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

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?

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.

Might give a shot at this...

@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. :)

@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.)

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.

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

I'd play it for free.

That was way faster then I expected. Poor BioWare.

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

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

"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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

I'd buy that for a...

Oh...

waawaawaaaa

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!

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

Any incentives?

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

Who would have thought!

I look forward to continuing not to play this game.

Guild Wars 2 will be out by then...

So meh. Meh I say!

@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?

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.

@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.

it's finally time to get this game

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.

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.

@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.

Alright, I'm in.

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.

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

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!

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.

@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.

@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.

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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.

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.

@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.

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.

adios

@SomeJerk said:

This is a very good thing for us, because this means we have KOTOR3 right here. Now, how the fuck is Warhammer Online still alive? DAoC I understand because it's the greatest PVP MMO of all time but..

I'm pretty sure that an actual Kotor 3 wouldn't have a bunch of quests where you have to go kill random enemies to get their quest item drops. Just saying.

that's sad.

@HarlequinRiot said:

@Forum_User said:

@Vash108 said:

I wonder how many bricks Bethesda is shittng right now. Aren't they doing quick bar combat?

As opposed to what? Going through a bunch of menus to do stuff?

As someone that doesn't play MMOs, is there a reason why they always opt for this style of combat instead of something more traditional, like say, standard 3rd person combat with just skills/combos thrown on top of it? I know they want to allow character growth, but using a quick bar style of combat alienates a good number of people I'd imagine (WoW not included, I guess, as usual).

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at. Are you saying that classes should have less skills? Because it's generally the sheer volume of skills, coupled with the fact that an online game with other players around can't be paused, that necessitates the hotbars, although some single player RPGs also have them out of convenience.

I'm not sure if you are coming at this from the perspective of a player of single player RPGs or as someone who just isn't really into RPGs, period. I can't really think of that many RPGs that work how you describe, MMO or not. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and the Fable series (neither of which I have played) come to mind. Those are kind of outliers, though.

@RedRoach said:

Subscription MMO's are not dead. New MMO's are just going at it wrong. WoW, RIFT, EVE and more MMO's are doing just fine with subs. All these failing MMO's are failing because they're bad, not necessarily because they have a subscription. TOR is the complete opposite of WoW. It's all about the leveling. WoW's leveling sucks, it really does. I mean it's okay but it's no thrill ride. But where WoW succeeds is in the end game content. There is always something to do, it's when WoW is really fun, that's why people play. TOR's end game content is just not of the same quality.

Just look at WoW: Cataclysm. In this expansion they focused too much on making new leveling content and not nearly enough on end game content. This lead to WoW's first subscriber drop ever. Leveling is really a prequel to the actual game, which is raiding, and pvping at max level. leveling is very minor in the grand scheme of things and focusing too much on it was TOR's downfall.

I think that Eve Online (which, as far as I know, does not have as many subscribers as The Old Republic, and never has, so I'm not quite sure where you were going with that) keeps people subbing in part because the pace of character progress is lethargic, and also is directly dependent merely upon subscribing, whether you are playing or not. Other MMOs actually let you reach the finish line, eventually, even if they introduce a new one later. I really hate Eve Online's progression system, and the last thing I want to see from other MMOs is for them to adopt it.

I give Eve Online points for two things:

1. It has an interesting economy. (Too bad it's in support of one of the dullest combat systems I've ever witnessed in a MMORPG, and that there is little else to the game besides the economy, really, which kind of just makes the whole game feel like some kind of weird exercise in circular reasoning or something.)

2. As far as I could tell, you have, for all practical purposes, unlimited storage. That just really makes me further question exactly why virtually every other MMORPG is so damn stingy about storage.

The real question is, has Bioware made any justification for replacing Star Wars Galaxies with The Old Republic? I stopped playing Galaxies a long time ago, and haven't heard anything that makes The Old Republic worth playing.

@Forum_User said:

@Vash108 said:

I wonder how many bricks Bethesda is shittng right now. Aren't they doing quick bar combat?

As opposed to what? Going through a bunch of menus to do stuff?

As someone that doesn't play MMOs, is there a reason why they always opt for this style of combat instead of something more traditional, like say, standard 3rd person combat with just skills/combos thrown on top of it? I know they want to allow character growth, but using a quick bar style of combat alienates a good number of people I'd imagine (WoW not included, I guess, as usual).

It's about damn time. Maybe I'll pick it up again and finish a storyline or two.