The executive producer says the studio must take note of Turbine’s success with Dungeons & Dragons. Free-to-play is a ”robust way to demo”.
”I could easily see STO going into a hybrid model similar to what Lotro is doing,” posted Stahl of developer Cryptic on the official forums, reports Massively.
”In that model, subscriptions stay as is - but you allow people to play for free but heavily limit what they can do - which in essence creates a robust way to demo the game and then if you want to keep playing, you either pay for every little thing you are interested in, or you subscribe and don’t have to worry about it.”
”Turbine seems to have some interesting plans and looking at how DDO has turned around, its worth taking note.” Dungeons & Dragons Online was in serious decline in North America until Turbine enacted their hybrid model, then revenue suddenly exploded.
Have you be playing Star Trek Online? Are free-to-play models an excellent way for MMOs to go, especially when giving players a taste of the game world as a demo?
