So me and my friend spotted Albion Online and just kinda fell in love.

However I personally have zero experience with MMOs in general: the closest I get is watching a speedrun of the original Diablo... Yeah.

Anyways, I have a couple of issues that I would like to clarify: the first, and possibly biggest, is the business model. Now I have read plenty of arguments on the line of "is Albion P2W" and so on, and what worries me is that all the claims that tell me I can play for free (other than the entry cost) presume way more playtime than I can afford. Will I be able to enjoy the game even if I only play a few hours per week? Or would I have to dump money into it for it to be enjoyable?

The other concern is the social aspect of the game: say I'm interested almost exclusively in crafting, or in abusing the market (a mathematician's gotta have fun): do I have to join a guild? And if so, how much "participation" does that entail? I'm not gonna cancel my week-long vacation because my guild's gotta do guild stuff, y'know...

So yeah, that's it. Also any information you consider useful for a noob like myself I'd gladly read. Thanks for sticking through 20 lines of post.