Albion Online Extends Beta, Abandons F2P Plan for now

Sandbox Interactive's Medieval-themed MMO is being prepared for a full release, however that journey may take longer than expected. In their "Road to Release" posting on the official game forums, the developer stated what they would be doing in the run up to the full release of the game.

The main headline piece of news was the fact that the closed beta is to be extended. There's no fixed end date just yet but the game will be open only to testers until at least the 1st August. The team felt that they needed more time to create a game that lives up to the grand vision they have and this required an extension to the beta period.

As well as this, it's been stated that that game will not be going Free to Play at launch as initially planned. Instead, the founder's packs will be removed at the full release of the game and replaced by starter packs. These are set to be similar to founder's packs but with less value for money so as to avoid having the founding players feel cheated. The main reasons given are that making the game ready for a F2P model would take development time away from other areas and would open the game up to things like spamming and botting.