Pay to Win

$80 million.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/star-wa...nalyst-6312400
http://www.killerguides.com/blog/gam...inning-product

The majority of the budget goes to paying employees. At their peak they had almost 700. That's a lot of paychecks over a 5 year development cycle.

You can enjoy throwing 15$ a month into the wind for a star wars skin and bad gameplay, i'll use mine more wisely.

" Wedbush's Michael Pachter believes"

And come on the gamespot website? That is the last place you want to look.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/star-wa...evelop-6348959

Looks like that 80 million magically grew to 200, same gamespot website you used too.

Edit: Even Forbes called it between 200-300 million.

Since we are posting web based comments as proof, lets look at opinions out of the swtor forum:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...-restrictions/
"Nope they still have no understanding of what makes a good F2P game."

"What BioWare seems to willingly ignore is that there are F2P MMOs out there that are very popular and quite good, so very few people will want to play a crappier version of this already mediocre MMO instead."

"If you make the free version ****, they’re not going to convert, it’s not like it’s Scientology."

http://www.gamefront.com/swtors-free...cons-and-wtfs/

"I tried to go back to the game when it went f2p but after all of 10mins i quit again"

"current implementation feels like a slap in the face to anyone who had subscribed at some point in time."

"EA and most companies seem to think people are stupid or can blind side them"

http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2012/1...rs-f2p-switch/

"Game offered nothing new, had WAY too many old design flaws."

"Preferred Status is a joke! There are restrictions everywhere! I cant even hide my helm unless i pay 350CC. I wont be playing, not unless Bioware rethinks there strategy. This is the WORSE F2P model i have seen yet!"

"model they are using punishes players"

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/foru...s-of-Free2Play

"I've ever seen such blatant money-grubbing in all the games I've tried. 720 Cartel Coins (read: over five bucks) just for colour synchronization and helmet removal for my playable characters? Repeat that for my AI companions? And goodbye side toolbars? *********** hell! I don't even know if I want to play this any more!"

"PvP and raiding also locked behind the paywall?"

"it's just EA trying to loot every last bit of money before Tortanic finally sinks to the bottom of the dead WOW clone sea."

LOTRO, STO, DCUO. They're all different, but have various restrictions you can either piece meal or pay a type of subscription. I've seen people argue each one is the worst or the best for different reasons. I'm not arguing SWTOR has the best model by any means; if you 've seen my posts on this forum over the past year, I'm clearly in a lot of disagreement with a lot of things they do.

Haha, OK, I'll apologize for my "kids" comments, I guess I hit a nerve. Guys, I'm old. You can make fun of that if you like, at least it's accurate.

I'm not sure why you have a really hard time with the idea that I am having fun with the game. If the game is gone in a year, then I spent money on something I enjoyed with my friends for a short time. Do you like the band Porcupine Tree? I'm guessing you don't, and you probably wouldn't pay $30 to see them live and you'd be miserable if you did.
However, I'd pay $100 for good seats. This is what we call opinion. It's hard, I know.

And again, it's a matter of opinion. It would be unwise to spend my money on something based on another person. I'm not telling you that you should spend money on swtor. Nor should you tell others what they should enjoy.

What did that teach us? Most of the posts on this forum are too biased.

Go compare the "restrictions" those games have to the ones swtor have. All of those combined have the amount of restrictions 1/4 of swtor.

You mean all of them.

See the rest of my post following that statement.

Its kind of funny your brought bands into this, but it'll work with what i'm about to say. I paid 250$ up front to see Slash at house of blues, i'd rather see that than some porcupine boy band. You can have the opinion that porcupines are better, but it's just an opinion, it rings hollow. Stats never lie and stats always talk.

I'll just leave it at this, before this turns into the philosophy of an opinion etc. You enjoy SWTOR, i'll enjoy GW2, Let's just agree to disagree.