BioWare Charts Star Wars: The Old Republic Free-to-Play Restrictions

[tmande2nd]

Yeah I got XCOM:EU to play right now.

I think I am happy right now.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I've been with this game since Day One so I should have a decent amount of Cartel Coins. Paying to equip purple items isn't new to me - high tiered items in DC Universe Online can only be equipped by having a premium account.

That said, I think they're a little TOO strict with what they're holding back on... but it's really no worse than a lot of other F2P games out there. I'm sure EA wants to make their money back somehow. *shrugs* I'll keep paying; it's not like I'd ever planned to stop.

 

[sunsetspawn]

Hey, how long do you guys think it will take EA to kill Bioware?

Some of Bioware's top talent have left. Many of the remaining employees are unhappy. The atmosphere has been crushed up there in Edmonton, and the excitement of making a great game is gone. Deadlines and profit maximization have taken the place of joy and creativity. We all talk about Bioware yet have no idea that it's Bernie fucking Lomax.


Bioware's been dead for awhile now and a couple of assholes (EA) are propping it up and pretending it's alive, and we, the naive public, talk about it as such.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Somehow the F2P version makes me want to play this game even less. How is that possible!?

Because they don't grasp the concept of F2P. Look at League of Legends. THAT is how you do F2P. All their content is available (new heros weekly) for everyone and it works converting them into paying customers.

Yeah, never agreed with locking content for F2P. All it does is break up the community and give people a poor impression of your game.
Even worse is the F2P games that lock stuff behind subscription anyway, while also using microtransactions.

 

[BaronIveagh]

Like there is still anyone playing the Old Republic free or not anyway. Anyone who can run ToR might as well jump ship to Guild Wars 2.

Why would you go there? It's just as bad! Pick up World of Tanks or something and at least get good PvP for free. (Assuming your pug doesn't totally blow.)

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I read this and just laughed alittle, its so very pathetic. They went free to play to make more people interested in their game and all they did was make it so draconian that no one will bother unless they specifically planned to just run the single player stories.

It makes me think of AoC which I was really interested in trying with the intent to pay if the free aspect was any good but they locked out most of the classes and basically made the free version painful to play so they lost my interest and my dollar.

My thoughts exactly.

Bullcrap they're trying to run F2P. They're just trying to lure players in by giving them a larger trial. EA needs to drop BioWare so they can get back to doing more important stuff, like NOT MMOs.

 

[The Lugz]

i was super stoked for this game at launch, i preordered the collector's edition for the cool malgus statue and then i played it for a single month

i cant comment on recent patches but the game was technically flawed and riddled with small problems when i played it, such as broken quests, zones that caused the server to crash of too-many people were in them and the client to be kicked to queues randomly, and for no reason

as for the pvp, it was a total joke many people with the best gear in the game got it in 30 seconds by exploiting game mechanics

the operation content was poor, broken, easy and extremely short

in short there was no endgame
a game like that isn't worth playing, even if it's free there are so many more worthy experiences around these days
( even free ones )

the only way i can think of to enjoy starwars is to level one of each class and then log out
it's only redeeming feature is each class's story

 

[Mister Six]

Meh, I'll go back as F2P to finish off the classes that had good stories that I didn't get to the first time. Not dropping a dime on the game though.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Got the itch to play again a little early last week. I must say, I forgot how much I enjoyed this game. I don't know what you guys have been seeing, but as far as I've seen in game, TOR has been thriving. Maybe not excelling but it's not on a downward spiral like most people who haven't picked up the game in months have been saying. Honestly, I've never had this much ease finding people to go do heroics and dungeons with in an MMO. That's probably due to the merging servers that took place earlier, but if that is the case then it was a good move on Bioware's part. The more lively a server is, the happier the customer, and it gets up to the hundreds in the Imperial Fleet hub.

I think people started calling TOR's death before it even got through its adolescence. From someone who just got back in the game, I think we can establish that it's pretty damn hard to see from the sidelines, now isn't it?

Anyway, still fun, start the free-trial if you want try it out without any monetary risk.

 

[shrekfan246]

Hey, how long do you guys think it will take EA to kill Bioware?

Well, since the end of last year Bioware has been on the quick train to the chopping block, as it were. They're tanking faster than any other development studio I've seen, except maybe 38 Studios. I imagine the next Dragon Age game will now be announced to be a City-Sim co-developed by Maxis.

Christ, how quickly they're falling.

 

[Notsomuch]

So you have to pay to grind dungeons, pay to pvp and if you get lucky and find a decent item you have to pay to use it. Most people's experience, mine included are hinged on the character creation. Well you have to pay for options from the get go you'll never be able to change later on. This is an amazing idea, in a vacuum where no other games exist. It's like they don't understand that there are games far better than the subscription version of old republic that are free to play, and they have payment options that are reasonable and don't break the game or restrict content. I hope the business department that came up with this model is exiled to another plane of existence, after getting fired.

 

[Karoshi]

Don't understand the hatred that this F2P restrictions get. Lotro had a lot more annoying restrictions, having to grind points in order to unlock quests. Here at least, I am going to be able to finish all of my quests and personal story-line without trouble.

As for dunegons and PvP - meh. The combar in Swotr wasn't very good in first place.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I might try it someday, but not today.

I'm sure this will prompt many to try the game that haven't before. I must say, though, that it definitely seems at least at first glance that these restrictions are much harsher than in other F2P/Optional Sub games I've heard about/played. LOTRO, for example, is F2P with an optional sub too, but you can earn credits for the cash store in game easily enough. With some effort and running a couple of characters at a time, you can pay for pretty much everything this way without even opening your wallet once. The optional sub for LOTRO just makes things easier and quicker but it isn't the only way to get a quality game experience which sounds like it may be the case here.

One thing you left out with the sub part of LotRO is that you don't just unlock the stuff that is locked to F2Pers.

My sub is 30 dollars for three months, plus each month I get 500 of those Turbine points to use in the story. Though, other than cosmetic stuff, I did end up using those points to pick up an eighth character slot. The only class I'm not running right now is Rune-keeper. Though I will fill that class when I get a ninth character slot.

The nice thing is now I have 8 characters from my main account that are the kinship I made, so I don't have to bother with my second free account and worry about my kinship auto-disbanding.

 

[anian]

The F2P seems to be an infant still, since even though a lot of MMOs have very similar mechanics, everybody still thinks of different ways of charging money...and EA again thinks of annoying ones.
F2P is supposed to entice you to pay, but it seems all this will have a very weak effect, since these restrictions make the game seem annoying before you actually find it enjoyable. If it's supposed to be a demo, then cap the levelling and restrict side missions and stuff, but all this is just clunky as hell.

Plus, as someone mentioned, how much are they gonna pay me to install Origin?

 

[GundamSentinel]

I'll just keep it plain and simple.

I didn't want TOR. I wanted KotOR 3. They didn't give me KotOR 3. They gave me TOR.

I would've been willing to go F2P just to do the storyline, but even that seems like a chore with all the restrictions they put on it. Screw them, I won't get it. So many MMO's made a better deal out of their F2P model, this just seems stupid.

 

[blackrave]

I personally don't care about MMOs or Star Wars, so I don't care in any possible way (and in few impossible ways too)

Hey, how long do you guys think it will take EA to kill Bioware?

Well, since the end of last year Bioware has been on the quick train to the chopping block, as it were. They're tanking faster than any other development studio I've seen, except maybe 38 Studios. I imagine the next Dragon Age game will now be announced to be a City-Sim co-developed by Maxis.

Christ, how quickly they're falling.

Well Bioware is making C&C:Generals2
A pseudo-C&C game without single player experience made by guys that specialize in RPG's
If this won't be the last nail in Bioware's coffin, then they are indestructible

P.S. What exactly is in your avatar picture?

 

[Kahani]

I'm sure this will prompt many to try the game that haven't before. I must say, though, that it definitely seems at least at first glance that these restrictions are much harsher than in other F2P/Optional Sub games I've heard about/played. LOTRO, for example, is F2P with an optional sub too, but you can earn credits for the cash store in game easily enough. With some effort and running a couple of characters at a time, you can pay for pretty much everything this way without even opening your wallet once. The optional sub for LOTRO just makes things easier and quicker but it isn't the only way to get a quality game experience which sounds like it may be the case here.

Yeah, LotRO is a good example of how a F2P MMO should work. You can play the game just fine without paying anything, and it's possible to access any of the content without ever paying. However, if you want to access all the content, paying is really the only reasonable way to do so since it would be an incredible grind to earn enough points by in-game actions.

Unfortunately, LotRO seems to be a big exception. Plenty of others are actually much more restrictive than TOR seems to be. For example, the entire point of Champions Online is to develop your own superhero with whatever mix of powers you feel like. But if you play it F2P, you're stuck with a very limited selection of pre-made classes that make it little more than a WoW clone with silly costumes. It seems as though many devs see F2P as little more than a glorified demo where you have to pay to experience the proper game, rather than as a full game where you pay for additional convenience.

Look at EVE, a monthly subscription MMO, with a high learning curve and a brutal universe that has no mercy and yet it's doing just fine.

To be fair, Eve isn't always a good example for this sort of comparison. Sure, it's one of the few MMOs that has consistently gained subscribers throughout its history, but it still doesn't actually have that many. Earlier this year, Eve hit 400,000. WoW has lost an order of magnitude more than that, yet still has over 10 million left. TOR is considered to be in bad shape because it's dropped below 1 million subscribers, but that's is still mroe than double Eve. Eve continues to do well as a relatively small niche game, but it's not what you want to copy if you're looking for millions of subscribers.