[Emil]

Right, I'll provide an example.

But first some background about myself, in case someone accuses me of being a sock puppet.

I've been following the boards both here and the Mudconnector for several years, but don't post very often. I've played text muds for about 10 years, starting very young. I don't run my own game, or imm on any mud. I've built on a few muds in the past, but found it slow and tedious, so I went back to just playing. I don't like graphic games, and I stick to non-commercial text muds, for the simple reason that I am at University, so money is pretty scarse.

At present I play 3 different muds actively, and log on to a few others regularly, just to chat with old friends. Occasionally I try out other muds, mostly out of curiosity, and sometimes get hooked enough to stay, at least for a while.

A couple of years ago I decided to try Achaea. After all, it did have FREE plastered all over its adverts. (Back then it didn't even say 'Free to play', just 'Free'). I browsed the website quickly, and found some generally promoting text claiming it to be "the only text MUD that still matters," and some of the usual links to various details of the game, which I also browsed quickly. No mention about payment that was immediately obvious here.

So I clicked the link 'Quick Start Guide', which provided some more side links that again I browsed quickly. Still no mention about payment, so I clicked the 'Play Now' button and created a character.

I went through the Newbie introduction, which I found a bit tedious. Being a pretty experienced Mud player I don't like being lead around by a ring in the nose and forced to do obvious tasks. I could however appreciate that the introduction would be good for a complete newbie to text muds, so the impression it left was favorable.

Eventually I progressed to the actual game, where I wandered about for a bit, slaughtered some mobs, talked to various players, and made a few friends. Still the impression was favorable, it seemed to be a rather good mud, and people were generally friendly, so I kept playing for a couple of days. However, this was when I first heard people mention 'credits', which apparently was something that had a large impact on the game and that you needed to get along. I got curious, asked around a bit and realised that you were supposed to pay for these credits with real money.

I didn't remember seeing anything about all this on the website, so now I went back to check it again. Being a bit more observant this time, after having heard the word in the mud, I clicked on the credits link at the bottom, which I earlier had dismissed as the place where you pay homage to all the people who have contributed to creating the mud. This was actually a rather easy mistake to make, because that is what the word 'credits' is used for in all Diku based muds, which is what I have mainly been playing.

After seeing the credits list, with the top amount of $579.99 for 2000 credits, I realised that this mud was not for me. It was a bit upsetting because of the friends I'd made, but I decided to make a quick and clean cut.

Did I feel decived? Sure I did.

Did I feel that I had wasted my time? Sure I did.

I also felt very stupid, because I hadn't spotted this before I even logged on. I don't like feeling stupid, which is probably why it left me with a very bad taste in the mouth. I actually even wrote a review for the game, to warn other new players about the hidden costs. That's when I found out that Achaea had blocked all reviews. For a while I was tempted to post about it on the boards here, but eventually I decided to cut my losses and just move on. Until now.

After all, you did ask for an example.