I think it's designed to to bring in more money from current subscribers. I've played other F2P games and they let you play all of the game and hope you enjoy it so much that you'll buy vanity items like pets and costumes and skins from the shop. That's how League of Legends works. This doesn't give you the whole game, it doesn't even give you a full UI, so people used to other F2P games are not going to like this model. They are looking for actual F2P games to play and this is more like a 'pay al la carte' model where you pay for everything in the game except for the story from 1 - 50. This may satisfy current subscribers but it's hard to see how it will lure in many new players. On the other hand, the people left playing the game are very strong fans after nearly a year of subscribing and will be much more likely to go blow some real cash on the shop. EA has already been giving people a free trial to level 15 for some time to draw in subs. I don't know if that is working or not, but this F2P implementation is an extension of the 15 level limit all the way to 50. It's not what most people who play F2P games are used to, but it does give current subscribers somewhere to spend all of their extra cash.

Haven't subbed since my first free month ran out. Can post. (obviously)

That's simply not true. Wow was heavily Alliance when it first came out because that side was more fully developed. Just compare Org and Ironforge. There isn't any comparison.

It can actually be deadly for epileptics. Most games come with a warning about this. But I wouldn't worry about it. Chances are, you'll die of boredom before you die of a seizure.

Is your toon male or female?

This is the solution. Always was. Always will be. A single faction warzone was a stupid idea and led directly to the population imbalance. If people couldn't queue for warzones when they first started leveling, they would figure it out very quickly and reroll on the side that warzones popped for more frequently. How to make an MMO 101.

Normally it's done by making the underplayed faction more attractive to players. For instance, let's say ALL of the warzones needed both Republic and Empire to play. People would get frustrated at never having a warzone pop, so they would reroll Republic if they wanted to play in warzones. Single faction warzones (huttball) are a bad idea and we now see why. Make the coolest speeder in the game only available to Republic. Make several cool features only available on the Republic side. At least, that's how other games do it. edit for faction confusion.

Sorry, they're too busy listening to their customers to do that. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

Oh, I see them. But they're not server forums so they're useless. Why bother doing EVERYTHING half way?

You couldn't possibly mean, "Why doesn't Bioware add an instant level 50 button while they're at it?" could you? I hope not.

Well OF COURSE NOT. You have to sign in with the key to access the vendor. THAT's the mechanic.

If Wow And SWTOR had been released at the same time 7 years ago, SWTOR would have already been outdated. It doesn't even have the features EQ1 had. Rift has only been out a short while and it released with many, many more features than SWTOR and I've been over playing the free trial this weekend and it's simply amazing. Voice acting appeals to the new people who came for the Star Wars theme. Most people who have played other MMOs find it sort of tragic.

I have a question. If the ridiculous traveling in this game is to bring some realism to it, then why can I land on a planet across the galaxy, use my fleet pass and then my ship is docked at the fleet instead of the planet I left it on. I was honestly worried about this first time I used a fleet pass. I was like, how am I going to get back to my ship. But no worries. It flew itself back to the fleet for me and I bet my ship didn't have to go through a single loading screen.

Op, I like your thread title. Maybe they should rename this game: Star Wars: Renewed Hope

Wouldn't that be great. As I understand it, Bioware was originally a Canadian company (hope I'm right about that). Canadians rock unless they don't and if they don't you know what I do??