[www.twitch.tv]

There is a premium currency, gold, that can be used to buy vanity-only items or as an alternative to buy the premium status

[forum.albiononline.com]

This game is a fee 2 play game coined by Jim Sterling. $30 USD is the minimum entry fee but you can pay as much as $100 USD for the Legendary Pack. Yes, this game has multiple tiers you can buy into just like AAA games selling 'editions'. Once purchased, there is a monthly subscription that 'speeds up' progression. Currency can also be purchased with real world money. Basically, its a full priced game (considering the severe lack of content) with microtransactions.There are 2 currencies in Albion Online. Gold is the currency that can be purchased with real world money. Gold can be used to purchase 'cosmetics' and to purchase. Silver is the 2nd currency and is used to purchase everything else in the game.The reason Albion Online is pay to win is that players can purchase gold with real world money and TRADE the gold through the gold/silver market (its super easy and instant). Players then can use the silver to buy power and skip the MASSIVE grind.The devs try to defend this by saying the game itself doesn't allow a direct transfer of real world money into in-game currency, but its irrelevant. The game is DESIGNED to facilitate pay 2 win in many ways. I just think its really funny that the devs use bold face lies. Who are they trying to fool here?This game has a full loot system. That means if your character is killed by another character, your body can be looted and you lose all the gear on you. This means that in order to get back into the fight or to start playing the game again, players will need to 'grind' the materials to craft their gear, grind to get silver to re-purchase their gear, or you guessed it, use real world money to purchase gold to purchase silver to re-purchase their gear. I think this is by far the worst system ever developed especially in a competitive multiplayer game (yes even worse than SW Battlefront's 2s progression system, at least when you die there, no-one can steal your star cards --- imagine that!!!).Now, players can even BUY experience (fame) through the Tome of Insight Did I mention all gear has ware and tear? Meaning, gear has a built-in timer in which the item will degrade over time and eventually break. Once its broken, it cannot be fixed (trash). Items can be repaired. The more ware and tear, the HIGHER the silver cost to repair. All things point to using silver to encourage players to use real world money.Some cosmetic items can only be purchased with Gold. This is another driving factor for people to insert more money into the game. Some people will claim its 'ok' because players can grind for the silver to purchase the gold. And of course, the best way to grind is to purchase 'premium' status which is the subscription. And then the people will say, you can just grind to purchase premium.If you followed that, you grind to purchase gold to purchase premium. Then you use your premium during grinding (because it speeds up the grind) to purchase gold so that you can purchase cosmetic items. Or you can just skip the grind and purchase cosmetics with real world money.Albion Online is designed to be a grind OR to use real world money to skip the grind. That's how these companies make money afterall. Why is the game a grind? Everything in game needs to be crafted. Everything that is crafted comes from materials. All materials must be gathered. Gathering is the grind. Gathering is not fun IMHO (some players claim grinding is fun; some people also may enjoy watching paint dry too).How does gathering work?You walk into the world, click on a resource node, wait, then click on the gathered material to put it in your backpack.That is the above process. It sucks. Its not fun. Its a waste of time. When your backpack is full, you go to town and either sell the materials or use the material to craft.Rinse and Repeat.Now if you have purchased gold with real world money, you can purchase silver on the exchange, go to any auction house and instantly purchase the materials OR gear you need.If grinding wasn't bad enough, there is farming in this game. That is right, be prepared to plant some carrots and wait 22 hours to harvest. Daily timers are yet another nail in the coffin of pay 2 win game design. Daily Timers are NOT FUN. Daily Timers are designed to keep the rats on the treadmill or for players to purchase gold in order to purchase the materials or crafted items from the daily timers essentially skipping the wait. All game design points to exploiting players one way or another.If this game hasn't employed enough dirty tricks, it pulls out all the stops for this one. This game designed an 'invite' system. Players first of all have to PURCHASE invites. Invites grants new players 7 days of free play time. If a player purchases the game, the player who sent the invite gets in game rewards some of which can ONLY be attained via the invite system. Every month there is a new reward. Its yet another way for people to use real world money in order to gain unattainable items otherwise. The more players that sign up under your name, the more rewards you get. Its just so dirty.Players who purchased the game outside of steam can NOT link their accounts. This forces existing players to either purchase the game through steam and create a new account, or not use steam. The developers claimed they would lose too much money from existing whales if they allowed the whales to transfer their accounts. The developers are not happy about the steam tax but they certainly want the user base that steam provides.This developer has a history of banning valid criticism to the game. I have posted my review on the forums and was banned. They also deleted my forum post twice containing this information.Albion online is not fun. It uses every exploitative trick to extract money out of its players except for loot boxes. I would highly recommend players to stay away from this game. The developers only want to exploit users for their money and do not want to actually provide a fun experience. Stay away.