Playing this as f2p

[YumYumTastyTV]

Is it viable? I saw that it's very similar to eve online and my main gripe with eve was that unless you were premium (which to be fair you could easily earn) you could not even craft everything. Are the restrictions in this game worse or better?

[opihi]

Better, far better. Premium in Albion is a boost, not a hard barrier. The only exception is if you want to have an island; you need to buy or earn premium to buy one. But if your premium expires, you still keep and can use your island, it doesn’t go away when your premium runs out.

After that, premium just means that you get more of things: more daily learning points, more silver when you sell things, more loot when you open chests, more resources when you gather, etc. Without premium, you still get all of these things, just less of them. Premium also gets you focus points, which can make activities like refining, crafting, and growing crops more profitable; you can still do those activities without focus, they just won’t make you as much silver. And premium lets you earn monthly challenge chests, but there’s nothing in the chests that you can’t get elsewhere in the game; again, you just get more, faster.

So, end result, if two players start at the same time, and only one has premium, that one will level up much faster than the other, and earn much more silver per hour. If they go head-to-head, the one with premium will almost always win. But the one without premium just needs to be patient, they can reach the top eventually too. Just takes a lot longer.

[opihi]

One thing worth adding: you say that premium in Eve was easy to earn. In Albion is is *not* easy, especially when you are first starting out. It currently costs so much silver that low-level players have to spend almost all of their playing time grinding silver to earn enough to buy premium. Once you advance to higher levels it gets easier, but that can take a while, especially if you have limited daily playing time. You are kinda forced to choose whether to spend your gaming time grinding for a while, to make the fun parts of the game (PvP, black-zone activities, etc) more rewarding down the road, or if you would rather do the fun stuff more or less full-time from the start and accept the lower rewards.

When I was starting out, I bought just the minimum premium necessary to buy an island (7 days), then played without premium for the next few months. It was fun, but my island wasn’t really doing much, costing me as much as or more than it made for me. So I decided to earn premium in-game. It took me almost 30 days of mostly grinding (mainly fishing) to get there. It probably helped that fishing, gathering, fighting YZ mobs - the main methods of grinding - is fun for me; not everyone agrees. Earning enough for the next 30 days of premium took significantly less time, leaving more of my game time for other activities. Each 30 days since then has gotten faster and easier.

I’m not a big PvPer, and definitely not a ganker. I’ve heard that ganking is much, much more profitable than fishing, gathering etc, once you get good at it, so that a competent ganker can earn enough for 30 days of premium in much less time.

[Ondjage]

You're not really restricted to anything besides owning a personal island.

You may craft any item you desire as long as you have the required resources and the (specific) crafting node unlocked in your destiny board. The game is essentially free, but you have to contemplate whether $5.00 is worth owning a personal island. That is the only thing you would be blocked from. That is a huge investment for a new player since there's no 7-day option. 30-days of premium cost 20+ million silver.

[YumYumTastyTV]

Thanks for the answers me and my GF had a fun first impression.

I have no idea what personal islands even are.

[Wong Jowo Hunter]

Don't let personal biases responses fools you, many f2p games have paid services that can and will boost you.

Even in the top biggest mmo game like Wow, their biggest streamer Asmongold, have admitted that wow has pay to win, imagine this game, a free to play game and mainly advertised as one.

[YumYumTastyTV]

Originally posted by Wifi Orbit:

Don't let personal biases responses fools you, many f2p games have paid services that can and will boost you.

Even in the top biggest mmo game like Wow, their biggest streamer Asmongold, have admitted that wow has pay to win, imagine this game, a free to play game and mainly advertised as one.

I mean i played eve and was pretty much fine with it, most was zerging anyways lol

[[MM] Seppel]

to get the personal island you can also buy the starter pack for 5€ which gives you 7 days premium, and the personal island is really cool