Another massively multiplayer online game is nearer to the market this week as The Matrix Online begins its open beta stress test. If you were hoping to get in on the action, well, unfortunately all of the free accounts that Fileplanet were giving away are now gone. However, if you still want to beta test the game, you need only pre-order it to obtain a key as well. It remains to be seen whether or not anyone will tear themselves away from World of Warcraft long enough to even look at this game. Even Everquest has been reportedly losing large numbers of subscribers, to the point where they’ve had to merge servers to keep the user populations high enough. The Matrix Online seems to be stealing a page out of the City Of Heroes book by offering subscribers a free monthly comic book as well. I think it’s gonna take a little more than that to attract players. At the very least I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of free trial period from The Matrix Online in the coming months.