MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy has a few ideas for the games he believes might go free to play in The List this week. Some of the games may surprise you to find on The List, others not so much. Either way, the trend for so-called premium games going free to play is now established with DDO, LOTRO, EQ II and PotBS all going that route in the last several months. See if you agree with Bill's assessment of which games might (or should) go free to play. Let us know what you think!

There’s sort of a running bet around the virtual offices here at MMORPG.com about which game will try to hop onto the F2P model next. Just this week we watched as Pirates of the Burning Sea announced their switch over to the more “new user friendly” model. Turbine’s DDO has started a tidal wave through the industry as it realizes that there may be better financial success through experimentation with new business models. Everyone seems to be trying something a little different, as in Everquest II’s splitting their service between vanilla EQ2 and EQ2 Extended.

Read more of The List.

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...think it's up to us to make the list :P

I would have said "Star Wars Galaxies"

Besides ticking off their entire player base with the NGE. It should be F2P, even then they might not get numbers.

In my opinion, a game must be built to be F2P, in order to retain anything.  Taking a game that is not built on that model, can not work very long.  Let's look at Warhammer;  Players already have the ability to change the appearance of their gear, so to me, I'm not going to spend dollars to look pretty.  The game revolves, like many MMO's, the shiny loot, and you said it best, the "Pay to Win" Model will back fire quickly and decisively.

As for paying for other classes and or races.  The way Mythic is known for adding those things?  Essentially what you are saying is the same thing as "Pay to Win"  You might see an increase at the inception, but I'll bet a dramatic fall off shortly there after.

Me 2 cents on it.

Well, apparently WAR is on  the list, judging by the screenshot. Any other guesses before they fix the link?

The list is normally 5 games... Lets see if I can come up with 5 games...

WAR (for sure)

SWG (most likely)

Lineage II (to compete with the private servers and give a new impulse to the game)

STO (after all sh!t that has happened to the game it would not surprise me :D)

AoC (game had a short peak with the expansion and is dieing again)

"Lineage II must eventually find some way to stand out from the thong of new titles."

:D

I know the Freemium model is all the rage these days due to DDOs success, but I suspect the next big wave is customizable monthly payments.  That might work for WAR - where you pay for the things you enjoy and have no access to the things you don't.

For instance, Tier 1 and all it's content is free as a trial.  For a couple of bucks a month you can have access to each other Tier.  For a small charge on top of that you can have scenarios, and so on.

If they get creative enough with the parcelling, you could have a greatly customized experience for the player, while the developers have instant, unambiguous feedback on which systems players don't feel worth their money.

I think Fallen Earth should go F2P.... but there's really not an easy way to make it F2P... that just a pipe dream of mine so I can add FE to my gaming repertoire.

Most people play WAR for free anyways. I think WAR would do ok, but I would be affraid of them taking it to far. Like others have said it could/would go P2win.

I would like to see a game go in the opposite direction. I love would love to see Atlantica go P2P and the dev's working harder on polishing the game. Really its an amazing game that just needs a polishing.

You can still read the article from the main page, in the "Columnists" section.

Games are :

Age of Conan

Lineage 2

Star Trek Online

Champion Online

Warhammer

While I appreciate your work OP there are some major flaws in it.

Vanguard you said its vision didn't go well with players. Well the problem wasn't the Vision it as the change in ownership and the forced release that killed the game. The game had a huge (judging by realistic numbers) fan base mostly from oldschool gamers till they decided to partnership with soe again, a company known for destroying our Everquest. People aren't trusting Soe anymore so even a F2P modell wouldn't help. I LOVE the game and its vision but I hate Soe with passion so for me there is no way back. I just don't want to have anything to do with this company again.

Warhammer Online as you mentioned a game with a high RvR focus can't go Pay2Win. Lets say they offer only cosmetic items since their designers have done a poorly job making different items they would need to redsign the itemization from the ground up so it don't think thats an option.

Star Trek Online and Champions Online  they are already Pay2Win games. Cryptic is charging a monthly fee and on top of that having a real itemshop. Only difference would be they could go way over the top with their Cstore by going Pay2Win but on the same side losing the rest of their customers.

Age of Conan its the most realistic from all listed games though I don't think Funcom will do it.

Personal Stance: Pay2Win is not an option for me there is a reason why I'm only playing p2p games. On the other hand pay2win can only work if its built from the get go just switching to pay2win can backfire big time eg. Everquest 2 Extended.

If Vanguard were free I would definitely play it. I liked a lot of what it had to offer: diplomacy, crafting, all the races and professions. Just not enough to pay a monthly fee for a dying game.

I dont understand this F2P fetish that a lot of people have now a days. $10-$14 a month is really not that big of an issue. I heard of F2P games that cost way more then that in the long run. F2P really isnt F2P.

Dont get me wrong I play Atlantica Online which is F2P, but not because its F2P. I play it because its a great game. I would easily pay $14 a month to play it.

Before DDO went F2P no one really talked about it. Now everyone is on the band wagon.

I think the question is not about a game but about what companies will make a complete transition to F2P. I really think Cryptic will adopt an across-the-board free to play model since their games (in my opinion) are games that you can really enjoy in short bursts and not longterm. The most common complaint or comment you see about their games are "It was fun for a while but I got bored" - a perfect example of a situation where a F2P model might help.

After that, I think SOE will take the model to all of their games as well with SWG being next.

Turbine made it clear that the F2P model works if done right (at least to an extent) and that they will extend it to all games.

And thats why I think Turbine's next game will be Harry potter, with a F2P model similar to LOTRO and Wizard 101. Just my prediction.

Star Trek Online or AoC should be.