BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes Free to Play

[Guest]

In a not-so-unexpected move, EA announced that The Old Republic is going free-to-play... with some restrictions.

BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes Free to Play : Read more

 

[crewton]

Maybe I'll keep playing...

 

[mari0_65]

R.I.P

 

[bustapr]

gotta say its MUCH more appealing now that its completely f2p until lvl 50. if youre so diehard that you want every item in the game and want to enjoy it past 50, then pay the sub fee. I like this model, but is the game worth trying out?

 

[shinmalothar]

The game is great but its suffering from a over saturated declining market. WoW is still successful in the subscription model becuase of its heritage. People continue to play WoW because they have already invested so much time and money in it. People are not willing to start a new subscription MMO when the free to play market is getting better all the time (or they have already spent a fortune on WoW).

SWTOR is definitely worth playing in a free model and once it has matured and been suplemented by more content it should become a very comprehensive MMO.

 

[Guest]

I played at launch. Good game, but I simply can't afford a $15 a month fee in my limited gaming budget. Can't wait for free to play so I can finish all of the character's stories that I had to abandon.

SWTOR was a good game, but I never expected it to be a WoW killer. Nothing can kill WoW but Blizzard itself, as said as that is.

 

[Thunderfox]

In other news, SWG is still dead.

 

[proxy711]

They will mess up the F2P model unfortunately. There's info out there saying they are going to limit the number of warfronts(pvp) you can do per week.

So they are taking the only lvl 50 content that you can play repeatedly, since raids and heroics lock you out after a clear, and requiring payment to play more. That's not how a good F2P model works. This is almost has bad as LOTRO's F2P model where they require you do buy 2-5 dollar quest packs for each zone.

A sad death for a MMO that had so much hype.

 

[internetlad]

is this the same story as SW:G that everybody running around is a jedi and nothing makes sense?

 

[Marcus52]

Right; a company is bringing in $20 million on its current player base, and it's "a tough place to be". We should all have it so tough.

Here's the new business plan for an MMOG: Make a decent game, sell the game for a price that pays for its development costs, charge those people who paid $60 up front another $15/mo because, well because you can and that's what they expect, then go "F2P" to bring in more players and sell them in-game goods that will end up costing most of them more money than a subscription would.

Why should EA settle for $20 million/mo when they can bring in $30-40 million by going F2P?

I can think of how this could potentially turn around to bit the industry in its soft parts, but at this point the business model works and makes a successful product even more successful without near the investment it took to make it. That's why publishers are doing it - not because the industry is in trouble or saturated (seriously?), but because they can basically do a little hat-trick and make some easy money.

 

[proxy711]

They aren't making $20 million a month. They have less then 1 million subs now. The amount of people that started to quit was so bad they gave another month free to max level players a few months into the game.

With the two recent waves of layoffs of Austin Bioware employees, the continued loss of player base, They probably aren't making a lot of money after all the expenses are factored in.

With GW2 being F2P and coming out this month the fact they are going F2P in the fall is an attempt to keep as many players as they can from leaving. I played Swtor for four months got 2 max lvl characters geared and cleared all content on both of them, then got bored and quit. I can honestly say GW2 does almost everything better then Swtor.

 

[xerroz]

It's a solid game but subscription is a dead model. SWTOR pretty much came between the time when subscription was starting to get negative reactions and F2P becoming the norm, so in a way that's definitely hurt it. Was a pretty good game back when I tried it in closed beta so no doubt it's gonna be even better coming November. Worth checking it out imo

 

[tomfreak]

I tot GW2 is using their existing GW1 subscription model? 1 time pay and F2P forever until the game shutdown?

 

[Guest]

Lack of opvp killed it for me. I only sub because of the promise of opvp, but Ilum turned out to be a joke.

 

[leongrado]

This saddens me . I don't understand why more companies don't adopt a B2P model (buy the game and play free forever). This way I know the company is getting profit from the price of the game and not from players buying an advantage. Apparently, F2P models are extremely profitable and that's why so many MMO companies are shifting to it. Still I just don't like that feeling when you play a F2P game and you know you're eventually going to have to spend real money to buy gear. I just feel cheated.

 

[Raid3r]

I will be playing this fall it seems.

 

[memadmax]

Hello people, this is EA we are talking about here, the same company that can take over any successful company/game series and pump it so full of sewage that it explodes like a giant sh it sandwich.....

 

[syrious1]

memadmax +1

 

[Guest]

People quit this game because it got released too early. No group finder? Admit it or not, a lot of SWTOR players came from WoW and got accustomed to certain functionality. At a minimum they expected what WoW could do and more. The game didn't deliver. People stick with WoW because they have a 7 year investment in their toons. That doesn't exist here.

F2P won't save it. Not by locking out the raids and the only content anyone 50+ would want to play. People will play the "story mmo" for the story, and quit right after.

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]In other news, SWG is still dead.[/citation]

Odd, I guess I don't have a guy surveying in the background....

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]internetlad[/nom]is this the same story as SW:G that everybody running around is a jedi and nothing makes sense?[/citation]

SWG took place in a time were the number of Jedi was in the single digits. SW:TOR takes place when there are 10,000s of Jedi and Sith.

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]xerroz[/nom]It's a solid game but subscription is a dead model. [/citation]

Only to those who can't see that a standard 15 dollars a month is much better then paying 100s for the same content you would normally get.

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Marcus52[/nom]Right; a company is bringing in $20 million on its current player base, and it's "a tough place to be". We should all have it so tough.Here's the new business plan for an MMOG: Make a decent game, sell the game for a price that pays for its development costs, charge those people who paid $60 up front another $15/mo because, well because you can and that's what they expect, then go "F2P" to bring in more players and sell them in-game goods that will end up costing most of them more money than a subscription would.Why should EA settle for $20 million/mo when they can bring in $30-40 million by going F2P?I can think of how this could potentially turn around to bit the industry in its soft parts, but at this point the business model works and makes a successful product even more successful without near the investment it took to make it. That's why publishers are doing it - not because the industry is in trouble or saturated (seriously?), but because they can basically do a little hat-trick and make some easy money.[/citation]

from what i understand the game was a 70-150 million $ game, and they needed to hit the 1.5 million player mark just to break even on server costs, and keeping people employed, at least thats what i remember.

 

[sicom]

Content lockouts is an absolutely terrible free to play model. All it does is fragment the community. What a travesty SWTOR has been.

 

[robochump]

I played SWTOR at launch and once the majority of the player base got to end game there was plenty of PVE but PVP was a disaster! And still is! It wasnt the lack of WZ that was the problem. It was players being very frustrated by how Bioware designed the classes. Eventually players would stack favorable classes to win and those with not so favorable classes would rage log. Also Ilum end-game PVP was fun during the first month even with the exploiters but quickly became rinse/repeat. Yawn. Was removed then never replaced. Bioware was hoping players would be content to roll one alt after another but like myself I dont have that much time and wanted to concentrate on my main and SWTOR lacked the content for that. I haven't played for months now and was bummed Bio blew it. But will give F2P a try.