Massively

Blue Mars will be free to play, but you'll have to spend real money to get in-game currency in order to participate in the world's economy (it hasn't yet been decided whether users will be allowed to "cash out" a la Entropia Universe). Since users can't create objects, money-making activities will tend towards the service-oriented: tour guide services are expected to be in demand, and even private police forces were mentioned as a potential in-world "employment" opportunity. There will be player housing and furnishings available to purchase, and clothing and accessories to deck out your avatar, but all of these will made by third party developers. When asked about the firm stance against player created objects, Mr. Chen cited reasons of quality control as paramount -- Avatar Realities wants only the highest quality goods and environments available to user experience within the world.

Asked what would draw a player to Blue Mars as opposed to other casual virtual world environments like Second Life, Chen cited the amazing scenery as being reason enough to want to habit the world. We should expect to see the "biggest waterfalls ever; things you could see nowhere else" on a trip across Avatar Realities' version of the red planet. Terrain data for the world is being pulled directly from NASA, making Blue Mars an intriguing mix of accurately rendered geography and imagined, futuristic civilization. Even fast travel has been designed with the goal of sight-seeing in mind: once you've been to a particular set of waypoints, you gain a time-compressed travel functionality between them that won't be teleportation, but some variation of vehicular transport that allows you to see the scenery while travelling.

It sounds like there will be a lot to see on Blue Mars, but will there be a lot to do? That will be the primary question to be answered once we get our mitts on the closed beta late next year.