The Lack of Guild Wars Trials

I was on IRC earlier and a player that wanted to try out guild wars had an issue. Turns out, there's no way to try the game other than the 10 day trial keys within the game. Without the ability for anyone to try the game without some huge hassle (I wound up giving the guy a nightfall only account) it seems, perhaps, someone in marketing should really be fired.

Well, in a game where you can get to level 20 in 6 hous, 14 hours is more than enough.

Might wanna look at the issue that we currently have with gold sellers first. I'm sure you've gotten a whisper from one of them using a trial account.

More sales is better for ANet. Lots of people won't buy the game if they can't try it. Really, there needs to be a free trial given on the GW site.

The gold seller problem is a poor excuse really. The PMs and spamming are annoying, but avoidable.

The gold sales problem isn't an excuse at all. Gold sellers have no trouble getting their hands on trial keys, and the main limiting factor is the number of computers they're willing to dedicate towards spamming. So having more trial accounts will just encourage more sales. Plus, from a business standpoint, who cares if Anet loses a few customers here and there to spam? As a game with no monthly charges, as long as they can keep an influx of new players, it doesn't matter. All they have to do is "promise" it won't happen in GW2 and people will still return to it. Plus it'll be an entirely new player base, as GW2 would be released ~5 years after GW, and a whole new batch of young people will have reached gaming age while the older batch "retires".

I've heard most of the time that gold bots get normal accounts, not trial ones.

The farmers use real accounts, the spammers use trial ones.

the problem is, you cant even get a trial key without knowing someone who has one. the fact that there's no way for some guy to just hop online, go to guildwars.com, and download a trial seems perplexing to me in a game where revenue comes entirely from people buying the game. It doesnt even have to be a long trial, 10 hours is more than enough, and with the GW store you'd have a lot of people that would in theory immediately buy it.

PM's aren't avoidable...

If free trials came out, it will only perpetuate gold spammers.

They do offer trails, just go down to gamestop, plop down $1.99 plus tax and have at it.

I would suggest faster disablements/bans for trail accounts and more trail keys (as it is indeed a marketing issue). But it also bugs a few players who want to show this game to friends, you only get 1 key (per expansion, but still) and that's obviously little.