Read in the Paper: Ea is going to add P2W to all their games

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that subscription also sending money to EA?

How is having access to ops an ingame advantage? Having a crystal that's +37 to +10 more powerful than the next guy can get is an advantage. Having access to ops or flash points or war zones whenever I want it is just playing the game.

Security key thing is interesting.

But by all means please do keep arguing that step 1 of p2w really isn't p2w. The more people that do that, the more quickly EA will race down the path and the more money they'll make.

Perhaps you don't have a "breaking point" on how much p2w is too much for you or maybe it's way, way down the road. Hopefully enough players share your opinion to keep the game funded after those with closer "breaking points" leave.

Operations drop gear. Subscribers(who pay money), have access to that more powerful gear while f2pers don't.

Sheez... P2W paranoia continues. About a month ago there was a thread claiming the new Czerka mount is P2W, LOL!

So... lets calm down a minute and think about this. A paper, credible or not, has made some assertions based on some evidence that EA is pursuing a P2W model. While I'm not certain the journalists or those outside the MMO world know what that means to us, I can make the following observations.

1. P2W, in the strictest definition of the term, already exsists in single player games. Whenever a game gives the player high-level armor or weapons etc. as part of a promo to entice pre-release purchases, essentially they are P2W. This is nothing new. DA Dragon Armor set anyone?

2. Microtransactions and subscription services are the focus for ALL conglomarate gaming houses. Why? Because they generate $$$ beyond point of sale. No mystery there. E3 all but confirmed this, yet... I don't remember a huge outcry from P2Wphobics then. This is not new news.

3. The mere fact that a EA exec, credible or not, says that they are going to offer purchasable items as part of a games release or as an incentive win does not mean that P2W has come to EA MMOs. It's apples and oranges when you compare MMOs to Single player games. Quite simply MMOs are about progression. To eliminate the progression by allowing P2W items would kill the game. EA will not apply the same rules to MMOs because, quite simply, they have players on the hook for many more microtransactions by keeping them around.

Just follow the money. It always knows.

But then, you get better gear from ops to do higher level ops. If you're not doing any operations at all, why does having better gear for operations matter?

This analogy works a bit better with PVP and the limitations on weekly warzones. The more you can PVP the better gear you can get more quickly, which gives you a competitive advantage. However, you can buy the weekly PVP passes, and pay less money than you would as a full subscriber.

That is EA "boiling the frog".

DT it's funny how people (not you) engage in "revisionism", "redefinition", and "meme theory" to make their point. Hey, if they say it enough it "must" be true. No arguing with people when they get to this stage.

I agree with you DT.

I wish the article was in English. I cant understand Viking!!!!

I wish everyone would stop using the totally inaccurate "microtransactions" talking point.

Microtransactions are charging you a buck or two for impulse buys of cosmetic fluff, or convenience items.

Microtransactions are NOT re-colored armor sets that have been in the game since day 1 sold at roughly the same price as a month's subscription.

A better term might be P2CL, or Pay to Cover Losses, because this is what they are doing. They know they have a small core of uber-Star Wars junkies who will buy anything they put in the store and they are using them to cover for the fact that their subscription revenues are between 10 and 25% of what they planned for.

This game has seen some significant improvements since launch but absolutely none of those are CM-related. There is no evidence at all that any CM revenue is being put back into the game, unless you count more junk and existing gear being 'ported' to the CM.

Egads, I'm about to defend EA. Make it stop, it burnsssssssssss!

OK, except for a) the continued availability of the service, b) the new content we're getting that's not sold on the CM, and c) a dev (Ohlen?) quote that the CM is doing really well and it's funding non-CM work, yeah, I agree that there's absolutely no evidence that the CM revenue is being reinvested to make the game as a whole better...

A) I'll give you that one, but I don't think things were quite bad enough that they were pondering a shut-down in the short term.
B) The new content that isn't available on the CM has been in the pipe since long before the CM existed.
C) This is the same people who said the game was doing well when they closed 90% of the servers? The same who said Makeb was going to be free? The same who said ther would never be P2W items in the CM?

b) Gree event is one. Yes, there was a lot in the pipe. Then subs tanked and a huge percentage of the staff was released. That anything survived and still is coming in means they continue to invest in content that is not CM. If you don't want to be convinced of this, please let me know and I'll stop trying.

c) Did someone actually say the game was doing well when they merged the servers? Was the Makeb quote before or after the mass exodus and switch to f2p? I'll give you the p2w thing, but that's sort of irrelevant to the discussion of whether or not content that's not CM is coming. It has come and there seems to be more on the way.