Gamasutra: The Burning of Star Wars - The Old Republic

I would be nice if EAware would actually listen to feed back like this. But, as we all know any press on SWTOR is good press on SWTOR if it gets people to take a look at the game. This article is spot on. Beside fixing bugs, if EAWare actually listens to the author and others that share this view, they could have a very succesful product. Right now they are skimming the edge of mediacrity at best.

I was never really one to believe all the EA is evil stuff. But I do think it's obvious that EA was behind the rushed conversion to F2P in under a year. Usually takes large MMOs a good year or two before such a large scale change like this.

It wasn't posted here, I searched prior to posting. What better place to discuss than where consumers of SWTOR can comment on it directly and hopefully those comments will be read and taken into consideration by EAware.

Maybe, but I refuse to agree with him because I find that he's a moron. I don't think SWTOR is the fairest F2P model, but it gives you good content for free and does its job of getting people to sub.

Logging onto a F2P game and wanting a subscription like experience without a subscription? Get real, I've played my fair share of F2P games and have never expected to be treated like a sub, nor do I know what it feels like to be a subs so it's impossible for me to expect it. Most people coming to this game fresh aren't going to know the perks of being a sub and likely won't care. If they want to they'll sub to get those perks, if not they'll likely just play F2P or leave. It seems the only people that are raging over SWTORs f2p model are returning players.

If you're doing that much content then why aren't you subbing? The whole point of the passes are for free players to play what they want at less of a cost than a subscription fee. If you seriously expect to get all that on two characters for less than $15 a month then you are just looking for a free ride.

This is the real kicker for me, when you don't do your job as a reporter and report things and do actual research and just say 'as far as I can tell', then your opinion needs to have its validation checked. It's true that SWTOR doesn't have an option to buy character slots yet, but if he was really going to report on SWTOR he would have done some actual research and found that Bioware is trying to get that feature in as well as improving character slots and action bars for F2P players.

Imo the bad decision to make this game f2p before fixing it or bringing it up to speed with its competition like WOW and Rift pales in comparison to the absolutely horrible decisions bioware made at release to leave out things like combat windows and macros and continues with allowing people to sell all the end game gear on the gtn. And i think that is all bioware, not EA.

You could say this about most MMOs though.

E.g. Wow's recycled content is FAR worse than SWTOR's (as is the extremely dull level grind), the "story" content is almost non-existent and not in the slightest bit interesting. The end-game content has been mediocre since about mid way through expansion 2. Yet Blizzard still charge premium prices with no F2P, then wonder why the recent expansion didn't sell well and people are quitting in bus loads.

No new MMO is going to survive without a "free" option any more. They just have to make it work and at the moment there's no real advantage to subscribing if you don't run ops...

No one can say this game is perfect, it is far from it. But, after reading this article I couldn't help but think to myself that this guy had some serious hate for this game. Now, I don't know that the fact that he used to work for EA had anything to do with this hate he was spewing, but I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, and I can't tell you how tired I am of hearing how BW/EA never told anyone that they had to subscribe to get their cartel coins, as I either read a blog/forum post/watched a livestream video of them telling people this at least 10 different times combined.

I just can't help but think that this article was written by someone scorned somehow. I would have enjoyed the article more if it was written with less bias and more facts. The following quote made me chuckle and shake my head at how unprofessional and childish this made the author of this article look.

Really?

So there is my two cents about that article. While I agree that there are many problems in this game that we all hope will be fixed, I don't think this article gives a fair portrayal of this game.

http://www.swtor.com/community/newre...eply&p=5581370

Ya it was already posted. must not have looked to hard.
But hating on SWTOR is the new Kim Kardashian.

Hmmm ... I searched on "gamasutra" prior to posting and didn't get any hits.

When I post 3rd party articles I usually mention the source in the title.

There are some inaccurate pieces of information in that article, which damages his credibility for me, but I don't disagree with his assessment that f2p was designed as an extended trial. If you are *only* interested in the story, it's not bad, although the xp nerfs have made that part of the game more grindy. I think he's overestimating the amount of damage it's done to existing subscribers, although 1.6's cartel/Life Day/1 year "celebration" disaster isn't a good sign for the future.