The Tourist : Sauntering Through Tera

We are ready to launch a brand new column today with the arrival of The Tourist that will feature jaunts through MMOs of note. In today's installment, we take a look at TERA. See what The Tourist discovered and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

Let's get the big question out of the way first: TERA has an excellent free-to-play model. Rather than take anything away from non-subscribers, En Masse is taking the opposite tack. If you want to run dungeons, do PvP, play more than one character (limit of two), and access every quest, you can. It's the same exact product players subscribed for at no cost. Buying a subscription earns you more goodies, such as a shortened dungeon cooldown and higher daily limit, a handful of consumables, reduced auction fees, and a mount. Instead of gating players behind pay walls, TERA has adopted the popular lockbox system, ala Guild Wars 2. You'll find these fairly often in your travels but the keys are rare, unless you buy them. It's a reasonable system and totally optional.

We are ready to launch a brand new column today with the arrival of The Tourist that will feature jaunts through MMOs of note. In today's installment, we take a look at TERA. See what The Tourist discovered and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

Let's get the big question out of the way first: TERA has an excellent free-to-play model. Rather than take anything away from non-subscribers, En Masse is taking the opposite tack. If you want to run dungeons, do PvP, play more than one character (limit of two), and access every quest, you can. It's the same exact product players subscribed for at no cost. Buying a subscription earns you more goodies, such as a shortened dungeon cooldown and higher daily limit, a handful of consumables, reduced auction fees, and a mount. Instead of gating players behind pay walls, TERA has adopted the popular lockbox system, ala Guild Wars 2. You'll find these fairly often in your travels but the keys are rare, unless you buy them. It's a reasonable system and totally optional.