Large moves to free to play

It has come to my attention that many MMO's are moving to free to play models.  This means that the game is free to play if you don't care what you look like or leveling at a very slow speed.  One is able to pay for aesthetic upgrades or faster leveling.  One game that I recently decided to check out was Global Agenda, a game set in a sci fi setting.  They have 4 classes, 3 of which are the classic healer, scout, and warrior type.  The fourth class was a class relating to robotics which seemed to be fairly unique.  I found that the gameplay was the standard kill stupid mobs and collect pointless things for people.  I don't really want to spend the hours and hours it will take to get up to the point where I will be able to participate in the Pvp aspect of the game.  The graphics were very impressive, particularly the characters.  I think the take away I have from this is that I will have a lot of competition, which was already a given.  I just didn't expect so many of them to move to free to play so soon.