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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.
the free trial period lasts until Jan 1, 2006, which is a whole year of free gaming. I couldn't figure out how this helps them as there will be newer games in that time that will certainly entice you away before you ever have to pay 1 cent. Then I clicked through the register a new character link (to read the terms), and saw all the various expansions the game has. I guess the idea is to get them in the door, and then dazzle them with all the other shiny doors they can pay for. Not necessarily a bad idea, if you've got worthwhile content for them to pay for.
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?
not only is there no subscription fee, but they're giving the original away for free according to their site.
i've been curious about galaxies, WoW, and some others, but I've always stayed away from them because of the monthly subscription fees.
I know what i'm downloading after work tonight!
And best of all they're doing it with BitTorrent!
awesome!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
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.
Just the basic game with no expansions. Sounds like you might have to pay more money if you want to use the expansions. Guess they feel they finally have a product that people will want to stay and play if given the chance.
Very tempting even without the expansions.
In other words:- "Because of the amount of new competition recently, and because we've largely been irrelevant to begin with, we're now so scared of the game dying completely that we're willing to temporarily commit economic near-suicide in order to attempt to jumpstart it again."
EA did this earlier this year with the "Return to Britannia" program for UO...giving people free two week periods and a free download of the Age of Shadows expansion.
Given that the amount a month's bandwidth would cost for many of these games, when the company behind a given MMOG offers you free time out of the blue, you can with certainty take it as an indication that the game is in deep trouble, popularity wise. Granted, it would make more economic sense that if they were ever going to give you free time, that they'd do it when they were doing well...but companies...especially software companies...don't work that way. When they're on a roll, they overwhelmingly tend to come down with a terminal case of hubris, and then proceed to attempt to gouge/rape you like never before, on the basis of a belief that they are invulnerable. It's only when most corporations are starving hungry that you can expect decent treatment from them.
Funcom making this offer can be very safely interpreted as a realisation on the company's part that Anarchy Online is headed for the gurgler. They're trying to save it, and if an MMOG is on life support, that should probably also tell you something about the potential quality of the game.
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!"
Does the game appeal to anyone in this sense, the whole gloomy futuristic science-fiction style?
In a word? No. There are two reasons why this game has zero appeal to your average cyber-punk fan.
First, the game is not set in the city. The game is mostly set outside of the cities. You might hit a city now and then, but for the most part the envirnoment is that of a planet's wilderness. The cities are all relativly small when compared to the rest of the gaming world and they don't feel terribly alive. I don't know about anyone else, but when I think cyber punk, I think of cities, and AOs cities are worthless for anything other then looking at.
Second, the game is traditional MMORPG in every sense of the word. I don't know about you, but when I think of cyber punk, spawn camping or hunting down random critters for mad l00t is not what comes to my mind. At its core, AO is Everquest. Your goal is to go hunt shit for experience and loot, and when it comes down to it, that is the very core of the game play. Perhaps other disagree, but hunting shit for experience and loot is not what I think of when I think of cyber punk.
Take Everquest, throw in a few alterations to the generic hack and slash modle, replace all fantasy words with future words, and give everyone a gun. You now have AO. Yawn. There is nothing inovative to see in AO.
The next update shadowlands, adds a new land, two new classes. It was built just for the new classes and new lands, and although fun, do not take away from the game if you do not have it.
Alien invasion is their newest expansion, and I haven't got a chance to play that yet, as far as I know, it is basically high level quests and such.
As graphic upgrade and such, don't worry, it's all in game so there is no reason if you like any game, to not try this game. Ok so maybe if you don't have an internet connection, but /. hate's anti-internet people anyways :)
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.