Based on an article found on Destructoid.
It looks like Bioware will be using the popular WoW-style financial model. : /
I was hoping for a Guild Wars-style (no monthly fee to play) with profits made from microtransactions or episodic content. Now, whether or not this is a viable business model, I'm not qualified to opine. I also believe that a free/month system would attract a larger consumer base, outside that of WoW.
Reading that article brought my anticipation down a peg.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Game » consists of 5 releases. Released Dec 20, 2011
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively-multiplayer role-playing game set 300 years after the events of BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic series, but still approximately 3,600 years before the events of the films.
Crap. SW: The Old Republic costs money.
".Reading that article brought my anticipation down a peg."Wow, same here. That's not great news. I'm not going to read that link but how much are they planning to charge per-month for it, if it's cheap enough I could be down with it because it does look like a special mmo.
Of course it's going to cost money...did anyone ever think SWTOR was going to be free? Also, the article mentions nothing about what sort of fee structure the game is going to use. There has been some speculation that it will be microtransaction based.
I believe the article mentioned Bioware undercutting the standard $15... to something around $10.
My biggest gripe, and I dont mean to debate subscription models here, is that once you decide to quit a subscription based game, you lose all of your "virtual accomplishmen", until you decide to sign back up. This is why WoW never appealed to me.
I know that there are gamers who will disagree and say that its not about the accomplishment and "It's about the ride". Meaning all of the fun times with party members, memories made, successful raids, all that. But right now, after leaving my guild wars account dormant for about 10 months, I can still double click the desktop icon and jump right back into it, no subscription renewal, and all items in my inventories.
Anyone else feel the same?
Well, yeah. But I knew the whole time that BioWare wasn't going to do that. Plus, I actually uninstall free MMOs when I finish playing them. They just take up too much disc space. So I don't actually have that instant accessibility.
All the article says is they are looking at what the current standard business model is for an MMO. In this case the majority of them are all charging about £10 a month for the ability to play the game. All MMO's these days usually come with the first month free when you buy the game. I haven't played WoW since it was first released and I only played for a month so I'm not up to date on the game. But most MMO's I know allow you to keep everything you earned or looted if your subscription runs out, SOME of them have a time limit though. As in if you haven't renewed your subscription in X number of months they remove your characters but keep your account.
I'm not sure why people are so worried about the pricing of SWOR, I'd more worried about the game itself.
Uh....that was an article about the same week as the game was first revealed from Bioware saying it would cost money. They weren't sure of how they were doing it at the time, but I don't know why anyone would ever assume it wasn't going to cost money seeing as its going to be a major release when it comes out.
I agree with Hamz though, I want to be optimistic and think it could be good because I know Bioware can make good games, but at the same time working with the same people in the project that did SWG's worries me, along with Bioware themselves never before stepping into the mmo genre. There is really no reason anyone should be thinking this game will be good at all with what we know unfortunately.
I gladly paid 15 a month for WoW, so if this is good (God, please let it be good!) I will gladly pay 15 a month for it.
paying monthly for an mmorpg... 1997 says hello
and besides, i've yet to ever see a free mmorpg that didn't completely suck ass. so i don't know how the hell those games are successful. i guess people will take anything if its free. i still want quality in the games that i play.
I'm worried more about the game play. If it turns out to be another WoW clone then I will pass. For all its faults Star Wars: Galaxies had, it was at least unique.
"I'm worried more about the game play. If it turns out to be another WoW clone then I will pass. For all its faults Star Wars: Galaxies had, it was at least unique."That SWG was.
Though I would say that if BioWare delivers on half of the story elements that they are claiming this game is going to have, this is going to be a much different experience than WoW.
As for the original topic, that Destructoid article didn't say much beside "we are going to look at the market at the current time that it release." Or something along those lines anyway. Of course it is going to cost money, and will cost money in a way that somehow they are bringing it in every month. To think otherwise, I would have to say would be a little naive. Plus, I really don't think the argument of "I don't want to pay for an MMO" really stands anymore. (If it ever did)
If it's as good as WoW, I'll pay the money. No other developer has ever made an MMORPG as well as Blizzard though, so if this game ends up being another over-hyped shitfest like Everquest 2, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Matrix Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer Online, or Age of Conan, then I suppose I won't be paying the money.
Honestly, I refuse to play MMORPGs that lack a monthly fee. No barrier to entry essentially means more morons that didn't pass first grade english and beg for money.
Anyway, why did ANYONE think this wouldn't have a monthly fee? Unless it's Korean, Guild Wars or Free Realms, it's not going to be free.
The worst about MMO's is that they don't last long. Heard the saying, get them while they're hot? MMO's as we know, solely rely on users because of their money and once users start to get bored of it and move on, it eventually will and the it collapses. Look what happenned to Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London and soon-to-be Age of Conan MMO's. Older and very popular games like WoW are still running because people are still feeding it with debt or in other words, monthly subscriptions but they'll soon die out as well. Games like Oblivion or Fallout are the best or basically, any game that is heavily built as a single or co-op but has online feature as a bonus are the best because they can last a very long time.
Thus, deciding to skip this game as well, waste of money, time and life.
This sounds better to me too. Micro transactions would just get out of hand and I'd rather not end up spending $100 a month on a bunch of little things.
" WoW-style financial model. "
Monthly fees have been in MMOs long before WoW. I also think it's a good thing that they have a monthly fee, because without it they would probably release the game and never have any incentive of patching or updating it, or even think about expandion packs. If they had gone with micro-transactions it would have led to possible imbalance because people would buy better weapons. OR it would lead to ridiculousness just thinking about some sort of chicken suit that people would buy.
I thought I had heard/read somewhere that microtransactions were the model of payment that they were going for?
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