To most Western gamers, World of Warcraft seems like the big massively multiplayer online game, dominating the online space and happily harvesting gamers' monthly subscription payments. Many games in Asia have achieved tremendous success by offering free play, but selling items for real cash that enhance the fun or make your character more powerful.

That model has been slowly trickling to the rest of the world, and becoming more entrenched. For example, Dungeon Runners offers a free game that requires a premium subscription to enjoy the game’s better equipment. Even ordinary releases are offering "premium" content, such as Hellgate: London, that will require a "premium" subscription to access part of the game.

The advantage of this model for MMOGs, is that as long as players have the bandwidth to download the game client, there's little reason not to try the game. And MMOGs require the kind of time investment such that once you’ve made a few levels, you might as well purchase some items and keep playing.

Publisher Codemasters has been converting some of its games to a free-to-play, pay-for-fun model. The MMOG ArchLord already changed to this system. Today, RF Online (Rising Force Online) has changed over to a free game. Players interested in checking out the now free game can download the client at the RF Online site.