Stupid F2P Restrictions

That's a brilliant idea Urael!!! Whoever suggested that must be super smart

Sure, Ill play a few sets. You serve.

You sure do like dramatic prose, dont you. I don't expect them to pay for anything...I expect them to do what is best for the title, to keep it solvent and profitable, healthy and upward mobile. I expect them to do well, and hope this move is the beginning of just that.

Looks like you enjoy silly exaggeration as well. I don't think luck has anything to do with it. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that somehow, some way we owe Bioware something. SWTOR is a commercial product seeking profit. As a vehicle of profit, it deserves nothing and is lucky if it receives anything.

That's how capitalism works. This game is not a religion, a family member or a political party.


It doesn't matter who it is aimed at. People that are happy with the status quo do not generate enough revenue to satisfy Bioware or EA's financial goals with the game. It is a very simple, succinct fact that seems to escape most of those that rage "if you don't like it, leave".

The following is probably more likely....Bioware does not want them to leave. Bioware wants the feedback as evidenced by this very forum we are chatting in. Bioware desires to make profits. You do not make decisions on who stays, who goes, who's suggestions or complaints are reputable or worthy....Bioware decides that.

You have to come to peace with the idea that things change, sometimes in ways you do not like, and this game may end up becoming something different than what you desire. The original plan did not work, there are not enough of the status quo folks to meet the game's goals....so we have change.

And that's that.

And super cereal.

It would seem F2P is not really an option, unless all you intented to do is RP, and watch the class stories, I was hoping for more, as this model of game play is dying, don't get me wrong I love this game, but more and more people want to move on to the next big thing, F2P here could do that to swtor, but with these restrictions, it more like a unlimited trial.

Couple of misconceptions going on in this thread that I think need clearing up.

A. Just because a player is against the currently proposed FTP option, does not mean that they are mad because they secretly wanted to switch to free to play and not lose any of their current game options, or think FTPlayers should have no restrictions on them.

B. Players voicing their concerns over the details of this FTP option don't necessarily believe that EA will up and change it all before at least trying out their currently planned model, but hope that their feedback will be heard(read) and that it could be potentially taken into consideration for the future. Besides the same people who are saying to stop "QQing" or that FTP option isn't up for debate, or in all likelihood the same silly folks that if we didn't voice our concerns now, would say in the future, "You guys should have said you didn't like it before they put it in!"

Final point, I pay my money to play this game and be part of the community and have access to the services found within, and nobody is going to say I am less intelligent than them or to be quiet just because I disagree with them about a game decision that is being made.

If people do not like the F2P restrictions, they have two choices. We know both of them already.

Would I rather the game keep going a long time, regardless of the type of F2P BW chooses? Sure, even if that choice causes me to quit playing, it's great if other people have MMO options.

However, I do respect the vision of the game artists and choices of the development team, even if they are not, in the end, financially "successful".

I'm SOOO glad they didn't do this. Then people who only want to F2P wouldn't be helping queue times at all for level 50 playing subs. 3 a week isn't much, but 3 a week times thousands (or hundreds of thousands) is a lot.

Actually they have three. They can continue to give feedback and hope to have some impact on the F2P, like they are doing here.

I fear that my success in pugs may go down a bit once the F2P crowd starts hitting level 50.

Most of my pugs have been with players that are reasonably skilled, with reasonable gear, and a reasonable ability to listen to advice about a boss encounter they don't know yet. Even the poorly geared pugs have often been alts of long-time players whose skill makes up for the lack of gear.

We'll see what happens, but I'm not hopeful ...

SWTOR did this to a degree. The folks at Bioware changed the way we interact with the MMORPG world. Story based voice acting is engaging and fun and certainly exposes a new facet of the MMO system. It doesn't get repeated enough, they have made it so other MMO's will have to be voice acted to really have people connect to the game (at least initially).

Now this is where it gets tricky, innovation is well and good but it means nothing if you can't get people to play it. Guarantee if you ask a gamer what type of MMO they want they will SAY 'not another WoW clone' buy they won't PLAY it- the numbers back that up. There isn't a single sandbox game out there that has 500k paying subscriptions. It's one of those nostalgia things that everyone wants in theory but not in practice.

What made WoW so great? Combining the best features of other games and offering it to you in an easy to access way. There's nothing particularly ground breaking in that but it's genius for breaking down initial learning curves and access barriers.

If you want to see the pitfalls of a non 'traditional WoW' design look at Tabula Rasa. It was a different take on the MMO world with a decent budget and a beloved developer at the head. It couldn't be more different than WoW and it totally bombed out within 2 years. Being different and innovative doesn't mean profitable or good. There's a major lesson there.

Now as a gamer with big ideas you might say 'oh well, I KNOW I can develop a game that would be a hit in a sandbox environment why the heck can't anyone else do it? ' The bottom line is that you aren't putting up millions upon millions of your own dollars to do it. Given what is successful on today's market and how poorly overall every MMO (not just SWTOR- every one in the last 24 months) has done at customer retention there isn't a lot of venture capital money to go around.

In the gaming world people talk about EA's lack of innovation then point to the sports franchises. Once you have a successful product that sells you don't change that model. In order to innovate you need to negate risk as much as possible make small games with low budgets to 'see what sticks to the wall' so to speak then those become your hits and that model is copied again and again. Sequels have become the most important way to drive the bottom line.

I won't say innovation in MMO's is dead but it's been shown to be not profitable and therefore a major risk. Blizzard is able to finance 'Titan' because they print the GDP of Zimbabwe on a monthly basis and they still have WoW to fall back on if it bombs. Interestingly enough when a game loses it's subs after launch they many of them tend to go back to WoW. Blizzard wins either way in this model as they don't lose a subscriber and anything players gained helps offset the higher cost of 2 MMOs and crush the market place.