If they were smart they would open kingsmouth as a free trial.  Cap the amount of XP the trials can recieve so they cant end up maxing anything out or whatever, dont put a time limit on it, restrict trial players to one trial chat chan so paying players dont have to deal with it.

Do this all around the end of september.  Your not going to get anything other than bored die hard GW2 fans comming in doing the trial now, give that game a month then give a trial that allows the akward learning curve to be conquerd, that includes allowing for at least some form of decent combat build to be obtained as well as enough time to really get into the kingsmouth lore...which is why i think letting people have an unlimited kingsmouth trial would do the game justice.  Just as long as their XP gets capped out and they cant communicate in the normal general chats.

Will have the added benefit of allowing people who do sub to have a jam packed kingsmouth for polaris as well...

Thus far the trials have been far too short to do the game justice, and the timing is terrible with a major overhyped release quickly approaching.  

Logged in 10pm EST last night and my server was full. And they are opening up another server as all of them are full. Game is doing very well. Move along.

Originally posted by djnestrick

Logged in 10pm EST last night and my server was full. And they are opening up another server as all of them are full. Game is doing very well. Move along.

just analyzing their website traffic looks like it peaked around the 8th of July and has been trending downward since. It's back down to June levels, so I seriosly doubt there is much if any growth population wise

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by djnestrick

Logged in 10pm EST last night and my server was full. And they are opening up another server as all of them are full. Game is doing very well. Move along.

just analyzing their website traffic looks like it peaked around the 8th of July and has been trending downward since. It's back down to June levels, so I seriosly doubt there is much if any growth population wise

Honestly who gives a Shit. As long as their making enough money to keep servers up,and update the game on a regular bases...thats all that matters. Really Funcom was smart to start with a small amount of servers, so they HAVE a health population on those servers,then releasing TSW with 50 servers and half of them being dead (SWTOR).

Originally posted by zaylin

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by djnestrick

Logged in 10pm EST last night and my server was full. And they are opening up another server as all of them are full. Game is doing very well. Move along.

just analyzing their website traffic looks like it peaked around the 8th of July and has been trending downward since. It's back down to June levels, so I seriosly doubt there is much if any growth population wise

Honestly who gives a Shit. As long as their making enough money to keep servers up,and update the game on a regular bases...thats all that matters. Really Funcom was smart to start with a small amount of servers, so they HAVE a health population on those servers,then releasing TSW with 50 servers and half of them being dead (SWTOR).

 

Funcom was also lucky in that a ton of people didn't bother with TSW because GW2 is so close to release, so less people bought it with the anticipation of playing it for a short period in time. SWTOR had alot of people buy it with no intention of playing it for the long haul.

1 new server and a first month celebration.

And the buddy pass was only given to people with sub and had to be given and registered by a certain date. That date is passed, no more valid buddy keys.

Now do what y'all do best and argue over semantics to see who the king of forums pvp is.

Additional RP Dimension “Leviathan” Opened

To accommodate the increasing number of players, we have today opened an additional dimension called "Leviathan". Leviathan will be flagged as a roleplaying dimension. It is not yet listed as "RP" in the list of dimensions in character creation but it will be very soon.

 

Please keep in mind though that no matter where you create your character, the single-server technology of The Secret World allows you to play with any character from any other dimension. Cabals are also able to recruit their members from across every dimension. A dimension in The Secret World can hold tens of thousands of people playing at the same time.

Celebrate the first live month of The Secret World!

It's been an exciting first month since the launch of The Secret World and we are grateful so many players are enjoying our game. This world comes to life through YOU, the players. To thank you for your continued interest, we are celebrating the First Month of The Secret World with new content, special prizes, and weekend access for your friends!

 

From Friday, August 3rd at 4pm GMT until Monday, August 6th at 7am GMT, we invite you and your friends to participate in this exciting celebration!

 

New content

On the 31st of July we will release our first monthly content update, The Secret World - Issue #1. New content to explore, new stories and mysteries to uncover. 

 

Help the people

Your task, if you choose to accept it: During the celebration weekend running from August 3-7, solve 30 in-game missions to help those in need and receive a special in-game t-shirt and 1200 bonus points.

 

Brighten the sky

Free fireworks for everyone! During the celebration weekend, you will be able to claim fireworks - 15 per character - in the in-game Item Shop for free! Brighten the sky and lighten the mood in these dark days, it's time to party!

 

Be on top

We know our players are dedicated, but we want everyone to see it! During the celebration weekend, we will have a special leader board, showing the 100 most dedicated mission solvers in The Secret World universe.

 

Everyone can join in

We want to share the joy with as many people as possible! Any player, who has any type of The Secret World account, may join us over the weekend to celebrate our first month! Early Access, Inactive Accounts, and Beta Accounts may all join in! If you do not currently have an account for The Secret World, you may register to participate starting today, Friday, July 27th, to have open access to this special celebration weekend! You can find the celebration event registration on the right side of the official website! You may download the game here.

 

Join us in our First Month Celebration, exploring the depths of The Secret World!

Originally posted by Tjommis

It's a smart move by Funcom to give a free weekend since a lot of potential customers base their impression of the game from the earliest open beta weekends. Back then it had some well known issues with unfinished animations and was lacking in the "feel-department". Much of this was resolved by launch, and this will give all those originally interested in the game a reason for a second look :)

It was a smart move to do the free weekend for another reason.  It allows potential players to check their rigs without wasting money buying a game they can´t play.    I didn´t have any tech problems with AOC, but a ton of people bought the box, then couldn´t play for the entire free month.

But they really will need (in the future) to open up the free play and allow more time.  It is one of the things Blizzard learned by only giving 7 day trials.   Real, new players simply were to slow at leveling to see things like dungeons or anything past the really tutorial type quests.  Give them unlimited playtime to get to the levels where they get to see at least more meat from the game.

Originally posted by stragen001

Well they are already offering free trials and its not even a month since launch, so I reckon its not doing so well......

World of Warcraft had a free trial at launch, before any numbers were taken into account, I know this for a fact because I got a free trial code in my vanilaa WoW box.

So, your logic is illogical. 

Lets be honest. For gamers that sit and play a game 5-10 hours each day, no game will ever be sufficient. There might be a game out there which can satisfy someones needs for a decent amount of time, but it will be a rare gem. From what I see and read of these forums, that has yet to happened to many of you. And for those of you who are waiting for GW2, I am 99% sure that the game won't meet your expectations and that after a few weeks you will be dead bored because it won't be anything more to do....

So, I suggest you either lower gametime and do other things besides gaming, or forever long for that "perfect" game.

Originally posted by Valua

World of Warcraft had a free trial at launch, before any numbers were taken into account, I know this for a fact because I got a free trial code in my vanilaa WoW box.

 So, your logic is illogical. 

WoW had a lot of free trial offers in the first year or so.  I started playing 6 months in and that was from a free trial disk off the cover of a gaming magazine. I also recall seeing computer stores here selling a $2 CD with a 7 day WoW trial on it.  This was common, I think I even saw the same disk in my local supermarket.

Now maybe TSW has sold well, maybe it hasn't.  All I know is that compared to other MMO's I've played at launch (Rift, Tera, Aion, Warhammer, and SWTOR) there has been no obvious drop off in the population and the game forums are relatively free of "I quit" posters (I found 2 after 10 pages, plus one guy who had to stop playing because his wife was going to have twins).

It was a little quiet tonight because it's patch night and the servers are normally down, but everywhere I went there were people killing stuff I wanted to kill :(

Last night on the Arcadia server, I decided to go back to the earlier zones and finish up some quests that I skipped (or were too hard for me), and do some exploring in areas that had monsters that were previously too hard for me. There were people everywhere! Not as much as on launch day, but almost half as many. Every quest giver, even in the obscure corners of the map, had a handful of people talking to them. Every quest I did, I had at least 2-4 other people to do them with at the same time as me. I expected the zones to be abandoned and empty, but it was quite the opposite. I'll admit that I was slightly surprised.

Originally posted by Bhorzo

Last night on the Arcadia server, I decided to go back to the earlier zones and finish up some quests that I skipped (or were too hard for me), and do some exploring in areas that had monsters that were previously too hard for me. There were people everywhere! Not as much as on launch day, but almost half as many. Every quest giver, even in the obscure corners of the map, had a handful of people talking to them. Every quest I did, I had at least 2-4 other people to do them with at the same time as me. I expected the zones to be abandoned and empty, but it was quite the opposite. I'll admit that I was slightly surprised.

Maybe you are running with alts of folks that have already completed most of the content? Will this new patch bring about a little more variety for folks that want to play an alt or does this mean there is still no replay value here ?

Originally posted by Baddogbill

Originally posted by Bhorzo

Last night on the Arcadia server, I decided to go back to the earlier zones and finish up some quests that I skipped (or were too hard for me), and do some exploring in areas that had monsters that were previously too hard for me. There were people everywhere! Not as much as on launch day, but almost half as many. Every quest giver, even in the obscure corners of the map, had a handful of people talking to them. Every quest I did, I had at least 2-4 other people to do them with at the same time as me. I expected the zones to be abandoned and empty, but it was quite the opposite. I'll admit that I was slightly surprised.

Maybe you are running with alts of folks that have already completed most of the content? Will this new patch bring about a little more variety for folks that want to play an alt or does this mean there is still no replay value here ?

I assure you people have not completed "most of the content." People may have followed the story, to the end of the prelude. 1st  chapter release is today.  

the story is no more than 5% of the availible content.  14 days /played here and I wake up every morning with 4 or 5 things I "need" to do.

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Originally posted by Valua

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Originally posted by stragen001 Well they are already offering free trials and its not even a month since launch, so I reckon its not doing so well......

---

 

World of Warcraft had a free trial at launch, before any numbers were taken into account, I know this for a fact because I got a free trial code in my vanilaa WoW box.

 

So, your logic is illogical. 

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Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by Valua

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Originally posted by stragen001 Well they are already offering free trials and its not even a month since launch, so I reckon its not doing so well......

---

 

 

World of Warcraft had a free trial at launch, before any numbers were taken into account, I know this for a fact because I got a free trial code in my vanilaa WoW box.

 

So, your logic is illogical. 

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I would offer free trials almost right from the start. The hardest part of the game is getting people to start.

I think the free weekends are not a bad idea either. I have not purchased the game, but I've got the client updated just in case I enjoy it this weekend and want to buy. I'll probably buy hedge clippers instead, but just in case, I'm going to check the game out.

 

I agree with this completely.

Nowadays developers don't like giving away free trials because they would prefer the player to buy the game instead to test it, which is wrong on so many levels, and exceptionally greedy. Also probably because they know their game is crap, so people trialing it wouldn't buy it anyway.

Blizzard never did this, they wanted people to test their game because they were confident that their game was great (and WoW was back then, and is now but a different kind of great.)

The Secret World is similar to WoW in that they know their game is good, and the majority of people who test it will probably enjoy it and maybe buy it. But the likes of Rift, The Old Republic, WAR etc didn't, maybe because they knew their game wasn't good enough for people to try for free then play.

A bit off topic, but another thing that annoys me is developers charging people to play Betas (Yes GW2 I'm looking at you) and treating the beta's almost like pre-play events rather than bug finding betas (that they should be.) I know beta's were also given out to websites etc, but that was like what - 10%? 

People actually paid £15 more just to play a few extra betas, on characters that won't even exist when the game goes live, I think that is insanely stupid, I'll stick to my £30 pre-order and just play when the games released.

Beta's should be free, for randomly selected people to find bugs, not to be bought for some extra cash. And trials should be a given at lauch, developers should have enough faith in their game to expect people to try for free then purchase.

That's just my opinion though.

I ended up getting too busy to actually get any real playtime in. It's not TSW's fault just that I can't see paying subs on top of the box price to level up anymore. I'm done with subscription based MMO's for this reason.

Originally posted by Lockthile

Lets be honest. For gamers that sit and play a game 5-10 hours each day, no game will ever be sufficient. There might be a game out there which can satisfy someones needs for a decent amount of time, but it will be a rare gem. From what I see and read of these forums, that has yet to happened to many of you. And for those of you who are waiting for GW2, I am 99% sure that the game won't meet your expectations and that after a few weeks you will be dead bored because it won't be anything more to do....

So, I suggest you either lower gametime and do other things besides gaming, or forever long for that "perfect" game.

I belive there was an article on this site about "content locusts", fits nicely I think. You cant make content fast enough for them. And before I get trolled,yes I know there are games out there that get released with very little content and your done in a month,even playing casually.

regarding the full servers. TSW has only one server. Everybody can play with everybody. It means that they fill one instance (let say kingsmouth) and then when this is full they fill the next. If you scan people in Agartha you can see that they come from every server (even french and german)

If the DIMENSION (eg Shard) is full then they make a new one. Sole purpose for the shards are to have the persisten PVP in the Fusang instance. In theory they could have had only one server. 

Originally posted by lizardbones
I think the free weekends are not a bad idea either. I have not purchased the game, but I've got the client updated just in case I enjoy it this weekend and want to buy. I'll probably buy hedge clippers instead, but just in case, I'm going to check the game out.

The hedge clipper comment made me laugh!

Gogo hedge clippers! :D