Free Trial (aka Visitor System) Updates

Greetings Avatars,

With Release 49 we are making a few updates to our Free Trial System. We are moving Free Trial users to the Path of Courage because using melee weapons is an easier introduction to the combat system. We are also going to limit interaction with the story to only the Path of Courage. Visitors will no longer be able to start the other story paths. Also, we are now going to limit how far Visitors can advance their skills to only level 50.

Making these changes will allow us to leave the free trial up almost continually therefore maximizing the ability for customers to try the game before they buy (previously the free trial was available 3 weeks out of the month). We feel firmly that giving customers this no obligation opportunity is great for the health of the game and a fair business practice that we wish to pursue.

Here is the updated list of Visitor limits:

• The term (Visitor) is appended to their character name
• Can only advance skills up to Level 50 (previously there was no skill cap)
• Can only play on the Path of Courage (previously there was no limit to story)
• Cannot start the Paths of Love nor Truth
• Cannot give items to other players via Trade
• Cannot purchase nor sell items via Player Vendors nor Public Vendors
• No ownership of property nor use of lot signs
• Cannot interact with public chests.
• Cannot move/interact with items on a plot even if they are given permissions.
• Cannot flag as Open PVP
• Cannot gain nor create ransom items when you kill or are killed in PVP (in Open PVP zones)
• Cannot play in Offline Mode
• Free Trial Access may be restricted during certain times of the year

We have seen some reactions to this information along the lines of “doesn’t this make Shroud free to play?” Well yes you could use some definitions of “freemium” to conclude that our limited free trial being available at almost all times makes us a type of freemium game. For us to truly be considered free to play though, all the above limits would need to be accessible after some amount of playtime but unlocked “quickly” through purchase.

It is worth noting that we modeled our free trial limits after World of Warcraft Starter Edition and we are not sure anyone refers to them as free to play nor even freemium.

In the end we do not consider these labels important. What we consider important is a customer’s ability to try before they buy while preserving the game economy from potential abuse (hence the restrictions on trade and ownership).