[Suicide Boy]

The word "free" has been abused throughout recent Western history — in television and radio commercials, magazine ads, junk mail, and other forms of advertisement; at automobile dealerships; and of course in the public relations aspect of MUDs and other forms of online gaming.

In my opinion, "completely free" should mean that there's no option to receive a perk of any kind by paying money to the developer. Otherwise, you're lying — or, at the very least, being disingenuous. If you're not being entirely up-front about your business model, you're not being completely honest. That's simple fact.

Personally, I consider it an insult to my intelligence when companies or individuals try to obfuscate their full business model "until I'm addicted" or "until I'm sucked in." I don't like being treated like a ruminant herd animal.

Threshold (is it any secret that New Worlds and Threshold are direct competitors at this point?) handles this particular issue much better, in my opinion. Frogdice doesn't blatantly advertise their registration system, but neither do they claim that Threshold is any flavor of "free." Also, registration is mentioned to new players early on, and the costs and rewards are fully documented and explained.

If players can trade their real-life wealth for IC wealth (and/or perks and XP), your game ain't "completely free" — end of story. It's free to play, a term I personally hate but which everyone recognizes and understands these days. It means you don't have to pay a dime to play, but if you don't ever want to pay, it will take you a lot longer to make money and get certain powerful/helpful items (if you're able to get them at all).

Many, many pay-for-perks MUDs are guilty of hiding the magnitude of their pay-for-perks systems, by which I mean letting players know just exactly what they can get for their donations and how "screwed" they'll be if they won't/can't donate. Kudos to those that aren't like that.