Stay away from free to play games?

[Dixie]

Kingdom of Loathing is so funny, I've played it for a while back then. I didn't realise it could be a paying thing, though (not that I'd have paid anything).

[Jozrael]

I have a very on again off again relationship with KoL, made much more enjoyable by the fact that free accounts are no longer deleted after x months of inactivity. But yea, I'll go years without playing it, then come crawling back one late late night and remain there, optimizing for a few weeks, until I get immersed in a 'proper' game again xD.

@Jetrel: I, unfortunately, did not coin the term. It's a common label to be slung around in LoL/other f2p forums that have a real concern about keeping the developers mindful of NOT becoming that sort of game.

[Zarel]

I have a very on again off again relationship with KoL, made much more enjoyable by the fact that free accounts are no longer deleted after x months of inactivity.

Shoulda told me. I had a Mr. A I could've lent you for a day.

Kingdom of Loathing is so funny, I've played it for a while back then. I didn't realise it could be a paying thing, though (not that I'd have paid anything).

They sell Mr. A's for $10 or $15 each, iirc. And they can be traded in for other items that can only be gotten by trading Mr. A's. It's possible for them to be traded with non-paying characters, so it's more like paying for money than paying for exclusive items, though.

[wesfreak]

I actually think that runescape is getting better since the dungeneering update, witch lets you train all your skills and fight with almost no risk of dying, and dying wasn't a problem since you didn't get to keep all the stuff you had from level to level in the dungeon. And the better you did in dungeneering, the more points you got, which could be used to get cool items. I stopped playing after I beat all the quests but one (dragon slayer) and restarted briefly but ended up quiting again.

The two other free to play games I know of are maplestory and regnum (both rpg games). Maplestory was 2D, and you could pay real money to buy "NX", which you could use to buy a few decorations: most of them didn't do anything, they just made your character look cooler, but some helped in small ways, like a pet that you could buy a money magnet for, so that your pet would pick up any money that it came across. Others were like double xp cards so that you get double the experience you would normally earn for killing a monster.

Regnum is an interesting case: You could pay money for things like good mounts or to instantly get to lvl 30 (the max lvl was 50) and to get better items, but it didn't all add up unless you spent alot of cash on it. One of the best parts was that it was mostly pvp.

A relatively detailed description of regnum multiplayer

The game had 3 realms: the forest, the desert and the mountains, and each realm had a noob-zone where no enemies could reach, a wall and 2 small forts and a castle. To make an enemy wall vulnerable you had to have captured that enemies castle and 1 of the forts. (if i recall correctly). Then you have to actually batter down the door and all the enemy players/npc guards there to get in. When inside you can capture an enemy gem (or a gem that the enemy captured earlier). When you have all 3 gems ( one from each realm) a portal opens to a new location, where a reward is decided. (it's either by vote or by the winner of a free for all match that takes place in the portal, can't remember which) (the reward was normally bonus experience for your realm or less experience for one of the enemy realms). This way you don't get into an endless loop, and keep having fun at maximum level.

The bad part about regnum is that it takes alot of time to actually get to level 50, and you have to be a very high level to be at all usefull in multiplayer.

[Jozrael]

Back in the day I played Achaea, a f2p but large MUD. It had an economy similar to KoL's, in that you could buy credits that were tradeable to anyone. I enjoyed it a lot in high school, dropped $400 on it at the very end, then stopped playing it abruptly. I don't view it as a waste as I now better understand when to drop money on games (hint: I haven't since then, though I am considering it with LoL simply to show support for Riot rather than acquire ingame power. This may become irrelevant if I pass this last interview with them this week, though xD).