Free-to-Play Everquest Highlights the Slow Death of Subscription MMOs

Sony Online Entertainment announced today that the original Everquest would make the transition to a free-to-play system in March. Released in 1999, EQ was far from the first MMO, but the industry followed its model. It's hard to imagine World of Warcraft finding success without SOE's game preceding it. The game's transition marks the end of an era -- it's the death knell for MMOs as we've known them.

Everquest's relatively small player base means the shift to free-to-play is more a sign of the times than an agent change in and of itself. Several high profile MMOs --including Everquest 2 -- have gone free-to-play past several months, but the original EQ isn't just another entry into the genre. It proved to the world that MMOs could become wildly profitable, and set off a game development gold rush that gave us everything from WoW to Star Wars: Galaxies. I don't mean to say that we'll never see a new MMO, but the free-to-play business model's ascension is complete. Don't expect to see another Star Wars: The Old Republic-sized launch anytime in the next five years.

Publishers chasing after Everquest, and later World of Warcraft, failed time after time. For every Dark Age of Camelot that found success, a dozen Auto Assault's and Matrix Online's cost their developer's amazing amounts of time and money. With this financial carnage in mind, publishers have started to shy away from games that use a traditional MMO business model. This year's most highly anticipated entry in the genre, Guild Wars 2, charges no monthly fee and don't be surprised if other upcoming games ditch the fee before they finish development. TOR may become the last major traditional MMO launch.

Developers typically report massive increases in player activity after making the switch to free-to-play. The only reason the monthly model still holds onto life at all is the lure of truly amazing profits. When a subscription-MMO becomes a hit, the money made from other games seems insignificant. Time and time again, developers, investors, and publishers lost money by betting that their game could dethrone WoW, and it took a decade of failure to convince them otherwise. The stream of retrofitted free-to-play MMOs like Everquest might flood the market, giving newcomers even more challenges than they did in the subscription days, but for now, free-to-play remains the only way for most MMOs to turn a profit.