A look at the latest trend in the MU Online market. A couple of weeks ago, Turbine announced that it was entering the free-to-play arena with the upcoming release of its MU Online Zen and Dragons Online expansion, Eberron Unlimited.
Although most people view this as a last-ditch effort to save the game from obscurity in a rapidly expanding MU Online Zen market, some also feel that Turbine is testing the micro-transaction waters with this move. This is hardly surprising as more and more publishers are getting on the F2P bandwagon.
A good portion of the US free-to-play MU Online Zen market still consists of Asian-developed games imported by local publishers, but that's certainly beginning to change. Big players like Sony Online Entertainment, NCsoft, and EA are already in the picture with Free Realms, Dungeon Runners, and Battlefield Heroes, respectively, with more in the works.
As far as popularity goes, the leader of the pack is still Maple Story, developed by South Korean company Wizet, with 87 million registered users, an estimated 10 to 15-percent of which are active players. But consider this: SOE's Free Realms recently reached the 3 million mark, barely seven weeks after it launched!
MU Online Zen will soon be embracing the free-to-play model.Of course in a free-to-play game, the number of registered users don't tell the whole story since not all of these are paying customers.
Few companies are willing to share their revenue figures, and those who do usually report their average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) rather than the average revenue per user (ARPU), which would be a much diluted figure.
Additionally, both figures are based on the number of logged in users per month, which is only a fraction of the total registered users.
In any case, the numbers seem to indicate that the ARPU on free-to-play games (which includes casual game portals such as Outspark and virtual worlds like Second Life) is generally between $0.50-$1.50, with an ARPPU ranging from $20-$30 a month.
In the absence of any other hard data on free-to-play MMOs, much is left to speculation. But Daniel James of Three Rings Design recently revealed that his company's little MMO Puzzle Pirates takes in about $50 each month per paying user through micro transactions alone.
This seems to indicate that given the option, MMO players will actually spend more than the customary $15 subscription fee.
So yes, there's money to be made in free-to-play games, and that's why the big boys want to play! It's all a matter of making your players want your virtual goods.
A lot of publishers have also adopted a so-called freemium business model, where players are given the option to pay a subscription fee to become VIPs and obtain access to certain features not available to free-to-play users.
Having said all that, and having determined that we want to expand our coverage of free-to-play games in general and MMOs in particular, let's take a look at what's out there right now.
Our list is by no means complete, and we would like you to tell us if there's any game we missed that you'd like to hear more about in the future.
