Gravity Interactive has announced that from yesterday all Rose Online servers are free to play. The change in business model has been made to attract new players into the game:

Rose Online has been a part of the Gravity family suite of game titles for several years now. We are going to update ROSE's subscription model to attract more users than ever before.

On July 29 we will be turning the servers over to Free to Play where all accounts in good standing may log in.

On July 15 we have removed the subscription page from the Website. From July 15 through July 29 new subscriptions creation will be unavailable.

It is advised that all Players who utilize the paypal re-occurring subscription model, login to paypal and cancel the re-occurring payment. We will automatically be canceling all remaining re-occurring payments (to not re-occur), around the 22nd.

Any Remaining Subscription time will be credited 60 Mileage points per day (1800/month) that is left of the current subscription Figured from the beginning of the Tuesday maintenance, 10am PDT July 29, 2008.

If you have friends that want to play ROSE but were concerned with the subscription cost now is a great time to invite them to join you on your adventure!

This will be a bright new beginning for ROSE online, come and join us!
Thank you,
Gravity Interactive, Inc. 

As you may have guessed, this is not a game geared primarily towards the hardcore trash-talking, kill-em-all, PK-at-every-opportunity players. There is no graphic violence, no putrid streams of foul language, no grim armor adorned with animal skulls to aspire to at higher levels. Even as a soldier (the character type I played as), the most gruesome costume piece you have is a helmet with ridiculously big horns on it. Instead, players work to uncover mysteries such as who poisoned some local children, animal drug testing(I'm serious), cart building and racing (take a go-kart and multiply the cute factor by about ten gazillion), and some save the world stuff that I unfortunately did not get to. Where other MMOs may rely on raw competition to appeal to players, ROSE's appeal is that it is never quite predictable in what it asks of you, and in this regard it keeps you guessing. One mad scientist, for example, asked me to test his vaccine on some local monsters. Sure, its a standard beat-up-the-monster quest, but somehow its less tedious when its phrased as research. And just like in real life research, in this case your efforts are in vain. Oh no! What to do? Employ logic and try a different tactic in hopes that the path you're on will someday merge with that of the answer.