There are three different 'Founders Packs' that will let you buy your way into Albion Online's closed beta, but the game itself was going to be Free To Play at launch—I say 'was', because those plans have now been ditched. Albion Online will instead be Buy To Play, AKA That Normal Payment Model That Most Games Have, as announced in a forum post yesterday.
"Making the game ready for a free to play model would take up significant development time which we would much rather use to make a better game" Albion Online founder Stefan Wiezorek said in the post. "Free to play would also create a lot of risks for the game - spamming, botting, world too small, etc - which we do not want to take if it can be avoided.
"When the game goes live, current founder’s packs will be discontinued and replaced with starter packs, which will give full access to the game but offer less value for money than the founder’s packs as this is only fair to all founders who help us in making the game. Of course, all founder's will automatically get full access to the game on release as well."
Moreover, the promising, largely player-driven MMORPG won't be out any time soon, as the closed beta has been extended by six months, until 1 August 2016, at least. Wiezorek says the team's "goal is for Albion Online to be a long term success, therefore, we only want to release the game when it is truly up to its potential. The extension of the closed beta period will allow us to make significant improvements to the game".
