Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

**Ravyr**

Forgive my ignorance on this subject I looked for an announcement in the forums but didn't see any mention of MXO being free. It might have been announced and I just missed it.

I occasionally drop by Anarchy Online to see old friends. I use a free account. In Anarchy Online, freebie accounts see advertising billboards and paid accounts have the option to turn them off.

In MXO last night occasionally I would see a glitch which would show an advertisement, not just say "Space for rent", "Your ad here", etc. The advertisement I saw was for a discovery channel show "digging for the truth" or something similar to that, which was the exact one I saw in Anarchy Online.

This leads me to believe that SOE might be working with the same company that funcom worked with to put advertising in Anarchy Online. It also leads me to believe that MXO is going to be offering a free subscription, with ads enabled to increase subscriber numbers - sometime after CR2.0.

Thoughts? Comments?

Siros7

MxO isn't going to be free.
The ads are there to gain more money for the game, wich it currently needs.
SoE just can't afford it to have people playing MxO for free atm.

**Cervacius**

That would be really awesome if it was free, but at the moment they are so poor they can hardly keep up with this game.

But if this game ever pics up into a major success, then one day it might be free.

I just dont see that happening during the time i play this game.

Chuui

The ads glitch in and out because they haven't fixed some sort of Z-plane problem with the overlays. Instead of fixing it and getting those ads working, they decided to introduce even uglier billboards to the game. I bet those don't work either =/

sinza · 01/24/2006 01:40:08

hey,

i wished the empty ad spaces are used for real ads.

Infact the Matrix would look more "real". I have no clue what all those Bluepills think about the empty ads.

Oh would be cool to have daily changing TV ads. So u can play and see what Movie u like to see at night, lol

Or actual News, like the huge screens at Timesquare NY. They should be in Mara of course, lol.

Dang, i have a idea, they could add a Announcement adboard, like "server shut down" or something else.

Or the Devs could add Informations for everyone.

love

sinza

Message Edited by sinza on 01-24-200601:38 AM

Message Edited by sinza on 01-24-200601:40 AM

Siros7

The emtpy spaces are already being used for real world ads, but for some reasons a lot of vid cards don't support it atm.

**Apocryphon**

Well....interestingly enough, I was reading the business pages of a Newspaper (possibly the Independant, UK paper) and there was a piece about SOE taking a close look and showing a lot of interest in free online MMORPG's after the success of Guild Wars and the coming of other free to play games. It implied that they were seriously considering adopting freepay gaming as a strategy for their future!

It mentioned another game (forget name) which makes money by selling ingame stuff for real money and seems to be doing well even though it actually has very little content or players as yet.

So whaddya think?

Will we be able to fork out the cash for our own Constructs?

Buy a piece of Merv's action?

**Ravyr**

Cervacius wrote:
That would be really awesome if it was free, but at the moment they are so poor they can hardly keep up with this game.

But if this game ever pics up into a major success, then one day it might be free.

I just dont see that happening during the time i play this game.

You may know more then I do about the MXO financial situation but I do find it amusing that anyone would consider Sony "poor". I also don't know if the ads came before or after SOE purchasing MXO (I'm new SMILEY )

I may be totally off but it seems like this game needs more subscribers, more then it needs money. Free subscriptions bring in more people, and more potential customers who might buy the game. I'm not sure MXO has anything right now they could give to paying customers (like extra content/places) and entice free subscribers to buy it, which is something Anarchy Online has.

**jeffers**

MxO is still on a limited budget from what I've seen posted on the forums and the Ad's are a new feature implemented by SOE.

We did have the billboards and stuff in game under lith, however they were mostly used for fun/event or WB stuff. I can't see them making it free however.

Jeffers

Roland_Deschain · 01/25/2006 21:50:46

The ads have been there since beta...they were ads for companies that had provided licenses for the game world for stuff such as clothing. Now however Sony is opening it up for more real world advertising.

And I do not think this game will ever be free to play.

Message Edited by Roland_Deschain on 01-25-200611:45 PM

Message Edited by Roland_Deschain on 01-25-200611:50 PM

iRomav

I can't see the game being free either, however I hope the money made from advertising in game is put towards something we can all enjoy (perhaps an employee hired entirely to play as LE characters... ? SMILEY

I can dream...)

QforQ-MxO

I'm hoping they hire another dev to work on content

Baruch

There was an announcement before Christmas that SOE is 'moving away from subscriptions' and will instead generate revenue from 'additional content.' I would imagine this additional content would be like the Desert of Flames expansion for Everquest II. No idea how far away this is, and whether it would apply to MxO, but it's certainly on the table.

**Villemar_MxO**

As long as they don't go nuts with it, if I'm bombarded with Geico ads for example, it'll kind of lose the immersion effect for me. We see enough of that crap every day.

The Constantine ads were amusing, I'll admit. Hopefully they won't whack us over the head with Times Square Informercials SMILEY

BODRaz · 02/03/2006 03:24:08

I have to say that if MxO ever went to free subscription, the amount of people playing the game and buying it would increase dramatically. At least 20 people have xfired me over the last few weeks and asked if the game is any good, and they would love to buy it. But as soon as i said you had to pay monthly, they were put off by it.

Message Edited by BODRaz on 02-03-200603:24 AM