loved the game but it took me 6 hours figuring out stuff so i thin kthere should be 3 day trial but at least 24hrs :)

Yes, 12 or 24 hours would allow to get more to some playing after finding out how things work. Players may already get some stuff or licenses with the trial and then might be more willing to subscribe because they may want to go on from there.

In the meantime, there's nothing preventing you from taking another 8 hour trial. You'll likely get much further now that you know the ropes.

I agree that making it 12 hours would make sense.

I agree too.

annoying part in taking another 8 hours one is that you got to build up fundses and licences again. 24 hours might be better seeing as most other games offer you 2 weeks...

most online games has a 7 or 14 day free trial period, i dont think that is any problem, those who likes this game tends to sub for years anyway

Most games make you buy the software.

Most games give a couple of weeks or so of trial time.
How much you play during that time is irrelevant.

Vendetta gives 8 hours of ingame time, which I think is better.
If I play through the 8 hours in one go I would probably want to buy a month.

Still, 8 hours may be a little short. 24 hours is a lot of free time, too, but maybe it's the way to go.
The problem is to actually put 24 hours worth of newbie-activities in the game. Currently there's not much to do unless you know what you're doing...

this was my main complaint too, when I started playing (Loooong ago :) )
I found the 8 hour trial a little short.

I'm pretty sure that I subscribed after about an hour or two of my trial. The $10 was affordable. And, I have a credit card with room on it for V-O purchases, and THAT's the deciding factor.

The problem with keeping people past the trial period is not that the trial period is too short for them to get a feel for the game. Longer trial periods do not contribute to the bottom line, I think they only serve to encourage more "freeloading." Remember, kiddos, VO is a business-product, designed to put money into the pockets of our favorite game developers. It's a trial-period. TRY it. If you like it, pay the measly $10 and play all you want for a month. Hell, the download's free.

A major barrier I think (for most online games) is that teens under 18 need to ask their parents for their credit cards in order to play an online game. Remember that most parents are not as "internet-savvy" as the average 13-year-old, and are loathe to have recurring charges on their cards for something that most of them do not understand fully. THAT's the real impediment to success here, not the limited time the trial lasts for.

/me puts on his evil marketer hat...

Now, if there were a way to encourage this particular demographic (young males from 13 to 18, possibly the odd female thrown in) to FIND a way to pay for the game, then VO would be gathering up this demographic for years to come.

I have no idea what the license & distribution agreements that Guild Software has signed with their partners says, but since I don't see any good-faith efforts on those distributor's parts I can assume that any deal they had is dead. So, without resorting to outright Fraud, here are some possibilities:

Ten ways to bypass the whole "Dad can I use your credit card to pay for online gaming?" question:

1. Work a deal with Apple to have .mac include a month's worth of subscription to Vendetta-Online. Then, have them be able to use their .mac account to pay for the service, which hopefully has the parent's credit card on file, bypassing the usual "enter your dad's credit card" in VO. Not many sci-fi mac MMORPG situations out there for Mac, right?

2. Same thing with .net

3. Accept paypal and other stuff. I forget if you do this or not. PaybyCash works, I guess.

4. Sell "larger-chunk" subscriptions on eBay and Amazon and other retailers. 3 mo, 6 mo, 13 mo, 24 mo, etc. For a slight premium, that is, to cover processing. They buy their subscription from Amazon and get a license code thingy, V-O gets notified, and it's an instant activation once you enter the license code. Dunno if your payment processor can handle this, though.

5. Somehow pose V-O as "Edutainment" I have no idea how this might be accomplished, but hey - parents will spend buckets of money on Edutainment, because they think they're being sneaky and making their teens "learn" when the teens are "playing." However most teens are not stupid and see through this after about age 6. Perhaps VO teaches you physics. Hehe. Perhaps it can be part of the "Starry Night" seriers of astronomical software.

6. Link to or have helpful hints on the V-O website for things such as the kid's versions of Visa, MasterCard, Discover, etc. debit cards - perhaps, under the guise of "learning to be responsible", parents can be convinced to allow teens to have these debit cards, and then VO can charge these cards their monthly subscription.

7. Cell phones. Lots of teens have cell phones. Partner with Verizon Wireless, Cingular, T-Mobile, etc. and figure out a way to have the billing for V-O get charged to the cell phone account, as a separate service, which is probably already setup under a recurring billing cycle to the parent's account via credit card or automatic withdrawl. Offer a token internet cell phone "texting access" to a specific V-O channel ingame. Technically, THAT's what they're paying for, but you get the monthly subscription fee thrown in since, well, they NEED a user ID and password to text-message their friends ingame, riiiiight?

8. Merchandising. Sell items (like the Valk plushie!) that are marked up to include three months of playtime! So, the Valk plushie will sell for, like, $29.99 and include a code-tag in the box that gives you free playtime. You can buy the game for $3 or $4 on Amazon and you get a free month of play-time. Someone's eating cost here, and I assume it's Guild SW.

9. Phone cards. Allow long-distance phone card charges to be applied to V-O subscription accounts. Dunno how this would work. But - hey, you have to play VO over PHONE lines, right? Well, OK, "telecommunication" lines...

10. iTunes. Sell tracks (Or movies!) on iTunes that give you subscription codes for 3 mo, 6 mo, 13 mo, 24 mo timespans. Hopefully the parent's credit cards are "stored" in the iTunes setup.

The whole point here is not to capture the 13-18 year old's interest, you've GOT that already. They WANT to play. They WANT to subscribe. The 8-hour trial is merely to whet their appetite, and give them the final PUSH to make the purchase decision, which, for them, is asking their parents for their credit card numbers.

Anyone over 18 has NO problem getting a credit card in the US. Credit companies fall all over themselves trying to get 18-year olds to sign up for credit.

The point is to reduce, eliminate, or bypass the barriers to the kid asking the parents for their credit card #. Not to give them more time to decide.

All-righty, then.

#1: Good idea, unlikely to work (I think), since Apple doesn't really want Macs to run games (said Jobs).

#3: Doesn't PayPal require a Credit Card, as well?

#4: Would be my strategy of choice.

#5: I don't like lying to customers. I disagree with that strategy.

#6: I wouldn't want to encourage the current trend of teens running debts (it's a real problem where I live), so I'm against that. Large chunks via eBay etc. okay, but not recurring payments.

#7: Same thing as #6

#8: Yes.

#9: Umm... okay? That works?

#10: Also very interesting, second-best after #4.

And of course, I agree with you in that more trial time would not encourage more people to stay. It would encourage trolls, e.g., since they could make more money (in-game) and be more annoying for a longer period of time.

"Merchandising. Sell items (like the Valk plushie!)"

/me want's a valk plushie!!!!

will pay credits to whoever has one :D

#1: Good idea, unlikely to work (I think), since Apple doesn't really want Macs to run games (said Jobs).

What? Not sure what you're quoting, but Jobs definitely wants to encourage Mac gaming not discourage it... games are a MAJOR reason people buy new hardware. The idea is still unworkable though.

One hour a day for two weeks is 14 hours.
Who signs up for a 14 day trial for some online game and only plays an hour a day?
The point of upping the trial period, at least for me, is to get people interested enough to actually try.

"Only 8 hours?! Eve gives me 14 DAYS!"

If they say that, then reply:
"Yeah, well EVE requires that much time to learn all the crap. With V-O you can be up and playing and having fun after 15 minutes, it's so intuitive."

Well, almost.

Now now Lexicon you know it's not true.

It took me a week (admitedly I also had class during that time) to learn how to beat Collector droids.
But quite frankly 8 hours was enough, it gave me just enough of the game to convince me to take 1 more month.

Also stop dissing EVE so much it is a fun game, for it's genre. It is also quite inventive in may ways.

My experience with the trial system is that every 7th and 8th hour of playing this game is spent hunting more denteks, until I reach a high enough level to participate in Border Skirmish with a competetive edge again. All in all it's not a bad system. Each time I learn to appreciate what good practice hunting collector bots is, and as a result of so much botting (this is something like my 25th account...) I feel I have a stronger grip on the basics of the game than most pilots. I also tend to fight like an Apu-tech Guardian, but that I'm okay with that.

I played WoW for some time, and was able to circumvent the whole credit card situation by riding the bus to WalMart, and picking up the monthly game cards that I purchased with money saved up from mowing lawns. The problem is, WoW is boring compared to VO, and is full of less adequately mannered individuals. So, count me as one amongst many teens who would funnel money into project VO if we could only find a way. (That doesn't include being responsible to the point where our parents actually let us borrow their credit card, that is.)

SMM: VO does have a cash order option that you can use, and I'm sure you could always just ask your parents to buy it for you and reimburse them with cash.

I made the decision to buy VO before the end of my second hour, but only because it is exactly the kind of game I have spent the 2 years prior looking for - I was a long-time EVN addict and modder, for whom the limited difficulty of combat in that game couldn't drag out the replay value any longer. Then along came VO, which was all the great things of EVN, but 3D and multiplayer, and I was sold.

That's just me though. Some other people decide whether or not to buy VO before the end of the trial period too, but others are still haggling when their trial time runs down to the last few minutes. A few make second trial accounts and then decide later, but the majority seem to just not bother and ditch VO if it hasn't convinced them of its value by hour 8.

8 hours is really pushing the envelope for these people. More time would be better, but not much more.

I say up it by 1/3 to 12 hours, and newbies would have that extra incentive to buy Vendetta.

12 hour trials.

Well maybe when they release 2.0 and start to advertise, they could make a big deal of extra trial time.

Vendetta Online... Now with a full 12 hour trial!