rpanons | It's just like my japanese yaois

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I think there's a sort of divide (if only mentally) between technically free to play MMOs (like Ragnarok), and big promoted titles like WOW or Final Fantasy XIV. ESO is pretty obviously trying to be the second; there's a kind of perception that going from the latter to the former is essentially giving up (like you said a lot of those games were in their death throws. RIP City of Heroes).

That's assuming that anon didn't interpret pay to play as "not free", which would be a true statement. Every mmo wants your money.

There is that stigma, yes. City of Heroes is a sad case, though. It was doing fine and could have lived on for years if it weren't under NCSoft's thumb. Paragon Studios was actually trying to buy themselves out of NCSoft ownership and almost had a deal signed when NCSoft's upper management abruptly decided to shut the studio down and kill the game off. There were stories on Gamasutra about it.

Also, generally I've seen "pay to play" as a synonym for the subscription model. However, there is one MMO I can think of that is completely free to play—Myst Online: Uru Live (http://mystonline.com/en/). No subscription, no microtransactions. They do take donations to help offset costs, but that's entirely voluntary and you don't miss out on anything by not paying.

Part of the reason Cyan Studios can afford to get away with this is that they've been adamant about making the game open-source (as they mention on the front page), but it's been a real case of doing it for the art, because Cyan's not doing so well financially (RAWA mentioned that he voluntarily took a pay cut to make sure the studio stayed afloat a few years ago).

It's just like my japanese yaois

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