This weeks stream provided a bit more specifics on the launch date/times for the Unchained PTS; October 1st for anyone with a Founders pack and October 7th for the general public. For Founders, character creation and name reservation will also take place starting on October 1st at midnight Pacific (they will try to provide the download for the client at least 12-24 hours prior).
As for the actual live launch, that is still set for October 15th (with the actual time being either in the morning or afternoon; EU region will launch first). The actual times will be released closer to launch. There will also be 3 servers per region (with an additional available for spinning up relatively quickly). Should a 4th server be spun up, there will be a grace period to allow Founders to create a character and reserve a name on it.
The team is trying to balance the projected number of players (based on various factors including pre-orders, past launch metrics with free to play ArcheAge, PTS interest, etc) versus queue times; they know long queue times aren’t the best experience but need to weigh that against the games community driven design. Kwai acknowledged that things tend to settle out after 3 weeks. They are also going to carefully keep track of faction balance (Nuia or Haranya) and will have the ability to disable character creation for the faction that has an imbalance. Unchained will also launch with two open character slots (an additional four will become available over time and will have a corresponding scroll to unlock them; it was not specified if this will be similar to expansion scrolls or if it will be something available for credits).
Kwai also clarified the account policy which he mentioned during the previous weeks stream. He mentions that it is 3 accounts per person and not per household. The reason for that again is simple since he notes that restricting access by IP, MAC address, and other means are methods that can be worked around. Instead, their main concern is how these accounts interact with each other; as a result, they plan to have a backend process in place where they can utilize logs to track the interaction of those accounts (like if those accounts are feeding most of their progress to one main account).
Kwai acknowledged the issue of alt-trains on the existing free to play servers which is something that will be addressed by their multi-account policy (to be enforced via the above backend procedure) which they will release once the PTS is launched. Basically, most MMO backend systems have varying degrees of logging in-game transactions (trades as well as purchases made via whatever shops are available). Part of this is out of necessity (support purposes, security, and for game economy purposes). So they’ll be able to pull reports not only based on cases where multiple accounts are coming from the same IP address, but they’ll also be able to narrow in on actual trades occurring between accounts (which over a longer period of time, can reveal trends that will pop up).
IMHO, if they are dedicated to monitoring this and taking the appropriate measures, this will send a strong signal to those used to playing the game with a lot of alts that it will be an exercise in futility. Furthermore, the game will have the Korean labor system (where you earn additional labor from actively playing). This itself will curb the advantages that alt accounts provided. Overall, I’m much further off the fence compared to three weeks ago (my only hang up is overall feeling of Gamigo as a company). I’ll be keeping my eye on the first week of PTS to decide if I will be pre-ordering a pack before launch since I want to see what the marketplace looks like (there was a early access PTS on Friday for some streamers and the media but there were some items that won’t be in the shop and not all of the prices are what they will be when the PTS goes live).
