What about making the vanilla (and best designed) factions free? It would add a bunch of new players to the playerbase who would presumably buy other shit with money. Nobody is going to buy this game anymore anyways after going on sale for 1 billion times.
I just dont like the idea of making a full price title f2p cause I feel cheated. Furthermore I dislike the concept of f2p as it is right now but thats just me.. I would actually agree on make the vanilla factions free only to keep this game alive but getting more players into a game can be achieved by other much better ways like great balance or game stabillity (framedrops, disconnects and all this lelics) to start with some important stuff. F2p is not a guarantee for a big playerbase, if the game is crap newbs will play 2-3 games, leave and continue playing dota, lol or csgo