Turbine prepares to throw open the gates to Dungeons & Dragons, and make it free-to-play. Why? That's obviously a strategy to survive in the major media markets against the huge competitor, like WOW owned by Activision Blizzard division of Vivendi SA, has a population of 12 million players.

"In a recent Boston Globe article, Brett Close, the CEO of Maynard, MA-based 38 Studios, which is developing its own online fantasy game, tellingly called fantasy-based MMORPGs—that's gamer lingo for massively multiple online role playing games—a market 'where there is a Coke and no Pepsi.'"

But it turns out American game companies have shied away from the F2P model, and that's due partly to their game systems weren't built to allow alternative forms of revenue generation, in which players fork over small amounts of cash for virtual goods such as costumes or weapons for their avatars.

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Now you see, the risk Turbine is taking is that a massive influx of new free players might increase the burden on the company’s servers, and that nobody will buy anything.

This article will show you the deeper reaon why DD choose to be F2P.