Silkroad Online
Just because a game is free, it doesn’t mean it’s, um, free. To paraphrase George Orwell, some MMO games are free, but some games are more free than others.
Many of these games take a different approach to earning back operating costs. Some examples are as follows:
- Eternal Lands is free…if your character is a human, elf, or dwarf. But if you want to play a high-powered race, such as the Orchans, it’ll set you back a donation of a few bucks.
- Yet another “free” model is Uru Live: Myst Online, which technically is only free if you subscribe to GameTap. GameTap is a $5/month service that gives players a buffet of videogames. With almost 1,000 games, this works out to $.05 per game—and let’s not forget their television offerings. (Alternatively, you’re paying $5/month for an MMO and getting close to a thousand other games for free.) So Uru Live might not be free, but it’s darned close.
- Some MMOs, like Shadowbane, are free, but players have to watch advertising. This is akin to commercial television, where audiences watch television ads; by contrast, paying a monthly fee is more akin to the UK’s British Broadcasting Company, which charges its audience for an annual television license. BBC viewers do not see advertising.
- Then there’s Kingdom of Loathing (KOL), a witty browser-based game so graphically spare that it could be described as the punk rock of MMO games. Creator Zack Johnson says the game is free because it initially had little content. “There was basically no way it was worth a monthly fee of even a dollar.” But Johnson manages to take in money each month by charging players $10 for a in-game item that gives a slight advantage and is only available for that month. These microtransactions also keep MMOs like Rappelz and MapleStory afloat.
- Guild Wars charges players for the initial purchase of the game ($30 will get you a copy of the original game, more for the more recent campaigns and expansions). But other than the one-off cost, the game is free.
- Although Anarchy Online (AO) originally charged $14.95 a month (cheaper if a year’s worth is purchased ahead of time), the Funcom company added a free version to their business model, with more developed content available for their paying members.
Morrison said, “With our expansion content being very clearly separated from the original game it gave us the ability to split the game up. It was relatively easy for us to make the definition between areas that could be used by free players while maintaining the newer expansion areas as something exclusive for paying subscribers.”
