Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (More info?)
So, casting around for a new MMOG to involve myself in, I was told about
Anarchy Online's fantastic offer; the game is free, and a year's play
time is free.
Most games offer a month free time when you buy the game. This is
radically different; I wasn't particularly interested in AO before
seeing this offer, but its just too good to turn down.
So, I went to the web site
http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/news/articles/8387L
which explains the deal. Looks like they are serious, of course the
idea is that I'll want the expansions, which I'll have to pay for and
which will break the "free year" part of the deal.
Thats ok with me, if I like the game I don't mind paying for it, or
paying for play time. I spent 5 years playing EQ1 and bought every
expansion, even the last couple which I didn't really get much use out
of (well, I played a berserker, which I couldn't have done without GOD,
but I didn't really do more than poke my head into GOD zones a couple
times, and only spent about 30 seconds in OOW).
The monthly fee bothers me even less, I've spent more on games in the
couple months since quitting EQ than I spent in a year of EQ
subscription fees; MMOG can be a money saver for me.
So why am I hooked on this free offer? Well, its the buyer's remorse
angle. I look around at all the games I could buy, and then I look at
games I've spent my money on over the years, most recently for example
Temple of Elemental Evil. I spent ten bucks on that game... and I
regret it.
Free, though, well, how can I go wrong? If I like it, I'll get
expansions and pay, most likely. If it turns out not to my taste,
though, I'm out nothing, hard to regret spending nothing.
OK, so I click download. Bah, it doesn't download right away, turns out
you need Bittorrent to download with. Following the links, it looks
like I have to pay at least $19.95. Aha, this is like the stuff they
offer to send you "free" by mail, only they require a "shipping and
handling" fee. I ship swords out by mail occaisionally, and I'll tell
you a deep dark secret; it costs me between five and ten bucks to ship
something, but I charge everyone twenty... whatever is left over is the
"and handling" part. Why do I do this? Because I hate shipping,
because I have to find a box that will fit and make sure the sharp end
doesn't end up poking out and hurting a postal worker (don't want to
disgruntle one), and because I don't want to take the time to figure out
exactly how much to charge when I don't even know what the final weight
of the package will be.
Thats a digression, though, my point is that it looked like "free" was
really going to cost me twenty bucks, and I started wondering what the
kickback arrangement was between Bittorrent and AO. Looking a bit
further though, I'm wrong, you can download Bittorrent without the part
of the arrangement that costs money. I'll have to look at the
arrangement deal and find out what they are trying to sell me... but for
my immediate purposes, just the software is free.
Downloaded that in about ten seconds, back to the AO site. Set up to
download AO; I get some weird Torrent file that takes about half a
second to download. Open that and Bittorrent opens up (along with a
donations page that I guess is part of the freeware package. I'll think
about it.) I specify a destination and at last the real download begins.
150 hours. This time drops steadily till it hits the 40 hour mark more
or less, but that seems to be a real figure. Less than a gigabyte of
content, on a DSL line which claims to give me 54 Mbps, now I don't know
a lot about how these things really work, but doesn't that mean I should
be able to get a gig in less than 18 seconds? Maybe thats 18 minutes?
Whatever, its been an hour so far and I'm at 7%. Now that implies that
the total time will be under 10 hours, but thats the same order of
magnitude as 40 hours, not as 18 seconds.
At the moment, Bittorrent reports a download rate of 6 KiB/s, downloaded
63.3M, out of a total of 817.6 MB.
More curiously, it reports and upload rate of 20 KiB/s and uploaded 165.2M.
Upload? What the heck is that about, I don't want to upload anything do
I? I've uploaded nearly three times as much as I've downloaded, if this
was just about sending the occaisional checksum back upstream to report
on how I'm doing I would expect a really tiny upload compared to download.
So, this first post isn't so much about AO as it is about the download
process itself. I guess I'll check back in a few hours and see how its
going, in the meantime I'll poke around a bit and look at the game
itself as featured on the web site and maybe I can find a Usenet group
for it or something to look at.
I bet I'll be one of the reviled crop of newbies, coming into the game
on a free scholarship like this, I know people railed against the free
magazine offers from CGW and the like back when EQ1 did it. Or maybe
they'll look on us as the potential new blood reviving the game, the way
some looked at the Platinum version newbies in EQ1.
Lance
So, casting around for a new MMOG to involve myself in, I was told about
Anarchy Online's fantastic offer; the game is free, and a year's play
time is free.
Most games offer a month free time when you buy the game. This is
radically different; I wasn't particularly interested in AO before
seeing this offer, but its just too good to turn down.
So, I went to the web site
http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/news/articles/8387L
which explains the deal. Looks like they are serious, of course the
idea is that I'll want the expansions, which I'll have to pay for and
which will break the "free year" part of the deal.
Thats ok with me, if I like the game I don't mind paying for it, or
paying for play time. I spent 5 years playing EQ1 and bought every
expansion, even the last couple which I didn't really get much use out
of (well, I played a berserker, which I couldn't have done without GOD,
but I didn't really do more than poke my head into GOD zones a couple
times, and only spent about 30 seconds in OOW).
The monthly fee bothers me even less, I've spent more on games in the
couple months since quitting EQ than I spent in a year of EQ
subscription fees; MMOG can be a money saver for me.
So why am I hooked on this free offer? Well, its the buyer's remorse
angle. I look around at all the games I could buy, and then I look at
games I've spent my money on over the years, most recently for example
Temple of Elemental Evil. I spent ten bucks on that game... and I
regret it.
Free, though, well, how can I go wrong? If I like it, I'll get
expansions and pay, most likely. If it turns out not to my taste,
though, I'm out nothing, hard to regret spending nothing.
OK, so I click download. Bah, it doesn't download right away, turns out
you need Bittorrent to download with. Following the links, it looks
like I have to pay at least $19.95. Aha, this is like the stuff they
offer to send you "free" by mail, only they require a "shipping and
handling" fee. I ship swords out by mail occaisionally, and I'll tell
you a deep dark secret; it costs me between five and ten bucks to ship
something, but I charge everyone twenty... whatever is left over is the
"and handling" part. Why do I do this? Because I hate shipping,
because I have to find a box that will fit and make sure the sharp end
doesn't end up poking out and hurting a postal worker (don't want to
disgruntle one), and because I don't want to take the time to figure out
exactly how much to charge when I don't even know what the final weight
of the package will be.
Thats a digression, though, my point is that it looked like "free" was
really going to cost me twenty bucks, and I started wondering what the
kickback arrangement was between Bittorrent and AO. Looking a bit
further though, I'm wrong, you can download Bittorrent without the part
of the arrangement that costs money. I'll have to look at the
arrangement deal and find out what they are trying to sell me... but for
my immediate purposes, just the software is free.
Downloaded that in about ten seconds, back to the AO site. Set up to
download AO; I get some weird Torrent file that takes about half a
second to download. Open that and Bittorrent opens up (along with a
donations page that I guess is part of the freeware package. I'll think
about it.) I specify a destination and at last the real download begins.
150 hours. This time drops steadily till it hits the 40 hour mark more
or less, but that seems to be a real figure. Less than a gigabyte of
content, on a DSL line which claims to give me 54 Mbps, now I don't know
a lot about how these things really work, but doesn't that mean I should
be able to get a gig in less than 18 seconds? Maybe thats 18 minutes?
Whatever, its been an hour so far and I'm at 7%. Now that implies that
the total time will be under 10 hours, but thats the same order of
magnitude as 40 hours, not as 18 seconds.
At the moment, Bittorrent reports a download rate of 6 KiB/s, downloaded
63.3M, out of a total of 817.6 MB.
More curiously, it reports and upload rate of 20 KiB/s and uploaded 165.2M.
Upload? What the heck is that about, I don't want to upload anything do
I? I've uploaded nearly three times as much as I've downloaded, if this
was just about sending the occaisional checksum back upstream to report
on how I'm doing I would expect a really tiny upload compared to download.
So, this first post isn't so much about AO as it is about the download
process itself. I guess I'll check back in a few hours and see how its
going, in the meantime I'll poke around a bit and look at the game
itself as featured on the web site and maybe I can find a Usenet group
for it or something to look at.
I bet I'll be one of the reviled crop of newbies, coming into the game
on a free scholarship like this, I know people railed against the free
magazine offers from CGW and the like back when EQ1 did it. Or maybe
they'll look on us as the potential new blood reviving the game, the way
some looked at the Platinum version newbies in EQ1.
Lance
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