Here's a veterans advice on playing Albion.

[Man of God]

I'm a closed beta tester and legendary founder. I was one of the top ranked PvP players back in CBT and OBT and I was a squad leader of 20 in the best guild (Keepers of the Darkside (KDS)). I quit about 1 year after retail release, which if anyone is from then will understand why. The game took years to return to glory long before it came to Steam.

I'll make this brief. In the game's current state, it is not worth playing now at all unless you are super bored and want to get a feel for the game. There's plenty of content but low level players, gatherers and soloers will get absolutely stomped outside of Yellow Zones. Always has been.

The playerbase is very healthy and people will indiscriminately destroy you outside of Yellow Zones. You can absolutely forget Black Zones which are always and I mean always sporting a few gankers and are likely not without a group of gankers for more than maybe 5 minutes at a time. Red Zones are definitely to be a no-go either. Inexperienced players will even have trouble running from single or small groups who will know how to get you off your mount and easily kill you.

So what I recommend is that you play this game during March 2023. As the playerbase will be split between this game and Asia. Many people in the west and EU especially will move to the Asia server, at least for a period of time. It's a fresh start server which SBI said would never happen. It represents a unique chance to experience the golden area of the game when REAL organized guilds ruled the game and not 'fat and lazy' guilds with years of power creep and real money investment.

If you play in March of 2023, you'll see so much less people in this current West server. Like literally more than half the playerbase will likely move. For the first few weeks and months the population in this current West server will be at its lowest. Gradually though some people who went to the Asia server will come back. Others will like the fact that their progress in Asia relies on their skill and dedication and not getting rekt by groups of guys with infinite stacks of top tier loot; they may elect to stay in the Asia server.

Honestly, and this isn't likely a popular opinion. But the game absolutely could use splitting the playerbase up. It's a chance for all the people who never got a fresh start, to get one. And the soloers to enjoy a far less populated game with MUCH less risk. Seasoned PvPers will still have plenty to kill too, but they won't be spoilt for choice and likely will also enjoy the lower risk from other gankers in different time-zones. This West server will likely become a LOT safer at times of day when Asians are awake and Westerners are sleeping. This hasn't been the case now with ONE worldwide server which we have now, as you'd get ganked at all hours of the day by people on the other side of the planet.

--- TL;DR ---

Whatever happens, there will be a lot less coordinated PvP groups in the current West server in March 2023. Likely a lot of big guilds will be "selling" resources in the West version to "redeem" in the Asia version or for favors later. It is recommended to play then in the West server if you want a 'safer' and more relaxed experience. You could also play in the Asia server if your ping allows, for a fresh start but expect total 'golden era' chaos.

Here's your free tip.

[opihi]

I am looking forward to the decreased crowds after the split, and wondering what it will do to market prices, gold vs silver exchange, etc.

I have to disagree with the “is not worth playing now at all” sentiment. Sure, low level players should stay in the YZ, but I still find enough content in the YZ to keep me interested for an hour or two per day. And yes, I get ganked in the RZ and BZs regularly, but I also usually survive to make it home from a few gathering expeditions between gankings. I just recently gathered my first-ever T8 resources; I’d caught all 3 T8 fish months ago, but until the Mists opened I’d only ever seen empty nodes of the other T8s.

If they ever make premium so expensive that I can’t afford it with in-game silver and have to pay IRL$ for it, I’ll probably quit. But for now I still think it’s totally worth playing. After the new server opens, probably more so; I might even get bored if the gankers get too spread out and gathering T8 becomes too easy … ;-)

[Rave Pathfinder.]

So there no balance in pvp

[Man of God]

Originally posted by Delivery man:

So there no balance in pvp

It's completely skill based. People already playing will have a massive advantage over you not just in skill but in gear too.

[Lights]

pls enjoy game. is very good, yes.

[James]

Careful with the finalities and totalities or whatever you call them. I have 60 hours in this game, and have definitely survived Red/Black Zone farming. Gotten a lot of my silver from farming there. That was two years ago, just coming back to the game and looking forward to doing it all again. Fortunately many people will move to Asian Servers and the threat will lessen a bit.

[Somebody]

I feel like I already read this on Reddit, wtf.

[Lights]

Originally posted by Leonidus:

Careful with the finalities and totalities or whatever you call them. I have 60 hours in this game, and have definitely survived Red/Black Zone farming. Gotten a lot of my silver from farming there. That was two years ago, just coming back to the game and looking forward to doing it all again. Fortunately many people will move to Asian Servers and the threat will lessen a bit.

almost all of the late-game content exists in red and black zones. anyone spouting about how unplayable those zones are is exaggerating quite a bit. theyve got a high learning curve, but the content is fine

[Man of God]

The end-game content isn't "fine" for newbies. When we have hundreds of people daily still complaining about losing everything.

This thread is advice and a warning, that if people are looking at getting invested in this game. The safest and most economical time will be after the new server hits. Either on that sever as a fresh player at the same stage as everyone else. Or on this server with reduced danger.

You guys can argue among yourselves all day about how red and black zones are "fine". I couldn't care less.

But those zones are still extremely unsafe and dying in them to gankers is extremely unsatisfying. Nuff said.

[James]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

The end-game content isn't "fine" for newbies. When we have hundreds of people daily still complaining about losing everything.

This thread is advice and a warning, that if people are looking at getting invested in this game. The safest and most economical time will be after the new server hits. Either on that sever as a fresh player at the same stage as everyone else. Or on this server with reduced danger.

You guys can argue among yourselves all day about how red and black zones are "fine". I couldn't care less.

But those zones are still extremely unsafe and dying in them to gankers is extremely unsatisfying. Nuff said.

Dude, did you not even read my post? I am a literal newbie with 60 hours in the game and I think it is absolutely fine. You are literally telling the person that you are preaching for that I am objectively wrong in my opinion and experience in the game. Yes, you have the chance to lose your stuff, but so long as you don't play too greedily and keep an eye out, you do have the chance to get away and back to town before players can gank you. If I do get ganked, which I have, I just learn from my death and move on. If you don't want to lose everything, play in yellow zones. With risk, though, comes reward. That's how the world and games has always worked.

[opihi]

No one game is going to make everyone in the world happy. Albion must be on the right track because it has unhappy people on both sides. Some posts on these online forums claim that the pvp zones are too dangerous and newbies lose everything and quit the game in frustration. At the very same time, other posts claim that the game is too safe, it’s impossible for gankers to catch victims because their weapons have been nerfed, and the game includes invisibility shrines, and the “journey home” ability, etc. so the PvPers are going to quit the game in frustration. Meanwhile the game is so popular that it is splitting its players between two servers for the first time. Apparently in between the “it’s too dangerous” and “it’s too safe” extremes there are a whole lot of us who think that the game is pretty fun.

[Lights]

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡:

The end-game content isn't "fine" for newbies. When we have hundreds of people daily still complaining about losing everything.

This thread is advice and a warning, that if people are looking at getting invested in this game. The safest and most economical time will be after the new server hits. Either on that sever as a fresh player at the same stage as everyone else. Or on this server with reduced danger.

You guys can argue among yourselves all day about how red and black zones are "fine". I couldn't care less.

But those zones are still extremely unsafe and dying in them to gankers is extremely unsatisfying. Nuff said.

People complaining about losing everything daily is not a commentary on red / black zones being unbalanced in any way, rather that those players did not adequately prepare for what they were doing. IE. it was a mistake on the part of the player for going out into a high risk area with more than they could afford to lose and in most cases, not doing a very good job of playing safely.

The thing about a high learning curve is that its steepest up front- getting started is the hardest part. And thats fine, plenty of games have high learning curves, the only difference on albion is that there is a form of consequences to playing poorly. Some people play cautiously early on while they get a feel for the game and what the black zone entails, others play it like its a yellow zone and end up losing that snazzy 6.1 set that they just blew 80% of their silver reserves on because they ignored several obvious warning signs that the area they're in is dangerous and likely to have gankers roaming around. Group A. will slowly but surely grind their way up until theyre able to maintain a healthy economy and navigate black zones competently and reasonably safely, Group B. will complain about how bad the game is. And the key thing to note here is that the people doing this complaining are the people that didn't take the time to learn what do and how to roam black zones properly.

Your advice, on its own, has some merit. The West server will be a more approachable environment for a new player following the launch of the East server- at least for a while. Where I take issue with your post is that you're making the presupposition that the game is currently too hostile to begin with, which is debatable at best. Getting in while the game is easier might make it easier for a newer player to maintain an economy in the short term, but if they're still not taking the time to pick up the skills required to regularly do black zone content, they're still going to go broke once the effect of the East server launch subsides. And they're still going to complain about it like its not their own mistakes leading them to their current predicament.

Albion doesn't have a problem with new player accessibility- it has a problem with new player expectations.

EDIT: Totally unrelated to the rest of this post, but you've got some incredibly racist nametags on your CS:GO weapons. Not cool.

[Shinerunner]

Counterpoint: I'm having a blast.

[Harold]

Who asked tho?

[(:AR:)-Paradox]

I started about a week ago and I've been having fun farming in the black zone without much incident. Just have a quick trigger finger on remounting and don't use anything too valuable.

My current kit for leveling 1-H spear and related gear costs me about 30-35k for 4.1, including a T3 mount. I think I've lost it maybe twice in the last week, and generally make the money for it back up in about 15 minutes of open world mob farming. I've not even started on the solo/corrupted/hellgate/group dungeons yet.

I'm looking forward to fresh start to see what it's like on an even playing field, but black zone is doable right now as long as you understand you likely won't win fights if you have 4.1 gear and low specs. I totally get I have the damage output of a particularly feisty flea and the durability of a low-grade DIY pinata, but I've been making plenty of fame and silver out there as a scrub.

EDIT: Saw Lights comment and checked your guns, good lord that's... something.

[Fairgamer]

So I just decided to 'get into the game' and as a new player, it's going to be a terrible experience?

That doesn't exactly attract new players to the game, does it?

Why have a game where it's unfriendly to people starting out? No level playing field in anything worth doing?