The first hit's free...
Last week, I got into a discussion with one of my co-workers about the various MMOs we've played. I've beta'd a few, but the only one I really play is City of Heroes/Villains. He's played World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and a few others, but nothing that really worked for him long-term. He found it was too much of a time investment to advance in WoW and GW, and that, especially in GW, the powers you can get are pretty limited.
I got into talking about the powersets in CoX and the fact that you can respec pretty much at any point in your career (and mentioned that it will also become much easier once they bring in the freespec inventions). I raved about the awesome character generator, the trading community, the inventions, the special events, and the frequency of new content being introduced. He said he'd been interested in getting into CoX, but wasn't sure what it would cost or what the game really looked like. Since I have it installed on my workstation at the office (though it's got a crappy video card compared to my one at home), I brought him over to it and fired up the game. I showed him the interface and explained various elements of the game to him, running about with my highest level 'toon, Bricktastic. He'd been worried that all the 'toons would look similar and was pleasantly surprised to see that none of the players looked even remotely alike.
Since he sounded interested enough, I offered to send him an invite to the game, which would give him a 10 day trial, and he took me up on it. I sent out the invite, burned the game client software from my workstation to a DVD and wrote him an e-mail on how to install it so that he wouldn't have to download the 2.5GB client from their site. He sounded pretty enthusiastic about getting it home.
I didn't hear from him all week, as he works at a client site every day but Fridays. I went up and checked with him if he'd been able to get it installed and into the game. He'd had no trouble, and had been able to get in and create both a hero and a villain. While he said he hadn't had much time to play since he'd installed it, he'd played enough that he was getting into The Hollows, Perez Park and Skyway City for missions. He'd been teaming with other folks and getting to see a lot of the villain factions. He'd even participated in one of the many costume contests and won himself 10,000 influence. It sounds like he's quite enjoying himself.
Now he just has to stay on into a paid account, which it sounds like he will, and I'll be given a free month of game play. Another has been brought into the fold. :o)