TERA MMO Reaps the Benefits of F2P and Hits 1.4M Players
Recently, quite a few MMOs have made the leap from traditional subscription models to the free-to-play model that's been so popular and successful in Asian markets. Even Blizzard's MMO giant World of Warcraft adopted the new model to an extent by making the game free-to-play up to level 20.
It appears that the mass exodus to F2P was a good move, at least for most developers. For Paragon Studios, the transition wasn't enough for City of Heroes, which shut down late last year.
Thankfully, En Masse Entertainment is having a little more luck with TERA. Since the developer made the switch to free-to-play back in February this year, the MMO's seen quite a jump in its player base. TERA's crossed the 1.4 million player mark and there's apparently been a tenfold increase in the amount of concurrent players.
"We've been blown away by the waves of players logging into TERA, and we're seeing amazing growth in both registrations and daily users. It's always great to eclipse the one-million-player mark, and at our current rate, it won't be long before we hit two million," said En Masse CEO Chris Lee.
To celebrate TERA's increasing numbers, En Masse is hosting a five-day Dracoloths Rising Event, allowing players to fight new large monsters and gain special item drops.
In the game there are rarely any new players (the ones I met never bought any shop items).
All you see is alt-characters running around, RPing and doing stuff. Like hide n' seek. Kinda sums up the end game possibilities of TERA.
Why do u think google/youtube and facebook even this site can provide full service without charging? THINK.
And also, TERA's gameplay/combat is the best out there. Could be better, but it's way more user dependent than all other MMORPGs and that's in a good way.
Cheers!
Better yet, integrate advertising subtlety. Like change skins on bill boards in town/city hubs with ads designed to fit into the genre. Just an idea.
EA did this in BF2142 - Intel and the Batman movie were ones i remember seeing.
The firing of 80+ employees of Paragon Studios was unexpected, as the staff was actively working on new updates and was on the verge of releasing the latest one (of over two dozens).
NCSoft's decision to shut down CoH was never about lack of revenue, as Aion and other titles have been draining NCSoft revenues where CoH was still bringing in money, and consistently so since going F2P.