Arise, Sir Microtransaction: TERA: Rising Has Risen
As prophesied (well, reported) by the god among men that is Nathan 'big dawg' Grayson, recent MMO TERA is to hop aboard the divisive ship Free To Play. Its new version, with its free client, has now gone live. Apparently free players will have access to all the game's content, but if you join 'TERA Club' you'll get all manner of in-game boosts. Existent subscribers fall somewhere in the middle. More details on that side of things here. All and sundry, meanwhile, will find themselves paying extra for stuff like character sots.
TERA: Rising, as it is is now known, is available in Europe right now. As far as I can tell it's already free in the US too. I've put a video below, but you can watch that in any country. Apart from China, probably. I hear the guys in charge over there are right dicks.
Download the client directly from here, if you like.
The big question, of course, is what's in the pipeline for games after free to play has run its course. My vote's on 'being forced to play at gunpoint.' EA have got a 4000-person R&D lab dedicated to that, I hear.