MMO Weekly: Prestige Items And Micro-Transactions

Hello there, my fellow gamebois and gamegurls, and welcome to the most recent and up to date edition of MMO Weekly.   In this week’s edition, I’ll touch upon two recent, and somewhat related developments in the world of MMO gaming.  

Free to Play MMOs and Micro-transactions

First up?  Allow me, for a moment, to talk about the “free to play” model in MMO gaming.  In my endless curiosity about MMOs and the trends that drive them, I stumbled across a little known study on the habits of MMO players in the western world.  The trend that most interested me in the study indicated that many players are more likely than ever before to play a free MMO, and less likely to play a subscription based game.  This wasn’t a huge trend, but it was a clear one.  People appear to be less enthusiastic about the industry-standard pay to play MMO games, and more enthusiastic about MMOs that are free to play.