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Anarchy Online to be Subscription Free
According to the offial site, Anarchy Online is removing fees for new users who subscribe to the game between the 15th of December 2004 and the 15th of January 2005. From the release: "We feel very confident in the unique features and heralded qualities of our game, and are now openly inviting everyone playing MMO's to find out what Anarchy Online is all about, completely free of commitment" said Ole Schreiner, Project Director for Anarchy Online. "Not only can we boast of a fantastic game which has been expanding for years, we are also constantly adding exciting new content, progressively making the ultimate sci-fi MMORPG even better." Commentary on the Zen of Design blog.
And they wondered how AO was going to survive WoW. They were one of the largest guilds in AO (if you count inactive players...*whistle*) and everyone is playing WoW right now.
But are they supposed to keep paying because they have been there since the begining? To pay monthly fee's to play with a bunch of boneheads? One of the big plusses for AO was it was not well known and had a high amount of players who knew what they were doing.
The temptation is ridiculous. A year free trial? Usually I get bored of these games before a year is up. I'd have to reboot, I suppose, anyone know if AO runs under WINE. But a free year... hmmm.
Well I googled and found this: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~marius/aolinux/. Perhaps I will give it a shot...
Why not fork?
I hear that the game is actually playable now. Of course, it was fixed too late to keep its reputation from hitting the gutter, which is why FunCom is doing stuff like this now. At any rate, I might as well try it. I'm not a big fan of MMORPGs but a free year is a free year.
Rob
Given the timing of this, I'd be inclined to think this has been done due to competition since the release of World of Warcraft.
I have played AO a fair bit, right from the start, however, I never felt I could make any progress if I didn't spend more than 3 hours on at a time. All the best gear in the game is constantly camped, and the latest expansion really only benifited high level characters who put imense amount of effort into the game.
I've now cancelled, and am enjoying WoW much more, with it's much more flexible play style and questing. Some of my friends have done the same. With WoW stealing many if not most of their players, I'm sure AO is doing this to keep their subscription levels up, but I doubt it's going to be enough.
In two weeks time, expect Funcom to release this statement: "Oops! We meant 1/1/2005! The keys are like, right next to each other!"
I played Anarchy Online years ago when it first came out, I can't even remember exactly when that was now, I guess I started back in 2000, perhaps earlier. I loved the game at the time, it was a beautiful game, pretty decent atmosphere, and character customization was outstanding. I could spend days on end just exploring the planet, not even bothering with the leveling treadmill. Great game. I eventually stopped playing AO in preference to other MMOGs and eventually canceled my subscription.
:-P) I got to the surface and found that wow, there's no one here. Everyone's playing in the Shadowlands now, Funcom had essentially abandoned the surface altogether, the same unexpected zone borders were there, some cities were inaccessible by foot, the usual stuff that we'd been complaining about and Funcom had been promising to fix.
:-P (Shadowlands added some interesting player customization enhancements as well though, including new jobs.)
A few months ago, I signed up again, as they were giving away the core game and the first two expansions (there are three now overall I believe, Notum Wars (land control), Shadowlands (new second world) and Alien Invasion (new plot booster and features, I guess.) Longing for the AO of old, I promptly jumped off the edge of Jobe (a floating city) and landed on the planet (luckily for me there was a bug in falling damage that prompted the devs to disable the feature a few months prior, so I survived the fall from the stratosphere.
Where they're giving away just the core game, these users will be limited to playing on the surface of Rubi-Ka, no access to the Shadowlands or even fighting for control of the land. I obviously don't know what their motives are in the end, but it'd seem to me that this may well be an attempt to get Rubi-Ka populated again, to bring the planet back to life. In a larger sense, it could also be creating a stronger social class system, as the paying users can look down on the poor planet-bound players from high above in their Jobe luxury apartments.
The free deal sounds great, but I think I may have to keep my paid account so I can do just that.