Before the introduction of Free MMO’s way back in the start 90’s, the prices needed to run an online game to cover its servers and constantly needed game expansions forced managers to sit back and look for a new direction on where this kind of cash can be pulled from.
At first managers decided on top of purchasing the game, a annual subscription would also be required from its consumers for the title to continue to finance its constant wave of expenses and wages. Some of the first payment types actually had the gamer instead of paying every month like we have and know of now, but making them pay hourly!
This progressed into consumers concentrating on one title at a time due to them not willing to pay for another. Insert the birth of “World of Warcraft”. This title dived in and grabbed control of the market. Consumers where fixed in by its huge array of combat mechanics and player grouping systems plus its ever growing nature of new game expansions and new content which left consumers with always having something different and interesting to do.
On this day World of Warcraft runs the online gaming market. If you’re having to pay for a title better off paying for the one that has the highest amount of content and players to chat to right? This was the kind of question that would have fired off the new generation of payment models. Not paying at all!
The 1st Free MMO’s started to land not soon after World of Warcraft stamped its position on the P2P (pay to play) market. At 1st these mini developed tiny Free MMO's were judged as being poorly designed and a shadow compared to their P2P (pay to play) counterparts so were disregarded by the general gamer. For the majority this was a safe assumption.
Although with all fingers pointing in the direction of failure these free MMO’s started to aim in the other direction. Pulling in large amounts of consumers from all over the world and with it a new payment option, the micro-transaction. Basically Free MMO’s are for the most part free however within these little money spinners usually contains an in game store.
These shops can be used to aquire all types of trinkets for your gaming experience. From items to aid you in leveling or goods to make you stand out from everyone else, this kind of money market started to do just that and companies were seeing huge amounts of income from consumers.
Now we are starting to see the bigger companies take on the genre of Free MMO’s with big title games such as Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online and Conan all making the change from pay to play (P2P) to F2P. And that’s just 3 to name, there are huge amount to choose from and with the extra plus that they are free you can test drive them all till you find out which you enjoy without having to pay for a thing!
If you are interested in looking at more check out some of these Free MMO's feel free check out this site http://planetmmos.com and read reviews and news about many Free FPS titles and many other top titles.
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