Free to play MMORPGs have a rather nasty reputation for being of poor quality, having poor customer service, and are often avoided by the majority of gamers due to these stigmas that the gaming community has put on F2P games. Are these stigmas justified?
Customer Service
The reputation of having poor customer service is generally true in over 90% of the F2P games, some lack any customer service whatsoever. Most have customer service, however, they take a very long to respond and generally give automated responses or unsatisfactory responses. I've played many F2P games and I've honestly only seen one F2P game with proper customer service, and that is Riot Games, creator of League of Legends. That is one company out of around 50 that I've encountered playing F2P games.
Quality of Gameplay
Most F2P developers use dirty tactics to rope people in. Pretty much 99% of F2P games lose their fun factor around halfway through the leveling process. There are exceptions to this of course, but most of those exceptions are ex-pay to play games such as Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. The general tactic here is to bring people in, have them feel like the game is incredibly fun by offering nice starting areas with seemingly fun gameplay, then about halfway through the leveling process hit them with either a severe lack of quests or an obscene amount of experience that you need to gain to level up. This of course is not true for every single game but it is for at the very least 75% of them.
What does Free really mean?
Free doesn't really mean free, the company has to make money somehow and would be a terrible business tactic to make a F2P game without some sort of micro transaction shop. Unfortunately, the majority of F2P games favor the heavy spender, and for those heavy spenders the cost of being the top players in the world in their respective game could cost them well into the thousands of dollars range, there are some that even go well over that into the tens of thousands of dollars just to have all the best gear, pets, etc. To put this in perspective, take a free to play game such as Battle of the Immortals for an example:
Cost of a good pet: $80
Cost of upgrading that pet: ~$60-500 purely based on luck
Cost of putting skills on that pet that are top notch: $3,000
Cost of upgrading gear to the highest level: $1,000-10,000 purely based on luck
So you're probably thinking "Who in the world would pay this much?!?!?!". Well, if you log in to Battle of the Immortals and look at the Pet Leaderboard, all the top 100 or so pets cost this much. I didn't even count in a lot of the other things people spend their money on in that game.
Now, lets compare the lowest possible cost in Battle of the Immortals to SIX YEARS of a subscription to World of Warcraft. The lowest possible cost in BoI is $4,140 to remain competitive at top ranks. The cost of six years worth of subscription of WoW equals around $1,040 plus the original game and expansions equals around $1,200. On top of all of that, the majority of people play a F2P game for around 3 months, even the top players typically play for a year or two. So a year or two of BoI = 4x more than 6 years of subscription to World of Warcraft, which is often criticized for being pay to play.
The good thing is if you want to be mediocre at best, you can play these F2P games for completely free. I threw Battle of the Immortals under the bus here but I actually play the game and enjoy it. Sure, I'll never be top notch because I won't spend over $10 on a F2P game, but I am content with that when the game is fun to play, a lot of people aren't though and will spend $1,000 on a game they've played for a few months. If you are easily tempted with phat loots that you can get by simply entering in your credit card information, stay far away from most F2P games.
Are All F2P MMORPGs Really That Bad?
Although most F2P developers are money hungry and have expensive items that boost your character far above every non-payer, there are a few good ones that don't require any money whatsoever and their micro transactions consist of primarily cosmetic items/potions/exp boosts. Nothing to really break the game when someone spends $10,000 as mentioned above when talking about Battle of the Immortals.
Here are some examples of great F2P MMORPGs that don't have a high cost:
Vindictus - Fantastic game with a very cheap micro transaction shop that doesn't really have anything in it outside of cosmetic items or potions. It is better than most MMORPGs on the market and its completely free!
League of Legends - Extremely fun DotA type game. If you've never played Defense of the Ancients, Heroes of Newerth, or League of Legends before, you're really missing out on this great genre of hardcore skill-based player versus player combat. Nothing in the game requires money except for cosmetic items that alter your character's appearance, everything else can be gained through just playing games!
Maplestory - I know what you're thinking... "Maplestory, that game that is for 10 year olds?!?!" Yeah, but it is really not just for kids, it actually has a really fun combat system and is updated very regularly. I don't play it much anymore but when I used to, I had a blast. Maplestory is from the same developer that created Vindictus and has a similarly cheap micro transaction shop that doesn't offer anything game breaking, purely cosmetic.
Fiesta - I know this game is very cartoony and somewhat old, however, it is very regularly updated and is actually quite fun. The micro transaction shop is relatively cheap and only has cosmetic items/potions/exp cards. My only complaint here is that you have to pay to get a mount, which is fine since you don't necessarily need it, but eh, make your own judgement on it as to whether or not that bothers you.
Other great F2P MMORPGs that I suggest you check out. (note, these are broken by big spenders, but are still fun)
Battle of the Immortals - Yeah, you have to pay a ton of money to become one of the top players. It is still a very well made game and is incredibly fun. It is a Diablo style game that offers some incredible looking armor and some awesome events. The game is updated fairly rarely and the customer service is poor, so those are things to keep in mind as well.
Forsaken World - You can buy gold and whatnot with real money which is a giant red flag right there. Not to mention the severe lack of quests once you hit level 35+. Despite these problems it is actually an incredibly fun game that rivals World of Warcraft in quality, unfortunately the same can't be said about the customer service or the late-game content.
Summary
From a business's point of view, the free to play structure is like a dream come true. Two dying MMOs (Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online) that went free to play more than doubled their profits due to replacing their monthly subscription with a micro transaction shop.
Is this the future? I think so. The monthly subscription business model is a dying breed that probably won't be resurrected any time soon, until people see the truth behind these "free" to play MMORPGs at least. Since World of Warcraft no game has really profited much off of the monthly subscription model, so one can only assume that businesses around the world will be pursuing the vast amounts of money to be had from the F2P model.
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