Before the introduction of Free MMO’s way back in the early 90’s, the expenses needed to run an MMORPG to cover its servers and constantly needed game upgrades forced companies to sit back and discover a new direction on where this kind of cash can be pulled from.
At first companies decided on top of buying the MMO, a subscription would also be needed from its customers for the game to continue to finance its constant payment of bills and wages. Some of the first payment models actually had the customer instead of paying monthly like we have and know of now, but having them pay hourly!
This progressed into players concentrating on one game at a time due to them not caring to pay for a second. Insert the birth of “World of Warcraft”. This game dived in and claimed reigns of the market. Players where fixed in by its emense array of combat utilities and online grouping systems plus its ever expanding nature of new game expansions and new content which left players with always having something new and fun to do.
even on this day World of Warcraft dominates the online gaming market. If you’re having to pay for a game better off paying for the one that has the highest amount of content and players to chat to right? This was the kind of query that would have sparked off the new generation of payment models. Not paying for anything!
The first Free MMO’s started to arrive on the scene not long after World of Warcraft claimed its position on the pay to play market. At first these mini under devolped tiny Free MMO’s were judged as being poorly designed and a shadow compared to their pay to play counterparts so were shrugged off by the general gamer. For the majority this was a correct assumption.
Although with everything pointing in the direction of failure these free MMO’s started to move in the other direction. Pulling in mass amounts of players from all over the world and lead to a new payment option, the micro-transaction. In simple terms Free MMO’s are for the most part free however hidden within these little gems usually contains an in game store.
These shops can be used to buy all types of things for your gaming experience. From items to increase the power of your character or goods to make you stand out from everyone else, this kind of money making started to do just that and developers were seeing huge amounts of income from players.
Now we are starting to see the bigger companies take on the market 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 to name, there are many to choose from and with the extra bonus that they are free you can test them all till you find out which you like without having to pay for a thing!
If you would like to 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.


