I would gladly pay IMC $50 for a starter pack IF I deemed it worth while. I want to play this game like anyone else BUT the fact that a lot of my friends will be isolated from this game for over THREE months is a big turn off.
I am not super excited about playing on an empty server for 3 months and considering my gaming group as of now is playing another MMO - I don’t believe convincing them to drop $50 on another MMO is going to happen.
I don’t believe IMC really thought this through and I hope that someone from there group acknowledges that this announcement was a huge negative impact to the Tree of Savior brand.
Only things that would alleviate this situation is a revamp of either the amount of money for early access packages or what is included in the packages or possibly even both. If those are not plausible changes that I would go as far as changing the time frames of the packages and reduce the total open beta waiting period from 3 months to 1 month and leave the packages the same prices.
Finally if IMC is trying to convince me to spend money, than IMC needs to realize a lot of people play in groups and not all groups are economically equal across the board. When you start dividing these groups you will find that a lot of them would rather hang with their friends than to join a new MMO. To convince a group of friends that they may have to be divide for 3 months because of their economical standing or choices is kind of a low blow. I mean the promise of an OBT was given but no heads up on a 3 month pay wall was ever notioned or discussed.
IMC needs to really think about how this decision affected their fanbase.