“[…] eventually you end up with a game that’s designed more like a slot machine than half-life 2.” – Notch, on F2P games

Nils posted last night about a post on Mind Bending Puzzles discussing the payment model of Memoir:44, a game labeled as free-to-play on Steam.  As it turns out the game isn’t actually free to play (surprise!), as you have to pay for each game you play after a certain amount of free games – a […]

You’ve probably heard about Glitch, the new bloodless MMO by tiny speck. It features a complex crafting system, all kinds of skill specializations and, most importantly, some very weird humor. I’ll admit, I had a laugh when I was first tasked with milking a butterfly, a task that required me to massage (with lotion!) said […]

“Facebook games are invariably free to play. “Free to play” is a clever little phrase which masks the idea that they are possibly not free to enjoy.” – Tim Rogers

I’m finally (after lots of unnecessary trouble) a VIP (which means a paying subscriber) for Lord of the Rings Online again. That means unlimited access to the game right? Let me try going to this new zone. Great, I can do all the quests without being hassled about buying them. It’s working! I’ll just clear […]

Longasc was so nice to give me detailed tips on how to continue my LotRO “career” over on Google+ following my last post. While I did (and still have) various reasons for not wanting to subscribe to the game, I eventually decided to do so on Saturday. I’ll be on holidays for two weeks starting […]

I’ve finally managed to get back into Lord of the Rings Online somewhat and out of the zone I’d been stuck in for ages. I even used the item shop, though I didn’t spend any money yet but used the points I got for owning both expansions instead. Those points got me a new zone […]

“To a game’s developer, buying gold or leveling is akin to telling them their game is so bad, you’ll actually pay money to avoid having to play it.” – Simon Ludgate, on Gamasutra

When Warhammer Online introduced the endless free trial, I was all over that. You could continue playing the most interesting aspect of the game forever without paying, basically introducing a casual PvP minigame you could play for free. Awesome. Now World of Warcraft has an endless free trial as well, except it is awful. Now […]

One often praised advantage of so-called free-to-play games is that you get to play sporadically without having to worry about wasting a subscription when you are not playing. Does this actually work for people in MMOs though? Ever since LotRO went F2P I plan to drop in and finally experience all those praise-worthy parts of […]