The IncGamers interview with Erling Ellingsen is an interesting read, but this question in particular sparked my interest:

There are many other MMOs of the same genre, and players can only afford so many subscriptions. Blizzard said earlier this week that it’s possible WoW will be free to play with microtransactions one day, would you ever consider changing AoC to a free to play model?

We’re certainly not ruling anything out, but we don’t have any current plans for that. However, we’ve had huge success going free-to-play with our other MMO Anarchy Online, and we strongly believe its a viable business strategy for these kinds of games.

Anarchy Online is still alive and kicking. It recently celebrated its eight year anniversary, so Funcom certainly knows a thing or two about free to play games.