Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes Free In One Week
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
The SWTOR free-to-play model is extremely stripped down. It's an obvious bait and switch from EA to get players to subscribe and have access to all the basic features of the full game. But to play devils advocate; I can understand limiting the online features like warzones and flashpoints, but limiting things like character creation & crew skills are just pointless, shameless, nickel-and-dimming tactics.
GW2 players are laughing their asses of.
GW2 players are laughing their asses of.
TOR will probably be one of the worst F2P mmos out there. It will see the jump in players that every f2p game sees, but people won't stick around, especially not with how restrictive they are being with the F2P option...
I could of swore champions online bit the dust faster than DCUO...... city of heros slayer my ass.Sylveria said:
This whole thing is a joke, the content wont be any better than when we paid for it, the only difference is that there will be swarms of morons that no longer worry about getting banned for being complete fuckwads in chat and you'll be restricted from playing the worst parts of the game. Actually its not a joke, because its not even amusing, just pathetic.
eh ...
the story wasn't interesting enough to make me wanna finish it, offering it 'free' but heavly restricted is hardly a reason to go back
sooner go back to DCUO then ToR
the story wasn't interesting enough to make me wanna finish it, offering it 'free' but heavly restricted is hardly a reason to go back
sooner go back to DCUO then ToR
I saw it on their public test server as I have a friend who still plays. It was a couple of weeks ago, though, so its possible they changed it. But this was after they acquiesced on the 2nd hotbar and I haven't heard about any changes since then.Starke said:
How it works is basically any quest reward that is purple and/or a lockbox (could be others but that is all I am aware of) will show up in the quest reward window with a little icon on it saying you don't have access to it without paying. But once you complete the quest, you don't get the item so that if you purchase access later you can use it, the locked item simply never appears in your inventory. It's gone forever. And some quests simply don't offer a free access item.
There are other really punitive things in there too that seem almost spiteful. From what I can see, the F2P is just not an enjoyable experience. It seems entirely tailored to annoy you into subbing rather than making unlocks and small purchases appealing.
Talking to that friend, he spent his entire allowance of cartel coins on the PTS just to get the game into a state where it didn't frustrate him. Now admittedly, he is used to being a subscriber with no restrictions, but that still doesn't seem like the right way to approach F2P.
Seems they're going the Microsoft route by treating free players as sub-class humans.
Pay for more quickbars? Pay to unlock the cargo hold? Pay to equip late-game items? Pay to get more than one crew skill?
Good god. The rest is acceptable, but these? These are just ridiculous.
EDIT: And I see they're charging for the ability to hide the head slot and match armor colors. Lovely.
Pay for more quickbars? Pay to unlock the cargo hold? Pay to equip late-game items? Pay to get more than one crew skill?
Good god. The rest is acceptable, but these? These are just ridiculous.
EDIT: And I see they're charging for the ability to hide the head slot and match armor colors. Lovely.
The thing that absolutely floored me was the restriction on hotbars.Tumedus said:
Seriously. Fuckin hotbars need to be bought?
Treatin your future customers like shit and givin them the shittiest experience possible in the hopes that they'll get pissed off enough at the shitty system to throw money at you to make it less terrible is an awful awful idea.
What could a system like that possibly gain other than resentment form its customers?
I was planing on trying it. But with all those restrictions they slapped on. Sheesh.
I also just got into a big active RP guild in GW2 so, no time.
I also just got into a big active RP guild in GW2 so, no time.
I have to say that EA's uber greed and the "Free To Play" model seem to go well together and also show both in their truest, most unfiltered sense.
There are plenty of ways to get people to want to invest money in F2P games, however what EA is doing here is pretty much taking the "harass to pay" model to an absolute extreme since to have anything like a comfortable playing experience your going to have to dish out a decent pile of dough.
The trick to doing the F2P thing "right" is to create a good game, and make it enjoyable enough on it's own where people want to spend more money on it, and try and trickle in the transactions a bit at a time, as opposed to trying to make huge piles of cash right out of the gate.
To be honest, it is going to be interesting to see what happens here. Either this will work and it's going to be a nightmare as more MMOs emulate this degree of cash sucking (pay for hotbars... ugh) or it's going to fail utterly making ToR not only a free to play record, but one of the first games of it's sort to try and go free to play and then fail utterly.
It's unlikely but through all of this I've kind of been hoping Star Wars Galaxies will be able to come back in some form (without being a total cash sucking f2p monster hopefully), I kind of miss my characters and houses and stuff there.
There are plenty of ways to get people to want to invest money in F2P games, however what EA is doing here is pretty much taking the "harass to pay" model to an absolute extreme since to have anything like a comfortable playing experience your going to have to dish out a decent pile of dough.
The trick to doing the F2P thing "right" is to create a good game, and make it enjoyable enough on it's own where people want to spend more money on it, and try and trickle in the transactions a bit at a time, as opposed to trying to make huge piles of cash right out of the gate.
To be honest, it is going to be interesting to see what happens here. Either this will work and it's going to be a nightmare as more MMOs emulate this degree of cash sucking (pay for hotbars... ugh) or it's going to fail utterly making ToR not only a free to play record, but one of the first games of it's sort to try and go free to play and then fail utterly.
It's unlikely but through all of this I've kind of been hoping Star Wars Galaxies will be able to come back in some form (without being a total cash sucking f2p monster hopefully), I kind of miss my characters and houses and stuff there.
Nope. When I bought it, it was its own client and the only login is directly into TOR. Still the case now.TheSYLOH said:
Oh well. I still had the game on my HD, so I patched it up to get ready for the F2P launch. I'll probably go visit my level 50 commando on whatever server she ended up on, then remember why I got tired of the game in the first place.
I'm very curious to see if Lucasarts new paymaster may yet yank this license and run with a new one in the future, especially with new movies on the horizon.
I'm very curious to see if Lucasarts new paymaster may yet yank this license and run with a new one in the future, especially with new movies on the horizon.
This game is still just a dime-a-dozen WoW rip-off with Star Wars thrown in. So unimpressed.
I really hope that Bioware escape EA. Since they took over, everything Bioware has done has been tainted. DA 2. Mass Efffect 3.
I really hope that Bioware escape EA. Since they took over, everything Bioware has done has been tainted. DA 2. Mass Efffect 3.
Better than people not playing at all, no?Fappy said:
I found the game bloody amazing until level 50 and the most fun I've had in an MMO levelling (GW2 the quests all feel the same), will definitely get all classes to 50 as the only reason I quit was because the raids were the same as WoW and I stopped my WoW sub for a reason.
