MMO Gaming is not dead. When over 10 million people across the globe are involved in 1 title alone, it is indisputable whether or not the industry still has a pulse.

There have been fairly large debates in recent years over the need for pay-to-play experiences vs. the new age free-to-play / 'freemium' models available. When you observe the majority of what is considered 'hardcore' MMO gamers or simply midcore long-term fans, the greatest percentage of these players are tied to a P2P title.

F2P if done very carefully and very.. well, right can work for the right type of game and the right audience. The model works really well for matchmaking type games and MOBA's.

As a developer it baffles me how some seem to think that it is robbery to have a pay / subscription-based structure for a title. 6 months of work on a moderate content update can cost a company hundreds of thousands and into millions of dollars to produce and market. For one-off titles and games that release smaller content updates, and much more infrequent 'new' game play elements freemium is fine in some cases.

Don't expect AAA MMO's to turn free to play, and make sure your developers actually get paid so they can continue to provide you with meaningful and robust content for years to come. If you buy into a game and find that it isn't for you take what you learned from your experience playing the game and help narrow your search to find the title that is more to your liking.

Yes, tactics come into play occasionally where some devs give you a first month free but only if a CC is attached for the second month and it raises some eyebrows and can make an individual feel shaky and untrustful. But it doesn't change the fact that large MMO's take years of development and millions of dollars to develop, produce, and market. It can be a little insulting when some players just expect free access. If the games content is not to your satisfaction and you deem it unworthy of your financial investment the answer is simple: Don't invest your hard earned money. This principal alone will trend to making companies more responsible for their content and quality assurance policies.

Yes, some titles that are Free to Play and advertise as such may be free, and some of them may give you access to a lot or most all of the games areas. However they will gate content behind a pay wall, and some games like ToR and... TFIR (get it?) have a great disparity between its paying and non paying customers for what they can actually do in the game.

I encourage and advise those wanting to try a game to insist on trial periods for MMO's, or limited free access days to give players a chance to look at the game unhindered. But do not jump straight to the option that denies developers an income and potentially reduces the games population because you want everything to be free.