En Masse Entertainment’s Tera is the latest massively multiplayer online role-playing game to go from subscription to free-to-play, the publisher today announced. The change is further proof that the subscription-based business model is no longer viable in the crowded MMORPG genre unless your game has the words “World of” and “Warcraft” in its title.
Tera joins other high-profile MMOs like The Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic as free-to-play games; these recently dropped their own subscription requirements as well.
Tera is available without a subscription starting in February. Past and current players will receive permanent founder status with exclusive privileges, the company said, while new players will have “standard” status with no level cap or content restrictions, although they’ll be limited to two free characters per server. Founders, meanwhile, will have eight character slots, four bank tabs, a title, an exclusive in-game mount, and more.
A subscription option will still be available for those that want it, En Masse said. For $14.99 a month, “elite” status players will get extra dungeon rewards, 10 bonus quests per day, daily in-game items and boosts, an elite mount, store discounts, and more.
To celebrate this change, En Masse said it plans to launch new in-game content, including a wave-based dungeon and a player-vs.-player battleground map.