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Atyreus · 01-12-2006, 08:42 PM

But there's a significant difference between the first two examples and the last example. A client is required to play Guild Wars. Registration is required to play Threshold beyond about the first 100 hours. Paying to compete is NOT required to play IRE muds.

Guild Wars could be accused of false advertising if they simply advertised themselves as "free to play" without qualification. I'm not going to try and guess exactly where advertising regulations would fall on a game like Threshold claiming to be "free to play," but the fact that banks, internet service providers, porn sites, etc., adhere to pretty strict standards when advertising services with free trial periods, I think it's fairly safe to say that they'd be on questionable ground. On the other hand, IRE's use of the claim "free to play" is promising a free service in a manner that is widely understood and accepted by consumers (and, as has been pointed out, by the FTC). That a few vocal posters have decided to take issue with this fact doesn't make this any less true. Nor is there anything particularly arbitrary about accepting IRE's use of "free to play" but not some of the one's you've tried to argue would be legitimate by the same standards, particularly since the issue isn't the literal or implied meaning of the phrase itself but the use of the phrase in the context of advertising a service in a manner that most consumers would understand and accept as a fair claim.

01-12-2006, 08:42 PM	#359
Atyreus Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Home MUD: The Dreaming City Posts: 60	But there's a significant difference between the first two examples and the last example. A client is required to play Guild Wars. Registration is required to play Threshold beyond about the first 100 hours. Paying to compete is NOT required to play IRE muds. Guild Wars could be accused of false advertising if they simply advertised themselves as "free to play" without qualification. I'm not going to try and guess exactly where advertising regulations would fall on a game like Threshold claiming to be "free to play," but the fact that banks, internet service providers, porn sites, etc., adhere to pretty strict standards when advertising services with free trial periods, I think it's fairly safe to say that they'd be on questionable ground. On the other hand, IRE's use of the claim "free to play" is promising a free service in a manner that is widely understood and accepted by consumers (and, as has been pointed out, by the FTC). That a few vocal posters have decided to take issue with this fact doesn't make this any less true. Nor is there anything particularly arbitrary about accepting IRE's use of "free to play" but not some of the one's you've tried to argue would be legitimate by the same standards, particularly since the issue isn't the literal or implied meaning of the phrase itself but the use of the phrase in the context of advertising a service in a manner that most consumers would understand and accept as a fair claim.