In response to the recent F2P announcement by publisher NHN, TERA Korea has seen an extreme boost in server population over the past few days. Three times as many players are logging in and preparing for the upcoming Federation Update.
TERA Korea will be going completely free to play on January 10th. Players are currently using the game’s mostly F2P servers, which give double experience at the cost of being limited to level 58. These servers were implemented last year and boosted the player population by 25% at the time — though that number dwarfs in comparison to the 300% increase seen just recently.
The sudden surge in new players has caused login queues on the scope of a brand new MMORPG. An additional free to play server was added to alleviate some of the pressure.
With this type of response, I have a feeling that the servers in North America and Europe are keeping a close eye on how well the Korean servers do once they finally go fully free. En Masse, the game’s North American publisher, has recently hired an ex-Nexon employee as their COO. With all of this in mind, it would honestly be surprising if the NA servers didn’t see a F2P conversion later this year as well.
If you haven’t gotten in on TERA yet and have the itch, now is probably the best time to do so. The Discovery Edition (aka free trial) is easy enough to get into and is free to play up to level 28. Amazon is also currently running a sale on digital copies of the game for $4.99 — and if you end up being too late to nab that, physical copies of the game now come with a special Tawny Huntress to swag out on. Mm, swag.
No matter how you look at it, 2013 looks like it’s going to be an exciting year for TERA.
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Source: MMO Culture
