Anarchy Online 30 day free time play offer expires December 31, 2008

It’s that holiday time of year again for non-paid subscribers of the sci-fi MMORPG Anarchy Online by Funcom. Funcom is based in Oslo, Norway.

I clicked the big “click here” link and was taken to Funcom to login. No further message anywhere about the offer. After logging into Funcom the status message for Anarchy Online showed: “status open, log in and play the game”

And so begins the infamous and sometimes frustrating (crashed on me while writing this) patching process. The last time I played Anarchy Online was when they were offering free play until January 15, 2008. I’m curious though how the “next payment due” screen showed 2009-01-15 when I clicked through the offer on December 3, 2008. They actually are giving me 42 days free, yes/no?

Not complaining about the extra free play time, but kind of curious what is the story. There is a “play for free” link on the official site that when clicked takes you to a page that describes:

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.

This is kind of strange, so they are encouraging users to setup additional accounts to be able to play the new content for free? And for how long?

FUNCOM Stock (Oslo: FUNCOM.OL) is trading at $2.75 down like so many other stocks from a high of over $50 in July of this year. This was a two year low according to Joystiq (Age of Conan servers merging, stock hits 2-year low). The bump mid year in the stock over the $28 it was selling for a year ago was most likely due to the Age of Conan launch. I tried to get into Age of Conan at launch, but it didn’t grab me. Three months ago Age of Conan director Gaute Godager has departed from Funcom and was replaced by Anarchy Online director Craig Morrison (Age of Conan director leaves Funcom, Anarchy Online director given the reins).

Analyst firm Parks Associates said in a recent report that game companies should give up the fees:

The analyst found that just two per cent of gamers in the US who do not currently play MMORPGs are interesting in joining a new subscription-based game. By contrast, 14 per cent would be willing to play a game that offered free access.

If you are going to charge Sony might have the right idea by offering a station pass which gives access to all their games (including Everquest, EQII, Vanguard, Pirates,etc.), but man, $30/month seems steep considering you can only play one game at a time.

Not sure how to take the Anarchy Online offers, if they are just promoting in hard times or they are desperate. Whatever the case, players get some free time to check out what’s happened the last year.