High Quality Free to Play Games

Just because a game is “free to play”, doesn’t mean it’s “low quality”. There’s a pretty terrible stereotype out there, mostly amongst forums for pay to play MMOs like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, that free to play means “low quality and bad”. What many of these folks bashing F2P don’t realize is that many pay to play games have gone free to play. Dungeons and Dragons Online from Turbine and Archlord from Webzen were both once subscription based pay to play MMORPGs, but are now free to play titles with cash shops.

There are many MANY free to play games out right now that are much “higher quality” than other pay to play games as well. Allods Online from gPotato for example had a 12+ million dollar budget. I’m not saying that Allods Online is “better” than pay to play games, but it’s certainly on the same level in terms of quality. Black Prophecy from Gamigo looks just as “good” as Eve Online from CCP, and it’s completely free. Well, not completely, as it does have a cash shop, but it’s still free to play. Martial Empires from Gamgio has also proven that free to play does not have to be “cheap.”

I do have to admit though, that there are a lot of very cheap free to play Chinese and Korean MMORPGs. Games like Age of Armor from Snail Games and Avalon Heroes from Alaplaya. In fact, there are easily 50+ “terrible” MMORPGs, which no human should play. I think that many pay to play players are turned off from free to play games because they’ve had poor experienced with these cheap games. Pro tip guys, skip games like Azuga: Age of Chaos and Battle of Destiny and stick with the Triple-A titles like Runes of Magic, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Allods Online.

So is free to play better than pay to play? I think so, but I don’t think it’s fair to generalize things. World of Warcraft is still an unmatched title in quality, content and variety. I don’t think any free to play game can come close to it. But there are free to play games that rival, if not surpass other pay to play MMORPGs – Especially the second tier pay to play games like Dark Age of Camelot and Pirates of the Burning Sea. I feel that some of these second tier games should go free to play, as there’s no reason to pay for them when there are better titles available.