Category: Free to Play

A Reddit user by the name of giulianob says he has invested the last few years in making a city building/war game. Got my curiosity so I checked it out. It’s called Tribal Hero. It might possibly be the slowest MMO ever made, but it’s actually kind of fun. It’s not something you sit in front of for hours on end. You can log in 2-3 times a day and do just fine. After starting and finishing the tutorial I found myself with not a whole lot to do. I checked back a little later and some of the abilities and things I could do had come off of cooldown and was able to spend a few minutes playing around building up my city. It’s similar in practice (and in name) to Tribal Wars and Travian. The best part about Tribal Hero though is that it seems to be completely free to play and there’s nothing I can find so far that’s asked me for money. If you want to read up a little more on it you can check out their wikia page or check out the Triabl Hero subreddit.

File this one with the other “not terribly surprised” posts about MMO’s that weren’t wildly successful and are now trying the Free-To-Play approach. Tera has gone f2p and if I’m surprised at all it’s because I’m kind of surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Starting in February 2013 you’ll be able to play without paying any fees. I think this one is definitely worth checking out for the world and environment alone. The character design is great, the combat system is probably one of the best ones to come out of MMO’s of late, and the environments are absolutely sweet and definitely unique. If you’re a fan of Guild Wars 2 and think that it has amazing environments, be prepared to be blown away by Tera.

The best part about it is that the F2P limitations are almost non-existant. The ones that are there are absolutely not going to affect your daily play. This isn’t like the mess that SWTOR F2P is with limitations everywhere you turn… in fact I’d say that the game is hardly any different than it was when it was a subscription model. Some of the bigger limitations are limits on how much gold can be sent through the mail, fees on the brokerage system (auction house, which you don’t have to pay for if you subscribe), etc. The difference between this and most MMOs that go free to play is that you’re given the game as it is for free – with benefits for subscription members. It’s not a stripped down version for free and the full thing for paying members, you get the game in a very acceptable state for free. In addition, you can simply purchase things that annoy you like bank slots – if you want more bank slots you can purchase those without having to pay a monthly fee.

If you’re interested in checking it out, head on over to http://tera.enmasse.com/free