There are a lot of emotions being thrown around about the free players, it seems like. Words like "freeloader" and even "socialist." One of the more common ideas thrown about is that a free player is a negative on SWToR.

So I set out to gather some data, because numbers beat feelings every time. Setting aside intangibles, free players do cost Bioware money. But how much? Well, turns out it's not a lot. And by not a lot, I mean you can maintain hundreds for a month for the price of a hamburger.

The cost of having a free player running around on SWToR is the cost of the bandwidth he's using - the amount of data transferred to keep his machine and the server updated on what the other is doing (or data transferred downloading the client/patches). He doesn't get customer service (subs only) and development work happens with or without him, and new stuff is largely paid content anyway. Downloading a bandwidth meter(1), I closed all other applications on my PC that might consume bandwidth and went to go play, measuring the various domains in SWToR and measuring just how much bandwidth I was using. What I found:

-Idling on the fleet was actually the most intensive activity I measured, which had an average of 8 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in populated areas (in this case the Black Hole) was the second-most intensive activity, at an average of 5 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic. Questing is important because it's the most strongly encouraged activity for a free player, and the majority of the game.

-Flashpoints were actually very light on bandwidth usage, at an average of 3 kilobytes per second combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in unpopulated areas and space missions both also had around 3kb/s; this is not surprising, the least bandwidth is used while soloing or in small groups. The less players/actions you have to update, the less bandwidth gets used.

-Loading into new areas was no more intensive, probably because it's all on your hard drive.

-I have not yet tried to measure Warzones. I kind of like winning and the meter won't minimize. ^^; I feel fairly confident assuming it will be the most bandwidth-intensive activity, so I'll come back with more data later.

(On an unrelated note, I found out that the bandwidth used in SWToR is low enough that if you were able to download the patches before the next patch hit, you could play it on dial-up.)

But this is just traffic. How much does this cost Bioware? I don't actually know how much their bandwidth costs, so I'll use something that's 99% likely to be more expensive: the "any old person could get this price" option. No bulk discounts at all. I chose a Virtual Private Network server(2) because in a VPN, you are also renting the server used. They therefore include the costs of server maintenence in your fee (with a markup, of course), so we're accounting for server costs in our napkin math. They cost 3.99 euros per month ($5.08) for a combined 1 terabyte upload/download, which equals 0.398736937 megabytes per second, or 408.3 kilobytes per second.

The majority activity is questing. I'll use the questing in populated areas average for our numbers here, since presumably places where you'll find one free player you'll find a lot of them. At 5kb/s, this means that $5 per month will get you 81 F2P players who play 24 hours per day. Assume that they instead play 8 hours a day, and that $5 gets you 243 really dedicated free players for a month.

So let's get some metrics, specifically leveling to 50 as a free player. Consulting a thread which lists play time (3). We get some people with 13, some with 6, someone claiming 3 who is probably lying. Let's highball our estimate a bit and say it takes 10 days /played or 240 hours to hit level 50. This comes to 4320000 kilobytes of data, which looks like a lot but it comes out to 4.32 gigabytes of bandwidth used. Applying arithmetic at a cost of $5.08/terabyte, it costs Bioware 2.14 cents to see a free player level to 50.

Downloading the game client is approximately 27 gigabytes of data(4), which costs Bioware 13.39 cents under this model which is again, almost certainly more expensive than what they actually use.

Combining the two and applying some more math, it costs Bioware 15.53 cents in bandwidth for a free player to download the game and level to 50. Okay, so what does this mean? It means that if fifteen free players download the game and play to the level cap, and one of them buys a single operations pass, Bioware has made money.

tldr: bandwidth is not expensive, Bioware needs a hilariously small conversion ratio on free players to make money on them.

(1) http://www.wizard-soft.com/meter/register.htm engaged in trial mode for the purposes of logging.

(2) http://www.edis.at/en/server/kvm-vps/usa/

(3) http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3382432

(4) http://www.swtor.com/info/faq/game

Such a long post, for metrics that are totally inaccurate.

F2P can only do 3 WZ's or FP's a week, so they are hardly a drain on resources on the fleet. Maybe for one day per week. But the added benefits for us paying customers is faster queue times. I would gladly pay an extra nickel a month in bandwidth to give me queues that are much faster.

They don't affect logins either, as a paying customer we get put ahead of them in the queue.

Downloading the software: How would you propose future customers get the software? Purchase it at a store? Will you supply the bandwidth for customers to download? Do you really think stores would even put this game on the shelf for $59.99 like it was for the basic version at launch?

You misunderstand.

I am attempting to refute the idea that free players are a big cost to Bioware.

They're cheap to maintain. Like, really cheap.

The percentage of them that need to buy stuff for Bioware to make money is hilariously low. The biggest bandwidth expense they'll incur is probably downloading the client: this would cost the bargain price of 13.39 cents per full download if I, a private citizen who will almost certainly pay many times more for bandwidth than a large corporation, hosted the client downloads myself.

You misunderstand.

 

I am attempting to refute the idea that free players are a big cost to Bioware.

 

They're cheap to maintain. Like, really cheap.

My apologies then! Sorry!

I am all for F2P players personally. I like the population spike, stuff selling better on the GTN, seems queues for FP's and WZ's are faster.

Wish it will last, not hopeful though.

I agree! Honestly I think they're really good for the game.

That's an intangible, though, and although intangibles are super super important, this is something you can put a number on.

lol the 2 million casuals didn't like you people the Hardcore Minority and your play style but yet you guys infected this game had a guild summit dedicated to you all to help ruin this game.

Games that focus on you people die and go free2play

lol the 2 million casuals didn't like you people the Hardcore Minority and your play style but yet you guys infected this game had a guild summit dedicated to you all to help ruin this game.

 

Games that focus on you people die and go free2play

one thing wrong in ur post,

others r true,

1.5 million players gone.

lol the 2 million casuals didn't like you people the Hardcore Minority and your play style but yet you guys infected this game had a guild summit dedicated to you all to help ruin this game.

 

Games that focus on you people die and go free2play

lol.

I don't consider myself hardcore (data-driven, maybe), I don't believe I was catered to, and I think the free players may well be the best thing that's happened to this game.

Did you read the bits where I calculated that a so-called "freeloader" getting a toon to 50 will cost the company a little over two cents?

'Cause yeah, that ain't expensive.

lol the 2 million casuals didn't like you people the Hardcore Minority and your play style but yet you guys infected this game had a guild summit dedicated to you all to help ruin this game.

 

Games that focus on you people die and go free2play

I really don't understand your post, I'll assume English isn't your primary language though.

This game is nowhere near 2 million subscribers..........................I'd say 500k is on the high side.

I really don't understand your post, I'll assume English isn't your primary language though.

 

This game is nowhere near 2 million subscribers..........................I'd say 500k is on the high side.

and again, i do feel like i have to stress this this part, if subs was enough to keep this game a float, why did it undergo a f2p conversion?

please answer this question, and thanks in advance

I really don't understand your post, I'll assume English isn't your primary language though.

 

This game is nowhere near 2 million subscribers..........................I'd say 500k is on the high side.

That's because those 2 million people left when the developers started catering to a small minority. Then Bioware Austin started getting canned after their poor design choices. Even the Bioware Doctors have resigned in shame. 200 million dollars they advertised to the casuals and WoW Crowd and what happened.....they decided last minute to cater and have events to the most undesirable type of people in the MMO world. The Hardcore Minority

indeed

 

and again, i do feel like i have to stress this this part, if subs was enough to keep this game a float, why did it undergo a f2p conversion?

 

please answer this question, and thanks in advance

This game was the most expensive game in history. 200 Million dollars and what happened? Last minute BIoware Austin decided to focus on the cockroaches of the MMO world the Hardcore Minority. Bioware Austin had almost all its staff laid off for their poor, poor, poor, poor choices. Hell the CEO of EA was almost replaced and EA's stock dipped down big time because of Bioware Austin. The Doctors quit in shame because of their poor choices.

This game was supposed to be a casual game instead what happened? Money was spent and the game day 1 had tons of glitches from using the Hero Engine instead of making an Engine in house. Then stupid events like the Guild Summit to focus on the cockroaches the Hardcore Minority.

It took 200 people and major designers to be fired for EA to get it's point across that a dungeon finder was needed. but to further stick it to everyone they kept the dungeon finder and refused to make it cross server and that resulted in 100 more people being fired and the doctors resigning in shame.

There are a lot of emotions being thrown around about the free players, it seems like. Words like "freeloader" and even "socialist." One of the more common ideas thrown about is that a free player is a negative on SWToR.

 

So I set out to gather some data, because numbers beat feelings every time. Setting aside intangibles, free players do cost Bioware money. But how much? Well, turns out it's not a lot. And by not a lot, I mean you can maintain hundreds for a month for the price of a hamburger.

 

The cost of having a free player running around on SWToR is the cost of the bandwidth he's using - the amount of data transferred to keep his machine and the server updated on what the other is doing (or data transferred downloading the client/patches). He doesn't get customer service (subs only) and development work happens with or without him, and new stuff is largely paid content anyway. Downloading a bandwidth meter(1), I closed all other applications on my PC that might consume bandwidth and went to go play, measuring the various domains in SWToR and measuring just how much bandwidth I was using. What I found:

 

-Idling on the fleet was actually the most intensive activity I measured, which had an average of 8 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in populated areas (in this case the Black Hole) was the second-most intensive activity, at an average of 5 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic. Questing is important because it's the most strongly encouraged activity for a free player, and the majority of the game.

-Flashpoints were actually very light on bandwidth usage, at an average of 3 kilobytes per second combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in unpopulated areas and space missions both also had around 3kb/s; this is not surprising, the least bandwidth is used while soloing or in small groups. The less players/actions you have to update, the less bandwidth gets used.

-Loading into new areas was no more intensive, probably because it's all on your hard drive.

-I have not yet tried to measure Warzones. I kind of like winning and the meter won't minimize. ^^; I feel fairly confident assuming it will be the most bandwidth-intensive activity, so I'll come back with more data later.

 

(On an unrelated note, I found out that the bandwidth used in SWToR is low enough that if you were able to download the patches before the next patch hit, you could play it on dial-up.)

 

But this is just traffic. How much does this cost Bioware? I don't actually know how much their bandwidth costs, so I'll use something that's 99% likely to be more expensive: the "any old person could get this price" option. No bulk discounts at all. I chose a Virtual Private Network server(2) because in a VPN, you are also renting the server used. They therefore include the costs of server maintenence in your fee (with a markup, of course), so we're accounting for server costs in our napkin math. They cost 3.99 euros per month ($5.08) for a combined 1 terabyte upload/download, which equals 0.398736937 megabytes per second, or 408.3 kilobytes per second.

 

The majority activity is questing. I'll use the questing in populated areas average for our numbers here, since presumably places where you'll find one free player you'll find a lot of them. At 5kb/s, this means that $5 per month will get you 81 F2P players who play 24 hours per day. Assume that they instead play 8 hours a day, and that $5 gets you 243 really dedicated free players for a month.

 

So let's get some metrics, specifically leveling to 50 as a free player. Consulting a thread which lists play time (3). We get some people with 13, some with 6, someone claiming 3 who is probably lying. Let's highball our estimate a bit and say it takes 10 days /played or 240 hours to hit level 50. This comes to 4320000 kilobytes of data, which looks like a lot but it comes out to 4.32 gigabytes of bandwidth used. Applying arithmetic at a cost of $5.08/terabyte, it costs Bioware 2.14 cents to see a free player level to 50.

 

Downloading the game client is approximately 27 gigabytes of data(4), which costs Bioware 13.39 cents under this model which is again, almost certainly more expensive than what they actually use.

 

Combining the two and applying some more math, it costs Bioware 15.53 cents in bandwidth for a free player to download the game and level to 50. Okay, so what does this mean? It means that if fifteen free players download the game and play to the level cap, and one of them buys a single operations pass, Bioware has made money.

 

tldr: bandwidth is not expensive, Bioware needs a hilariously small conversion ratio on free players to make money on them.

 

(1) http://www.wizard-soft.com/meter/register.htm engaged in trial mode for the purposes of logging.

(2) http://www.edis.at/en/server/kvm-vps/usa/

(3) http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3382432

(4) http://www.swtor.com/info/faq/game

The cost of a free player (or ANY player for that matter) has little to do with bandwidth. I guess you don't know anything about overhead, labor rates, cost of goods, etc. In a game like this...the cost is basically already calculated and is not spread across the player base. It's a set standard that is probably good for about a few million more players until they have to dump more money into servers, etc. Trying to spread cost across each player makes it look like the cost decreases per player. However, were talking about real financial formulas here and I guarantee 98% of the people on the forums have no idea what I'm talking about.

I really wish people would stick to things they actually know about instead of coming to the forums and trying to sound smart. Really. Stop it.

The same goes for you yahoos spouting off the 200 million cost number. Unless you work for EA and have access to their financial data you have no idea what it cost. A few clueless Internet analysts have talked about the 200 million price mark...without ANY evidence to back it up. You also don't know the standard cost to keep it running nor do you know what profits they are making. NO, you don't know. Don't pretend you do.

I had bad connection to The Bastion over the entire weekend, jumping from 400-1200ms all the time. The only time it stabilised was after Sunday 7pm (GMT +8), where it fell back to what I've been getting pre-f2p (200ms).

There problems this game has shouldn't have happened at all. Bottom line they were given 200 million dollars they bought the rights to a broken engine before it was even ready for release. Star Wars The Old Republic is a tale of mismanagement.

The cost of a free player (or ANY player for that matter) has little to do with bandwidth. I guess you don't know anything about overhead, labor rates, cost of goods, etc. In a game like this...the cost is basically already calculated and is not spread across the player base. It's a set standard that is probably good for about a few million more players until they have to dump more money into servers, etc. Trying to spread cost across each player makes it look like the cost decreases per player. However, were talking about real financial formulas here and I guarantee 98% of the people on the forums have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

I really wish people would stick to things they actually know about instead of coming to the forums and trying to sound smart. Really. Stop it..

I am comparing what the cost difference would be between "Free Player Bob Plays SWToR" and "Free Player Bob Plays Something Else" if I were hosting the free players myself. I am doing this in response to the people saying "freeloaders should pay or get out" or "free players are a financial burden on Bioware." I'm not trying to sound smart, and if it looks like I am, I apologize. (I'd settle for 'vaguely credible.') I'm trying to bring some data into this, specifically that the price of adding players isn't nearly as much as people seem to think it is.

The truth is that additional free players cost next to nothing. Or, as you say, until a certain point, really nothing at all. (And after that not very much.) It's napkin math and not a rigorous fiscal analysis; the advantage is that anybody who doubts the price of hosting can follow the links and do the math themselves.

I know about overhead and labor costs, thank you, and that spreading the cost per player isn't precisely accurate. Whether a free player comes or goes has little bearing on the money spent on any of it - except hosting.

I am comparing what the cost difference would be between "Free Player Bob Plays SWToR" and "Free Player Bob Plays Something Else" if I were hosting the free players myself. I am doing this in response to the people saying "freeloaders should pay or get out" or "free players are a financial burden on Bioware." I'm not trying to sound smart, and if it looks like I am, I apologize. (I'd settle for 'vaguely credible.') I'm trying to bring some data into this, specifically that the price of adding players isn't nearly as much as people seem to think it is.

 

The truth is that additional free players cost next to nothing. Or, as you say, until a certain point, really nothing at all. (And after that not very much.) It's napkin math and not a rigorous fiscal analysis; the advantage is that anybody who doubts the price of hosting can follow the links and do the math themselves.

 

I know about overhead and labor costs, thank you, and that spreading the cost per player isn't precisely accurate. Whether a free player comes or goes has little bearing on the money spent on any of it - except hosting.

I 100% agree its not costing bioware really anything to add free players. Anyone who thinks that it is...is not smart. The base costs are already set.

However, and I'm not trying to insult you, your math doesn't really mean anything. I would take the argument...in the real financial direction.

There are a lot of emotions being thrown around about the free players, it seems like. Words like "freeloader" and even "socialist." One of the more common ideas thrown about is that a free player is a negative on SWToR.

 

So I set out to gather some data, because numbers beat feelings every time. Setting aside intangibles, free players do cost Bioware money. But how much? Well, turns out it's not a lot. And by not a lot, I mean you can maintain hundreds for a month for the price of a hamburger.

 

The cost of having a free player running around on SWToR is the cost of the bandwidth he's using - the amount of data transferred to keep his machine and the server updated on what the other is doing (or data transferred downloading the client/patches). He doesn't get customer service (subs only) and development work happens with or without him, and new stuff is largely paid content anyway. Downloading a bandwidth meter(1), I closed all other applications on my PC that might consume bandwidth and went to go play, measuring the various domains in SWToR and measuring just how much bandwidth I was using. What I found:

 

-Idling on the fleet was actually the most intensive activity I measured, which had an average of 8 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in populated areas (in this case the Black Hole) was the second-most intensive activity, at an average of 5 kilobytes per second of combined download/upload traffic. Questing is important because it's the most strongly encouraged activity for a free player, and the majority of the game.

-Flashpoints were actually very light on bandwidth usage, at an average of 3 kilobytes per second combined download/upload traffic.

-Questing in unpopulated areas and space missions both also had around 3kb/s; this is not surprising, the least bandwidth is used while soloing or in small groups. The less players/actions you have to update, the less bandwidth gets used.

-Loading into new areas was no more intensive, probably because it's all on your hard drive.

-I have not yet tried to measure Warzones. I kind of like winning and the meter won't minimize. ^^; I feel fairly confident assuming it will be the most bandwidth-intensive activity, so I'll come back with more data later.

 

(On an unrelated note, I found out that the bandwidth used in SWToR is low enough that if you were able to download the patches before the next patch hit, you could play it on dial-up.)

 

But this is just traffic. How much does this cost Bioware? I don't actually know how much their bandwidth costs, so I'll use something that's 99% likely to be more expensive: the "any old person could get this price" option. No bulk discounts at all. I chose a Virtual Private Network server(2) because in a VPN, you are also renting the server used. They therefore include the costs of server maintenence in your fee (with a markup, of course), so we're accounting for server costs in our napkin math. They cost 3.99 euros per month ($5.08) for a combined 1 terabyte upload/download, which equals 0.398736937 megabytes per second, or 408.3 kilobytes per second.

 

The majority activity is questing. I'll use the questing in populated areas average for our numbers here, since presumably places where you'll find one free player you'll find a lot of them. At 5kb/s, this means that $5 per month will get you 81 F2P players who play 24 hours per day. Assume that they instead play 8 hours a day, and that $5 gets you 243 really dedicated free players for a month.

 

So let's get some metrics, specifically leveling to 50 as a free player. Consulting a thread which lists play time (3). We get some people with 13, some with 6, someone claiming 3 who is probably lying. Let's highball our estimate a bit and say it takes 10 days /played or 240 hours to hit level 50. This comes to 4320000 kilobytes of data, which looks like a lot but it comes out to 4.32 gigabytes of bandwidth used. Applying arithmetic at a cost of $5.08/terabyte, it costs Bioware 2.14 cents to see a free player level to 50.

 

Downloading the game client is approximately 27 gigabytes of data(4), which costs Bioware 13.39 cents under this model which is again, almost certainly more expensive than what they actually use.

 

Combining the two and applying some more math, it costs Bioware 15.53 cents in bandwidth for a free player to download the game and level to 50. Okay, so what does this mean? It means that if fifteen free players download the game and play to the level cap, and one of them buys a single operations pass, Bioware has made money.

 

tldr: bandwidth is not expensive, Bioware needs a hilariously small conversion ratio on free players to make money on them.

 

(1) http://www.wizard-soft.com/meter/register.htm engaged in trial mode for the purposes of logging.

(2) http://www.edis.at/en/server/kvm-vps/usa/

(3) http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3382432

(4) http://www.swtor.com/info/faq/game

They arent a drain on anything other than our fun level.

"Omg I cant hide my helmet!!!!??? OOMGWTFPHAILIHATEJOOEAAAAAA"

I had bad connection to The Bastion over the entire weekend, jumping from 400-1200ms all the time. The only time it stabilised was after Sunday 7pm (GMT +8), where it fell back to what I've been getting pre-f2p (200ms).

i don't have that problem during all weekend, same server and same gmt+8,

btw THAT server crashed , DC, rollbacked recently if u recall.

That's because those 2 million people left when the developers started catering to a small minority. Then Bioware Austin started getting canned after their poor design choices. Even the Bioware Doctors have resigned in shame. 200 million dollars they advertised to the casuals and WoW Crowd and what happened.....they decided last minute to cater and have events to the most undesirable type of people in the MMO world. The Hardcore Minority

Most of the updates were dedicated to raiding content by adding more operations, flashpoints and the group finder. I hope that going forward they decide to add content for everyone, like events and more storylines like the one to get HK51.

This game was the most expensive game in history. 200 Million dollars and what happened? Last minute BIoware Austin decided to focus on the cockroaches of the MMO world the Hardcore Minority. Bioware Austin had almost all its staff laid off for their poor, poor, poor, poor choices. Hell the CEO of EA was almost replaced and EA's stock dipped down big time because of Bioware Austin. The Doctors quit in shame because of their poor choices.

 

This game was supposed to be a casual game instead what happened? Money was spent and the game day 1 had tons of glitches from using the Hero Engine instead of making an Engine in house. Then stupid events like the Guild Summit to focus on the cockroaches the Hardcore Minority.

 

It took 200 people and major designers to be fired for EA to get it's point across that a dungeon finder was needed. but to further stick it to everyone they kept the dungeon finder and refused to make it cross server and that resulted in 100 more people being fired and the doctors resigning in shame.

The funny thing is that all of these things were told to them in beta. Even the Revanites (sp? can't remember how to spell it) were telling them this. Beta players were told in Phase 1 that they were only there because launch standards required a beta. One dev constantly told beta players that the in house testers were far more capable at solving the games issues then randoms.

They arent a drain on anything other than our fun level.

 

 

"Omg I cant hide my helmet!!!!??? OOMGWTFPHAILIHATEJOOEAAAAAA"

Well then. Give free players the option to hide their helm and they won't complain about it. And you won't have to look at the ugly helmets.

Fun level fixed!

It's silly, really. What is there to lose from F2P? Not much. It'd just coax some people into spending money on Cartel Coins or re-subbing.

On a lighter note, 13 days after the election and the first time I heard "socialist'! Progress.