Saturday Soapbox: The Scourge of Free to Play*

Admittedly, there are exceptions in the world of free-to-play. To date, Lord of the Rings Online has achieved the most elegant balance between immersion and profitability in a genre where stepping out from the shadow of World of Warcraft is nigh-on impossible. It's also been a profitable move for the game.

LOTRO achieves this delicate balancing act by offering everything from quests to XP boosts to instances for a multitude of prices. Yet it also provides a way out through a subscription that takes the vast majority of these micro-payments away. It pacifies the long-term subscribers while giving the game a second chance to live up to its original design intent. Here's a rope, it'll costs you some money, but we'll pull you out of the hole.

If, by some strange quirk of personality or mallet-blow to the head, I then decide that my hobbit isn't complete without the kind of ermine robe that Liberace wouldn't have been seen dead in - well, that option's available too. On paper, it's a system that works and satisfies all audiences.

The free-to-play game effectively becomes an extended trial, and Turbine isn't coy about showing its hand: if you enjoy the game enough to regularly spend money on trinkets and quest packs, sooner or later you'll come to realise that it's far more economical to pay for a subscription. But regardless of how you dress the window, there's no getting away from the fact that players are now living in a shopping centre, rather than a world set apart from the real-world monotony of earn and consume, earn and consume.

Worryingly, the free-to-play approach has led to some abominable Frankenstein creations where dollar-eyed executives have seen the potential to take an existing subscriber base and further monetise it - to change the rules mid-game as it were. Seeing the adaptive business models and the opportunity to capitalise on their player base, CCP recently hybridised their game by introducing micro-transactions in addition to a subscription.

As a result, boundaries were pushed, tempers became frayed and - in the MMO genre at least - there's a feeling that close relationships are being gambled in exchange for a greater stake on the table. Hard though it may be for a long-term player with countless hundreds of hours invested in a universe to commit to a decree absolute, it certainly strains the relationship and sullies the experience nevertheless.

There aren't yet enough hard figures to clarify the stickiness levels of the free-to-play model but it's entirely possible that the new influx of players are less casual than the hardcore subscribers might like to believe. It's easy enough to put a lighter to a tenner, ignore the change, and get stuck into an all-you-can-eat feast once a month. Items purchased piecemeal on the other hand retain a permanent sense of value and attachment.

It's an important rule of life that whether you're muddling your way through an interview - or even just in the company of people who really do know you better - then it's absolutely essential to express your undying love for change. It's one of those awful human traits that we like to see in others, even if we secretly despise it ourselves - I'll admit I'm a man of habits.

But creating a world that belongs to the players, where communities can have the same experience and share their own stories - without chapters being closed to those who can't open their wallets any further- is something that matters in gaming. In an escapist world, all of its inhabitants should be born equal.