Dear Lord, Break These CHAINS of Monetary Oppression!

At AGC, SOE President John Smedley has announced they'll be releasing a free MMO in fall 2006. The revenue model casts aside subscriptions in favor of premium purchases, similar to the item databases and character profiles they have available in EQ2 for an extra fee. It's good business, if you think about it. Guild Wars has over 1,000,000 subscribers, primarily because there's no monthly barrier of entry, which does scare off a huge number of people.

SOE is smart. They're one of the first American companies to understand it makes sense to charge for the crack, not the crackhouse.