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

#12300000591 01/23/2006 13:34:59 Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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?

#12300000592 01/23/2006 14:02:49 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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.

#12300000593 01/23/2006 15:23:30 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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.

#12300000594 01/23/2006 17:32:47 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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 =/

#12300000595 01/24/2006 01:36:06 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000596 01/24/2006 07:47:33 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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.

#12300000597 01/24/2006 13:22:51 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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?

#12300000598 01/25/2006 07:36:31 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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.

#12300000599 01/25/2006 07:53:34 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000602 01/25/2006 21:44:32 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000605 01/29/2006 15:57:12 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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...)

#12300000606 01/29/2006 19:14:19 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000607 01/31/2006 07:01:22 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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.

#12300000608 02/01/2006 20:19:51 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000609 02/03/2006 03:23:52 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

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

#12300000610 02/06/2006 12:40:07 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

SOE is currently developing a free MMO, kind of like an answer to Guild Wars.

#12300000611 02/07/2006 05:59:06 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

I saw a gamefly ad lol

#12300000613 02/09/2006 05:01:32 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

Sony isn't poor. But no corporation, no matter how well-off, will run something for free when it's a cash-hog even WHILST people are still paying for it.

#12300000620 02/13/2006 17:09:11 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

I haerd there will be advertisments. But no mention of free anything.

Hey, if you can have your cake AND eat it too, why not?

#12300000622 02/13/2006 20:17:26 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

There are several ways to make money, advertisements aren't in game because Sony is doing it out of the kindness of their hearts... having said that I agree a company doesn't want to lose money, but sometimes it pays off to take a momentary lose, if you make up that loss later on (eg. free trial periods).

Anarchy Online does fairly decent with their free strategy from what I've gathered but... to get the full game you have to buy it. There's a lot of zones, items, weapons, skills that you don't get if you just play the free version.

I don't think MXO could do that now.. but I really think if more people played Matrix Online they would like it (after CR2.0). The question is how do you bring them here, after such an abyssmal launch/reputation of MXO and SOE?

#12300000623 02/14/2006 08:18:45 Re: Is MXO going to be free? Odd thing I noticed last night.

Currently SOE has the following alternative-revenue things going on:

- EQ2: 'Station' servers allow people to buy and sell items for real $. NOT my idea of a good time, but for those that like it, it exists. I don't follow that stuff closely enough to know if it's had any effect on the other companies who do that stuff (and break EULAs in doing so).

- Planetside: Free ... to a point. Apparently you can play Planetside for free but cannot progress past some 'cert' level or another. I believe Planetside also has ads of some sort.

Now I don't expect much of anything to happen here until the combat revision is finished. Then I'd assume SOE would like some return on the investment and will attempt to respark interest in MxO. Whether that means more ads or limited free content is beyond my guessing.