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

1337mokro

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Dec 24, 2008
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Hello everyone. I would like to present to you.

The people that spent an alleged 300 million dollars on this game, neglected any game that was going to be released other than their sports branch and established franchises in favour of this one, issued a rabid marketing campaign and now not even a single year after it's release, are crawling back into their cave out of shame for thinking a subscription MMO can survive in this day and age.

The reason WoW can survive is because of dependency, it's users depend on it for social interaction and their mental investment. You don't have that. You can never have that because you are living in 2012, a recession era where people are desperately looking for work, stealing and dealing if they can't find any work and where most adolescents and young adults who generally play such games no longer have the time nor money to invest to become dependant on your game.

I don't think EA's dreams of power and star wars glory lasted for longer than 6 months. It is still a very good single player game I will play entirely solo when it does go FTP. So thank you EA I will enjoy what I would have enjoyed had you not made this an MMO. You on the other hand, won't get any money, because it is an MMO that failed.
 

synobal

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Jun 8, 2011
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You know it baffles me. Eve, has something like 350k subscribers, runs a massive cluster for a single shard universe, gives away free content updates (because lets face it they must) and maintains very respectable profits.

Yet these big 'tripple A' mmos can't seem to stay a float or be worth producing new content for with out tons of subscribers. I think the corporations running these MMOs are looking at the MMO model in a flawed way. Instead of trying to grab a huge chunk of the market and holding onto it why not first build a solid base of players and then expand your subscriptions by refining the game until it is a polished gem.

I can't help but feel that all this 'short term' greed ends up hurting everyone in the long run.
 

Akexi

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May 15, 2008
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Going free to play: not a bad idea

Separating a bunch of standard content to the people who still want to pay, thus segregating your player base on a game that implements social interaction: fucking stupid
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Nov 18, 2009
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mirage202 said:
Why are subscriptions dead?
Why is Free 2 Play the shining knight on his white steed?

Everyone that isn't Blizzard is heralding F2P as the only course of action. Interestingly, everyone who isn't Blizzard, heralding F2P, are also the same people churning out reskinned WoW clones.

My mind just seems to stick to the point that subs aren't dead, just the minor detail that nothing worth paying for has been released.

Active WOW sub 2005-2010 (Lost interest eventually)
Active Eve sub 2004-Current (Still worth paying for)

F2P games with cash shops maintain interest for.. a month tops I guess. Perhaps if they stopped A) Applying traditional game retail values to MMOs and B)Actually produced games worth paying monthly for, this wouldn't keep happening?
Because it has shown to be the only way to keep players and revenue going for every MMO that isn't WoW. Lord of the Rings, Conan online, and so many others doubled if not tripled both player counts and revenue after going F2P. The more people leave, the emptier the game feels, and the emptier the game feels, the more people leave. WoW hasn't gone F2P yet because it's massive player base is more or less self sustaining, and even that is dropping.

The market has changed. The economy is still crap, their is to much free competition, and traditional MMO gameplay is becoming obsolete. World of Tanks, Tera, Plantside 2, even Guild Wars to some degree all have actual gameplay, and require skill beyond "click the hotkeys at the right time." TOR is both traditional in gameplay, and feels old. Besides the well written story and the setting, what really makes it better than a billion other MMO's that don't cost a dime to play?
 

faefrost

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frizzlebyte said:
While I am not a big fan of TOR, simply because I wanted KOTOR 3 instead of this, I will be playing it now. Can't say I would ever do a microtransaction at all, but going F2P is a good thing, IMO.
mirage202 said:
Why are subscriptions dead?
Why is Free 2 Play the shining knight on his white steed?

Everyone that isn't Blizzard is heralding F2P as the only course of action. Interestingly, everyone who isn't Blizzard, heralding F2P, are also the same people churning out reskinned WoW clones.

My mind just seems to stick to the point that subs aren't dead, just the minor detail that nothing worth paying for has been released.

Active WOW sub 2005-2010 (Lost interest eventually)
Active Eve sub 2004-Current (Still worth paying for)

F2P games with cash shops maintain interest for.. a month tops I guess. Perhaps if they stopped A) Applying traditional game retail values to MMOs and B)Actually produced games worth paying monthly for, this wouldn't keep happening?
We have a winner!

I honestly don't think that the huge movement is towards ftp as a standard or as a preferred business model. Rather ftp is the only viable way to rescue a game that fails to gain traction as a subscription game. It's the MMO equivalent of the $20 bin at Gamestop. People didn't stop playing SWTOR because of the subscription fee. They happily paid that to check it out. There are some subscription games that have been going for 10+ years. The problems aren't "the subscription model". The problems are unrealistic expectations by publishers and developers, un polished, un finished games, and the constant stream of look alike wow clones.

Now there is an important lesson to be learned. While ftp is not the end all be all holy grail and the way of the future. It is a part of it. New games would do well to learn the lessons of ftp and game demo's. Any game that releases should have a ftp demo of some sort. If your game is good let the players experience it. They will pay from there. Stop trying to dump sight unseen games on us.
 

shintakie10

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Akexi said:
Going free to play: not a bad idea

Separating a bunch of standard content to the people who still want to pay, thus segregating your player base on a game that implements social interaction: fucking stupid
This is such a true thing. I mean, it entirely depends on how limited it actually is. Do they mean like...a certain amount of flashpoints/warzones an hour/day/whatever or do they mean somethin else like a qol adjustment in the opposite direction like no group finder option?

Its a bit early to say just how bad it could actually be and how horribly Bioware/EA plan to shoot themselves. Given the history of the game itself and the developers/publishers absolute arrogance to the entire situation my money is on shoot themselves in the foot and the bullet somehow ricochets off the ground and hits them in the head right after.

Maybe I'll be surprised though and the limited access bits wont actually be as horribly limited as I expect.
 

Adventurer2626

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Jan 21, 2010
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Time to go back to the best online massively single player rpg I've tried. But I haven't tried Diablo III yet so we'll see if it holds onto that title. On a side note can one feel guilty and vindicated at the same time? I'm sorry I couldn't fund you KOT-I mean TOR! Hopefully you can still scrape out a living through off of cosmetic slave dresses and ship hull skins from an online store. *a space-folding sigh*
 

AbstractStream

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Feb 18, 2011
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After investing so much money into this MMO, now it's F2P. Not that F2P is a bad thing (unless EA executes it horribly), but still. Sucks for them.
 

RedEyesBlackGamer

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Jan 23, 2011
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I'm going to try to sit here and not be smug. This was an inevitability. I'm just surprised it was this soon.
 

TWEWYFan

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Mar 22, 2012
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Hurray! I can't wait to start playing again since subscription was the only thing holding me back.
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
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Awesome! I was just playing KOTOR II so this will be perfect. Can't wait!
 

Grape_Bullion

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Mar 8, 2012
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Please let this be an example to other developers trying to put out an MMO *cough*Bethesda*cough*. Making a WoW clone in a popular setting is NOT guaranteed to be successful.
 

cthulhuspawn82

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Oct 16, 2011
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It's common belief that all these subscription based MMOs flop because they cant compete with WoW. I think it's just that the subscription based model itself is a flop, when Blizzard releases their next big MMO, and it's forced to go free to play in a month, my point will be made. WoW just got lucky to hook a bunch of people before we all figured out what a scam pay to play is.

Of course, free to play is a flop as well. The only good way is the Guild Wars 2 way.
 

Darkmantle

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Oct 30, 2011
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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.
DDO does it well, you never have to pay for anything, you can build up credit in-game to buy cash shop items, at a pretty good pace too.