Gamescom Interview with Jeff Hickman about the future of SWTOR

The one question I have personally is … How do you change a story MMO into a cash shop MMO? Because, you're introducing a cash shop into a story MMO. There is definitely a process there. If you can talk about that that would be great.

Jeff Hickman: We talked a lot about … months of deep investigation.

So they had free 2 play planned for months, I wonder how many? They might have even had it planned since the beginning or near the beginning.

Because the free to play accounts can only run 3 fp PER WEEK and only one WZ per day making it literally impossible for them to gear themselves through those processes, additionally they have restricted access to the GTN meaning buying and selling crafted guy to acquire upgrades will be much more difficult for them.

This isn't an issue for level 50 WH geared ranked pvpers and it's not an issue for people in campaign and black hole gear, who this is IS an issue for are the "hordes" of new players they are predicting (accurately or not who knows) that will join the game.They are forcing them into an untenable situation where the traditional routes to gearing up are NOT available to them.

and before anyone says "so what, they can sub if they want gear her der"
just remember: it's all about incremental change, and that statement is essentially saying: "I don't care if they make the free portion pay 2 win with gear bought straight from the website for real money because that will NEVER happen to subbed players..."

if free to play becomes pay to win it's only a matter of time before that seeps in and contaminates the rest of the game like cancer mastitizing to the bones.

I like how now it's some deep conversation they've been having internally for months... all the while they're flat out lying to everyone's faces saying "no we'd never go f2p that's not an option, quality is much better with a sub model blah blah blah..."

but now that it's free to play "oh free to play is going to be much better quality, much better for the players we've been talking about it for months blah blah blah..."

and they expect us to believe ANYTHING they say? They expect us to not automatically assume they are going to try and screw us... HA.

What (if anything) will subscribers have to pay for after F2P launches?

Jeff: I wish I had a solid answer for you on that. We’re still in discussion about some of the larger content updates that we’re planning. Great example is the planet Makeb. We’ve talked about Makeb, we have a lot of plans around Makeb. I wish I could give you more details, but I can tell you that I think the playerbase is going to be really, really pleased. More story content. New and interesting things for the players to do. More systems and interesting functions in the game … I can’t go into a lot of detail, but around things like that … This is a pretty big piece (of content). It is probably all that I can say. It is definitely still for discussion whether we sell that to the subscriber or the subscriber gets that for free because it is a big beefy chunk of content.

I'm still not seeing the problem. 3 FP's a week is probably more than I run leveling alts, and once you've got a piece of orange gear you can keep upgrading it until 50. If that's not working, they can buy more FP access. I don't see a problem asking people to chip in something.

So you don't see them artificially limiting access to content in order to compel you to spend money in their cash shop as problematic?

See the problem isn't that the player is being forced to chip in, the problem is WHERE the player is being forced to chip in.

Gear represents a direct relationship to power. Telling the character "if you want power you have to spend real money" turns the game from free to play to pay to win. If you're fine with a pay 2 win game... well ok then... but I think you're in the minority, but to each their own I guess.

I think it's hysterical that instead of debating people's interpretations of the video, you just claim that no one must have watched.

We all watched, the only difference is that we recognize placating lawyer speak and pc bs when we see it.

They will only charge for "beefy content chunks" what the heck does that even mean?

Why was HK in the BETA but there is still no release date?

Why were we promised content updates THIS MONTH and all we got was a sloppily thrown together even that doesn't even have rewards for 80% of the classes?

Why are they backtracking away from their original promise that "subs will get access to all content for free," and now saying "well there may be some content they have to pay for."

Where is the secret space project they've been working on for 9 months but can't even tell us WHAT IT IS much less show us a single screen shot of it?

Where is the revamp to Ilum and expansion on owpvp they promised us 6 months ago?

Why do we STILL not have an appearance tab? The ability to queue 8 mans in reg wz, automated server transfers or many of the other things promised to us so many months ago?

Why have only HALF of the promises that came out of the Guild Summit been followed through on?

You see there are so very many broken promises here mate, so many things that were never followed through on.

Remember the huge "wall of crazy" that they said they were looking at putting in the game "hopefully starting at the 6 month mark."

Yeah they haven't even begun dev on those yet...

So when they make promises, instead of being mr. rosy glasses, glass half full guy, I see it for what it really is... more ceo speak to keep us paying while they pull the wool over our eyes.