The Albion Online founder community has been none too pleased about Sandbox Interactive’s original decision about what non-founders would get in their starter pack when the game launches a week from today. Albion’s devs intended the starter packs to cost the same as founder packs but offer less value, but as the community flames suggest, the veteran players believed that starter pack folks were getting better stuff than they were, and that wasn’t going to fly.
Welp, you can stop griping; they hear you. In their apology letter, the Sandbox devs wrote that they “simply messed up.”
“The best answer to that seems to be that we were so deep in the echo chamber of finally getting the game out of release that we simply lost the outside perspective along the way,” a forum post from late last night says. “We have previously communicated that Starter Packs would be comparable to Founder Packs, but would have less value for money. We felt that with the 10% extra Gold, the Founder’s house and all the little other founder’s perks we had kept that promise, in particular given that the founder’s gear would no longer be available post launch. We have underestimated how much the looks of the starter mounts matter to many of you.”
Consequently, rather than take away items from starter pack buyers, the studio will grant new items to founder pack buyers, including everything equivalent starter pack folks were getting (like that mount), plus extra gold. They won’t, however, be changing up the launch schedule for the tiers.
The game’s beta ended this weekend after server hoopla; the game will remain offline (except for the test server!) until Monday, July 17th, at 9 a.m. EDT, when it will open back up for legendary founders and legendary starters. Other founder and starter pack purchasers will see staggered entry over the following few days.
