The Death of Pay-to-play

There was a time in the evolution of the MMO, around the beginning of 2009, when free-to-play games were shunned by Western gamers as low-quality, cartoony, badly translated Asian imports offering only two paths to leveling success--make pay-to-win microtransaction purchases or engage in an endless, mindless grind. Despite early successes like RuneScape and Maple Story, many old school MMO players believed that free-to-play meant you got what you paid for--a whole lot of nothing. It seemed that the Western market wasn’t ready for what Asia had embraced; we liked our games with subscriptions and none of that nickel-and-dime crap, thank you very much.