The Secret World
Genre: Themepark MMORPG | Release date: February 2, 2010 | Initial payment model: Buy-to-play with subscription | Change to free-to-play occurred on: July 31, 2017 | Website: The Secret World Legends on Steam
What payment model did the game start with? The Secret World was launched in summer 2012 by Funcom with a “buy-to-play plus subscription” model.
However, it didn’t run well from the start, prompting the subscription to become optional in December 2012.
Ultimately, Wildstar had to close its doors on November 28, 2018. The remaining few players were not enough to cover the MMORPG’s costs.
Content is more important than the model
Conclusion: As you can see, changing to a free-to-play model can definitely help an MMORPG. Many games on the list had a good run after their free-to-play transition and would surely have been discontinued long ago without the change, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Lord of the Rings Online, TERA, Rift, or Star Trek Online.
However, all these MMORPGs are now facing the passage of time, and the games are no longer being developed as they were at their peaks.
Sometimes, though, the free-to-play transition doesn’t help at all. If the games are not properly developed after the free-to-play transition, only a quick, short boom occurs that quickly fades away as seen with The Secret World Legends or WildStar. These games were not granted a trend reversal.
MMORPGs do occasionally die off. We present the 7 that died the fastest in an article.
The release of The Secret World between Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3 was considered a flop. The game flew under the radar of the mainstream for years but was considered a hidden gem by fans of stories and puzzles.
Why was the change to free-to-play made? The player numbers of the MMORPG The Secret World were never good and developed negatively over time.
Funcom ran out of money in 2015 and fell into a crisis, which was then solved by the success of “Conan Exiles” in 2017. With the new funding, Funcom wanted to give The Secret World another shot.
To attract more players, not just the model should be changed. Larger adjustments to the game itself were necessary, which is why the relaunch seemed to be the better idea in Funcom’s eyes.
In essence, there wasn’t really a transition to a free-to-play model. Rather, Funcom discontinued the regular version of The Secret World in June 2017 and replaced it with The Secret World Legends, which was released as a free-to-play game.
What happened to the MMORPG after the change? After the reboot, the online game saw a sudden spike in player numbers (via Steamcharts).
However, these player numbers declined over time again. The “relaunch” was not radical enough for many players and changed too little. Therefore, the effect wore off quickly.
The Secret World Legends remains active. In autumn 2020, it even received a major update.
