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NHN, the publisher of the Japanese & Korean versions of TERA, has announced that all servers will be converting to a free to play version in early 2013. Korean TERA servers will see F2P action on January 10th, with Japanese servers heading that way in mid-February.
There is no word from either En Masse Entertainment (NA version) or Gameforge (EU) about whether or not they will follow suit.
Read more at MMO Culture.
Comments
The F2P conversion is coming with some huge changes ... TERA was always missing meaningful PvP, Sieges and raids... well, all that seems to be coming.
http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/general-discussion/topics/Teras-Next-Big-Content-Update1
EU - Gameforge are making an anouncement in Jan - quote below from a Gameforge Community Manager (Tiala) taken from Tera eu website:
"Hello everyone,
yes, the Korean version of TERA is going f2p which is the next big step for them. Please understand that it is too early right now to talk about this but we will have more information for you about the EU version in January.
Regards,
Tiala"
From my experience I saw more people arguing it will go F2P and that it's already flopping in Korea. You must have been on some other forum.
Eh, TERA is still in the top 6 most played MMOs from the Korean sites i've recently browsed. 18th game overall last week for players.
But both Japan and Koreas F2P test servers were so successful they couldnt help but pursue the model to its fullest extent.
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Nothing wrong with that, i'm looking forward to the impressive content beind added alongside F2P conversions.
Besides, TERA outlasted TSW and SW:TOR and overall seeing all these MMOs flop is more sad than funny IMO.
People said the game did not have enough content for P2P and should be F2P.
Game going F2P and content added.
Bit ironic really.
Really odd indeed... but BHS was never good at making quality decisions.
Finally, it's starting.
Was waiting until this game went F2P before I played it. Beta wasn't a good experience; was never going to pay for it in the first place due to that.
Shame I have to deal with my alias being used by somebody else. Quit SWTOR after they server merged for that reason; they didn't even bother to send out any e-mails about it.
http://www.gamenote.com/rank_ongame/?search_mode=weekly
TERA just dropped to 20 from 18 last week, well see where it ends up after F2P goes live January 10th. I said test servers for a reason, KTERA launched one server with moderate restrictions and capped at level 58, the server is usually mid/high population so it has spurred them to go full force F2P.
That's an odd assumption. Considering theres very successful games in NA that are complete flops in Korea, different markets. Not to mention LoL is doing the same thing in Korea as it is here... completely consuming everything.
You said it dropped out of the top 20 months ago, I just pointed out it didn't. And yes the gap between MMO playerbases in korea is large, but it's large here as well, does that mean every MMO after WoW/GW2 is dead/garbage? Obviously not.
The market is saturated, especially in South Korea with its 50 million inhabitants.
From what I can remember, without looking how things are as of today...Aion was the Big Kahuna in S-Korea with +/- 50% of the online gaming market cornered but around the time of Blade & Soul dropped to half of what it used to have (too tired to Googlefu this right now).
What I'm trying to say is it's sink or swim for many titles over there (elsewhere too nowadays...) There are plenty of games to choose from and many don't have to put up with slow patches, shitty customer service, crappy content etc. etc.
So it doesn't have to mean that the game is "bad."
TERA felt worth the box price, just not the subscription.
I would play it alongside GW2 if it went F2P with a GOOD payment model.
"As you read these words, a release is seven days or less away or has just happened within the last seven days those are now the only two states youll find the world of Tyria."...Guild Wars 2