Jonric: How does adding an item purchase element to the game benefit the players, especially when it has been done as a retrofit? 

Craig Morrison: At the top level, it provides an additional revenue stream, and that always benefits players in the long run. Just as integrated advertising that supports our free play offer, this system generates funding that makes further development viable. This is important; since Anarchy Online is an older title with a stable player base, it lets us focus on maintaining the team, which can then provide more free and paid update content.

The new vehicles also break when players are struck in combat, immediately taking them out of travel mode. This ensures that the existing ones still serve a purpose by allowing players to traverse more dangerous areas.
The production overhead for smaller paid content packs is much less than for full expansions. This allows the team to work on things we add for free, which addresses something that was very problematic in the past since you needed more people for the full expansions.

Jonric: How does the system actually function? How can players put real money in, and is there a minimum purchase amount?

Craig Morrison: On our billing pages, players can buy special Paid Points that let them make special smaller purchases, either through the billing system or in the game. All the normal payment methods we accept apply, including PayByCash for those without access to credit cards.

The cost is $1 or one Euro per 100 points, and players can purchase 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000. They can then spend them in two ways, either on special items available through the billing site, or by transferring them into the game itself, where they can be used at special vendors.

Jonric: For accounts with multiple characters, can players allocate the points among them? And how are you dealing with subscribers?

Craig Morrison: The points that can be transferred to an account get sent to all the characters so each can then spend them independently; i.e. each character gets all the points to use. So, if players want to try different items for different characters they are free to do so. We thought this was an important part of the offering so people didn't feel like they had lost out compared to expansion-style content that is available to all characters on an account; we wanted the paid points to have the same feeling.