Gaijin’s seafaring MMO Age of Water has an official early access launch date: April 18th. We’ve had our eye on the game since its first reveal all the way back in 2020; it entered closed beta last year with plans to hit early access in early 2024, which is… now.
We chatted with the devs from Gaijin’s Three Whales Studio back in January; they emphasized to us that this is not a lobby-based PvP title like many of Gaijin’s other games. It is an “open-world story-based PvE game with some multiplayer options” with instances of 100 players. While there is PvP, nobody’s locked into it or penalized for not engaging. The game is buy-to-play with a cosmetic-only cash shop and the possibility of paid DLC, but the devs are strongly against pay-to-win, so don’t expect it.
While you wait for the release, there’s a freebie on offer: The studios have released a free prologue demo called Age of Water: The First Voyage to tease players ahead of the launch.