Trion Worlds, the developer of Rift: The Planes of Telara, has officially announced that they game will be going free-to-play for levels 1-20. This is similar to when Blizzard opened up World of Warcraft for levels 1-10 (now -20) free as well, but with massive restrictions. Rift is far less restricted and makes a game certainly worth its merits. Interested? Then check out MMO Anthropology, they have the story.

With patch 1.1, Star Wars: the Old Republic discovered that faction imbalance can really wreck open-world PvP and by offering incentives for players to play open-world, but without a mechanism that permits regrouping really amplifies the problem. As a result, BioWare discovered with SWtOR culture that some things come with unintended consequences.

As a relatively new property, SWtOR is still growing up.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

In the newest MMO Anthropology the transition from subscription services to free-to-play for the video game Star Trek Online. Over the past three months Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have been preparing their MMO property for this transition and there have been numerous changes to the game world. The most significant of which the addition of dilithium—a commodity/reward currency that overtook other reward currencies and melded them into one—and the addition of a pay-currency called Cryptic Points.

Other changes have been the addition of a virtual item shop and a tier system between Silver (free-to-play) and Gold (subscription) accounts with access to different bonuses and additional game enhancements such as more character slots, ship slots, inventory, and etc. for subscribers.

The introduction of a sudden rush of free-to-play users with the game opening up to non-subscribers has generated quite an influx of new users and this may have consequences for the culture within the game.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

You too can become invulnerable in Star Wars: The Old Republic but just getting down and grooving — with the /getdown bug — although BioWare has fixed this exploit as of the 5th of Jan 2012. Also, keep in mind that looting boxes on Ilum could lead to getting suspended (or banned) from the game.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

But it gets better!

In the very thread that they published about their opposition to the bills, a United States Congressman, Representative Jared Polis of Colorado, posted a comment explaining his position on SOPA

“As a member of the League of Legends community (partial to Anivia and Maokai),” Rep Polis writes, “and as someone who made his living as an Internet entrepreneur before being elected to Congress, I’m greatly concerned about the future of the Internet and gaming if Congress doesn’t wake up. You may have heard that Congress is currently considering a bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. While SOPA has a ton of problems, there are some significant issues that I thought fellow gamers might want to know about.”

He goes on to say that he’s greatly concerned with SOPA because it will likely stifle exactly the type of innovation that brings us games such as LoL and points out how SOPA makes it far too simple for angry competitors to level the playing field with the nuclear option by removing competition. It also means that indie developers and small media companies will have to live in constant fear of the shadow of larger players in the field.

To wit, he explains, “That’s why companies like Riot, who want to protect the games they create, are opposed to SOPA.”

If only other video game companies would wake up and use this reason to lobby the government and tell them that laws regulating the Internet and their content aren’t just unnecessary, they’re failures waiting to happen.

While legislators are dangerous beasts under the usual case, it’s good to see one who actually is part of the video game community to come out and mention an understanding of the problems that affect us directly. It certainly looks like SOPA and PROTECT-IP are being railroaded into law by the entertainment industry in spite of widespread political and popular dissent so…

It may be too much to hope that all of Congress will listen leave the Internet and video games alone.