Two years and counting
One of the largest misconceptions about [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] free-to-play gaming is that the games must be free to all players, at all times, or else they cannot carry the title of "free-to-play." I have made my feelings on the topic known several times. Free-to-play is a general term, just like rock and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] roll or science fiction. There are shades of free-to-play, but there is always one guarantee: You can access some part of the game for free. If you have to buy anything before you can even access the game, it is called freemium, velvet rope, or any other term that we want to come up with that means "not free from the start." Guild Wars is not free-to-play. A [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] like Wizard101, which allows free initial basic access but eventually requires payment to move into deeper areas of the game, is not free-to-play either; it is freemium. Of course, now we can get into discussions about the timing of the required payment, how that further defines the term, and how certain RMT items qualify as content while others do not, but honestly I'm bored of the whole discussion. My rule from now on is to name the game and we can define that particular game. There are simply too [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] many variables.
This is important to note because the argument is often that free-to-play has been a recent invention of greedy developers who want to squeeze every last dime out of players or that only "failing" MMOs resort to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] using free-to-play. The truth is that it was a payment model that was born out of the need to allow players to play and pay how and when they want.
One of the largest misconceptions about [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] free-to-play gaming is that the games must be free to all players, at all times, or else they cannot carry the title of "free-to-play." I have made my feelings on the topic known several times. Free-to-play is a general term, just like rock and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] roll or science fiction. There are shades of free-to-play, but there is always one guarantee: You can access some part of the game for free. If you have to buy anything before you can even access the game, it is called freemium, velvet rope, or any other term that we want to come up with that means "not free from the start." Guild Wars is not free-to-play. A [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] like Wizard101, which allows free initial basic access but eventually requires payment to move into deeper areas of the game, is not free-to-play either; it is freemium. Of course, now we can get into discussions about the timing of the required payment, how that further defines the term, and how certain RMT items qualify as content while others do not, but honestly I'm bored of the whole discussion. My rule from now on is to name the game and we can define that particular game. There are simply too [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] many variables.
This is important to note because the argument is often that free-to-play has been a recent invention of greedy developers who want to squeeze every last dime out of players or that only "failing" MMOs resort to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] using free-to-play. The truth is that it was a payment model that was born out of the need to allow players to play and pay how and when they want.