AO-Universe

I think not. After clicking on an add on mmorpg.com, I find out only a small bit of the game is free, the rest requires a monthly fee. Now I dont know about you guys or other people, but when I see free, and when the main site says nothing about that being false, I find it misleading, false advertisement even, that they tote a "free to play" tab, and not mentioning anything about having to pay for it or it's expansions. The main site.

[quote]If you used to Play Anarchy Online in the past you can of course use your old install files, however you will need to create a new account to advantage of the freeplay offer.[/quote]

The above is taken from the site, and all I see is it saying "free to play", and in the parts following this passage, nothing says I have to pay for anything. Even the site itself features its "Play for free!" add. -_-
I checked, and just to update my account, I'd have to pay for the expansions, and several times over I have checked to make sure I didnt miss any minor details. The most I could come up in terms of minor details was that the ads running on MMORPG.com were out of date, yet, why would an out of date ad run on the main site itself as well.

Now, my question is simple. Is this game really free, or does funcom (or whoever the hell developed the game) love tricking people?

Honestly, I favor no type of MMO, I've played all kinds (Even the horrible Asia-grind styled MMOs that only the chinese could find enjoyment from), so I am not being biased when i say this, but AO to me does not seem like it is worth the money, not when Tabula Rasa is already out (which i have played the trial for), and seems like it is worth the money to pay.

So. Is the game free? How can Funcom sleep peaceful at night with it's trickery? Is it worth dishing out money to buy a few expansions when I already pay for WoW, and have GW if I feel like a free game?

Go ahead and flame me, i dont mind. I know i can be a real sarcastic/synnical punk at times, so dont hold back.

AO Classic with Notum Wars is totally free. It's subsidized for in-game ads. Every year it is renewed. You never have to pay a monthly subscription fee. I've been happily playing on a Froob account for over 2 years.

There is additional content with the three expansions Shadowlands, Alien Invasion, and Lost Eden. You pay a monthly subscription fee for these, just like people did for AO Classic back in the day, as well as pay for each expansion (although there are package deals).

If you want to learn more about the Froob portion of the game, click the guide in my sig.

I dare say that the game is worth playing, and worth every penny that I've not spent (and many folks who do pay for expansions love to play the game as well). The full extent of Rubi-Ka is open at your feet, and you can level to 200 with a Froob account. If you do decide to pay for expansions, you'll get a game with a mature community and stable servers (for the most part).

Ahh, thank you for telling me. I checked the site several times over in search of anything, and well, the main forums, lacking a search function (which is rather strange considering that is a staple of many forums), did nothing to help. I've been on a bit of an MMO hunt since I hit 70 on WoW, not from boredom of it, but rather the obsurd prices of flying mounts in that game, so while i wait the 2 or so days between each auction, i have somethin to play besides CoD4 and some other things. I'll give classic a try, though i doubt anything would pull me from paying for WoW lol.

And maturity wise, im not expecting much heh, the infamous "Barren's Chat" of WoW is the greatest source of immaturity, so anything can seem mature in comparison lol.

AO gets a lot of ppl leaving to go play WoW, but I've noticed that the mass majority of then come back to AO after a little while, community is great, game is always different (yes, there's the usual grind stuff too), to be honest, I always swore I'd NEVER pay to play, but this game had me in under a month & I've now been playing 3+ years...

People have tastes, you know. Some people like the always-existing-prehistoric-fantasy-style game, like WoW, Silkroad, GW, 2Moons and some other games. I think that there are too many games based on this prehistoric stuff, with all the dragons and such. AO is a total pull from all those games; AO gives you a glimpse of the future. I love sci-fi, so I love AO. I tried to get "addicted" to WoW a few months ago, it didn't work. I tried to get "addicted" again a little while ago, didn't work out as well.

So, it's just the people, who choose what to play...

warning : playing as a froob is free in term of money ...

but very expensive in term of time

Lol, that is so true.

Life? What life???

What you get for 'free' is essentially the same as the 'paying' community had back circa 2002-2003. Funcom isn't 'tricking' anyone about what they offer, it's a full-fledged game you get to play for free.

As for a search function, only paying subscribers logged into the main forums get access to that.

The confusion is due to the "Unclarity" of the game. The AO website and the creators of the game are not clear about anything.

They still have ads telling you to Try EDEN or Buy EDEN, and it takes you to a page that doesn't even show EDEN... not even if you dig!

I am under the impression that they are in for a major site-overhaul soon, since all the things there are failing, crashing the web-browsers, or just seem like endless loops back to the "Buy this game" pages.

I am personally trying to get them to sell HOURS instead of MONTHS, and to create a "Special Credit", which allows you to purchase "You Only" items, that can not be traded in the game, but you can purchase them for others, and also purchase hours for friends accounts too.

Baby steps... Time for the present, because these games are still a little in the past. (Looking forward to that new game-engine, as long as it doesn't triple the game-download time, for those extra graphics!)

CursedSeishi wrote:Honestly, I favor no type of MMO, I've played all kinds (Even the horrible Asia-grind styled MMOs that only the chinese could find enjoyment from), so I am not being biased when i say this, but AO to me does not seem like it is worth the money, not when Tabula Rasa is already out (which i have played the trial for), and seems like it is worth the money to pay.

I personally found Tabula Rasa to be very lacking in gameplay. Sure, the first hundred or so times you cap or defend a CP is a lot of fun. But then you realize you're only level 15, and have 35 more levels of the exact same thing to look forward to. It gets worse when you hit 30 and already have your endgame talent build, because the developers apparently thought 4 skills per class would somehow be enough to build an MMO around.

I wanted to love TR, I really did. It's just not possible. A month in and two level 30ish characters under my belt, I just couldn't stand it anymore.