Pay to Win

Free players do not support a game.. they leech off of it. Subscribers and shop users support a game. This is in fact true of all MMOs that let you play part for free, and charge for part (aka: Freemium).

then wow is pay to win because my trial character isnt as good as the others?

Try a kixeye game or a bigpoint one. Then you'll be back here and wanting to hug every single one of the devs.

Sony Online Entertainment boss John Smedley has said all Planetside 2 players are equal in the developer’s eyes, because they’re “content for each other”.

....... Y-eah, okay. While different genre, It still does open the door for debate. If as a subscriber I get faster queues for FP/WZ due to more free to play players, is that such a bad thing? While I disagree swtor is pay to win, he is correct in saying free to play players are completely hindered by restrictions that no MMO should have. Subscribers should be rewarded more and get priority for everything. Free to play players shouldn't be handicapped by slower XP. Time is money, as a possible subscriber/current free to play player, are you really going to pay $15 just to gain access to the bare essentials you get in pretty much every MMO on the market? I don't care what your response to that is, you're not going to do that.

Well thats a purely PvP type of game.
They NEED as many players as they can get.
But SWTOR doesnt need a massive ammount of players that are paying nothing towards the game development. True F2P players are contributing nothing to the game unfortunately. Sure, they bolster the FP ques a bit making it slightly easier to get into a group, but this game simply isnt dependant on people grouping to truly experience the game.
You can go through the entire game 8 times without grouping once... and then just leave, having contributed nothing to the games other players.

But in PS2, you will be contributing from the second you spawn in game the first time... you are basically cannon fodder. YOU are the mobs...

Well that would require them to radically redesign the game which just wont happen. You dont design a game from the ground up as a themepark game and then after 2 years on the market just completely change it to the core to be a sandbox game.
Its just not financially viable since it would cost as much as making a new game (and take almost as long)

Still the same premise, If I want faster queues(with subscription) there will be more players in the pool to work with. I agree, but F2P players aren't leeches, they contribute in a big way.

Well, to be honest this is just as speculative as the post you responded to. Either reason is just as valid and possible.

I think game quality was rather poor before the launch of the Market/F2P, and has improved substantially since.

I disagree that it is not a consumer driven convention. I think it is directly driven by consumer interest and patronage. Casuals seem to have a strong interest in store purchases.

That, in combination with what seems to be a traditional (or hardcore) player exodus from the MMO market for tougher more challenging FPS games has made it likely that the market it moving toward serving it's new target audience, and that audience is very F2P/market friendly.

As an investor I am taking my hard-earned money and investing it in EA in hopes that I might make more money than I do on a CD that offer 1/2 a percent interest. But I'll forego dividends and current income in hopes the stock price will rise. It might fall, in which case I will lose part or even all my investment. The point is that I RISK my money to invest in EA hoping they will make a profit and a part of that will pass to me, which I can then use for living expenses in an attempt to stay off the welfare rolls and support myself.

And what I see here is a bunch of clueless people who have no idea whatsoever about how to run a company or program a game who seem to feel they are instant experts on both and entitled to call the shots just because they subscribe for a measly $15 a month, the entitlement generation who want character transfers for free just because they say so.

Now who is the most greedy? The guy who risks his life savings in hopes a company will do well and make a profit? Or the guy who sucks everything they can out of a company claiming profit is a dirty word?

So.. you want cannon fodder. Got it.

Thing is.. freemium games do not provide "queue fillers" with parity capability to you the subscriber, UNLESS they are working the non-sub side of the access model and paying a-la-cart.

True free games do.. but then again.. that's an entirely different business model in the MMO genre... and not actually free.

1) Subscription Only
2) Freemium
3) Free

And NONE of them are FREE. They each have their own specific monetization models that they follow. And generally speaking.. it is the "Free" business model that injects the most problematic P2W components into the game play.