The Daily Grind: Are free trials good for MMOs?

I don't just think free trials are good, I think they are absolutely essential. It's a way to attract new business, get back old business (e.g., people re-subbing, or existing players getting "perks" for getting new folks to play the trial then sub), and keep your name out there (e.g., new expansion releases so you spam out the free trial invites once again).

Beta release help to catch bugs and polish the game. Often there are bonus given by the host such as head start on playing and in game bonus items.

I'd say Open Beta 'trials' are aren't inherently good or bad. Its a tool. It depends on how its used by the developer/publisher.

I've participated in 4 open beta 'trials': WoW, LotRO, STO, & FFIV

I decided based on these experiences whether or not to buy each. For WoW, my ex & I weren't even interested in it until we tried it out. LotRO was good in beta, but I couldn't afford 2 more subs. BUT, I just bought SoA & MoM for LotRO! So it all worked out eventually.

As for STO, that game was released WAY too early. Its still in development as far as I'm concerned. And FFIV is REALLY pretty.... that's about it. The interface is horrid. Even with a gamepad, its interface & combat is slow & boring.

So my advice for developers / publishers is this: If a game is polished & of significant quality, then open beta / trials are your friend. If not, i.e. it really is still a beta product and/or its just not a great game, then you should AVOID any sort of 'try before you buy'. (good for them, bad for consumers)

The FF14 open beta just saved me from purchasing that pile of crap. Canceled the pre-order and now await patiently for Star wars!

Free trials doesn't apply to every gaming publisher's business plan, because certain companies can move a product by other means. Such as advertising and various other promotions.

For example, Blizzard could convince you to buy and subscribe to WoW with an offer to receive some cool swag like T-shirt and toy. Where in a company like Hi-Rez studios wouldn't have the means to do such promotion. Even if it did, it probably would never be as successful as a promotion as Blizzard's. So Hi-Rez would need to do free trials to get the word out about their game.

Of course free trials are risk for some companies, because the slightest negativity about a game is uncontrolled PR nighmare. Some companies can handle the negativity, some can not, but do their best to make the most out of free trials.

The gist of my post here is that free trials are not a universal business strategy and gamers shouldn't assume that no trials equates to company hiding something. The decision to do a free trial has little to do with gamers response, and more to do with what is the most cost-efficient way of promoting their product that will reach the widest audience. Free trials might seem low cost, but it does nothing if you haven't heard about the game.

Alright, so,
Open Betas and Closed Betas.
Good sometimes.
Like Valkyrie Sky, they patched like 11 times with some pretty significant stuff during their closed beta. the closed beta was two weeks.
Other games, like Heroes of Might and Magic Online...
I played it, it was fun, it was buggy as hell and the in game font was barely visible.
I provided this feedback on their forum and they did a sum total of nothing with it for two weeks.

It is rather unfortunate that most companies that import/localize MMOs are disconnected from the development and that their open/closed beta process is not to gather feedback about anything the gamers would be interested in but rather to make sure all of the language in the game is implemented properly.
Again, there have been some rather pleasant surprises through the years, but this is the majority of games I've seen.

Then there is the disconnect between the local community and the foreign developers. Unless you can speak their language and post on their forums then I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for your suggestions to be read.

But as far as free trials...
WoW has a free trial where you can't use the PM system, auction house, party system, can't have more than 10 gold per character, and a few other things.
and the reason they did this is because people were using the trials to harass people, muck about with the economy and just generally be a nuisance.

STO had a free trial where you could do all that stuff, and access all of the content that accurately depicted what the rest of the game was going to be like.
The ground combat was terrible, the space combat didn't really seem dynamic, and the social aspect of the game was actually worse than not being able to PM or party with anybody in WoW. (personal opinion.)
in the end it ended up being a 10 gig download for 30 minutes of gameplay.
I spent more time than that in the champions online character creator.

There there are other good examples of free trials.
A: Global Agenda. They gave me 14 days free and I hadn't reached the end of the demo at the end of a 7 hour sit.
B: the Reccatear demo on steam
C: the Phantasy Star Portable 2 demo on the PSN (for PSP)

Basically it does mean a lot to me that a developer would
A: take the time to put together some manner of demo or demo content to show to prospective players/consumers.
B: Ensure that the demo/trial is of sufficient quality that people would actually WANT to keep playing it.

On the flip side I absolutely despise free to play games where you HAVE to spend money to be competitive from minute 1. (I'm looking at you Battleforge, with your delicious PVP action that is deep and complex and more delicious than Starcraft II, except I'm pretty sure somebody is gonna figure out how to do that in Starcraft II but they'll use Yu-gi-oh cards cause they're a twelve year old in disguise. Curse you EA, with your oppressive monetization schemes)

Open betas and free trials are essential from this consumer's point of view, for the personal reasons others have mentioned, wherein you can evaluate whether the game is worth purchasing for yourself.

It also exposes to everybody whether a developer's systems are in place to cope with the launch day hordes and past that, since an MMO is a long term investment. A less organised developer might be shooting themselves in the foot by doing this, but honestly, too bad, you don't gain anything by trying to hide the fact you're not ready, except losing overall consumer trust in the long run by acting deceptively.

I've stuck with City of Heroes since 2004, and one of the driving reasons is their beta testing system and close interaction of developers to their playerbase. They've evolved a system where they invite their long time players and useful bug testers in closed beta, run an open beta for all existing players to stress test/preview/build hype for their next issue patches, rinse and repeat. Their forums allow for focused feedback, with suggested formats, and the bug report system files into NCsoft support, which may be curt in the manner of a big org but always sends some manner of response back to your email to let you know it's gotten filed into their system for review.

Guild Wars is another memorable game in which the developers launched some really polished betas and preview weekends (aka free trial). They had no official forums for feedback, but I recall their community managers - Gaile Gray was one of the big names at the time - scouring all the unofficial forums to compile info for the devs, and returning very prompt feedback back to the players. One of their systems impressed me to the point that I sent Gaile Gray some positive feedback via email and received a personal reply of thanks - which impressed me to no end in those days where any company representative was more likely to ignore you than not.

I was also impressed with the level of service and developer feedback response of Pirates of the Burning Sea - even though after a trial of the game left me feeling that combat was too slow for me personally. Hopefully they are still doing well with their niche crowd. Ditto Fallen Earth and Eve Online, those games were not for me when I tried it, but the developers looked like they were interacting fine with their audience and responsive to feedback.

On the other hand, Tabula Rasa cheesed me off when I attempted to file a feedback report of their new player tutorial and the bug system proved incapable of accepting anything more than a couple sentences or so. I tried their forums as a last recourse, received ZERO developer feedback (and noticed that was their rule, developer silence throughout anything and everything), and a bunch of closeminded fanatical fans stridently defending the tutorial as being exceedingly clear and implying I was an idiot for attempting to share feedback during a BETA to make it clearer. You can see where that kind of management leaves you in the long run.

For games like Age of Conan and Champions Online, it was a mixed bag. I enjoyed the games during the beta testing / free trial periods, excused the occasional bugginess, but steadily lost confidence in the developer's ability to respond. As a result, I ended up playing them for the first free month or two, enjoying what was there, and then abandoning the subscription while waiting to see if the developer would clean up their act or no.

I think there's definitely damage being done with early trials. The early days of a new game going online, there are going to be issues not found from the beta (or maybe they were, and still made it through). With an early trial available, you've got a mix of people who have actually invested some dollars in the game, and then a bunch of people who are thinking about it, but as yet, having committed nothing. If the game launch isn't as smooth as silk, then you're going to scare them away.

It would be better to have a stable game for 6 months, and work with those that have made an investment, and then release a free bug-free trial, where the gamer can make a decision on the merits of game player, rather than the stability of the game.

The open beta is a little trickier. If you're doing a new game, it's probably less work to declare an open beta. However, with a bit of marketing, PR and a sign up process, the game company might be better off with a close beta. At least with a close beta, you are more likely to get a better quality of tester, and can eject those that are just there to free load (and who doesn't do that from time to time).

Of course, I know diddly about what goes on in a beta program. There could be all sorts of logging going on that helps the game company just by having someone log in, from an open beta. Tracking server load, time popularity, internal bug reports and failed assertions, etc.

Early trials, not so good. Free trials after 6 months of release, better.

Open betas, not recommended. Close betas, preferred for quality of feedback.