Funcom does the Mythic

Might this be the new way to maintain a stable "customer" base? I mean, even if those players aren't paying, they are paying, thus they count towards the stats. Age of Conan might have, let's say, 10k or 20k new players playing on White Sands, some of them finally subscribing (I'm being quite optimistic with the numbers here, I know); if there were 100k accounts before (which at this very moment, I doubt), it would mean a really big increase in the player number, but players wouldn't really be playing the game, but just a very anecdotal part of it.

I'm pretty sure, that this movement only tries to get as many players as possible to subscribe, but the MMO market has become a place where numbers speak for your game better (or at least "more") than anything else. Do you think we'll see more offers like this in the future in other MMOs? I certainly do.