Free-to-play: Games gratis

Subscription free gaming is on the rise.

If there is a king of online gaming, it is World of Warcraft (WoW) — Blizzard Entertainment’s multiplayer world that has achieved a state of ubiquity when discussing massively multiplayer games.

But the king’s subjects are moving away to other lands; last month, the BBC reported that WoW has lost nearly two million subscribers to date since its peak of 12 million in 2010. And WoW is not alone — games requiring a paid subscription are generally losing ground online, but gamers are finding new worlds to explore as more and more titles change to become free-to-play.

Ironically, gaming titles which shift to a free model often find themselves more profitable and successful than before. Several big names in gaming have made this transition in 2011. Age of Conan — Funcom’s online world based on the books by Robert E Howard reported getting 300,000 new players in August — the first month after going free. Sony claimed last month that DC Universe: Online had over one million new players since its switch to a free model in October. Whereas, earlier in the year Team Fortress 2, Champions Online and City of Heroes can now be used without any fee.

Other brand names are following suit. At the end of November, both Star Trek Online and Earthrise announced they would remove subscriptions at the beginning of 2012.

Subscription free gaming isn’t itself new, although in the past it has been associated with titles that were initially developed with the intent of not charging a price. Often lacking the same amount of development and detail as the more expensive, premium titles, free games have been looked down upon by avid gamers. However, the more recent movement of previously commercial subscription titles to subscription-free gaming is adding a new standard to what players expect from free content.

Probably the most high profile shift was of Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO), developed by Turbine and released in 2006. By 2009, its playerbase was dwindling, but the game was given a new lease of life when the transition was made, and thus it managed to attract hordes of new players — especially because of the extra appeal of it previously being a “premium” game. Numerous features of the game were made inaccessible, as were certain choices that could be made during character creation. But the game also added an online shop allowing these things to be bought individually if and when players wanted, as well as items that might be needed during play.

In short, while the game can be legitimately described as playable for free, playing totally for free also introduces some inconviences — players often pay for some of the convenience to be returned. Alternatively, some choose to continue paying a monthly subscription rate to have all the locked content made accessible. These three concurrent approachs — free but limited, paying piecemeal, and subscribing for all content — have become the standard with the formerly-premium games changing.

However, it is a model that works well, and when Turbine announced the same change for it’s title Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) in 2010, many gamers were surprised. Unlike DDO, LotRO was seen as still successfully running on subscriptions. However, 2010 was a pivotal year — games journalism website Eurogamer recently highlighted an industry report by analysts Screen Digest that it was the first recorded year that income from game subscriptions had fallen. However, in the same time the income from “free” gaming had risen considerably, indeed more than making up the amount lost.

So what does the future hold? Subscription-only titles are becoming rarer, though there are still several titles holding on strong such as Eve Online and Rift, as well as the granddad of MMOs, Ultima Online which is still running on subscriptions 14 years after its release. But even the king WoW itself has acknowledged the attraction of being free-to-play, having started providing a limited amount of free content.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2011.