‘Buy-to-play’ is a term that refers to games that have box or download fees associated with them but do not incur a mandatory subscription. Some have optional subscriptions and are more properly referred to as hybrid B2P. Most have cash shops and microtransactions.
buy to play
Bot-maker Bossland’s legit game flops, Germany rejects Blizzard’s US court victory and won’t enforce damages
Are you surprised to be hearing about Bossland again? We're surprised to be reporting on it. The German-based botmaker made headlines for the last...
Elder Scrolls Online begins testing Summerset; here’s a look at the chapter’s houses and buyables
As all eyes in Elder Scrolls Online turn to the future expansion heading to the game next month, testing has begun in earnest on...
Guild Wars 2 plans bonus harvesting weekend, backs player artists crowdfunding a GW2 tarot deck for charity
So here's something Guild Wars 2 doesn't do much: special weekend bonus events. This one's probably more about getting folks to buy harvesting tools...
Wisdom of Nym: What we know so far about Final Fantasy XIV’s next patch
Yes, the latest live letter happened, the fan translations happened, and as one could expect the Final Fantasy XIV fandom has already taken half-translated...
The Daily Grind: What’s the biggest scandal the MMORPG genre has ever seen?
Over the weekend in the Guild Wars 2 spyware article comments, a commenter remarked that Blizzard's Warden spyware was "the biggest scandal in MMOs"...
The Game Archaeologist: Lineage
If we judged MMOs by their numbers alone -- and I'm not suggesting we do so -- then the original Lineage would be the...
The Stream Team: A big boss beat down in ARK
Just because there are no pillars to enter the lairs of the spider, ape, or dragon bosses on ARK's Aberration doesn't mean that Massively...
Guild Wars 2 used client-side spyware to aid its latest purge of potential cheaters
ArenaNet's just gone on a purge of potential cheaters in Guild Wars 2.
"Yesterday we suspended 1,583 accounts for a period of 6 months," Gaile...
Massively Overthinking: The best of PAX East and GDC in 2018
The past couple of weeks has been wild as we dispatched writers to GDC in San Francisco and PAX East in Boston to gather...
Here’s how to playtest Elder Scrolls Online’s Summerset chapter next week
Summerset is closer than you think! The Elder Scrolls Online team announced today that the chapter is expected to hit the test server on...
Destiny 2’s second expansion, Warmind, launches May 8, or whatever
Gone are the days when Bungie would put out teases and trailers for its expansions, apparently. Last night, it practically stealth-announced Destiny 2's next...
The Elder Scrolls Online previews the mechanics of jewelry crafting
One of the biggest additions with the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset is the inclusion of crafting skills for jewelry. That might...
PAX East 2018: An interview with the big griffon statue
Everyone knows that the various people portraying characters at PAX East are just there to portray a character. That's not who they really are....
Tamriel Infinium: Understanding Elder Scrolls Online’s Mephala and speculating on Summerset
Let me teach you how to understand Mephala the Webspinner. Maybe that's misleading; she's a Deadric Prince, and who can really understand the motivations...
Perfect Ten: Why trend-chasing doesn’t work at all for online games
Video games have always been a remarkably insular field; that's the nature of development. Someone produces Super Mario Bros, and a few years later...
Guild Wars 2 has completely overhauled gathering tools with glyph upgrades and wardrobe implementation
A couple of weeks ago, a nasty patch bug borked up harvesting tools in Guild Wars 2. Hardest hit were the endless-use versions that...
Worlds Adrift heads into early access next month
Ready to take to the skies? All aboard Worlds Adrift's custom-made airships, then, because Bossa Studios is bringing its "community-crafted" MMORPG to Steam early...
PAX East 2018: Hands-on with the surprisingly solid combat of Ashes of Creation
This year's PAX East featured a lot of games early in their testing phase, but Ashes of Creation was one that had splurged for...
PAX East 2018: Hands-on with The Elder Scrolls Online’s Summerset
One of the fun parts of this job - or one of the odd parts, depending on how you prioritize things - is how...
PAX East 2018: Guild Wars 2 game director Mike Zadorojny on Path of Fire, monetization, and more
It's not every day that you walk into a building dominated by an enormous griffon, the enormous statue replicating the mount in Guild Wars...
