell them to split the cost among them and buy a copy. they can all download it and then they can rotate days trying it out on their own.

http://dealzon.com/deals/cheap-guild-wars-2

or if you trust them, let me them play on your account for a few hours/days/whatever.

good luck

GW1 didn’t have a free trial till…..5 years after release?

@ Kumu Honua
Really, wow, I know it took that long for a trial to appear in the original, well i’m hoping that’s not the case for GW2, that or I’ll have to promote it a little bit harder then =P

@judeobscure
It’s not so much a matter of cost (well it kind of is) so much as they don’t want to blow X amount of money for a game that they will probably not like or play.

And it’s not that I wouldn’t trust my friends with my account, its that I’d want to be there playing with them to guide them through it, since these guys are new to MMO’s in general and are only put off by MMO’s for their original stigma (which guild wars 2 pretty much throws out the window IMO)

@Latinkuro
I’ve explained that to them, to which has given them a good impression about the game as a whole, but they still have reservations, also, I figured right now would be too early to open up free trials, but I just would like to get an idea of if there is going to be one available in the not to distant future.

@Farzo
Well that’s a true enough point, and it does make sense, but still i’d love to be able to give my friends a tour of Tyria for a week. =P

@norc
An influx of players when free trial periods are open are always inevitable, but of course these players aren’t going to be around forever (well unless they eventually decide to buy the game)

Though they could also combat the potential influx as you explained by allowing us players who already own the game to give out a single (or maybe 2-3) trial invite(s) to a friend for a week or something.

What I did with my friends was just to invite them over and take a look at the game at my place. Let them make a char- do the tutorial. Show them some of the world on my main etc.
For the ones who live in different countries from me I just spammed with screens everyday until they gave in :P

Actually I remember Guild Wars 1 having a free trial card being distributed over here in the Philippines in the few months after the release. It gave us a 10 hour free trial. I was amazed by the game, but couldn’t buy it since I was on dial up back then and couldn’t play online games straight.