14 DAY TRIAL // The MMORPG market is a very competitive one, with plenty of titles out there to duke it out. However, none of them are really good enough to dethrone the King of the Hill, World of Warcraft so all they're left with is fighting amongst themselves in hopes that all the blood and gore of their struggle might attract someone’s attention. One or two titles tried to challenge WoW, and only succeeded in the way that when they were awarded second and third place their name was in the same sentence as the over-11-million-subscriber colossus from Blizzard.
Not even completely free MMORPGs have gotten really far, but that is because a free game self-imposes some great limitations upon itself. A developer team fed only dreams and “tomorrow never dies”-checks is entitled to giving up somewhere along the way. But a hybrid character might succeed where the standard class failed. Recently, Dungeons & Dragons Online decided that they should make the monthly fee an optional trait for the game. It may seem like a really bad idea, since it's the very thing any MMO feeds on to exist, but then again all innovation is regarded with skepticism.
But like any new idea, it seems to be working. Whether it does so because it's really good or just because its new and everybody likes shiny things remains to be seen. What is clear, is that ever since DDO's monthly fee became optional, a score of players have joined the community. Predictable as this may be, the next chapter is a bit of a shock. Apparently, the number of paying subscribers has increased by 40 percent. Players didn't really care about the game when it was free, but now that they have to give up money that would have been otherwise been used for food, things have become dangerous, exiting and obviously appealing to them.
Besides the extra money the game receives from its extra monthly fees, funds are pouring in from other sources as well. "All aspects of our business are growing. Hundreds of thousands of new players in the world are playing for free, with a very high percentage using the store," said DDO executive producer Fernando Paiz. "We have a good chunk of the population that is spending more than $15 a month," he added. "The traditional subscription model can only make X dollars off a player. This kind of removes that cap." The game must be really good or just incredibly addictive if once played for free it determines players to do so in exchange for money.