Not sure how many here have beta tested an mmo before, but in my experience some of them will wipe the servers of characters before launch (unless it's something similar to an early bird scenario they have for people who have pre-ordered, for example).

Pure speculation thread of course as I dont think there's any hard info on this but the question is, do you think the devs will conduct a server wipe before launch to even the playing field?

Hope so.

Beta is beta and should not be treated as an "early access".

And besides, it tends to be the F2P games that don't wipe the characters in beta. Answer to your question might be a hint about the payment model...

Of course you loose you characters when the game launches. This is an entirely different server and game client.

FFXIV ARR will not be having a character wipe in phase 4 (open beta), and is not F2P. I might also add since they don't have investors, and the game developers are the ones who have the funds, the game won't fall through and go to F2P as soon as an investor panics like in other games. What you've said is a baseless assumption, especially if you think that alone is evidence to ESO's payment model.

Well, as you can probably see from my post I used the words like "tend to" and "might be" which strongly suggest speculation.

I know, and I provided an example that went against the notion of "ESO will be P2P because..." Even though yours was "ESO might be P2P because.." I don't want anyone thinking that ESO has to be P2P because of something like server wipes.

Closed Beta = 100 Char wipe.

Open Beta = who cares its open so everybody can play it, so i dont really need a wipe.

But i think after both there will be a wipe.

Most likely. Not wiping characters forces them to release new content faster, which would be a really bad idea from their point of view.

Yep.

Look no further than Neverwinter to see why servers should be wiped after betas are over. That game has seen one economy-ruining exploit after another. You need to have a proper test phase where you let a massive amount of people break your game all at once. It's a bad idea to be accountable to paying customers while in that phase of testing.

-Travail.