Well ftp is probably a good idea. When Everquest 2 opened up freeport as a free to play server it actually quickly became one of the most populated servers, and for all the people who were raging about quitting when ftp came the game is still as healthy as before.

My other thought is , um we've heard the more updates sooner from BW before. As a matter a fact right before your last update 1.3 when you promised more updates in a more timely manner. Then you all apparently droped everything you were working on and started coding the ftp stuff.

BW why should we believe that you this time ?

I like this idea in that moving to F2P has helped many games of recent years enjoy a new lease on life. And looking at the current plan of roll-out here, it seems a pretty fair way of doing it. I for one had no plans on letting my sub expire, and this doesn't change those plans. If this brings in more new players, all the better. However, I do see some issues here.

In the article, Jeff mentions players that said they would come back if the game had no subscription fee. While that may be true for some, I currently do not see the max level players coming back just for that reason. One of the biggest complaints about SWTOR is the end game, which consists of the Operations. The F2P option does not grant access to Operations, so the Raider has no reason to come back just because of the F2P option. Many people unsubbed because of they felt the end game in SWTOR is lacking. Unless a lot more content is implemented for the end game (aside from one new Operation), there is nothing to draw those players back.

Also lacking is viable Open World high level PvP, which many would see as an alternative to the traditional end game Raiding mechanic. Again, like above, there is nothing to draw the elite or open world PvPer back into this game. For the move to F2P to be viable, high level and open world PvP must be implemented, outside of adding War Zones, and if necessary certain limits imposed on the F2P player as they will do with War Zones.

Moving to a complete F2P option may bring in many new players, but the key will be to keeping them and hopefully turning them into subscribers. The leveling game will keep them engaged without a doubt, but that's only until they hit level 50. Unless huge strides are made to the max level game, I only see this as short term solution ultimately.

BJ

Very interesting news. You have my attention (for new content) and my patience Bioware. I am a very happy subscriber and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

For me the $15 a month is not only an investment in a game I really enjoy, but a very very affordable form of entertainment. I spent $20 for a 2 hr movie last month, but paid you $15 and got 8 operation evenings with my guild, and many (maybe too many??) more hours of trading, flashpoints, warzones and some sweet space combat

Thanks again. Keep up the good work!

I've never been more disappointed. I knew the game was most likely going to be F2P, but I would have rather you gone the way GW did.

I can see that my subscription money has been going to making limits for those who will be playing F2P;Not, as you say, expanding. Where's the S/S romance we've been promised since before launch?

Though, I will be keeping my subscription for now. I'm hoping that it will have a good outcome for the game, and that the game itself won't become worse as SWG did.

What the hell do you mean by "boosts" ?!?! The hole program seemed good to me until I read that single word. Vanity items, yeah, I'm totally cool with that, unbalance the game in any way with "boosts" and I'm out. Try not to screw this up please, you've already done enough damage to "the most anticipated game ever"

Probably XP boosts, maybe blue quality stims. Maybe legacy unlocks with cash.

excellent decision bioware, i applaud you and look forward to what you provide for the players.

 

I for one will continue to subscribe so that i can enjoy everything the game has to offer and get the perks that come with it. I have been a subscriber since day 1 of early access with the collector's edition. I enjoy the game and the content you provide, despite what all the haters and trolls have to say (every day) about how "terrible" the game is.

 

I believe this new model is an acknowledgement of the changing business model of online gaming and reflects the best way to approach the market now.

^^ this

You obviously completely missed the point he was making, and for the record there will be no less than a handful of idiots running around doing and sayign anything just because they know it will not affect them negatively becasue they know they can turn around and make yet another account to come back and grief harass and be just in general a PITA. I've seen it first hand with several of the other games I played that went F2P. That is the quality of player you end up attracting with this model and is exactly why this model IS a bad idea, well at least if you are trying to give the appearance of trying to keep a more mature community.

If u see a idiot put him in ignorlist I dident see any idiots during beta. what about the people who cant pay dont u think they want to play this game it do not only attract idiots. Besides every time something new commes up u will always see people complanig u cant please everyone but *** isent it better to start playing for free? I dont know if u have played Rs befor but un that game I never even seen a idiot or maybe I just dident cear but still it was the most played F2P MMO. So I got the point but the good things are more than the negative. And I just tired of complains!

Probably XP boosts, maybe blue quality stims. Maybe legacy unlocks with cash.

xp boosts are almost guaranteed, crafting boosts are likely, Stims and medpacks are very likely too. Legacy unlocks are almost certain, I mean look at the grind system they set up, they have always been planning on making those into a convenience buy item.

Damage reduction boosts, and other stat boosts are a possibility, but that is a wait and see wort of thing.

so this is the iceburg that has sunk the Tortanic

ive unsubbed, i dont plan to play an game that is run by EA now that they have a cash shop in it...

6 months this will be a pay to win game.

also good luck getting a group on LFG now

Thought about this.. I have 173 days left on my sub but I've just cancelled because the game will be f2p.

Why? Well, I don't get time to play operations or even many FPs. Possibly just 1 or 2 FPs a month. I was paying so I could play if I wanted to, I was playing this rather than other mmorpgs because I had paid for it. So with not paying I can still do what I want just without the stupid vanity items. I'll probably end up playing different games and even restating my WoW sub. End result is that bioware just lost another subscriber and probably a player eventually.

If it becomes pay to win I'm out anyway but otherwise bioware just saved me £100/yr.

I've never been overly happy with the gameplay past level 15 tbh but was willing to keep a subscription going to aid development. I wanted to see flashpoints to the same quality as the first, proper space combat and more freedom of choice. Looks like that won't happen now, I get the feeling its all trinkets and re-hashed missions from here out.

For their sake I hope I'm not typical because if I am this game won't make it to Christmas!

I can see that my subscription money has been going to making limits for those who will be playing F2P;Not, as you say, expanding. Where's the S/S romance we've been promised since before launch?

That would be next to the pile of other things we're still waiting for, like neutral gear, expanded story, proper space combat, character transfers where one can choose destination, flashpoints that meet Black Talon's quality, customer service, and everything else that most likely got de-prioritised the moment EA laid off a load of the staff. To be honest, this still feels rather like desperate last gasps rather than a sound planned business strategy. It might work, but as others have commented, F2P only draws people in. They have to want to keep playing & paying and that is contingent upon content & gameplay quality.

It is true that with an influx of players and money the game might well receive more support from EA, turn around and get more of those things we desire. However if I'm honest, my faith in TOR is on the decline since a whole series of band-aid fixes have been applied instead of building a proper foundation for the game in the first place (that by the by would most likely have retained the players they're trying to tempt back now). People might cry hindsight, but we pointed a lot of this out in beta and were ignored. My sympathies are with the actual developers & content creators for the game, because I'm prepared to bet they said a lot of the same and were also ignored.

I don't get time to play operations or even many FPs. Possibly just 1 or 2 FPs a month. I was paying so I could play if I wanted to, I was playing this rather than other mmorpgs because I had paid for it. So with not paying I can still do what I want just without the stupid vanity items. I'll probably end up playing different games and even restating my WoW sub. End result is that bioware just lost another subscriber and probably a player eventually.

Many more will follow suit, probably counting myself and my partner...

Bioware, please realise this is a mistake;

F2P players should not play on the same server of the subscriber .... what do you think ?

i think: make it an own topic

There was no specifications yet given, yet there is so much panic. I don't actually see much difference, of course, if this will be done right.

I expect that:

all the content is available for subscribers. 100%. I mean there should not be any p2w items. If you are sub and you want to buy an item, the only things separating you from that must be level, proficiency requirements, and the amount of ingame currency. Not real money.

Money should not enable anything, that subs do not have by default. Maximum what f2p player would be able to do with money injections, should be unlocking the content that subs already have.

F2p should not be available anywhere, where teamplay or proper behavior is expected. That includes flashpoints, operations, warzones. Why? Try LOL (which actually has pretty good experience of trolls and how to deal with them). They have autobans, punishments and stuff, and they still suffer from trolling. SWTOR does not have a good anti-troll system. Therefore, areas requiring to have trust in teammates should be worth something.

I love how everyone is addressing BioWare as if their staff really have any part in the decision to destroy SWTOR for a profit. Now c'mon guys, does that sound like BioWare? No. That sound like EA? Ohhhhh yessss.

They're making the game F2P because EA ruined the launch. They're making the game F2P because EA botched up the preorder/early access mechanism so that many players got to see the buggy, feature-lacking game they were pushing out early to hit the "christmas crowd". They're making the game F2P because the end result of a botched launch, missing features, and bugs is that they've had to pump more money into staff/development to keep things rolling the past 8 months.

But wait... if they make it free... how does that "fix" the lack of revenue? o.O

Well quite simply, they gave everyone who had canceled (myself included) a free week of playtime when 1.3 added the LFG tool and consolidated the population down to make the servers actually playable. After the week of time was up, the majority of those players didn't resub. Newsflash: Same thing happened with 1.2's release. They've realized that the early, buggy, featureless launch of the game started a downward spiral in which players already have a bad "taste" in their mouth for the game and they can't develop fast enough to convince those players to come back and pay $15 a month.

One of the biggest issues is the overall population. MMO population works on an inverse exponential scale. The more people you lose, the more people you lose. And you always lose them faster than you gain them. Look at WoW. They had what? 13, 14, 15... million subscribers. RIFT came out, they lost millions overnight. Then slowly gained some of them back. SWTOR came out, same thing happens. When Guild Wars 2 releases late August we'll see the same thing. All other major MMO's will have a population dropoff, then some people will come back, others won't.

SWTOR needs to get ahead of this population loss or the game's going to completely die and they're just out the money they spent on development. Now I'm pretty sure everyone at BioWare, EA, and the vast majority of players on here agree that the launch was way too early and responsible for most of the issues we have right now. Better to wait and launch a functional game, than launch early or on time with a craptastic one. GW2 is a great example of that. Did they have some preorders get canceled when they pushed the launch back a month? Sure they did. Did they lose as many purchases as SWTOR lost with the early launch (and I'm talking percentages here let's not get into semantics), no they didn't. Because we all know in the back of our minds that it's better to wait and have something done right, than have something now that's broken or rushed. Apparently EA missed that little life lesson.

So going F2P is the only option at this point, and the way they're doing it is clever. Rewarding all the players who've already paid for the game with start up credits for the F2P store. Here's what'll happen. The game goes free to play. Mass emails fire out over the internet to all past subscribers: "Hey it's FREE now! Oh and on top of that we gave you money you can spend on stuff to thank you for being a subscriber in the past!" Now what happens when someone tells you "Hey there's this cool new store you've never been too in a place you used to really enjoy oh and here's a gift card for it" You bet your wampa you've got a trip to make. So what's going to happen is most of the canceled subs will come back and have a look at the game if for nothing other than to check out the F2P store/model and see what's what. Many of them will probably go "Oh wow... I can like enjoy the questing and stuff for free? Well hell... that was like my favorite part... I guess I'll stick around..." Because let's face it, the questing and storytelling in SWTOR is the most unique feature of the whole darn game.

Meanwhile the website announces F2P, Facebook and other social media announce it. Right now you're all posting in all your other forums and websites and chat rooms about how SWTOR is going free to play. Well hey guess what, that's advertising for them. Not to mention I'm sure we've all had this experience before:

You: Hey [insert friend's name here] have you played [insert game name here]? It's really super awesome and totally amazing and you should come play it with me!

Friend: How much is it?

You: Well it's $50 initially, then $15 a month, but it's really awesome and totally worth it and we could play together.

Friend: Ehh... I dunno man we'll see.

You make the game F2P and the conversation changes:

You: Hey [insert friend's name here] have you played [insert game name here]? It's really super awesome and totally amazing and you should come play it with me! Plus they just made it free to play so you can come check it out with me and it won't cost you a dime.

Friend: Sweet! I'll go download it tonight!

Bottom line is F2P means returning players, new players, better server populations leading to better player retention. Some monthly players will stop paying and go F2P. Some non-existing players will sign up and opt to pay monthly. Some old players will return and make some micropayments with their free currency, then buy some more here and there to augment the play experience.

In short, they're not losing any money by going F2P, but they are losing money with the current model. The game will die faster as it is right this moment than it will on F2P, and the only chance of pitching this downward spiral back up into growth is going F2P so they can reach the audience and get people involved in the game. The real question in my mind is, now that EA is finally exhibiting a little intelligence in their decision, are they going to screw up the F2P store with real stats gear, daily/weekly/monthly stat augments to turn your toon into superman for 24 hours so you can pwn noobs in pvp with a single hit, etc.

As long as the F2P store is set up with micropayments correctly, they just might turn this around. Some items to consider for the real money purchases:

• Additional character slots
  
• Race unlocks
  
• Additional Cargo Bays
  
• Increase in max currency able to carry per toon
  
• Cosmetic pets
  
• Moddable gear with unique looks only obtainable in the real money store (has no stats/augs in it yet)
  
• Color crystals with stats comparable to in-game ones but colors unique to the store
  
• Speeders/mounts with the same speed/knockoff protection as in-game, but unique looks
  
• XP boosters (maybe 12 charges each, 2 hr duration, persist through defeat)
  
• Legacy XP boosters (maybe 12 charges each, 2 hr duration, persist through defeat; stacks with regular xp booster)
  

Just a couple ideas there for things people might shell out some real money for, and obviously that stuff needs to be realistic in terms of price. People aren't going to pay $10 for a color crystal or a speeder. Also, set up a system where maybe every weekend there's a random store item/unlock that goes on sale for each person. Discounts the price 50%. But it's purely random. Could even be something they already unlocked on the current character but could unlock on another. That's the sort of thing to get people to make spur of the moment decisions on. "Oh hey wait what? I can get an additional character slot for half off right now? Hmmm... well I have been wanting to try a ______ and it's only a couple bucks on sale... Yeah ok."

Anyway, if you guys can do this right, SWTOR just might see an upward trend for a change I'll be keeping my sub active for the time being in the hopes the store doesn't get filled with game-breaking items to make a quick buck.

Excellent decision Bioware, I applaud you and look forward to what you provide for the players.

 

I for one will continue to subscribe so that I can enjoy everything the game has to offer and get the perks that come with it. I have been a subscriber since Day 1 of Early Access with the Collector's Edition. I enjoy the game and the content you provide, despite what all the haters and trolls have to say (every day) about how "terrible" the game is.

 

I believe this new model is an acknowledgement of the changing business model of online gaming and reflects the best way to approach the market now.

I totally agree with you. I think its really sad that the hate and trolling this game gets, half of it is undeserved. How is F2P a bad thing???

I love how everyone is addressing BioWare as if their staff really have any part in the decision to destroy SWTOR for a profit. Now c'mon guys, does that sound like BioWare? No. That sound like EA? Ohhhhh yessss.

 

They're making the game F2P because EA ruined the launch. They're making the game F2P because EA botched up the preorder/early access mechanism so that many players got to see the buggy, feature-lacking game they were pushing out early to hit the "christmas crowd". They're making the game F2P because the end result of a botched launch, missing features, and bugs is that they've had to pump more money into staff/development to keep things rolling the past 8 months.

 

But wait... if they make it free... how does that "fix" the lack of revenue? o.O

 

Well quite simply, they gave everyone who had canceled (myself included) a free week of playtime when 1.3 added the LFG tool and consolidated the population down to make the servers actually playable. After the week of time was up, the majority of those players didn't resub. Newsflash: Same thing happened with 1.2's release. They've realized that the early, buggy, featureless launch of the game started a downward spiral in which players already have a bad "taste" in their mouth for the game and they can't develop fast enough to convince those players to come back and pay $15 a month.

 

One of the biggest issues is the overall population. MMO population works on an inverse exponential scale. The more people you lose, the more people you lose. And you always lose them faster than you gain them. Look at WoW. They had what? 13, 14, 15... million subscribers. RIFT came out, they lost millions overnight. Then slowly gained some of them back. SWTOR came out, same thing happens. When Guild Wars 2 releases late August we'll see the same thing. All other major MMO's will have a population dropoff, then some people will come back, others won't.

 

SWTOR needs to get ahead of this population loss or the game's going to completely die and they're just out the money they spent on development. Now I'm pretty sure everyone at BioWare, EA, and the vast majority of players on here agree that the launch was way too early and responsible for most of the issues we have right now. Better to wait and launch a functional game, than launch early or on time with a craptastic one. GW2 is a great example of that. Did they have some preorders get canceled when they pushed the launch back a month? Sure they did. Did they lose as many purchases as SWTOR lost with the early launch (and I'm talking percentages here let's not get into semantics), no they didn't. Because we all know in the back of our minds that it's better to wait and have something done right, than have something now that's broken or rushed. Apparently EA missed that little life lesson.

 

So going F2P is the only option at this point, and the way they're doing it is clever. Rewarding all the players who've already paid for the game with start up credits for the F2P store. Here's what'll happen. The game goes free to play. Mass emails fire out over the internet to all past subscribers: "Hey it's FREE now! Oh and on top of that we gave you money you can spend on stuff to thank you for being a subscriber in the past!" Now what happens when someone tells you "Hey there's this cool new store you've never been too in a place you used to really enjoy oh and here's a gift card for it" You bet your wampa you've got a trip to make. So what's going to happen is most of the canceled subs will come back and have a look at the game if for nothing other than to check out the F2P store/model and see what's what. Many of them will probably go "Oh wow... I can like enjoy the questing and stuff for free? Well hell... that was like my favorite part... I guess I'll stick around..." Because let's face it, the questing and storytelling in SWTOR is the most unique feature of the whole darn game.

 

Meanwhile the website announces F2P, Facebook and other social media announce it. Right now you're all posting in all your other forums and websites and chat rooms about how SWTOR is going free to play. Well hey guess what, that's advertising for them. Not to mention I'm sure we've all had this experience before:

 

You: Hey [insert friend's name here] have you played [insert game name here]? It's really super awesome and totally amazing and you should come play it with me!

Friend: How much is it?

You: Well it's $50 initially, then $15 a month, but it's really awesome and totally worth it and we could play together.

Friend: Ehh... I dunno man we'll see.

 

You make the game F2P and the conversation changes:

 

You: Hey [insert friend's name here] have you played [insert game name here]? It's really super awesome and totally amazing and you should come play it with me! Plus they just made it free to play so you can come check it out with me and it won't cost you a dime.

Friend: Sweet! I'll go download it tonight!

 

Bottom line is F2P means returning players, new players, better server populations leading to better player retention. Some monthly players will stop paying and go F2P. Some non-existing players will sign up and opt to pay monthly. Some old players will return and make some micropayments with their free currency, then buy some more here and there to augment the play experience.

 

In short, they're not losing any money by going F2P, but they are losing money with the current model. The game will die faster as it is right this moment than it will on F2P, and the only chance of pitching this downward spiral back up into growth is going F2P so they can reach the audience and get people involved in the game. The real question in my mind is, now that EA is finally exhibiting a little intelligence in their decision, are they going to screw up the F2P store with real stats gear, daily/weekly/monthly stat augments to turn your toon into superman for 24 hours so you can pwn noobs in pvp with a single hit, etc.

 

As long as the F2P store is set up with micropayments correctly, they just might turn this around. Some items to consider for the real money purchases:

• Additional character slots
  
• Race unlocks
  
• Additional Cargo Bays
  
• Increase in max currency able to carry per toon
  
• Cosmetic pets
  
• Moddable gear with unique looks only obtainable in the real money store (has no stats/augs in it yet)
  
• Color crystals with stats comparable to in-game ones but colors unique to the store
  
• Speeders/mounts with the same speed/knockoff protection as in-game, but unique looks
  
• XP boosters (maybe 12 charges each, 2 hr duration, persist through defeat)
  
• Legacy XP boosters (maybe 12 charges each, 2 hr duration, persist through defeat; stacks with regular xp booster)
  

Just a couple ideas there for things people might shell out some real money for, and obviously that stuff needs to be realistic in terms of price. People aren't going to pay $10 for a color crystal or a speeder. Also, set up a system where maybe every weekend there's a random store item/unlock that goes on sale for each person. Discounts the price 50%. But it's purely random. Could even be something they already unlocked on the current character but could unlock on another. That's the sort of thing to get people to make spur of the moment decisions on. "Oh hey wait what? I can get an additional character slot for half off right now? Hmmm... well I have been wanting to try a ______ and it's only a couple bucks on sale... Yeah ok."

 

Anyway, if you guys can do this right, SWTOR just might see an upward trend for a change I'll be keeping my sub active for the time being in the hopes the store doesn't get filled with game-breaking items to make a quick buck.

Exactly!

Executive Producer Jeff Hickman addresses the fans about our Free-to-Play announcement:

 

 

Read More

Reason?:we wanted to be able to bring the game to more people.... ummm I think the reason is more like this: Star Wars has been such an overhyped dissapointment...

1.we pushed the release date back 4 or 5 times and still released it with hardly any of the features a game should have at launch...

2. Opened not nearly enough servers causing everyone to have to wait hours until play.

3. ilum was poorly designed and allowed for tilted poplulations to DOMINATE and farm battlemaster in a few hours for which we did nothing about... no 24 hour rollback... no nothing...

4. we then realized we needed more servers open so we opened WAY WAY to many of them causing the populations on servers to drop to 150 ish players so no one could do anything.

5. we figured PvP was something players actually had to spend time doing to achieve anything so we decided to make it so fresh-to-50 players could just buy the battlemaster gear after making others spend time working for it.

6. LAST, we woke up one morning and realized CRAP we now only have 10 servers open (literally) because we condensed population because of all the subscriber losses... We better do something AH HA!!! make the game free to play because no one is subscribing anymore and it is no longer profit making.....

So in short, above is the paraphrased version of what I think Mr. Jeff Hickman was trying to say......

Also I must give a congradulatory pat on the back to Swtor... this game went F2P faster than star trek online.... lmao.

Personally I will keep subscribing for now, and I hope the F2P raises the population again.. altho it wont help the raiders at all... See you all in game!! you have a 1/10 chance of being on my server!!

oh and as a personal request Bioware/EA/swtor/Jeff Hickman, can you please raise the amount of character slots for subscribing players.. thanks again..

I've been recently playing the SWG EMU. It's pretty much a complete PRE-NGE SWG!

You can get sued you know? lucas arts wants people to play swtor

You can get sued you know? lucas arts wants people to play swtor

swgemu is a pre CU version of galaxies not a pre NGE, and no you cannot get sued lol....the guys making the emu have been doing it officially from scratch for several several years like 7 or 8 years and you still have to have purchased an official version of galaxies to be able to install the Launcher for the EMU so no.. you cannot get sued...