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League of legends is having massive success with a similar model too. You can do and experience just about every aspect of the game for free without annoyances or interruptions about paying and many players start playing for just that reason then invest a great deal of cash into the game a few months or even years down the track when they're hooked.

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To expand on this: virtually everything is paid for by in game currency you can earn by playing games. Every game you play makes you money (you earn more for longer games). Using that money, you can buy almost everything.

The equipment you can buy with the in game currency gives you a real advantage in player vs player battles. Having no equipment at all means you need a very large skill advantage over the other players to be able to win games.

To get all things you might reasonably want to buy, you need to play an uncomfortable amount of games - which gets many people to take a shortcut and buy the in game currency with real money instead of obtaining it by playing games.

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