The online gaming space has changed a lot over the last decade. There was a time when many gamers would die a little inside when they heard the word free-to-play due to its link with low-production games.  But that has changed quite a bit with bigger budgeted games like The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest II, City of Heroes and countless others all adopting a free-to-play model in some form. BioWare Mythic feels that there is still room for both subscription and free-to-play games and the EA-owned studio is looking to provide an option for both.

Speaking with Gamasutra, BioWare Mythic GM Eugene Evans reflected on the past success of Dark Age of Camelot and explained why the developer chose to take a different approach with bringing Warhammer Online to the free-to-play market with their spin-off Wrath of Heroes, noting that there is a whole community of players that don’t want the free-to-play model.

There's a whole community that doesn't want that. We decided that there's a lot of things you have to get right about a free-to-play game for it to be successful, everything from the size of the download to the accessibility that lets you quickly get to the fun of the game, and we really wanted to rethink our offering with Wrath of Heroes.

Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes is scheduled to launch later this year and while the title will be free-to-play, Evans stated that developers and publishers today are now dealing with a global audience and a payment model that works well in one region might night be as accepted in another.

Source: Gamasutra