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In the commercial project I recently started we plan on adopting a hybrid system, which I hope will capture the best of both types of fee paradigms (i.e. pay-to-play vs. pay-for-perks).
The biggest advantage of a PFP system, to my mind, is allowing players to play your game for free - not only does this help amass a userbase by including those who don't necessarily want to shell out money for their gaming experience, but it also gives people a chance to try it out and see how they like it before they put any money down.
With that in mind, our foundation will be a monthly pay-to-play fee - probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 USD or so.
Initially I was leaning very heavily towards offering trial periods, like one free month, or somesuch. However, someone, I believe it was KaVir, suggested something pretty interesting. Namely, the possibility of allowing perpetually free play within a limited scope, and only charging players who wish to use the entirety of the game's content/featureset.
Rather like old-school shareware - you can download and play Wolfenstein for free, but to advance past the third level you have to send in your $15 or whatever and register a full copy of the game.
Applied here, it would likely translate into something like the ability to play non-human/outerworld races, access to the space combat/colonization modules in the game, or some other sort of possibility I haven't come across yet.
This wouldn't carry the negative issues of a PFP system because it's more or less a binary arrangement; either the player pays and has access to these "extended" elements, or they don't. Once access is given, they're on a level playing field with everyone else.
On the other hand, it would still allow people to play for free; and if balanced properly, it wouldn't have any effect in terms of giving paying players any real "advantages" over non-paying players, but rather only access to certain parts of the game that are reserved.
Anyway, it's far from fully fleshed out, but that's the general idea. Whether or not it's actually viable, we'll just have to wait and find out. <g>
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