...the trial method for new users would be changed?

my sugestion is that instead of giving new users (or suspended users) a limited time trial, they would instead be restricted in space. So new players would be restricted from exploring the entire universe but they could play in a limited area for as long as they want.
This would bring the game back to a semi-free game with some clear benefits (and of course some issues as well).

Benefits:
- players that would never p2p (pay to play) may stick arround and add to the population
- players that are on-hold (like i am now) could still play and get a feeling of the progress and decide easily to come-back
- players that are on trial would be excited by the possibilities of exploring deep space and discover new civilizations (yes, i know)
- that specific area would be highly populated and enable game-play, economy dynamics, development and testing
- game can be advertised as "free with certain limitation"
- players that would not consider p2p in 8 hours might feel attracted to p2p when they reach higher level for their chars and feel confident on escaping in the larger universe.

Downsides:
- game logic needs to be changed to accomodate different rases in one space-limited area
- game-play might migrate to the respective area and the rest of the universe will "decay"
- the economy would be messed-up in the respective region, but as an advantage, with a dynamic economy, prices would tend to level and make other regions more attractive.

as an easy to be implemented alternative, the free players might be restricted from using the wormholes.

It's just a draft ideea that i didn't want to just forget, i will give more thought but in the meantime feel free to destroy it. or of course develop it.

Kinda already been suggested, but theres more downsides to upsides, a few you missed is

- Most the new players would be confined to one area, making newb killing easy.
- Makes paying for the game as it is right now not feasable, even if people were locked to nation a space (maybe UiT), theres not much that can be done outside that area right now that cannot be done within it.
- Newer players would not get to partcipate in some PRE's like the nation war/deneb run. I believe that some people who stuck around did so after being in one of these events.

Myabe when the devs feel its ready for mass advertising to start again, this could be a good idea, especially if levels were limited to something like 2/2/2/2/2 so that although you could grind XP, levels would not rise above these levels without paying. But right now, no, its a bad idea.

This is only my opinion of course.

what if it was changed to say a 10 day trial? you can get more done in 10 days than 8 hours. 10 days and we'll get more "addicted" players willing to shell out the 10 bucks a month.

for example, that "other scifi online game" gives a 15 day trial...well in 7 days I had many some what built up skills, joined a corp...(guild)... made over 150 million credits, and had 12 different ships suited for different purposes.

so, if we gave a longer trial time...the potential player would be walking away from alot more invested and there for more likely to be inclined to part with the 10 dollar a month fee.

I don't have any great opposition to free players hanging around and contributing to the game.

But I also don't have any great desire to cater to players that can't come up with cash. It isn't very much money, and if you can't /won't pay, then you get whatever you get and I don't really care about what you want.

It isn't really ever a question about if the game is worth it. it is a question about why in the world should we cater to deadbeats. get a job.

no one likes dead beats, but the time between my trial ending and my signing on was significant...mainly because with only 8 hours dedicated, I wasnt walking away from much. I ended up chosing this game over EVE for various reasons...but in all honesty, after 15 days on EVE the chiose was pretty close, in the end I decided I like VO quite a bit more. but picture what you can do in 15 days vs. 8 hours...I just think if the trial was extended, even to a mere 10 days...we'd have more players,the devs would have more income and the income could be put towards the game which would attract even more people, more income, more additions to the game...its a beautiful cycle.

I think we should extend it to 24 hours of play, to be safe. That's enough for around 4-8 days of gaming ( that's 3 hours a day)

The "play for 10 days" thing sucks, beacuse you can't control how the time is spent. Having less time, but being able to control it is better for the consumer, IMHO.

It's a TRIAL period. If you can't determine whether you like the game enough to pay for it in 8 hours you are, frankly, an idiot.
If you MUST, then you should create a new temporary player and try out MORE things for another 8 hours.

I'm of the opinion that extending the trial period will not substantially contribute to Guild Software's bottom line.

This is becoming boring.
We had all kind of suggestions about trial period and game time from ideas of free days to paying by hours played. None of them were acceptable for Guild Software.
I say, make trial last for 10 hours playtime so we can finally forget about this.

You know it won't end there, bojan. Some people want to freeload, like Runescape. Ugh... :/

That is EXACTLY why people ask for more than 8 hours, moldyman. They want something for nothing.
But I'd say fine, make it 10 hours since that'a s nice even number. But doing that will NOT stop the freeloaders from asking for more free time.

I don't think Guild was rejecting other methods of trial accounts forever - it's just that right now the priority is to make the game worthy of staying around for. Their business model is what it is by necessity - for now. They've proven themselves to be highly adapatable and will change the trial account setup when they feel the time is right.

All that said, I've been playing War Rock since the beta and find their plan to be very interesting. You can play for free and with reasonable resources, or you can subscribe at any of 3 rates and get access to more equipment, options, in-game cash, and perks (access to more maps, guilds, etc.). I've been playing on the free plan and don't find myself to be outclassed by the subscribers for the most part. I'll consider paying when they iron out the map glitch cheats and fix some of the other annoyances ("Diffuse the bomb!").

[01:43] <vo> [100] <Incarnate> guardian: because if we tried changing our business model right now, we would instantly go out of business.