The Daily Grind: What's your free-to-play breaking point?

The entire concept of free-to-play is becoming more and more prevalent in MMOs lately, particularly in the past year. It's a great concept, but unless the game in question is being produced by someone wealthy and altruistic, the companies presenting these games are still out to profit. That's where item shops come in: from the "pay for shortcuts" model of Dungeons and Dragons Online to the now-infamous perfumes in Allods Online, every free-to-play game will offer premium items or things that would otherwise take some time to get in exchange for a little quality time with your credit card.

So the question is, what's your breaking point? At what point do you look at the cash shop and decide "this is not free-to-play because that item is a necessity and/or the time required to get it free is unreasonable?" It's entirely a matter of opinion, depending in large part on your style of play. If you don't mind spending a certain amount of time to earn whatever item or in-game currency you need, it's not going to bother you as much. If you just want to play the game without worrying about special items or working through some sort of point system to get things in the cash shop, you're going to feel differently.

So hit the little button at the bottom and tell us what you think!