In that regard, Tera should never have gone f2p, since it didn't follow the usual MMO aspect and shook things up by being action oriented. But no, it failed fairly early on and went f2p, with a ton of expensive cash shop items that make the XIV mogstation look amazing. It also had the shop when it was p2p as well, before 2.0 released. It was my in between mmo, as well as gw2.

Tera had a lot of amazing systems in place, that were very different from any other mmo i'd played (not sure they are unique things, but they were new to me). It still didn't keep the game from getting stale and failing to keep sub numbers, and why is that? Because they didn't keep a steady stream of content coming with good quality, among other things.