From pay to play to free online RPG Games

Posted by vijayvinson on February 18th, 2013

With the release of new games on a monthly basis, the MMORPG list has grown considerably in the last few years and the good news is that more and more free online RPG expand players’ options. Games of this type are usually large projects and require a significant number of people working on them, there aren’t just programmers, developers and testers but also graphic and sound artists, customer service, game masters, forum masters, etc. The technology that allows players to connect to a game server and interact with thousands of other gamers is not new but it’s continually improved and polished to deliver a smooth and bug free gaming environment. Last but certainly not least, the hardware parts for servers and the necessary staff to maintain and keep everything working properly is not an expense that can be so easily neglected. Companies spend lots of money (usually millions) to make a MMO game and even after the game is released there are still maintenance and updates expenses. Gamers usually pay for the initial purchase fee to cover the costs for game development and the monthly subscription is required for maintenance, customer service and game updates.

Most of the veteran free online RPG started with a pay to play business model and ultimately decided that switching to free to play and premium options is a better option than shutting down the game servers forever. The decision to switch from pay to play to free to play is taken into consideration when the playerbase starts to decrease at alarming rates. All pay to play games start with different types of servers (PvP, PvE, RP, RPPvE, RPPvP) but when the playerbase shrinks the costs to maintain a large number of servers are bigger than the subscription income and the game doesn’t make enough profit. When this happens and the game becomes free to play, most of the game servers are closed and all the players migrate to one (or two) special free to play servers. The free MMORPG list has 2 categories of games: those that still require an initial purchase fee to download the game (or buy it from a store) with no monthly costs and those that go fully free to play with no download or monthly fee.

Everquest 2 was released in 2004 as pay to play, became free to play in 2011 and it’s one of the most popular games on the free MMORPG list. Some of the features that make it so popular even after almost 9 years are lots of classes and race variety. It’s one of the free online RPG with lots of quests that keep players busy even for years, Everquest 2 has more than 9000 quests. There are 12 expansions and adventure packs that add new content, upgrades and improvements. Everquest 2 is developed and published by Sony Online Entertainment in collaboration with other major game publishers.

The Secret World is one game on the MMORPG list that has an optional monthly subscription but a mandatory purchase fee. One of the differences between The Secret World and other free online RPG is the lack of the class system. Players are not required to pick a class when creating a character, the game has a system that allows players to change play style anytime in game. The questing system has main missions, side missions, dungeon missions and puzzle missions. The Secret World is developed by Funcom, the company that also handles Age of Conan, and published by Electronic Arts.

We have an enormous MMORPG list on our gaming portal. You will find all types of games from browser based to free online RPG.