Trion’s Defiance to Go Free-to-Play on June 4, Follows Rift’s Lead with Patron Passes

Nowadays, when it’s announced that an MMO has begun a free-to-play transition, it comes as little surprise. This is especially the case with Defiance, but not because the game has been “dying”. I logged on about a week ago, and the server still seemed to have a healthy playerbase. But with a much-slowed trickle of new players coming in, Trion clearly wanted to do something – especially with season two of the Defiance TV show starting in late June.

Being that Defiance was never a subscription-based game, this transition strikes me as even less of a surprise. Fortunately, current owners of the game (and those who purchase before June 4) will see nothing change at all with what they have access to – the game will in effect be identical. Faithful players do get rewarded, though, with a free 30-day Paradise Patron Pass as well as 1,000 Arkforge currency.

That last sentence highlights an issue some players might have – the game’s never had a subscription, as I mentioned above, but now it’s going to offer one. Of course, a subscription will be entirely optional, but it’d be easy to understand why some might have an issue with it.

Nonetheless, like Trion’s other MMO Rift, Defiance‘s Patron Pass offers boosts to XP and currency gain, gives a daily grab bag of two-hour boosts, login bonuses, and 10% off anything in the store. Trion has not stated a price for this Patron Pass as of the time of writing, but I’d imagine it will cost less than the $15/mo Pass in Rift, given it doesn’t offer quite as much, nor does the game offer nearly the same level of content.

Free-to-play accounts will be limited in a couple of key ways: Character slots will be limited to 2 (versus 4); Loadouts, 2 (versus 5); Arkcodes currency, 50 (versus 75); and inventory slots, 35 (versus 70). Players will undoubtedly be able to correct these limitations with the help of their wallet and the ingame store.

Free-to-play often means the beginning of the end for an MMO, and while that’s hard to ever argue, I’m still looking forward to the future of the game.

If you’re a new player and want to pick up the game before June 4th to lock in the rewards, the game can be found at Steam for $10. The deluxe edition isn’t remotely worth the $20 premium, nor is it worth buying the season pass either – all of that content will be included in the game after the free-to-play transition.