Albion Online is going free-to-play next week: here's what's planned and how to avoid queue times at launch

Albion Online is a medieval fantasy MMORPG set on a sandbox open world, where players drive most of the game features like economy and crafting. The game also features cross-platform-play, which is remarkable for a MMORPG.



The game has been launched on Steam on Jul 17th, 2017, and hasn't been doing great on player count. The game expects to change this by going free-to-play next April 10th.



The game's development currently includes upgrades to the server hardware and optimizations of the game code. However, it is possible that new players may have to deal with a queue on the first days of the free launch, if the total number of players is too high. In this scenario, those with Premium would get preferential access.

The following chart shows the times at which the game is more crowded. Thus, avoiding these peak times may help new non-Premium players access the game servers without delay.



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The sandbox online games are growing in the world since the release of Minecraft, probably the first world-famous sandbox (multiplayer) game. Albion Online and other similar games have been launched on Steam over the last months and years and most are struggling to achieve mass success comparable to that of most of AAA games.

That said, some sandbox games with multiplayer functions are doing well on Steam, as is the case of Terraria, even though it has been launched eight years ago.

Albion Online is focusing on randomization to keep players hooked, with its new random dungeon feature, and its developers are working on improving many game features and expanding them.

Will Albion Online rise and see a huge player base change? That's something we will see in the next few days.