Major changes are afoot at Albion Online — and some might not make fans of the cross-platform sandbox too happy.
Sandbox Interactive announced today that it will be extending the closed beta test at least through August 1st, 2016 and will not be pursuing a free-to-play business model for the launch version. “Making the game ready for a free-to-play model would take up significant development time which we would much rather use to make a better game,” the studio posted. “Free-to-play would also create a lot of risks for the game — spamming, botting, world too small, etc. — which we do not want to take if it can be avoided.”
The shift away from F2P and the longer development period does have an upshot, namely more stuff that will go into the finalized product. The team shared a list of improvements planned for the coming year which include a much larger and more detailed game world, zone reworks, an Ultima Online-inspired PvP reputation system, fishing, and something called “expeditions.”
To make the wait for launch a little more tolerable, you can check out a player video of Albion’s solo dungeon experience below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzo0xMCIsRU
