My two cents on the whole thing (contains spoilers).

Super fanboy or not, you have to at least recognize trends when you see them. The quality of Bioware's products has gone down steadily sense aquisition by EA (that can't be denied). EA continues to be near the bottom of consumer confidence (that is a fact). Given both of those, can either be trusted to deliver a decent F2P game? After all, they have managed to screw up what could have been a decent subscription based game.

IMHO, the main problems can't be fixed with subs or F2P.

The game is incredibly shallow. Once you get pass the voice overs, there is not much there. The Sith Assassin was fun, but if I want to try the Sorcerer, that means I have to play the same exact quests. In and of itself not a bad thing if it weren't for the fact that all the class quests are basically the same (start as a lowly guy, get betrayed or wronged in some way, seek revenge, take over/save the galaxy).

The Republic Soldier line was decent, but early on the concequencies were kind of stupid. I have my character say in a very nice way to a little kid "I really think you should go back to your parents" and I get dark side points. ***? Did any of the writers proof read to see if that made sense? (I'm not listing all of the classes but you get the idea).

The game comes off as being a single player game with multiplayer tacked on. There really is not much of a reason to form a community if you can do the bulk of the game by yourself, really only needing to be in a guild to run ops and flashpoints or to go into a warzone together (which aren't that fun to begin with). And when it comes down to it, ops just boil down to "beat the enrage timer."

Classes have been nerf to the point where it's nothing but "flavor of the month" DPS builds, which wouldn't be all that bad if everyone didn't look the same. And what is with the armor? It's like the devs said "screw KOTOR" and went with something that looks at home in the Elder Scrolls universe.

Ultimately for me, the game just got boring. This revelation came to me as I was finishing up my daily Illum quest of just riding around in a circle for 30 minutes to collect some canisters and maybe help kill the occasional Republic guy that came along. That's really all I had to look foward to, since there was never enough lvl 50 players to get a decent warzone match going. Sure, I could make an alt, but the game as designed isn't really conducive for taking your time. You can breeze through some of the story content then hit wall because some of the bosses seem to not have been playtested/designed with both advanced classess in mind (ala colicoid broodmother), which forces you to grind side quests to point where you are practically over leveled for the next planet, let alone that one boss on your current planet. Rinse and repeat.

There are far too many issues in this game for a simple switch to F2P to do any good, and the F2P people will realize this and leave. And if you alienate them by not letting them onto the forums with the subscription players, they aren't going to stay around and pay for their micro transaction.

F2P cannot save bad game design, bad gameplay, and bad developer decisions.

Except no where did I say LA was the sole force behind shutting SWG down. It was a mutal decision backed by several reasons. You have been trying to tell me SOE made them shut down SWG and that they wanted to keep it going. That is not true.

Lucasarts didnt run SWG. All Lucasarts did was get a fat paycheck every month from SoE. You telling me they decided they would rather not have money?

Lucasarts didnt run SWG. All Lucasarts did was get a fat paycheck every month from SoE. You telling me they decided they would rather not have money?

Lucas Arts didn't want competing MMOs with their label. SWG, as wonderful as it was early in it's life, had only been going downhill since NGE turned it into World of Warcraft - Star Wars Edition. So if you don't want competing licenses, which would you choose? Of course they went with the newest option, but hopefully they've now learned their lesson about working with EA.

BBC News article on SW:ToR F2P

lol are the cracks of the past start to peel

Muzyka added that SWTOR isn't really suited for a free-to-play model, though.

yet here we have

EA will have been planning to introduce this since before launch, but the drop in subscribers makes it a timely announcement," said Steve Bailey, senior analyst at IHS Games Digest.

Lucasarts didnt run SWG. All Lucasarts did was get a fat paycheck every month from SoE. You telling me they decided they would rather not have money?

License agreements are way more complicated affairs than "Give me money." There is exclusivity to consider, as well as a number of other variables. It could be that EA wanted exclusivity, and Lucas Licensing decided to grant it to them.

Clone Wars Adventures is a special case, as it's nothing more than a collection of minigames, rather than a true MMORPG.

It could also be that SOE decided that maintaining/renewing the Star Wars license for SWG wasn't worth the cost. Wizards of the Coast made that decision, and now they no longer make Star Wars RPG products.

You are playing today that which should have been launched back in December. It was rushed and it's bugs, missing content, scrapped pvp system, blind-man-playing-lawn-jarts crafting evolution and lack of community tools are the proof. I realize that no games launch perfectly, but TOR nailed the fail. Many players left after just a few months. Long before the fixes happened.

Now the good folks at TOR, Bioware, and EA are telling us the business model is causing failure, not the 7 months of Pay2Beta. Free to Play has nothing to do with game quality, only profits, and please don't buy the BS.

You are playing today that which should have been launched back in December. It was rushed and it's bugs, missing content, scrapped pvp system, blind-man-playing-lawn-jarts crafting evolution and lack of community tools are the proof. I realize that no games launch perfectly, but TOR nailed the fail. Many players left after just a few months. Long before the fixes happened.

 

Now the good folks at TOR, Bioware, and EA are telling us the business model is causing failure, not the 7 months of Pay2Beta. Free to Play has nothing to do with game quality, only profits, and please don't buy the BS.

I couldnt agree more with you my friend

Lucas Arts didn't want competing MMOs with their label. SWG, as wonderful as it was early in it's life, had only been going downhill since NGE turned it into World of Warcraft - Star Wars Edition. So if you don't want competing licenses, which would you choose? Of course they went with the newest option, but hopefully they've now learned their lesson about working with EA.

That's absurd. SWG NGE was not even close to being like WOW. After playing the pre-cu emu, I have no idea how anyone could stand that grindfest. The crafting was still nice, and I could live with the skill trees, but no quests, no space, and running terminal missions to farm mob kills was not fun. Neither is there any GCW city battles.

Pre-cu had a worse UI, and tons less to do than the NGE. It's no wonder they did the CU, and NGE, because that pre-cu stuff is horrible for the most part.

The pure sandbox thing in the pre-cu was not going to work, not because it was too hard, but because it was boring as hell. The NGE was still mostly sandbox with a little themepark added. I thought it was brilliant, and I never ran out of stuff to do.

Lucas Arts didn't want competing MMOs with their label. SWG, as wonderful as it was early in it's life, had only been going downhill since NGE turned it into World of Warcraft - Star Wars Edition. So if you don't want competing licenses, which would you choose? Of course they went with the newest option, but hopefully they've now learned their lesson about working with EA.

Simple fact is SoE didnt see it being a good investment. Lucasarts was all for it read the links I put up earlier. The head guy at Lucasarts gaming said he saw no reason they could not exist side by side. SoE on the other hand didnt see anyone staying when TOR came out. It doesnt take an economics major to figure out what happened. Rather than renew for a time (do they do 1 yr or maybe make you agree to pay for 5, 10?) they chose to shut it down. Wasnt worth it to run anymore.

Simple fact is SoE didnt see it being a good investment. Lucasarts was all for it read the links I put up earlier. The head guy at Lucasarts gaming said he saw no reason they could not exist side by side. SoE on the other hand didnt see anyone staying when TOR came out. It doesnt take an economics major to figure out what happened. Rather than renew for a time (do they do 1 yr or maybe make you agree to pay for 5, 10?) they chose to shut it down. Wasnt worth it to run anymore.

Very interesting exchange, all of you.

So, tying this back to the current situation, does anyone think there's any angst over at LucasArts about this? It's their brand, and I wouldn't think this is reflecting it well. Maybe it's not unprecedented?

This is the first Star Wars game I've played since Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Yeah. Think about it....keep counting back....but i came to this game because it was Star Wars, and I'm pretty pissed off.

I know a little something about marketing a brand, and customer service, so I know that for every one of me, and each of you, that are saying something, there are 100 people who get a bad taste in their mouths and quietly stop paying. Go somewhere else and pay that guy.

That's absurd. SWG NGE was not even close to being like WOW. After playing the pre-cu emu, I have no idea how anyone could stand that grindfest. The crafting was still nice, and I could live with the skill trees, but no quests, no space, and running terminal missions to farm mob kills was not fun. Neither is there any GCW city battles.

 

Pre-cu had a worse UI, and tons less to do than the NGE. It's no wonder they did the CU, and NGE, because that pre-cu stuff is horrible for the most part.

 

The pure sandbox thing in the pre-cu was not going to work, not because it was too hard, but because it was boring as hell. The NGE was still mostly sandbox with a little themepark added. I thought it was brilliant, and I never ran out of stuff to do.

A-friggin-men, brother.

If SWG wasn't shut down, we could've seen their movement toward episode 6 content and beyond (GAT FTW!)

Siege cities FTW

GCW FTW

ZONE RAIDERS FTW

Oi...all the "OMG you shut SWG down for this..?" again...

SWG was almost at the bottom of the hill...TOR was just the final nail in the coffin sort of speak. The GCW content was a huge blunder amungst other things.

Dec 19, 2011, I told ya so...

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=499385#post499385

Oi...all the "OMG you shut SWG down for this..?" again...

 

SWG was almost at the bottom of the hill...TOR was just the final nail in the coffin sort of speak. The GCW content was a huge blunder amungst other things.

I LOVED the GCW battles. Some days that's all I did, just because I was having fun.

I found this screenshot in one of my folders.

http://quantum-sheep.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/f2p.jpg

Seemed to fit how I felt when I heard the news!

QS

Oi...all the "OMG you shut SWG down for this..?" again...

 

SWG was almost at the bottom of the hill...TOR was just the final nail in the coffin sort of speak. The GCW content was a huge blunder amungst other things.

I think it was a huge mistake shutting down SWG. Some of those 1 million people who left TOR might have tried it.

This is the timeline to FAIL

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/bioware-mmo-project/1225612p1.html

The bottom line is F2P doesn't matter.

Do you still enjoy the game?

If so, stick around, pay the sub.

Do you not enjoy the game or are you bored?

Cancel your sub, and maybe come back later as a F2P player to check out the game once they/if they start making good on their promises of new content.

The game is still the game. Either you enjoy it, or you don't. If you don't, I am not judging you - different strokes for different folks, and everyone likes different things. But at least for right now, this game is still the same game after the F2P announcement as it was before it. And you have a long run of it being this way until November hits, which is when they are targeting F2P to go live.

So if you enjoy it, get your enjoyment from it, and don't let F2P needlessly freak you out. And when November comes around, you can see what the deal is then and re-evaluate whether you still enjoy the game. And if you don't, again, find something you do enjoy.

The bottom line is people need to stop holding torches and bearing grudges for what in their own idealized world a game could have, should have been. A game simply IS what it IS, and if you enjoy it for what it IS, then enjoy it until you don't anymore. And if you don't enjoy the game, why waste your time? Go find something you do enjoy then, but just have enough CLASS to not crap all over it for the people who have different tastes than you and are still enjoying the game.

Its that simple, and if you are getting angry and bitter over a video game, seriously you need to get out more and experience life, and realize there are far more important things in the world than a video game...

I could actually go to Free to Play and lose nothing. I haven't run a raid in a long long time. I could level a bunch of characters to 50 for free and possibly sub again in a few months. It would be tougher to make credits though. I guess I'd have to do level 50 dailies a lot more.

I played LotRO when it was F2P. I guess it can get people hooked and persuade someone to buy & subscribe. Playing F2P leaves you missing a lot of features you wish you had. If you like the game, you'll spend money to have them. Really tough to play LotRO without spending and money or at the very least, doing the tasks to earn points for things like the ability to use their auction house and a mount or get more bag space. Or even for content. For some odd reason, EA has decided to give people everything short of raids for free. In LotRO, there were expansions, so leveling to max really required you to buy some content.

Had to get this post copied and posted from a closed thread, because I thought it was said so damn well....made by The_Butler.....

." Back on topic yes I think it could have easily lost that many subs but I don't think its because of the lack of end-game but the lack of anything to do once you've completed the class quest for those not interested in Ops. I mean once your class quest ends in this game you might as well just switch the game off for that toon if you don't wanna raid. There's no acheivements, no crafting to grind, no deeds to solo, no places to explore so everything that made getting to level 50 fun just stops. So roll an alt or click unsub even if you loved the game.

Does not help as the Levelling process to 50 is just ridiculously quick! "

This statement in a nutshell sums up imo why the game lost so many subs and are now planning a FTP model.

I could actually go to Free to Play and lose nothing. I haven't run a raid in a long long time. I could level a bunch of characters to 50 for free and possibly sub again in a few months. It would be tougher to make credits though. I guess I'd have to do level 50 dailies a lot more.

 

I played LotRO when it was F2P. I guess it can get people hooked and persuade someone to buy & subscribe. Playing F2P leaves you missing a lot of features you wish you had. If you like the game, you'll spend money to have them. Really tough to play LotRO without spending and money or at the very least, doing the tasks to earn points for things like the ability to use their auction house and a mount or get more bag space. Or even for content. For some odd reason, EA has decided to give people everything short of raids for free. In LotRO, there were expansions, so leveling to max really required you to buy some content.

I played DDO and it was the same way - could get to level 12 and then your options were limited getting to 20 unless you grinded enough to purchase packs from the freebie points from unlocks.

Letting people go to 50 is the 1 major deviation from the DDO model, and I think in this case, its the needed one given how story is crucial to the game. Smart move on their part.

I could actually go to Free to Play and lose nothing. I haven't run a raid in a long long time. I could level a bunch of characters to 50 for free and possibly sub again in a few months. It would be tougher to make credits though. I guess I'd have to do level 50 dailies a lot more.

 

I played LotRO when it was F2P. I guess it can get people hooked and persuade someone to buy & subscribe. Playing F2P leaves you missing a lot of features you wish you had. If you like the game, you'll spend money to have them. Really tough to play LotRO without spending and money or at the very least, doing the tasks to earn points for things like the ability to use their auction house and a mount or get more bag space. Or even for content. For some odd reason, EA has decided to give people everything short of raids for free. In LotRO, there were expansions, so leveling to max really required you to buy some content.

Depends on how they do the FTP for returning subbers. LOTRO did it the right way. If you prevously had subbed, you was treated differently than the new FTP players. For example, I got to access all the content I did before I unsubbed and all my chars I was allowed under the FTP model ( 7 out of 9 ) could access that same content...free. The gold was limited to 4 g per account. But I had 12 gold and could still access all of it. Just could'nt earn anymore. Bank and inventory spaces? I never lost any I had allready paid for while playing. So if they treat the returning subbers the same as any other FTP player, they will be losing a lot..where as with the way LOTRO did it, I felt like I had not lost anything I did before.

Depends on how they do the FTP for returning subbers. LOTRO did it the right way. If you prevously had subbed, you was treated differently than the new FTP players. For example, I got to access all the content I did before I unsubbed and all my chars I was allowed under the FTP model ( 7 out of 9 ) could access that same content...free. The gold was limited to 4 g per account. But I had 12 gold and could still access all of it. Just could'nt earn anymore. Bank and inventory spaces? I never lost any I had allready paid for while playing. So if they treat the returning subbers the same as any other FTP player, they will be losing a lot..where as with the way LOTRO did it, I felt like I had not lost anything I did before.

Everything I have read thus far as more and more is coming in, is that this system is going to be a variation of the DDO/LotRO model, which is a very good move.