Maybe free to play is a good thing

EA funded a mmo worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and stated "F2P" in its first year, they mean P2W, they will milk swtor for all its profits and then throw it away like trash.

F2P will likely become P2W in EA's hands. The problem is not $15 / month. The problem is no real content updates since 1.2, which was a pretty trivial patch with limited content. The problem is no world events and no mini games, open world PvP, etc. The problem is poor design.

F2P does not solve any of it. I also sincerely doubt they will generate more revenue via that route. What it will do is try to exploit the game / milk for all it's worth. Just think about all the game's most sought after features and the ones that are hardest to grind. Those are the first things to appear in the cash shop and either will disappear from the "free" game or the grind factor will be increased dramatically.

The math is waaaay off anyways. $14.99 a month divided by 30 days a month is roughly $.50 a day and broken down even further it's ~$.02 an hour so the average maintenance (at 4 hours) is ~$.08 a week lost due to maintenance, or ~$.32 a month lost due to routine maintenance. Now, let's assume there is one extra maintenance a week and it lasts roughly two hours so that's an additional $.04 a week lost to maintenance. So when it's all said and done, it's roughly one day a month TOTAL lost to maintenance. Wow. Now I can see why people are so upset at the amount of maintenance...and no matter how hard I tried, I could not type that with a straight face.

The only way to get as much revenue as 500k players spending $15/mo, Do the math, its in the millions.
Is it implement a cash shop people would actually use.
Thus P2W, Thus Worst MMO on the market.

Oh, come on man, you have to subtract at least 6 hours a day for sleep. Even the nerds who live this game only do it 18/7.

It's ridiculous. This game does not need to go F2P. To be more specific, just the way the game works right now it seems like only P2W (Pay-to-Win) would work. Imagine paying $2 dollars to access Taris, then $3 to access Tatooine and then $4 dollars to access Balmorra. Imagine how much it'd cost to pay to access Bonus Missions.

Jeez, I just wish players would stay bringing back the P2P vs. F2P fight and concern themselves on much more pressing matters that'll push BioWare in the right direction.

It's as if the sky is falling if this game does not go F2P. This game will apparently be raining cats and dogs until F2P will be implemented. Since many players QQ'd about the server queues during SWTOR's launch, got all the servers they asked for and complained even more, just imagine what other mechanics and features these players would be crying about once F2P hits.

The moral of the story: Having these P2P vs. F2P debates won't help one bit. It won't even help EA.

In my mind, LOTRO's "hybrid" free-to-play model is the only possible F2P model that could work.

Personally, for me it is about hassle when it comes to subscriptions. I want to pay my money each month and know that I have access to everything in the game. I don't want to be constantly nagged in to buying more bits of the game that I don't have access to. Its frustrating and breaks any immersion I have. It can also get out of control if you aren't careful.

On this front, LOTRO did well. Even after F2P, I kept paying my monthly subscription. I never ever paid any additional money for content outside of expansions.

Where LOTRO failed in my eyes was the additional change in direction of the game post-F2P. Instead of continuing to develop endgame content and expand PvP, they shifted their focus to fluff items (sold in the store) and to smoothing the leveling curve and low level areas (usually the first areas new players encounter, thus encouraging them to stay). LOTRO probably had a good business case for doing this as their existing development model wasn't attracting/retaining enough players, but as an endgame focused player this is what eventually made me quit LOTRO.


That is what worries me about SW:TOR ever going free to play.

Games that go free to play make the assumption that their payment model is the reason that they arent making enough money, whereas in reality it is the quality of their game that is the issue. In addition to changing the payment model, they also tend to change their content focus to suit the new intended playerbase. This drives away their previously loyal customer base as the game changes too much.

On that basis, i will likely quit if they go F2P

Free-to-play can be a good thing, if you use it right. I wouldn't mind it if SWTOR implemented a free-to-play system that was more like LOTRO's, where there IS a cash shop, but buying something doesn't totally screw up the balance, and there could be expansions (and I really hope there are expansions) that you could buy in the shop too. It would be a bad thing if it took the path of pay-to-win. THAT, would be a horrible thing. This game might not have to go free-to-play though. It's just struggling right now, like almost EVERY MMO goes through. Things could get better, or SWTOR can just copy LOTRO's free-to-play system. Either way, SWTOR still has the potential to be an amazing game.

I belive the F2P model is the future if implemented right, and by that I mean that there should be tons and tons of possibilities so you can cater to everyones need - does not include pay2win, that is a big no no, no.. no.. no.. no!

I think GW2, their business model (concept) and how they have designed their game is the future and i hope they succeed as I hope TSW will succeed (new and facinating character development), just to break the infernal-theme-park-choked-to-death-follow-they-yellow-road-daily-end-game-crap!

Bioware, dare to be differant, I double-dare you in the name of gaming and as a player who like to shape up my own content and immerse my self within the Star Wars "Galaxy"

From -my- PoV these points alone would bring in tons of cash to EA/BW
- in no particular order:

- Extra character slots
- Extra Legacy slot on same server
- Legacy features / unlocks (Bank / Vault, "housing": Capital Ships, Bunkers, Space Stations etc)
- Unique Orange Cloth / Armor Pieces
- Improved workstation (convert piece to bound to legacy and remove class restriction)
- Cloth / Armor Dye
- Dual Spec
- Mounts
- Pets
- New playable species
- Character Customization!!!
- Legacy characters as companions
- Ships: Freighters, Transports, Starfighters, Gunboats + IMPORTANT: exterior and Interior design!
- Smuggler / Agent, Trooper / Bounty Hunter as "universal" classes
- Unique universal companion packages
- Force Power Dye (tired of the fantasy-ish crap.. gold/yellow and purple.. really, BioWare? )
- Unlock Out of Combat regenration emotes to legacy
- Unlock Cybernetics (+1 new pieces) for all species
- Legacy Commendation tab "one commendation to rule them all"
- Set-Bonus vendor (re-think how to implement the stats, Cyber and Bio-implants is a good start imho)

this just the top of my head, I would buy most of these features over time- some I would cash out right away
- arguably a lot of these features should be handed to us for free or traded for ingame currency with the normal gameplay-activity-called-GRINDING!

For those who dont get it
- I'm not a GW2 fanboi, I will never touch that anime fantasy stuff
- No P2W, nor do I encourage it - this is pay for fluff - P2F.. did I create a new one?

Hate to say it, but it's not the 15 bucks per month that entitles him to being upset about not getting monthly content updates.....it's the fact that they claimed they would be pushing out monthly content updates, but we've had an average of 1 update every 2-3 months, two of which can't even be considered "content updates" because they didn't add any new content.

So yeah...15 bucks per month isn't too much, but 1 content update in 7 months is certainly too little.

The game is definitely headed towards f2p, whether you want to rip into him for his frugality or not.