Yep,  WOW, LOTRO, WAR and every other game except EVE does the same thing.   There is just too much room for abuse, and really in 7-14 days, you really don't communicate that much with other players.

Originally posted by Bodeus

isnt it kinda hard to get involved in the organized PvP without the ability to chat? Isnt the PvP THE selling point of AoC?

yeah sieging is the selling point to age of conan, but you wont do that till wel after your trial is up. chat is not needed for the trial, you either like it or you dont.

At least with this game they give trials their own chat channel to talk about the game with.  Was very active on the Wiccana server all day yesterday.

Trial channel was overflowing with scrolling chat all day, I'd say a good half of the chat was coming from veteran's of the game coming back to try it again and the other part of the chat was discussion about newbie questions, what class is good...how this game compares to war and wow etc...the typical chat you would expect.  So yeah.  Try and know wtf you guys are talking about next time.  You can chat in Trial chat all day, they just don't want gold spammers to make trial accounts to spam their paying customers, is that so hard to understand?

As many others have said it is because of gold sellers and PL ads. I remember the first trial in WOW, you had loads of goldesller and PL sites using trial accounts simply to advertise for the game. And trust me you lot would be happy that they have limitied if anyone of you knew how bad it was in WoW. Imagine 6 different companies all spamming chat royally until they got banned, then they get a new trial account rinse and repeat.

It was impossible for normal players to have a conversation at all at times.

Wow, I've never been acused of shilling or a game developer. Well rest assured, I don't work for Funcom, nor am I some Fanboy. I just play the trial, and I'm just pointing out stupid arguments people post. Including yours. Here we go:

Putting on a good front for players is EXACTLY the point of game trials/demos. When has a game developer ever loaded a demo up with the worst content their game has to offer? The Gears of War 2 demos at E3 never showed any of the crappy vehicle sequences, but nobody ever accused Epic of hiding things from potential players that may drive them away solely to get them to give Epic money. You know why players didn't say that? Because that would be asinine. Yet here you are...

Now I know you are one of those weirdos that took the crappy release of AoC to heart for some strange (likely perverse) reason, but the fishing for commision bit is a far fetched conspiracy theory even by your standards. Really, I'm surprised that your rectum has enough room for both your head AND your tin foil hat.

Now I'm off, back to enjoying my free trial to a game that I likely won't subscribe to anyway. Unless my master plan here works and I get my big fat commision payment.

Hey, it worked for Tabula Rasa, right?

Perhaps someday a very clever programmer will invent a way for users to decide what can or cannot appear in their chat windows, and we won't have to worry about this.

I don't see what the big deal is, considering there is a channel dedicated to Trial, and it's global.

Bullshit. The purpose of trial is not to see if the game will run on your system. Nor is the purpose of a trial simply to show people game mechanics.

If that were the case, why not make a single player demo? Part of any MMO demo, and the OVERWHELMINGLY IMPORTANT PART OF ANY MMO is the fact that your'e interacting other human beings. You limit that to trial accounts, you limit the number of people who have a positive experience with your game.

Originally posted by Revthought

Bullshit. The purpose of trial is not to see if the game will run on your system. Nor is the purpose of a trial simply to show people game mechanics.

 

If that were the case, why not make a single player demo? Part of any MMO demo, and the OVERWHELMINGLY IMPORTANT PART OF ANY MMO is the fact that your'e interacting other human beings. You limit that to trial accounts, you limit the number of people who have a positive experience with your game.

You do know AoC is heavily instanced, which really kills that whole "interaction" part of your logic...

And wrongo. A trial is exactly that. You don't download a trial just to talk to the community. You download it to see if you enjoy the game, as in the mechanics, how well it runs on your system, and if it catches your interests.