Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3997491-20130702092041/@comment-7153552-20130715142821

Not put out a fire before it happens, but this sounds like it's escalating. We don't know anything yet, I imagine they'll have to announce soon, though. I mean we're almost to the fourth quarter and that means only one-1.5 quarters before release. They have to start ramping up the hype between now and release. Plus they recently sent out another wave of beta invites  - which I was yet again missing from - and that means they're one step closer to finalizing the game. I don't know that I believe they'll do an open beta before launch, but they might have an early access event for people that were in the beta events or that preorder when that becomes available. As for the sub-based bit (which isn't really a copy of WoW, they stole that from the industry standard at the time), I just can't see it happening and them being successful. Make the microtransactions interesting and the game will survive on its own. I just found another F2P game that's in open beta (Firefall, check it out . . . it's a bit buggy, but it is beta) so it's just another example of games that aren't following the old standards.