TOR to sell Stated Gear In FTP cash shop here is our new content after 6 monthes of n

Your asking about an expansion that hasn't even been officially announced, only teased. I see your point, and I'm going to assume Bioware will have pages of disclaimers that accompany Makeb, if it's 'sold'. If not, your point is valid.

You are arguing that there will be no crafting market to support mat farming. I disagree and you are now insisting that there will be a market and that I prove that there won't be?

you've lost me here. You are both agreeing and disagreeing with me at once.

Yes LOTRO orginally had a subscription model, exactly as SWTOR does, and did for 3 years and 2 expansions.

After the F2P you kept access to the old content whether you had the VIP (sub) option or F2P option, although F2P did have other limitations such as charater slots/bank space/gold amounts etc.

Where as SWTOR is basically limiting (or removing) your access to content you already have full access too (and have effectively paid for IMO) if you go F2P, unless you unlock it again in the cashshop - i.e. pay for it twice!

Exactly, paying twice isn't going to encourage people.


They were going to, in all honesty I haven't been back to LOTRO since SWTOR went Live so I'm not sure.

However the point was that orginally they were totally against it, but the cashshop model sells what sells, so it crept in. They, of course, said that they had no intentions to sell raid level gear, but the interesting bit was "at this moment", which again shows they know F2P is all about selling what sells. And if it's a case of lower profits or selling raid gear they will do it.

Well, since you just defined it in economic terms.... NO it won't, except in your mind. Crafters ALWAYS follow a narrow set of crafting that maximizes their return on investment. Just because one thing is no longer a market, just means they craft other items. This already happens when content is patched into the game. It is the nature of crafting and player choices for equipment.

While there are some critics (as always) in the LoTRO community about this, by and large most people simply don't care. They really don't. And the minority that does either learns to cope with it or leaves. But overall, the model has been well accepted by the player base (because it helps the game continue to thrive) and it has been successful for Turbine for the same reasons.

You personally don't like the model, but that does not mean all people dont' like it, nor that it will destroy the game. No matter how many times you say it or how many different ways you try to contrive it.

The same thing applies to the current content in my mind though.

IF they were actually saying that a subscription gave you access to everything under the F2P model (as they orginally stated) then they'd actually have some justification for making you pay twice.

But given that they are likely to sell Makeb to subscribers, they simply don't have a leg to stand on, it is purely selling the same stuff twice because they think they can get away with it.

So there isn't one then.

Half right, and half wrong. Not everything was grandfathered in. Book content and expansions were grandfathered in. Which makes sense because the books were given to you for free, and the expansions you purchased. But you had to keep your sub running if you wanted to continue to play and have access to all aspects of the game.

It will kill the gear and weapons market, assuming they don't just start selling everything else on the cashshop.

Cashshop Pots and such will kill that market too.



Look at LOTRO numbers, it's dropping badly, they have around about the same number of players now they had before they went F2P.

The problem is with dropping players is they have to sell more stuff to less players, which is what drives them to sell things they wouldn't have sold previously.

All content was, not every aspect of the game, which is what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying that Bioware EA should allow ex-subscriber account to keep everything the same, but I am saying they should have access to content they already bought (effectively), by buying it again.

Unless, of course, they DO go the model off F2P with subscription = access to everything (except maybe proper expansions).