Switch to free-to-play working very well for DDO
Turbine's MMO Dungeons and Dragons Online has been around since 2006, but recently enjoyed a sudden huge spike in players. Thousands more people are playing, including our own Shawn at our readers behest. This skyrocketing popularity probably isn't a mystery or a surprise to you -- Dungeons and Dragons Online announced back in June that they were going free-to-play, and the response seemed to be overwhelmingly positive.
Executive Producer Fernando Paiz said that subscriptions have gone up 40% since the game went f2p. "All aspects of our business are growing. Hundreds of thousands of new players in the world are playing for free, with a very high percentage using the store." The topic of microtransactions is a hot one, but there is apparently something to be said for an a la carte menu when it comes to gaming. Offering the game free has given quite a few people the chance to check it out when they wouldn't have before, and in the case of DDO people are liking what they see enough to stick around.
