Allegedly Free Game: Difference between revisions

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** This is only true because the cash shop currency and cash shop items are purchasable from other players in the game's store ... for ''millions'' of in-game currency. Practically speaking, if you don't pay for the Mr. Store content you're not going to be competitive without truly epic cash-grinding.

** On the other hand, Kingdom of Loathing isn't exactly a competitive game in the traditional sense. A major selling point of the game is the content and writing, all of which is available to completely free players. Even content from purchasable items is accessible to free players for relatively cheap amounts of in-game currency. Purchasable familiars drop items that allow access to special content, these items are often put up for sale for a pretty reasonable price, buying a 'content familiar' is actually the least efficient way to gain access to the new content. In this way, a player who is just enjoying the humorous dialogue and quests is not in any way limited.

*** What does constitute this, however, is leaderboarding. As a solo activity, competition in ~~[[Ko L]]~~ is more akin to golf, where players who do not interact attempt to get the lowest turncount. In this sense, buying cash-shop items is [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|basically required if you want to get on the leaderboard.]] However, the leaderboard is entirely optional, with it's rewards being very minimal or a simple [[Bragging Rights Reward]]. And as the community is fond of saying, "Leaderboarding is not the game." Of course, the community will also replace 'leaderboarding' with any other aspect of the game. Basically, there's a lot of ways to enjoy the game. Most of them are free, with only a few things like leaderboarding 'requiring' the player to spend money.

*** What does constitute this, however, is leaderboarding. As a solo activity, competition in KoL is more akin to golf, where players who do not interact attempt to get the lowest turncount. In this sense, buying cash-shop items is [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|basically required if you want to get on the leaderboard.]] However, the leaderboard is entirely optional, with it's rewards being very minimal or a simple [[Bragging Rights Reward]]. And as the community is fond of saying, "Leaderboarding is not the game." Of course, the community will also replace 'leaderboarding' with any other aspect of the game. Basically, there's a lot of ways to enjoy the game. Most of them are free, with only a few things like leaderboarding 'requiring' the player to spend money.

* ''Kwari'', an former online FPS. The equipment that you couldn't get unless you paid real money? ''Bullets.''

* ''[[Mabinogi Fantasy Life]]'' by Nexon started out this way; with the main storyline quests, powerful [[Empathic Weapon|Empathic Weapons]], and character rebirths only available to paid members. With the "Pioneers of Iria" expansion, all game content was made available to free players; but there are still a lot of [[Bribing Your Way to Victory|non-essential but highly useful game enhancing items]] available for a paid premium.

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* ''[[The Daily Show]]'' had Aasif Mandvi expose iPad app "Tap Fish" as one. You pay to resurrect fish/get a better aquarium. One man's children spent '''$1500''' dollars on the game, since it goes through iTunes, which saves credit info and doesn't usually need more than a basic password.

* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' is now this: it went free-to-play in June 2011, but the new unpaid players get stuck with a 50-slot backpack (as opposed to the standard of ''at least'' 300), being unable to gift or trade items, not getting cosmetic items from random drops, and only being able to craft a limited number of items. Thankfully, players still have access to all game balance-affecting weapons, so theoretically they can enjoy the same game (short of the cosmetics, which don't do anything anyways, and the storage space issue), and buying any item from the Mann-conomy will instantly upgrade you to Premium status (which gets all the perks of people who have bought the game). On top of that, the cheapest item is only 49 cents (though you need a minimum deposit of $5 into your Steam wallet if you don't have it already). Additionally, people who owned the game before it went F2P got a special untradeable Proof of Purchase hat.

** Interestingly, [http://tf2stats.net/hats/ the majority of TF2 players have the Proof of Purchase hat.] So, most of active players have not only bought the game, but did so before it became "free." This is probably because the game's been out for years, is absurdly popular, and was priced at less than $20 for most of its life (it dropped to just a couple of dollars at one point). In addition, it was part of the very-popular Orange Box bundle which included ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' and the complete ''[[Half-Life 2]]'' (to date). It seems Valve made the game free because they realized that nearly all the people who were ever going to buy the game already had. But as The Orange Box still technically has ~~[[TF 2]]~~ in it, buying the pack gives you the Proof of Purchase.

** Interestingly, [http://tf2stats.net/hats/ the majority of TF2 players have the Proof of Purchase hat.] So, most of active players have not only bought the game, but did so before it became "free." This is probably because the game's been out for years, is absurdly popular, and was priced at less than $20 for most of its life (it dropped to just a couple of dollars at one point). In addition, it was part of the very-popular Orange Box bundle which included ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' and the complete ''[[Half-Life 2]]'' (to date). It seems Valve made the game free because they realized that nearly all the people who were ever going to buy the game already had. But as The Orange Box still technically has TF2 in it, buying the pack gives you the Proof of Purchase.

* ''[[The Caverns of Hammerfest]]'' became available entirely for free after the Parallel Dimensions update. You, however, can only play it once a day, so you have an option to buy more games for the day if you're impatient enough.

* ''[[Nethack]]'' is a major aversion of this trope. It is one of the oldest video games still being developed, has always been completely free, the most popular servers record and archive your games for all to see, and some servers even let you watch other people play in realtime and even ask them questions. alt.org/nethack has countless archived games, does not have advertisements, and makes it very easy for a beginner to know where to start looking for help in climbing a very steep learning curve.