Who’s hyped for Throne & Liberty’s open beta on Thursday? Well, NCsoft, for one. Amazon for two. The pair of them have released a new blog to convince you to be number three, specifically homing in on the companies’ values and monetization policy. The teams are essentially mandating an anti-pay-to-win stance, suggesting power upgrades should be accessible to all and that shop purchases shouldn’t ever be necessary. That means:
- There are three different currencies, including one buyable with real money but also earned through PvP and auction trades. One comes through regular play, and the other is an event currency for things like Twitch drops.
- There’s an auction hall, which enables trades using the RMT currency (and functions to funnel that currency to people who won’t spend real money on it). However, players won’t be able to sell things from the cash shop on the AH.
- There is a one-time per-character buyable pass for leveling quickly in addition to seasonal per-character battle passes.
- There’s a cash shop in which players can buy cosmetics and the RMT currency (but not regular currency, food, or potions).
The blog post has detailed explanations for each category, which honestly makes it all sound much more ominous than it is. Amazon and NCsoft further note that they will be selling early access packs for the game that provide as many as five days of headstart access to the game. Here’s the plan to avoid pay-to-win with the headstart:
“We will have both Early Access and Launch Servers. Players who do not purchase Early Access Packs will still be able to select fresh servers at launch when all players are beginning their adventures together. Players who start at launch will still have the option to create characters on Early Access Servers if that is their preference. For a set period of time, players from Early Access Servers will not be able to transfer into Launch Servers, and the Auction House clusters will not mix Early Access Servers and Commercial Launch servers.”
Open beta runs July 18th through 23rd for those who want to peek in on all this before they buy in.
