As most people are familiar with the rising popularity of MMORPGS, or a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, some might not be familiar with the more modern business model many companies employ nowadays to entice new gamers to play their product. There is a rising trend for companies to release Free-To-Play MMORPGS. Essentially this means that the product is usually not found on store shelves for sale and there is the removal of a monthly subscription fee common with many titles in this genre. Often you might wonder how a business company can survive with a business model of giving away their games entirely but I will attempt to explain how many companies thrive on this type of business model. First I will explain what the runescape accounts is. It is a game centered around the player taking control of a fictional character often in a mythical setting and controlling almost all aspects of that character or what is known as an avatar. The overall focus in these types of games is to increase or maximize your characters level, abilities, skills and equipment. An MMORPG is unique in that it is a setting in which players could interact with others online in a virtual world via the Internet.

   The term MMORPG was first coined by Richard Garriott famous for creating one of the older and first widely successful online RPG known as Ultima Online Ultima Online is widely acknowledged with popularizing the genre in the early 90's. Some examples of popular Pay-To-Play MMORPGs after Ultima were Everquest in the late 90's and today by far the most popular one is World of Warcraft Traditionally these games were available for purchase in a retail store which contained the game software and when you installed the program you also created an account with a valid credit card. Then on a monthly basis you paid the subscription fee which ranged anywhere from 10-20 dollars. This is commonly referred to as a Pay-To-Play model. Game mechanics employed insured that character progression was something that was not fully achieved in a short amount of time. Many of the game elements were heavily time centric and it could take many months or upwards of a year to achieve the maximum level or desired status. Group interactions were also encouraged to achieve common goals thus further immersion in the game community resulting in players just spending time "hanging out".