Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes Free-to-Play

Li Mu

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Oct 17, 2011
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cyvaris said:
Brace yourselves, a shitstorm is coming.
Yeah. What's with all the butthurt?
People complaining that it's gone free. People complaining that it's not completely free. People complaining that the part they want isn't free.

Just another day in the Escapist's BAAAWWWW factory.


Honestly, I think everyone is just a bit bored of MMOs in general. I tend to pick up the WoW expansions and then play them for a couple of months and then unsubscribe. However, it's very unlikely that I'll play Mists of Pandaria at all when it's released.
The whole genre is a bit stale for me now.

Perhaps Guild Wars 2 will change things...but I doubt it.
 

Saviordd1

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Lunar Templar said:
Saviordd1 said:
nodlimax said:
major_chaos said:
This is a good thing from where I'm standing. the sooner MMOs move away from the bullshit monthly subscription model the better.
You do know that Freemium or "F2P"are usually more expensive than the Sub based MMOs? But the costs in these models are kind of hidden for the uneducated kind of people.
Well that's the most pretentious thing I've heard.
"Mmm yes, microtransactions are for the SMALLER and STUPIDER people."

In all reality its easier and rarely more expensive. I think my time in a F2P game was most concentrated in STO, in which I spent maybe 10 bucks altogether and played the game for about 6 months and still occasionally play it. How is that more expensive? You do realize that 6 times 15 is 90 bucks right? That, the last time I checked, is more than 10.

Microtransactions are normally a tad cheaper, and if they are not in some cases its just easier to pay 2 bucks here or there instead of 15 a month.

But I guess I'm just uneducated for thinking that right?
actually,

he's right in that in can be more expensive, a lot more expensive, but then it for me (long time CoH player here) it's a matter of value.

the value of permanently unlocked content, for all characters, on all servers. and if i have the option of paying a little now to have a little unlocked for the rest of the life of the game. then yes, I'll drop that $5, even if it means what i spend in the shop exceeds the sub fee, cause its a one time purchase it ultimately pays for it self by just being available regardless of sub status
Isn't city of heroes sub based only...?
If not then its in the minority, most F2P MMO's I play give you more than enough stuff for free provided your not lazy.
 

Darth_Payn

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Hooray! Now I can pick up where I left off with my Cyborg Sith Warrior! Last I recall, my slave and I were just about to leave Korriban.
 

SnakeCL

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Apr 8, 2008
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Hopefully we see another 400% revenue increase with SWTOR like the one we saw with LotRO.
 

Ledan

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Apr 15, 2009
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Woo!
Now I'll play it, in-between playing GW2. Liked the trial i played, but not enough to pay 14.99/month.
 

KeyMaster45

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Jun 16, 2008
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They seem to have mistaken "F2P" for the "eternal demo" model of business. If you're going F2P then all aspects of your game need to be available to everyone who logs in. By gating things off to subscribers only you defeat the purpose of even going F2P, especially in what they're doing with TOR. I see no incentive to play the game as a free user, in fact it looks more like they're punishing people who want to play free by relegating them to what is essentially the single player experience in an MMO. This reeks of crappy EA business decisions, and I'm sure they'll end up rethinking their model when they see it's not going to change anything in regards to their profit with this game.
 

Lunar Templar

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Saviordd1 said:
Isn't city of heroes sub based only...?
If not then its in the minority, most F2P MMO's I play give you more than enough stuff for free provided your not lazy.
eh ..... sorta sub based, they went F2p a while ago, and you get 8-ish years worth of content to play with plus all the power sets up to the latest expansion if your just starting. there's a graph i could hunt down, to illustrate the difference between the 3 tiers, but I'm feeling particularly lazy at the moment

point was, 95% of the sub content is purchasable, with only the end game 'Incarnate' trails/missions/powers and an extra 12 character slots being sub only far as things that matter go (yeah, 12, each server caps at like 44 slots >.> yes, my main sever is almost full ....)

and if you do a little finagling you can get some of the more spendy paid content for, like $5.
(they are still honoring codes for the Going Rouge expansion, and its REALLY cheap to get now) so there's even more content to dick around with (new starter 1-20 zone, extra game mechanic, more powers, plus a free month of sub status)
 

Arina Love

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Apr 8, 2010
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Fr said:
anc[is]So I probably wont be able to play as a green human, a blue human, grey human, or a human with bits of metal taped to their face. I can live with that.

Can anyone tell me what the difference between an operation and a flashpoint is? There's so many silly names for everything, is any of it single player stuff?

It's strange that they are adding a 4th kind of currency. From what little I've seen in the free trial, there's regular money, social points, and commendations. Social points cover the Leia bikini and things like that as far as I know, so why don't they just sell those?
Normal flashpoints is something easy to do with 3 other people to get better gear when you lvling.

Operations is only for 8 or 16 man, lvl 50, and Operations (Story mode, Hard mode, Nightmare mode) are hard, requires attention, tactics and gear.
The flow is this, you lvl to 50 then you do hardmode flashpoints (hard modes unlocks after lvl 50 ) to get some gear to bring your char to the point where you will be able to do first operation (EV story mode) then from there you forget about flashpoints and grind OPS. EV then KP then EV and KP hardmodes then EC and only then EC hardmode. To be regular and successful OPS runner you will need a good guild with voice coms.
 

Mister Six

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KeyMaster45 said:
They seem to have mistaken "F2P" for the "eternal demo" model of business. If you're going F2P then all aspects of your game need to be available to everyone who logs in. By gating things off to subscribers only you defeat the purpose of even going F2P, especially in what they're doing with TOR. I see no incentive to play the game as a free user, in fact it looks more like they're punishing people who want to play free by relegating them to what is essentially the single player experience in an MMO. This reeks of crappy EA business decisions, and I'm sure they'll end up rethinking their model when they see it's not going to change anything in regards to their profit with this game.
But that's just it, the only good part of TOR is the single-player stuff. PvP is a joke, Flashpoints are crap as the rewards aren't worth the hassle of trying to get a group together, especially as chat is restricted to individual planets that usually only have 5-10 people on them at a time, and unless the endgame has significantly improved Ops will still be boring as sin. Blocking off certain races might be an issue for some people, but really it's just a different coat of paint. Space battles were fun at first, but on your second character they are mind-numbing affairs you can do with your eyes closed. Really the only thing that I would want to pay for, if I could do so without having to pay for a full sub., is the use of Speeders as the planets at the 20+ level are a pain in the ass to walk around.

Edit: Keep in mind I left back in March/April, after getting three characters to 50. They were supposed to be adding a bunch of stuff but I left before that so it is possible some of this is no longer true.
 

NathLines

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May 23, 2010
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YES! I tried the trial, and to my surprise, I enjoyed it a LOT more than Guild Wars 2. Now, to see if their F2P model works well.
 

mirage202

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CriticKitten said:
mirage202 said:
Worth noting that this is obviously not true, since some MMOs still survive and even thrive to this day on F2P models, whereas most "pay to play" models experience a spike and then a quick downward slide to significantly lower figures.

Also worth noting that while Guild Wars 1 isn't technically F2P (it's actually "buy to play" like any other non-MMO game) or even an MMO at all, its cash shop has not only sustained the game since it released back in 2005*, but it's also brought in enough revenue for them to afford a full-fledged MMO sequel under the same franchise name....an MMO that will use pretty much the exact same model.

People don't go F2P just to boost profits for "a month tops", they do it because it works in the long term. The market has changed significantly since the days of premium subscriptions. Free to play isn't synonymous with "piece of garbage" any more, and premium no longer necessarily means "top of the line" either. With the lines blurred, people are becoming less willing to fork over monthly payments for an experience they can essentially get for free. It's not as simple as "just make your game better".

* EDIT: Biiiiig typo there. '05, not '02. xD
Hmm I obviously didn't quite make it clear enough that the month tops part, was my personal time investment before hitting the paywall, or finding a glaring lack of depth at the endgame, not anything to do with the change of revenue model.

I'm not against F2P games, I'm just confused why F2P is being lauded so strongly by all these companies that insist on churning out the same crap over and over. They try copy WOW, fail, hail F2P as the future, instead of, well, innovating.

I suppose what I am asking is, has the market really changed? or has it just gotten fed up with Generic Fantasy MMO #7433? TERA, Aion, TOR, Secret World, all big budget MMO's, all claimed to be the next big thing. Well, didn't happen did it? Generic Fantasy MMO with a slight game mechanic change #7434 #7435 etc etc. What if the F2P model only has its current popularity due to everything being the same, either a WoW clone, or yet another carbon copy asian style fantasy MMO.

I guess I just refuse to see the sub model as dead until a company actually steps up and releases something new and most importantly different, with a monthly sub. If/when that failed, then I could see lauding F2P as the future being anything other than a weak excuse to explain away massive failure on the part of these publishers.
 

itsthesheppy

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Mar 28, 2012
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Francis said:
itsthesheppy said:
Thats one hurdle down. Now all they need to do is make Origin unnecessary to run it and I might actually play.
Get it straight from the site and you don't need Origin.
Direct from the FAQ on their own website:

Will I require an Origin account in addition to a SWTOR account?

Yes, you will require an active Origin account in addition to a Star Wars: The Old Republic account. You can create a new Origin account by going to the Origin Account Registration page, entering your email address in the appropriate space and clicking ?Start my EA Profile.? This will take you to a screen where you can create your EA Master ID and set your password.
You can also start a new Origin account by logging in with either your Facebook or PlayStation Network accounts, or by downloading and running the Origin client for the first time.
This is the part that has me a little confused. Do you just need the ACCOUNT but not the client?
 

Kyber

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Oct 14, 2009
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I'll have a look at it but i didn't quite understand one thing about that, Are some races or classes and stuff like that sealed off from the people who start playing it now when it goes F2P?
 

Quiotu

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Mar 7, 2008
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itsthesheppy said:
Francis said:
itsthesheppy said:
Thats one hurdle down. Now all they need to do is make Origin unnecessary to run it and I might actually play.
Get it straight from the site and you don't need Origin.
Direct from the FAQ on their own website:

Will I require an Origin account in addition to a SWTOR account?

Yes, you will require an active Origin account in addition to a Star Wars: The Old Republic account. You can create a new Origin account by going to the Origin Account Registration page, entering your email address in the appropriate space and clicking ?Start my EA Profile.? This will take you to a screen where you can create your EA Master ID and set your password.
You can also start a new Origin account by logging in with either your Facebook or PlayStation Network accounts, or by downloading and running the Origin client for the first time.
This is the part that has me a little confused. Do you just need the ACCOUNT but not the client?
Yep, basically. You need an account to log into the game, but you don't need Origin itself installed on your system to run. TOR has its own login client.
 

Fr]anc[is

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Arina Love said:
A very informative quote
I figured it was something like that, thank you.

itsthesheppy said:
This is the part that has me a little confused. Do you just need the ACCOUNT but not the client?
That's what I've heard prior to all the F2P news. It doesn't actually need the Origin program, but a TOR account counts as an origin account. Same thing with the free trial I played. Doesn't need Origin itself, but the signup page said it might be turned into an Origin account or some such nonsense like that.
 

itsthesheppy

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Mar 28, 2012
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Fr said:
anc[is]
Arina Love said:
A very informative quote
I figured it was something like that, thank you.

itsthesheppy said:
This is the part that has me a little confused. Do you just need the ACCOUNT but not the client?
That's what I've heard prior to all the F2P news. It doesn't actually need the Origin program, but a TOR account counts as an origin account. Same thing with the free trial I played. Doesn't need Origin itself, but the signup page said it might be turned into an Origin account or some such nonsense like that.
I'm happy so long as my computer remains origin-free.
 

Podunk

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Dec 18, 2008
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Great, now Secret World, go Free 2 Play. We all know it's going to happen, and you look like a fun game.
 

viranimus

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Nov 20, 2009
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And with that... the last nail is fully in the coffin housing ToR.

Unlimited access to story mode... but... no access to certain parts of the story mode. (IE flashpoints, etc) Yeah ok.

And if your going to do the whole F2P thing... giving free access to the only part of your game that is even remotely good, while restricting access to the worst parts of your game (Space combat ahem.) gives no one any sort of incentive to purchase pointless and incredibly stupid microtransactions.

So way to go. Youve managed to pull a hat trick of stupidity with this game.