Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Free to Play This Fall

adios

Yeah...The Secret World's probably fucked. No marketing at release at ALL. That's honestly a shame too, it's really got serious potential to become something great. If they just overhauled the combat...they'd really have a killer title on their hands. Jesus...how many MMOs did EA end up getting involved with?

When you're hemorrhaging money on a fucking Star Wars licensed game that was hyped beyond belief that already has a built in market....that's not a good sign at all for the MMO market in general. I've had my issues with Bioware in the past (I've almost moved on from the Mass Effect 3 debacle), but they're still a talented group of dudes regardless. They can restore their reputation with some serious soul searching and I want them to come back with a vengeance. MMOs have become nothing short of a money pit that are frankly more trouble for studio's than they're worth. Don't want to see Bioware suffer a similar fate as 38 Studios.

@Lamashtu said:

Why not make the client buy to play like the Guild Wars model, then do away with the subscription fee? Going free-to-play this quickly seems like jumping the gun to me. I mean Jesus Christ, Rift hasn't gone free to play yet, if anything, that game should have gone free to play before SWTOR would.

The words "residual income" are like the siren's call for investors and CEO types, and as it so often does, the prospect of easy money blinds people to reality. Well, I guess more easy money, in this case.

It's kind of like how some of the television networks try to chase the old ratings that they had back when there weren't like five hundred channels on television. They just can't let it go.

Means more people will experience this great game. Check it out if you have not already and come back if you have not played in awhile. I know I will.

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sure didn't take them long.. Whoever spent $60 on this or paid a subscription must be missing that money right now.

@jerseyscum said:

Yeah...The Secret World's probably fucked. No marketing at release at ALL. That's honestly a shame too, it's really got serious potential to become something great. If they just overhauled the combat...they'd really have a killer title on their hands. Jesus...how many MMOs did EA end up getting involved with?

When you're hemorrhaging money on a fucking Star Wars licensed game that was hyped beyond belief that already has a built in market....that's not a good sign at all for the MMO market in general. I've had my issues with Bioware in the past (I've almost moved on from the Mass Effect 3 debacle), but they're still a talented group of dudes regardless. They can restore their reputation with some serious soul searching and I want them to come back with a vengeance. MMOs have become nothing short of a money pit that are frankly more trouble for studio's than they're worth. Don't want to see Bioware suffer a similar fate as 38 Studios.

I am of the opinion that the first thing a MMO developer should nail down is the combat, assuming the combat is a significant chunk of the game. That only becomes more and more true as more and more MMOs get made. There's really no good excuse for clunky combat in a MMO at this point.

Here's what I think, though: Funcom has known all along that they are going to make The Secret World a free-to-play game, once the boxed sales die down. It's kind of similar to how non-MMO games are sold for sixty bucks and then the price on most of them quickly drops. It's just that in the case of these MMOs, they are also hitting the early purchasers with sub fees.

@Mcfart said:

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sure didn't take them long.. Whoever spent $60 on this or paid a subscription must be missing that money right now.

You could use that kind of argument against buying almost any game at release. I have so many games that I got for $5 - $10 that were originally $50 or $60, sometimes purchased less than a year after release.

If someone is really looking forward to a particular game, they will probably be willing to pay the premium to play it close to release. In my case, that would be a game like Guild Wars 2. I know it will be cheaper later, but I don't want to wait.

If this lets them focus their time/money on improving the game instead of doing everything else to pretend everything is just investor-fucking spectacular then I sincerely anticipate future updates.

I'm still feeling burned enough to not expect much, but saying as such shows how much I still hope for the best.

Sorry for not reading through the 200+ replies, but am I missing something in this: you buy the game for $15, and then you can F2P it? Or is the client/game free to download as well? Halp!

got this right around when it came out and i feel so guilty for not having played it :(

Kind of want to try this now that I don't have to pledge a monthly sum. Then again, I don't have time to play MMOs.

Alright, I'm in.

@cbarnes86: This would be a great idea, but they'd probably have to offer both payment methods (pay-as-you-go and a monthly subscription) or they'd get complaints from people who get more than their money's worth simply because they have the time to spend playing regular long sessions. Personally I've never been one for the subscription model but more because I don't want to be paying for several months where I don't use it, which would undoubtedly happen with the way I jump around between games.

Everyone is saying, "Oh gee, if I paid money for this game, I'd be darn angry about this here news!"

I paid $150 for a Collector's Edition and this news doesn't upset me. Last December I spent about 200 hours bringing my Trooper to the level cap and thoroughly enjoyed it. My gameplay/dollar ratio was more than justified. I own dozens of games on Steam that I've paid less than $5 for that have a worse gameplay/dollar ratio.

The problem I had with SWTOR was that it simply hit a brick wall once my class quest ended. There were some daily quests that were mildly amusing, but got old quickly. I couldn't run any group content due to the lack of virtually any LFG functionality. It was easy to cancel my subscription.

Going F2P just means that I can log back on my account and mess around without depositing $15 back in the machine. New players will get an incredible value, but that doesn't make me bitter.

Easily worth it, I'm still paying and feel it's worth it.  Join the GB Community guild on Corellian Run server, /who Kessler Run.  Best time to find someone is probably weekends.

it's finally time to get this game

@thebigJ_A said:

@Trilogy said:

@LegendaryChopChop said:

Cool, now let's end all MMOs too while we're at it.

Yea because that's not completely irrelevant or unnecessary...

You mean like MMOs?

No, I mean like you're uninformed opinion of them. It's sort of like all the people that hate Call of Duty just for existing. So silly.

And they could have just made KOTOR 3......shame. I am still surprised they didn't make it to at least the beginning of next year.

@Mcfart said:

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sure didn't take them long.. Whoever spent $60 on this or paid a subscription must be missing that money right now.

Yes, much like you miss an money you spend on a product which devalues over time...so every purchase I ever made except for my apartment? You do realize that most exchanges of money for products mean you get less money, yeah?

Guild Wars 2 will be out by then...

So meh. Meh I say!

I look forward to continuing not to play this game.

Who would have thought!

I called it and people said I was an idiot on here. Haha.

any idea of any of us players that use to be subs that want to play again.

Any incentives?

1) Obligatory "I'll be playing Guild Wars 2" comment (because it's true)

2) What's with the straight-laced article title? I expect a little more snideness from my Alex

3) Don't believe them! ToR is NOT going free to play!

waawaawaaaa

I'd buy that for a...

Oh...

I will go back and play the game on and off now that it is going free. The grinding of generic enemies to get to the story bits was just too much for me when the meter was running.

It's not really free to play in the true sense there are truly free to play games out there with no restrictions at all like the North American versions of Aion and Lineage II to name two, this is more like Pay to enjoy ie if you want to enjoy the game fully as it should be you need to pay.

They should make it like many other F2P games ie open it up fully and have a cash shop they will find people would be willing to spend money there if they are enjoying the game they wont if they feel they are being to restricted and hampered and forced to buy like EA seem to be doing with their so called F2P model. unless they change their F2P format they will find people just wont stay and i can see them shutting the game down in less than a year from now.

The most annoying thing in MMOs is when they claim they are MMOs but then you end up in an super instanced world, where you meet like at most 10 persons in a major HUB, and you have to switch instances to actually find one that has some people in it.

Among other things, that's the reason why World of Warcraft is popular, because there is no instances in the outside world and when the server has 2000 players connected, you bet if you would take the time, you could see every single on of them if they would be questing in zones, without having to deal with being put in some instanced zone where there should be 500 people but you can see only 5, 10, 8, 9 depending in what instance you are.

That said, Blizzard is going even further with populating the zones with their newest XP pack, instead of instancing it. So when you're playing on your server and you lack population, you will see people from other servers that are in the same zone as you are, so you will not feel alone and abandoned.

That's what's worth the $15 a month in my book (next to other things ofc), a MMO should feel massive not like a single player game with with 16 play multiplayer experience as SWTOR seemed when I tried it and quickly abandoned, due to exact this reason.

If you call it MMO, better make that promise come true and fuck off with instancing for cities, zones, keep it for raids/dungeons/battleground but never for the outside world, else you're not making an MMOG but a MOG game.

@FMinus said:

The most annoying thing in MMOs is when they claim they are MMOs but then you end up in an super instanced world, where you meet like at most 10 persons in a major HUB, and you have to switch instances to actually find one that has some people in it.

Among other things, that's the reason why World of Warcraft is popular, because there is no instances in the outside world and when the server has 2000 players connected, you bet if you would take the time, you could see every single on of them if they would be questing in zones, without having to deal with being put in some instanced zone where there should be 500 people but you can see only 5, 10, 8, 9 depending in what instance you are.

That said, Blizzard is going even further with populating the zones with their newest XP pack, instead of instancing it. So when you're playing on your server and you lack population, you will see people from other servers that are in the same zone as you are, so you will not feel alone and abandoned.

That's what's worth the $15 a month in my book (next to other things ofc), a MMO should feel massive not like a single player game with with 16 play multiplayer experience as SWTOR seemed when I tried it and quickly abandoned, due to exact this reason.

If you call it MMO, better make that promise come true and fuck off with instancing for cities, zones, keep it for raids/dungeons/battleground but never for the outside world, else you're not making an MMOG but a MOG game.

Yeah I'm in the same boat. Why would I pay for an MMO and still have to play solo or spend half my time looking for the other thousand people playing on the same server?

I have zero issues with the standard $15/month fee for MMOs, I actually think it helps games go much further than F2P do. Look at everything WoW has been able to accomplish, while most F2P games are just merely surviving. In 5+ years even F2P will need to evolve to something more.

"but can you honestly imagine anyone developing a new MMO with a subscription model in this climate?"

i really hope f2p becomes norm. only 2 mmo's im intrested, GW2 & World Of Darkness [VTMB sequel, kinda], & i hope by the time WoD is out, it has no other options than to be f2p.

Too little too late, I already bought Guild Wars 2.

@TrafalgarLaw: It's free to play not free to own*.

That was way faster then I expected. Poor BioWare.

I'd play it for free.

There is no mmo market, it turns out. Maybe there never really was.

As SWTOR requires Origin to play it, I'd like to offer my big fat middle finger to any EA subscription or Free to play model.

@Dick_Mohawk said:

As SWTOR requires Origin to play it, I'd like to offer my big fat middle finger to any EA subscription or Free to play model.

If you get a retail copy, you can run it without ever opening Origin. That's what I do, it runs better. ("Better" being a relative term, as the game still runs like crap for everyone I know.)

@Zuldim said:

@Dick_Mohawk said:

As SWTOR requires Origin to play it, I'd like to offer my big fat middle finger to any EA subscription or Free to play model.

If you get a retail copy, you can run it without ever opening Origin. That's what I do, it runs better. ("Better" being a relative term, as the game still runs like crap for everyone I know.)

Thanks Zuldim. I didn't realize. Might be worth a bash after all. :)

Might give a shot at this...

They seem to be making the only part I care about free to play. I have no interest in the actual multiplayer parts of this game. Just give me the story. I concider this a win.

Talk about dead on arrival. This is probably the biggest bomb in MMO history. Didn't this game cost, like, a billion dollars to make?

I'll actually play when it goes FTP.

What do you think is the reason to pre-announce this move? Doesn't this hit their bottom line for the next couple months while people wait for the new model to take effect? Or does this suggest just how dire the subscription drop-off was becoming.

hmmm i was hoping i wouldn't have to pay anymore for this but oh well i still love this game.

Oh good! A reason for me to try it again!

I sure bioware thanks you guys for all your support and isn't the reason at all they disregard when making decisions for games

I might return if my friends want to play too.