Pay to Win

But the artifact gear restriction simply is P2W area. Hide Head Slot isn't, credit cap isn't, even the unability to do Ops (without Weekly Pass) isn't but artifact gear, yeah, it is.

Nonsense.

All it does is give subscribes automatic rights to wear artifact gear. Non-subs must unlock the ability to do so, just like they have to unlock a number of things that subscribers have automatic access to.

THEN.. they have to actually go inside the game an acquire the actual artifact gear.

this isn't EVE online. $15 shouldn't be much, if it is then the last thing you should be doing is PC games

No, this isn't about that the subscription is 15 dollars. No it isn't much. The point is the restrictions of being a free players makes it pay to win/pay to enjoy.

Dude...it's pay-2-play-unrestricted. Just like very other Freemium MMO.

You can pay via a subscription, or you can pay to unlock the subscription only features one by one.

Winning.. is completely on you the player.

If you want to prosecute the game on the way it's business model enables play.. fine. But please just stop with the "win" nonsense.

Pay to Enjoy*

Other "Freemium" MMOs you can go to max level without worries, they don't leave main parts like PVP and Raids out of the free to play experience. Now in swtor, all of the fun parts about the game are restrictive. Now it is pay to enjoy. Now we move on to why it is pay to win. Not even counting all of the best high lvl armor is restricted to the free players, you have to PAY to be ABLE to USE the HIGH lvl ARMOR - making it 100% pay to win. And there are low level purple armor that are only allowed to those who have PAID.

So again, all games that have a subscription are pay to win. This game was pay to win at launch. World of Warcraft is Pay to Win. EVE is Pay to Win.
Not sure which other free games you have played, but most of the ones I have seen do very similar things. You pay to unlock the ability to wear certain armor, you pay to unlock certain areas of content; if you found a game you really love and you can do everything you want to do for free, then that's your game.

Sorry, your weird definition of pay to win doesn't hold water. If you don't like the restrictions, fine, but it's not pay to win by a long shot.

The whole problem is that you make a false comparison. SWTOR is a sub game with a f2p option. It's not a f2p game. Because of this you cannot compare f2p players with subs. It's just a wrong comparison.

Companies need to make money. This is a given. So everything in that sense is pay to win.

This game was set up to get the full enjoyment of the game for people who buy the game and pay a sub. The f2p option gives you less and yes you have to pay to fully participate. This is not pay to win. You made a completely false conclusion there.

If a game is pay to win depends on whether people who have a sub need to buy stuff off the cartel market to win. The truth is they don't. Pay to win is a concept that came from the f2p games where if you wanted to compete in pvp or endgame you needed to pay for it and at outrageous prices for that matter. Now, in a f2p game, where the standard of accounts is a f2p account, then yes you can speak of pay to win.

SWTOR is simply NOT a f2p game. This is the foundation of your incorrect conclusions. It's a sub game with a f2p optionthat is intended to get people interested in the game. WoW has it too but goes till level 20 or something I believe. The main point of the f2p option is to get people in the game and give them a chance to see if this game is worth it to them to play long term. A sub is ideal but you can unlock a few things as f2p and you are fine as well. Really, artifact authorisation is about the only thing you need to level the playing field on gear as it is, so it's not a big investment as those f2p games as it is.

If you are not willing to pay a sub, then you are not entitled to fully participate. When leveling to 50, you can fully participate in everything. I never really use artifact gear for characters before level 50 because orange gear with blue mods is just fine and because of bolster you can do fine as well in pvp.

It's when you get to 50 when things change and rightfully so. It's called pay to play not pay to win.

All the unlocks can be found on the GTN, so people can use in game credits to buy these unlocks... true someone else had to put it there, but if you have the credits you can easily quite close to subscribers as far as the features go, without spending a single unit of a currency.