From our own recent successes, we know that it takes an extraordinary amount of planning and work to pull it off well. And it wasn’t a quick fix or flip of a switch for City of Heroes. It wasn’t until we had more data roughly a year and a half ago that we felt comfortable making the decision to change.

We had our first internal discussions about City of Heroes offering a free to play component back in 2007 or 2008, but to be honest it represented too much of a risk at the time because MMO customers had not accepted it yet. Ross Borden: Free-to-play online games have been around in the West for several years now but it wasn’t until more recently that we started to see the first subscription-based massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) change their business models or announce upcoming free to play MMOs. We talked with Ross Borden Senior VP of Brand & Business Strategy at NCsoft about the new City of Heroes Freedom, promoted in part by this Ayzenberg Group produced trailer! list: What are you general thoughts on the free-to-play trend which is currently sweeping through the industry. Now, so-called freemium games are starting to rise from the ashes of previously subscription-only MMORPGs, one of which is City of Heroes.

While free-to-play has been the primary business model in Asia for online games the past several years, the West has started to catch up rapidly.

Can you still play city of heroes