Anyone here remember Tabula Rasa? It was
the aspiring sci-fi MMORPG by Richard Gariott that was released in
October 2007 with high hopes, but unfortunately the game is now
scheduled to close all North American operations on February 28th,
2009. In just under two years, an MMORPG that took nearly 6 years to
develop will soon become history. Anyone remember Hellgate: London? How
about Fury? These are all relatively well known and hyped pay to play
MMORPGs that have disappeared, if you dig through the MMO graveyard,
there are literally dozens more pay to play games that have flopped.
It’s ridiculous that all of these multi-million dollar MMORPGs have to
go to waste. The point I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t have to be
this way. These MMORPGs CAN make money, they just need to adopt a
free-to-play business model.

There are plenty of ‘pay-to-play’ MMORPGs that have thrived after becoming ‘free-to-play’. Games like Archlord, RF Online, Rose Online, Mu Online, Priston Tale and Ragnarok Online
are just a few examples of once ‘pay-to-play’ games now ‘free-to-play’.
Heck if you dig deep enough you can find boatloads of games that were
once pay to play and are now pay to play. These games were clearly not
profitable for the publishers when they were pay-to-play so they
decided to make them ‘free to play’. If they weren’t profitable under
this system, they surely would have been shut down, but the fact is
they haven’t been shut down, they’re still around. Games like Archlord
and RF Online, which were just about empty, are now surging in
popularity. I urge game publishers to at least try a ‘free to play
‘model before shutting down their games.

There are a lot of ‘pay-to-play’ MMORPGs
out there today that are losing subscribers by the day that need to do
something quick or they’ll soon join their friends in the MMO
graveyard. Game’s like ‘Dark Age of Camelot’ and ‘Star Wars Galaxies’
simply cannot compete with the likes of World of Warcraft. Why are
these games still trying to charge a monthly fee when their games
simply cannot compete on a ‘pay to play’ level with World of Warcraft?
It just doesn’t make sense. Even EA’s new MMO
juggernaut ‘Warhammer Online’ is starting to falter. Within a few
months of release the game reached ~ 800,000 subscribers, but those
numbers have now plummeted to around 300,000 active subscriptions. How
about games like Vanguard or Age of Conan? How long do you think those
games will last? Sure, they had quite a bit of hype before release, but
if you look at the numbers, both of those games are shedding
subscribers, and fast. Heck Age of Conan already closed down a few
servers and odds are they’ll close down even more if more people cancel
their subscriptions. I’m not saying that World of Warcraft or Warhammer
Online should be free to play,
but I do urge failing pay to play MMORPGs to at least try re-launching
their games as ‘free-to-play’ games before shutting them down.

Source:

Make Pay to Play MMORPGs Free