Posted on: Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
Posted in: News
Comments: 70
SWTOR to go F2P, Bets are Over.
The shocker of a title says it all, more or less.
Some time ago, Emmanuel Lusinchi of BioWare mentioned Star Wars: The Old Republic going free-to-play; player subscriptions took a noticeable hit and the pennies just weren’t flowing. Although it isn’t an uncommon practice for a developer to lay off staffers after a big release, I offer my genuine sympathy and really needy cat to all the recently released Austin-based employees.
On this fine day in July, Electronic Arts released a statement declaring every storyline up to level 50 shall be free-to-play come Fall. Current paid subscribers of Star Wars: The Old Republic will be rewarded accordingly with a monthly 150 Cartel Coin bonus; the new in-game currency will make a similar Fall appearance and can be used to purchase swanky gear and other convenient, game-enhancing crap.
Then again, I’m sure some people just can’t afford to lose more money ontop of Netflix, XBL, Secret World, TERA, L.A. Fitness, L.A. parking, L.A. rent, needy cat, etc., for another trite MMO with barren end-game content; however, BioWare is promising more regularly scheduled good stuff once August rolls around.
Meanwhile, pandas.
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70 thoughts on “SWTOR to go F2P, Bets are Over.”
Hey joe !
i just wonna know why the hell havent you made a review on this game yet(swtor) ? i just dont understand, u sound like u are very excited about this game ?? so i just dont understand ??
the Limitations are worse, in fact you cant even trade or even mail people on a free account, so if you were to play with a friend you cannot trade items with each other, or even trade in game credit to start your character out with. Yes I know this can prevent the so called gold-sellers or farmers, but that’s their problem not mine, when they make a game non enjoyable they make it for everyone else who just wants to play with friends.
By the way the restrictions are horrible, in fact it kills the game rather than support it, you are limited to two characters per account, no bank or even cargo space, you can only place 2 items on the market at one time, war zones, flashpoints, and so on are limited by weekly numbers, meaning you can only do war zones 5 times a week…
So once EA gets rid of the stupid model that forces you to PAY to have fun, i don’t think their sells are going to increase any better or even anytime soon. they are too limiting and restricted on the F2P, also its a pay to win scenario but more towards pay to have fun… Its depressing when EA is so desperate but so dam stubborn and controlling with their products.
Ill play swtor when they rethink their policy with free to play, because its not free, its just a demo account that’s all it is, and that’s all it will be unless they change it A LOT. oh did I also tell you that you are limited to 3 races? or class types?
Ghost-
I’m so exited to come free!!! Then i can play with my friends. Don’t know though if this retricions may effect the free users of the others
Reading all of these limitations i think EA or bioware might still fail untill they minimize the warzone limitations or at least instead of giving us all of the warzone maps remove the per week warzone limitation! Also travel limitations i dont understand what can they remove from traveling! Basicly what they are doing is giving us the story of all toons and a lil bit of stuff to do. This will lead to all of the f2p guys who wont sub not play the game after they finished a story or all of the stories which wont bring any profit anyway and they might also lose subscribers from the f2p cause some people dont like this! Im pretty shure this will bring them some more subscribers, but the problem is this can only do so much and if the trial didnt bring in more players this will not bring more subscribers then the trial did. The way i see it is if they still want to keep the subscriber system they need to give f2p players also better endgame content so people can experience more and maby be more engouraged to subscribe or at least remove the warzone limitations which basicly is the only fun thing u can do after u hit lvl cap maby also raids, but the flashpoints and operations for me are just grinding and thats not fun in my opinion unless u have some great group of friends with u!
Well being able to play the story for free is kinda cool, although I found (my story at least) to be boring and repetitive (exp, go to planet A, find a protect “secret” project A while faced with a dilemma on whether to use it or not due to moral consequences, rinse and repeat on world B)
Still this announcement will have me considering resuming my game, but I am certain I will never pay subscription for this game again
I’m going to miss dancing in the warzones before they start as well as playing them as often but it is not a huge loss.
And the “Evil” or “Good” Dialogue suck in this game, I swear it never challenges you because you make all your dialogue options according to which alignment you want to follow, not the actual dialogue itself. (unlike KOTOR I might add)
To elaborate, all your decisions are either Good or Evil, tending to choose between the 2 if you are supportive of that thing at that time etc is detrimental because it prevents access to special abilities with either alignment, forcing you to choose an alignment from the get go, Meaning you focus less on the actual dialogue and more so on the alignment it belongs to. Also In the game, SWTOR never presents a situation that is grey and not clear Black-and-white, never challenging you because of what I said earlier.
Everything EA touches turns to corporate plaything crap. Voted most evil company in America for their avarice, worst than banksters.
Restrictions are deeper than it looks at first glance. No warzones = no pvp, Xp, credz.
‘Per week’ system, on foot (no fst travel),.. EA marketing bstrds. Will take forever to lvl up to 50, and thats what they want, to keep you playing their product.
And note how marketing is producing less bang for the buck with Swtor.
Calling EA the most evil company is plain retarded, they dont ruin people, destroy the environment. Kill animals. etc , the people who voted for EA are just ignorant kids, who thinks games are more important than the wellbeing of other people .
If you want evil companies, try banks who bankrupt people, insurance companies who refuse to cough up the cash for surgeries, not an electrical entertainement company.
should be interesting to see how many people start to play the game once it goes f2p
Trying Free trial now and i like it, but limited Warzones?? Played more than 30 yesterday! and some Wz’s last what, 10 minutes? think im gonna log to play 1 hour per week??
A single player MMO? what a blast!
I rather play lvl 15 unlimited Warzones as it is now, or go play Multiplayer (PvP) games.
Bioware failed in TOR because they assumed that an old school hotkey mmo would appease the masses. But sad fact is as good as TOR was and mind you IT was good(save the end game) people had a been here done that feel with it. Meanwhile games like GW2,DCUO and Tera are innovating changing way mmos are played, and people are gravitating toward those games. Even WoW has seen a substantial loss in subscriptions and i DO believe that subscription mmos are a thing of the past to some degree. TOR still has probably BEST story going for it in any mmo to date, and will remain one of those games i will return to just to play stories through which hey thats free!
I see a lot of people on here saying they wished for kotor 3 and I have to agree. I played the first 15 levels of the trial for this game and it was just way to much like WOW for me enjoy. I played WoW for close to 5years and I’m just burned out of hotkey MMO’s in general. Still if anyone wants a proper conclusion to Kotor1/2′s main protagonists then I highly recommend the novel Revan which wraps up the tales of bastila, revan and the exile as well as a few of the chars from kotor 1/2. It’s written by one of the writers of ME1/2 (don’t worry I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with ME3). So even though we will never see KOTOR 3 there is a satisfactory way to end the stories of those games out there. Check it out.
Too late Bioware, Guildwars 2 is almost here now and I’d rather pay a one-time fee for GW2 then nothing for SW:TOR.
A year ago I would have loved to experience the storyline but GW2 seems like a much better and (more importantly) more original MMO.
But do continue work on DA3, make it as good as DA:O and I might consider buying one of your games in the far future. For now the taste left behind by DA2 and ME3 just makes me puke.
Been playing SWTOR sice it first came out it is a damn good game! Keeping my subscription though
I loved KotOR so much, that I was hyped for this game. This game being KotOR 3. SW:TOR just doesn’t feel right to me, and if they want me to spend 15 dollars a month (That’s more than XBL and my gym membership combined) for yet another bullshit MMO, then they thought wrong. F2P just makes me think “Oh, well that’s nice” and I move on to other things.
What the hell happened to Bioware? Dragon Age, ME1 and ME2, KotOR, Baldur’s Gate, great games, amazing even, my favorites. Then ME3, Dragon Age 2, SW:TOR, and DLC up the ass happened and my once favorite developer seems to be sorely lacking.
Maybe it’s an EA thing.
Any love for the people already paying for it?
That’s in the article along with a link.
I played the Sith Warrior story to level 50, then started with the Trooper (currently level 31). While some of the missions were a bit tedious (the old ‘collect six rat tails’) and repetitive, I love the storylines. It made me play on for hours and hours, until I almost fell asleep at the keyboard. The only games that ever did that were… Mass Effect and KOTOR. While SWTOR has its flaws, it is still a good game if you enjoy an RPG with a story.
finally paying wasnt worth it thats probably why i stopped playing but im gonna start playing again now
My little brother is going to be happy with this announcement.
this is gonna be one of those free cant do shit MMOs
Actually I disagree the way they have it set up right now, its free do the only thing you would want to do (the story which is awesome) and then dont give them a dime for end game content. Its great for the consumer
I can’t wait fr this to come… I played te trial, IT LOOKS AWESOME. true the graphics need a better touch… but that can wait. I finish the trial (thinkng it was the free to play) and i was stunnd he dropped me off right there! The part i had been waiting for and then they say.. and I quote,
“Thank you for playing the trial. Please puchase the game to progress further in the story.”
That really ticked me off. We now i am sounding like our great leader Angry Joe so I will stop now and leave the game ranting to him.
Ok I understand f2p players not having access to operations, limited Fp, WZ and space missions ( missions weren’t great anyway), but limited travel features? thats some bs right there. There is only 4 ways to get around anyway: flight path, speeder, the player’s ship, and his/her own 2 legs. Limited character creation choices…well its not like there was alot to choose from anyway.
I hope it does good for Bioware (Sadly though I hate EA xd), I really like this company and this game, I’ll keep paying the fee as long as the new content keeps the game fresh and fun.
Ps1: Bioware, remember what happened to DCUO, their servers went crazy, BE CAREFUL.
Ps2: Joe are you going to do a review of this game eventually?
Well, I am keeping with SWTOR and paying the sub. 15 is not as big of deal as it was when playing WOW and buying the expansion packs.
They should have just stayed with the SWG game.
Thing is, they’re really not making it free to play, because that option is so horribly limited it really can’t be called more than a demo. No, you see, they used this new F2P “option” as an excuse to introduce a cash store (cash stores and F2P go hand in hand) so they’ll be pushing a cash store and a subscription (while offering a shitty F2P “option”).
Demo’s don’t allow you to level all the way to max and play any content in the game. They are just putting a cap on the amount of BGs/dungeons you can do every week. I doubt casual players that barely put in game time will care much about the caps. The only real difference on their end is that they can now play without the fee.
You could also just roll an alt to level/play when your main is capped out on content charges. They haven’t said if these caps are account wide or character specific. If they aren’t account wide players will just be ignoring them with several toons.
My biggest concern is in how the upper management (John stick it to the consumer Riccitello) is going to manage the cash store and flashpoints/operations. To be able to sign up I’m pretty sure with even free to play you have to have a credit/debit card on file. I’m concerned that if f2p players hit their flashpoint/operation’s cap and go over there won’t be a warning (as it will probably be buried in the TOS agreement) and it will autocharge via microtransaction for the service. So there will be auto fees for certain taxi services/flashpoints/operations. There’s a lot of ways this service can be abused and I’m wary of how they will handle it.
In the current trial you don’t have to give them any informations beyond your e-mail adress. And since all trial accounts will be automaticly converted to F2P, I don’t think there will be anything like automatic microtransactions.
tell you the truth I’d be relieved if it works out well. I guess my lack of faith in Bioware and EA is sorely lacking
I really wanted to see this game thrive. I even bought the collector’s edition. Somehow bioware managed to get everything so wrong, I used to post on the forums, listing the problems with the game and I recall people telling me, you don’t like it? quit, you won’t be missed. Heh, i see how that turned out.
Hehe, that’s how it goes. Unless you’re Blizzard, you can’t just piss on players and throw subs away like water.
““Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe,””
Translation: We finally realized our PoS MMO was overpriced and that’s why no one is sticking around when better MMOs across the street have the same price. We finally realized the best solution to this problem is to reduce said price.
They dug their own grave at 15$ a month and I knew they were going to tank even before release just from my time in the beta. And look what happened in 6 months. It’s like clockwork. If you don’t have Warcraft quality or some kind of new standard, then this is exactly what copying their price tag does for you. No one is going to pay full price for your crap when a much better MMO is no greater in price. And GW2 is on the horizon with no monthly at all! If they went with 5 or 10/month then a lot of players may have stuck around and they’d have a leg to stand on other than just their Star Wars paint job. They could say “ya our game sucks, but it’s cheaper!”, and that’s a good argument that would win for many players. But they didn’t have that so everyone left.
I just don’t understand why companies want to release a lesser product but yet still try to get the exact same amount of money as a better product. That hoax works for the first <6 months when you put a licensed name like "Star Wars" on it but an MMO is banking on longevity, and you won't have that. They dug their own grave like idiots and now F2P is the only hope they have to get out of it. A lot of players would come back if they could pay less than 15$ a month. Now they will have players hitting for <15 in the cash shop. Btw, a 1-15 range from discounted fans is much higher than 0 from disappointed leavers.
But I believe the world deserves at least 1 good Star Wars MMO because players should have choices instead of every title being a sword and board magic medieval title. So hopefully they can finally start climbing out of the ditch they jumped in and Old Republic can be saved. As a totally F2P title it will actually compete with all the other F2P titles in this world.
Sweet, now I can play SWTOR agai- Wait a minute… Limited number of space missions per week? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
You got to give up something if you want to play for free.
Eh, space missions are nothing more than fancy rail-shooters, boring and repetitive, I am not giving up anything I did like (full story).
I bought SWTOR when it came out, I subscribed, and leveled 2 characters to 50 and had a couple of mid-level characters while I was off work on sick leave.
The individual class stories start off good, but they all sort of mesh together as you level… you get a real sense of “been there, done that”. The REAL killer of the game is lack of end-game content… There’s only so many times you can do your dalies before it becomes a chore.
And everyone has the same gear… random loot would have at least given some incentive to keep trying, but no, everyone knows what the best gear is, and exactly what you have to do to get it.
I know the feeling. I still have a subscription even thought I don’t play all too much anymore… I want to play more of the class storylines, but I just can’t make myself play trough the same world again. The game is fun but there is only one questing path per faction and that’s a big issue.
SWTOR is a good game. But with no innovations at the beginning it wouldn’t possibly gain time to create a community, or make its own special climat. WOW is still running cause they had 8 years to develop those things. And most important they are adding NEW STUFF. Expansions, patches, items, secrets in game. And SWTOR is still young and beside being SW MMO it’s generic, and after clearing only one class story you won’t go back to play another class. SWTOR needs time, attention, and passion from it’s makers. Time to develop a community and gain experience.
Generic.. lol what an amazingly descriptive word there!
when u roll a new class in WoW, NOTHING is new. except when the quest TEXT that reads ‘Lo there %class%, i need you to gather me some poofballs’
and WoWs idea of innovation is to dumb down all the classes so that u and your granny can play the same game together, on her 486.
Frankly, I think a happy medium between premium and free accounts would be ideal. Something where you can pay a little and have a few incentives, but the suckers- I mean subscribers still get to eat their fancy cake.
don t even but the suckers- I mean subscribers still . fuck you man they get rip off with this and don’t be so rude kid . now you get to play it with out paying for as they did you eating the same cake with toppings taken off your the sucker kid =_= they just giving you the left overs
The guy doesn’t say anything extraordinary. You could have a Premium package where the subscriber pays a lot, but receives plenty of stuff, you could have a Normal package, where the subscriber pays a reasonable amount and receives most of the stuff, but still misses some of the most exciting ones, and you could have Free packages, where you just get the core game. The DC universe MMO is like that, and it’s actually quite a good game where you get value for your money.
Now, if the subscribers for SWTOR were fool enough to buy an extremely expensive game and pay an extremely expensive subscription fee each month as well, with all that’s been going on with EA for the past 3 years, then that’s their problem, and there’s no need to go around cursing people just because they are reasonable.
No need to go around cursing people just because they are reasonable. He called over 5000 guy and woman that plays this game suckers.
you need to work on you lies they may work on your blind kids but not on me. -_- sorry if being rude it not nice to lie to my face act like I can’t see =_=, sorry if was being rude you never know what I was talking about . It’s all good
the moment i read that this was going to be free to play i went outside and did the vader no ooooooooooooooooooooooooo…. i’ve crapped well over $180 for this game. the same thing happened to me with DCU. thats it i’m done with the mmo genre. i’m not even going to invest in the skyrim mmo. peace i’m out!!!!!
the main issue is that, while TOR itself wasnt a bad game in fact probably one of better mmos out there… it unfortunately suffers from lack of innovation. They copy and pasted the tried and true MMO formula and did almost nothing to change it WHILE isn’t a bad idea…if had came out say 3-4 years ago it doesnt work today. The reason is that mmo’s are currently in a period of change and transition, they are adding more action elements, more active combat, and ideas and concepts are in a state of change… so while TOR itself is good… its about 5 years to late.
Why Joe didn’t review ToR? He was really hyped for the game and played in the beta. After that nothing, not even a mention. Am I missing something?
I’m pretty sure SWTOR taught Joe that he’s not really an MMO kind of guy.
Did he dislike it or did the monotony of playing an MMO just kill his interest?
Star Wars and Diablo 3 probably disappointed him too much to review them. I’m sure they will later be on his “most disappointing games of 2012″ list, which fans won’t dispute him on because by then the hype will be over.(Technically Star Wars came out 2011 but there wasn’t enough time to fully judge it until 2012 hit, thus it’ll be treated by most as a 2012 title)
consider the fact that theres a shitzillion video games out there to play and review, an MMO is prolly the worst use of his time.
and to give a really good review of an MMO, you have to play the crap out of the endgame content, unless its just an initial impression.
imagine doing a review of WoW and saying u only got to the end of Elywnn Forest. You would get jumped on so bad for saying you know anything about the game
Pretty much.
i’m paraphrasing but when i see this i hear this “when you in a game for 3-4 hours and we ask you to pay a dollar to reload we’re not gouging we’re charging…..and i think thats a substantially better future for the industry.”
ea’s current ceo……..the banker…….
After seeing that youtube video you’re paraphrasing I knew that EA was as corrupt as they people believe they are.
They didnt make an actually new KOTOR and continue revans story or something like that! They made an MMO i realy liked the idea, but this game fails to deliver as have recent bioware games with to much similarities with WOW and no new combat mechanics like in tera or such it hasnt realy got anything new and exiting for u to have fun with meaning the game it self was never that good! Also they should of made a Single player KOTOR and i think they would of had 5 times more success with making a new KOTOR then making TOR!
Hell Yeah!
Yup!
They had one of the best storyline ever in RPG gaming, and instead of expanding on it and/or finishing it, they just forgot about it and went ahead to milk the cow, instead of fattening it.
Yes! SWTOR felt more like Mass Effect than Star Wars. And what did feel like Star Wars was more like The Clone Wars than The Old Republic. It only takes place about 300 years after KOTOR II, they are alot closer to it than the prequels.
Not to mention, an MMO was a bad idea. It’s a risky genre to enter in the current age, a single player RPG would have been much more successful. I would just be afraid that EA would completely ruin it somehow.
My ideal KOTOR III would be Lucas Arts getting Obsidian again and actually giving them the time to finish the game. Maybe have it take place in the uncharted space that Reven and the Exile went off to.
Heh, it seems every time I talk about KOTOR, I go on a pointless rant about this…
Pointless? heh, don’t worry about it, I have to restrain my urge to write about it when the topic comes up. Hopefully there will be a real KOTOR 3 that is not an incomplete mess, but with SWTOR etc, all I’m seeing is the prospect of it happening dwindle
.
but this IS KOTOR 3…
imagine this KOTOR 3 you speak of came out, you’d all be saying, “omg imagine if we could play it online!”
I doubt it, if I wanted to play online I would play a game that was tailored to online or had good online aspects like an MMO (such as Guild Wars etc) or a first person shooter like Battlefield 3 or Counter-Strike. Not a game whose past ones were all focused on single-player.
And to be honest I don’t see a game like KOTOR working well online at all, it focus more on story and next-to-nothing for online, and to be honest I am quite fine with that.
pff, first of all the game looks and plays nothing like kotor instead it plays like wow…. which disgusts me… also did you see the me3 ending fuck bioware….
I’m not surprised that this happened. Its too much like WOW to really shake things up in the MMO genre. Paid subscription models can work with MMO’s (hell theres still a MUD called Dragonrealms thats charging 15 dollars a month subscription fee for the last decade or more and its doing just fine) but it has to be an outstanding game which sadly SWTOR is not.
This would definitely get me interested in getting SWTOR, since I just can’t stand subscriptions and I feel like I’m pressured to play the game as much as possible
I know, Subscriptions always made me feel pressured to play through the game as quickly as possible instead of going at a leisurely pace enjoying myself. And it’s a smart move on their part, getting more people hooked on the game and attracting them into paying subscriptions, kinda of like extending the trial up to level 50.
I think its funny to see that they are limiting the customization, because when it first came out it had pitiful customization barely anything to change. Also limiting the Flashpoints? Yeah cause they weren’t hard enough to start up already.
Limited character customization? REALLY? It’s just cosmetic, why limit that of all things for free players?
I don’t like how much they are limiting for free-to-players though, saying that ToR in general is going F2P is false, since there’s such a large limitation of everything.
Though to be fair, most people who play the game will only bother to complete the main class quests I assume, so it’s not all bad.
What they’re trying to do is pretty much extend their trial from level 15 to level 50 and try to hook new players into subscribing. And if you like the game and you’ve already leveled yourself to 50, that’s pretty much the only thing you can do. Subscribe.
Ah well, I tried this game in a beta and decided it was not worth paying and now.. it’s not worth wasting my time on a trial. Just waiting for it to be truly free to play before thinking of playing.