{"id":67972,"date":"2014-10-15T13:56:17","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T11:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=67972"},"modified":"2014-10-15T13:57:35","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T11:57:35","slug":"games-that-jumped-on-the-free-to-play-wagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/67972-games-that-jumped-on-the-free-to-play-wagon","title":{"rendered":"Games that jumped on the free-to-play wagon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We will get straight to the point with this one.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some games that started life as retail titles but converted to the way of free-to-play. They now let you pay to advance, pay to look great, and pay to win.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Star Wars: The Old Republic<\/h3>\n<p>Bioware did not rush the full transition of the Star Wars MMO to a free-to-play game status. At first, the free-to-play version did not offer much &#8211; you got story content, but could not chat, receive messages, or even create your own character.<\/p>\n<p>After a fan uproar, the game finally opened up more features and kept the in-game purchases few and far in between.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QyYbvVAtlWk?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">DC Universe Online<\/h3>\n<p>The DC MMO was one of the biggest releases of 2011, but the game slowly started to lose its fan base due to its pricey subscriptions.<\/p>\n<p>After a while, the developers split the game&#8217;s subscription into different tiers &#8211; legendary, premium, and free &#8211; and players started to get back to the action.<\/p>\n<p>Free players can access the full game, but cannot access the DLC packs.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/H7Nf-m6WGl4?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Tera Rising<\/h3>\n<p>Tera Rising was a game that many people expected to be free-to-play in the fist place, but wasn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>A little while after its release, the developers received complaints about the subscription-based model and that switching to free-to-play was the best thing for the longevity of the title.<\/p>\n<p>The advice was sound, with the player count almost tripled after the transition to F2P.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AHc6EYgM5ws?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Age of Conan: Unchained<\/h3>\n<p>Age of Conan took about two years before it migrated to the free-to-play option, and when this took place its name changed from\u00a0Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, to Age of Conan: Unchained.<\/p>\n<p>The reasoning was that players were no longer &#8220;chained&#8221; down by a subscription. Haw haw.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2gz3hOcZORA?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Team Fortress 2<\/h3>\n<p>Valve turned Team Fortress 2 into a free-to-play game for seemingly no reason, after the title sold well and had a large player base.<\/p>\n<p>The move saw its popularity skyrocket and today it is the most popular free-to-play shooter on Steam.<\/p>\n<p>If you want some great customisation options you will have to pay, otherwise go on and join the action &#8211; gratis.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GLlLQ3LmZWU?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Tell us about your favourite free-to-play games, in the comments and forum.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More gaming news<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/69361-nvidia-gtx-980m-970m-revealed-here-are-the-specs.html\">Nvidia GTX 980M, 970M revealed \u2013 here are the specs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/69173-x99-vs-z97-gaming-motherboards-sa-price-review-roundup.html\">X99 vs Z97 gaming motherboards: SA price, review roundup<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/69345-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-pre-order-price-roundup.html\">Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare pre-order price roundup<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These games went free-to-play, earning great success in some cases<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":69417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1994,21],"class_list":["post-67972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-free-to-play","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69545,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67972\/revisions\/69545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}