Aventurine today announced some upcoming changes to the new player experience in DarkFall, which can be found here. Surprisingly only a few on the forums are crying “Trammel”, and most seem to agree this is a good step to getting new players into and comfortable with DarkFall.
There are a few issues facing a new player to DarkFall, with one major area being the completely different style of control, day-to-day activity, and general focus of the game. The truth is that anyone who was following DarkFall because they wanted a quality PvP MMO has likely already tried it, so new players today truly are new and likely don’t fully know what they are signing up for. Given that so many in the MMO genre today have cut their teeth on an EQ-clone, something like DarkFall is going to feel very foreign to them.
What this temporary protection does is allows those new players to focus on just learning the UI, the basics of PvE combat, and their immediate surroundings. Most will still likely die to their first goblin, get lost, and not know how to Rest, but at least they won’t be doing all that while some PK is trying to get them to flag themselves gray or killing them just outside of tower range. That will happen eventually of course, but at least a few hours in that new player will know the basics and stand a slightly better chance to fight back or run away. I’m sure dying while trying to get out of mouse UI mode is not a great first impression.
Finally, it’s not hard to see how something like this newbie protection could be further modified into a free trial setup. Use the same limits placed on a character, extend the time to 3-5 days (the longer the trial the more likely it could be abused, but that would require some more testing), and you give anyone interested at least a decent peek into what DarkFall is about. Any sort of trial with PvP included would get messy, and I think someone killing a few mobs should come away with a decent understanding of just how unique the combat system is in DarkFall compared to tab-target MMOs.
Hardcore Casual 
It sounds like a cool addition to the game. I never tried Darkfall because of the PKing the second I log on. Well, if I logged on. I guess I’m too scared of a wuss to try it. This might help tip the scale though.
The trial is important. More so than the player protection thing (which is ‘meh’ to me).
I know your position about the ‘first 24 hours’ thing but that trial is a dealbreaker.
For me, it’s not so much about being cheap but wanting to make sure the game plays well on my rig before spending $$s on it.
The trial will certainly cause a lot of people to check out DarkFall, no doubt, but it’s important to make sure that it not only shows off DF well to those new players, but that it also does not have any kind of negative effect on those already playing. In most games free trials are abused by gold sellers/spammers, hackers, and all the other undesirables of an MMO. Given that you can already install client-side hacks (that are detectable), hundreds of free trial toss-away accounts flying around one-shotting everyone would not exactly be a good thing.
Such problem with most trial accounts can be avoided simply by having some additional check beyond just an email verification.
Personally, I have no problem with a trial being tied to a credit card as long as that purchase doesn’t occur unless I authorize it.
Or, alternately, since the purpose of a trial is limited, I don’t have a problem with a server setup that is separate from everything else (like “Trial Island”).
You could even restrict the ‘new player’ protections to that island and severely limit what is on the island (thereby limiting which skills could be learned).
Flipping the subscription to live gets you on a ship off the Island and away you go (to likely be happily ganked when you get off the boat lol).
I don’t know how well a trial island would show off DF though. Something like that works for DDO because, well, all of DDO is one island hop to the next, but DF is very much about being a part of a giant world and the traffic in and around it. Even if you are a new/trial player and can’t PvP, you can still witness roaming gangs coming through, attacking others, etc. We will see what AV does with it, if they ever release a trial on any major scale.
Gotta say I agree with this post and this sort of thing now has me curious.
The idea of a trial for Darkfall has me all giddy inside. :)
Before they do any trial they should do a welcome back week like LOTRO does.
All players who have been subscribed for more than 1 month will have it activated for 1 week.
This should provide a massive influx of players. With the amount of changes that have happened over the 2 expansions and patches, people who left shortly after release would be amazed if they came back for a week.
Also the free week would be much much easier to implement.
I thought about this a bit and put my thoughts together over here: http://strictmachine.me/?p=696
While it might not be a perfect solution, I like it better than temporary invulnerability.