From the AO launcher:
Upcoming downtime
Greetings citizens of Rubi-Ka,
We will have a significant period of downtime next week, provisionally starting on Tuesday 7th of August and lasting for approximately 48 hours. This is to allow us to transfer the live servers to an all new state of the art production environment. Exact times and details on the downtime will be announced within the next few days.
Funcom Support Team

im curious is AO now free, or was that a limited time offer? since i hit 70 on WoW with my warrior ive been bored, jus runnin around killin alliance an am looking for something to play in those instances when i am bored, god forbide i find a MW4 pack anywhere or dust off my D2LoD disks

No, it is free forever. The expansions are where the action is. Those are pay (once you get a or all expansions, you are no longer able to go back to free either).