Brighter Shores, the new MMORPG from Jagex co-founder Andrew Gower, officially enters closed beta this week – but you won’t be hearing much about it as it’s locked up tight behind an NDA.
What players are talking openly about right now is an apparent shift in the development timeline as indicated by a tweak to the monetization plan. Fen Research’s plan was originally to lock quite a bit of content behind a premium pass – basically a subscription. While the first city and explorable zone are open for all, additional zones and things like player trading were meant just for paying players. And they still are, but now, the official site’s updated graphic suggests that player-to-player trading won’t actually make into the premium pass for the early access release.
“We going iron man at launch boys 💪,” one Redditor joked. Most folks don’t seem all that fussed, though it’s certainly a little worrying since it’s something that clearly changed in the last two weeks. Then again, Gower has already said that he won’t consider the game to have officially launched until it has PvP, and in fact it’ll stay in early access until PvP is ready, so best to continue remembering that if you’re planning to drop cash for a premium pass next month.
“I was hoping to have p2p trading ready for launch on 6th November, but it looks like it wont quite be ready in time,” Gower said on Twitter. “Will probably be one of the first feature updates after launch though. Everything else is still on track.”
The actual early access launch arrives November 6th.
