So 1.0 owners have to start paying the monthly fee immediately?

[Alhanelem]

the lack of free trial seriously curbs the initial momentum the game will have.

ok, you suckered me in, the pro troll that you are.

What lack of a free trial? Pretty much everyone here that already played 1.0 is already going to be playing. All NEW CUSTOMERS *will* get a free trial. Because new customers, everyone that is looking at the game but didn't buy it the first time around will get their free trial. This will not curb the initial momentum the game will have.

The quote you made of yourself implies that there is no free trial at all, for anybody, and that's just not true.

The beta doesn't show the full game and doesn't constitute a way to ascertain the final quality of a game.

Wrong. It does constitute a way to ascertain the quality of a game. You're kidding yourself if you think people don't play betas to preview a game and ascertain the quality they think it will have. How many games radically change from a late term beta to a launch a few weeks later? None that I know of. It is ridiculous to suggest that people can't get a good idea of what the game will be like or its level of quality at the final phase of the beta.

Many games even go from being in beta to being "launched" with little more than ceremonial patch. The difference between launch day and the day before is often minimal- and such was the case with FFXIV 1.0.

[Abriael]

What lack of a free trial? Pretty much everyone here that already played 1.0 is already going to be playing.

Keyword: Everyone here. The people here are an extremely overwhelmed minority compared to the 800,000 that purchased 1.0.

A free trial would have brought back a lot more of those that aren't here.

Wrong. It does constitute a way to ascertain the quality of a game. You're kidding yourself if you think people don't play betas to preview a game and ascertain the quality they think it will have. How many games radically change from a late term beta to a launch a few weeks later? None that I know of. It is ridiculous to suggest that people can't get a good idea of what the game will be like or its level of quality at the final phase of the beta.

Many games even go from being in beta to being "launched" with little more than ceremonial patch. The difference between launch day and the day before is often minimal- and such was the case with FFXIV 1.0.

Most games in open beta are still riddled with bugs, they may have nearly full features, but they have plenty problems that can undermine a player's enjoyment of the game, not last server issues, that are still extremely common even in open betas.

That's the same reasons why you don't see decent journalists review games on their beta (and when some get caught doing that, they get rightfully slammed by their readers). It's not a fair assessment of a game's final quality.

if you change an article to something stupid or something obviously wrong, it will get changed back quickly. While citing wikipedia as a primary source by itself is not ideal, that doesn't mean that wikipedia is always wrong or isn't a good place to start for a preliminary information probe. I challenge you to find a print encylopedia or dictionary that differs drastically from what Wikipedia defines those terms to be.

It's definitely not an authoritative source for synonyms, and especially technical ones. Even without considering the fact that that article doesn't state anywhere that "demo" and "free trial" are synonyms as the term "trial" is used in a completely generic way.

Add to that the fact that the terminology used for MMORPGs is normally slightly different than what is used in general gaming and you get the picture.

Ultimately what we have is the definition Square Enix always used for free trial in their official communication, which is the free period of gameplay after the launch of the full game.

They never used the definition of free trial for betas or for early access.