There is obviously no time-table associated with any of this information and for that matter no definitive answer on exactly what a "Trial" account exactly means in ESO. Having said that, let us wildly speculate . . .

Thanks to user/AMGarkin the following lines were found in the EsoStrings table:

• "[eng] Trial Account", -- SI_TRIAL_ACCOUNT_HELP_CATEGORY

• "[eng] Disabled on trial accounts.", -- SI_TRIALACCOUNTRESTRICTIONTYPE1

• "[eng] Whispering disabled on Trial accounts.", -- SI_TRIALACCOUNTRESTRICTIONTYPE2

• "[eng] Trial accounts may only whisper to friends.", -- SI_TRIALACCOUNTRESTRICTIONTYPE3

• "[eng] Guilds disabled on trial accounts.", -- SI_TRIALACCOUNTRESTRICTIONTYPE4

What can we safely assume? Well the fact that these exist in 1.5 and haven't appeared previously we know that ZOS is most likely going to add some form of Trial account in the future. I don't think this is a huge shocker. All subscription MMO's have some form of Trial accounts and some players have already been asking for them to try to entice their buddy who watched the Angry Joe review 6 months ago to give it a go. It can range from the constant trial of WOW to the trial weekends of GW2 or something in between.

From the strings we also know a few of the restrictions that trial accounts will have. Trial accounts will only be able to whisper people in their friends list and guild functionality will be disabled.

What are your thoughts on ESO Trial accounts? What TYPE of trial accounts do you think ESO should have? What additional restrictions do you think trial accounts should have?

My speculation:

• I think trial accounts initially will be special event-type things - limited to weekends sprinkled throughout the year. I think the first one will be at Console launch. Which based upon the wording in their Update 5 API Patch Note Changes post leads me to believe is possibly still on track for this year.

  "As gamepad support continues to accelerate, existing lua objects and control structures are being refactored at a faster rate."

• Trial accounts have no clairvoyant power as to the state of the game or any impending doom - sorry haters. EVERY established sub-based MMO has some form of a trial account. Actually the fact that they are working on trial accounts means the sub is around to stay for the foreseeable future. There would be no need for trial accounts in a F2P system.

• Trial accounts can only help make ESO stronger in the long run. Although I'm not looking forward to that first weekend . . .

Let the "ohmagard F2P imminent" begin . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .