Read about how the Free MMO category was started and why it still stands and continue to grows today
Before the time of Free MMO's way back in the start 1990's, the prices needed to run an online game to cover its servers and constantly needed game upgrades forced managers to sit back and research for a new angle on where this kind of income can be pulled from.
At first managers decided on top of purchasing the game, a subscription would also be required from its players for the mmo to continue to finance its constant payment of expenses and developer wages. Some of the early payment types actually had the customer instead of paying monthly like we have and know of now, but making them pay hourly!
This progressed into gamers focusing on one mmo at a time due to them not willing to pay for another. Bring on the birth of “World of Warcraft”. This mmo dived in and claimed control of the market. Players where enticed in by its large array of combat and social grouping systems plus its ever expanding nature of new game expansions and new content which left players with always having something different and fun to do.
On this day World of Warcraft dominates the MMO gaming genre. If you're going to pay for a title better off paying for the one that has the more content and players to chat to correct? This was the kind of question that would have kickstarted off the new generation of payment options. Not paying for anything!
The 1st Free MMO's started to appear not soon after WoW claimed its position on the P2P market. At first these small under devolped tiny Free MMO's were reviewed as being poorly made and a shadow compared to their P2P brothers so were ignored by the general player. For the majority this was a correct assumption.
Although with all fingers pointing in the direction of failure these free MMO's begun to aim in the other direction. Pulling in mass amounts of consumers from all over the world and lead to a new payment market, the micro-transaction. Basically Free MMO's are for the most part free although hidden within these little money spinners usually contains an in game shop.
These shops can be used to buy all types of addons for your playing experience. From items to boost your characters stats or clothing to make you stand out from the crowd, this kind of money venture started to do just that and managers were seeing huge amounts of income from consumers.
Now we are starting to see the popular developers 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 P2P to free to play. And that's just 3 at top of my head, there are endless amount to choose from and with the extra plus that they are free you can try them all till you find out which you enjoy without having to pay for a thing!
