I'm one of those people who have been burned one too many times with MMO games. I bought Warhammer Online, Final Fantasy XI, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and Champions online all at lauch. The one thing that ties them all together? I didn't enjoy a single one, nor was I in the beta for any of them. I applied to the beta for a few, but I have horrible luck when getting accepted to something like that. So, I basically went into each of those games on the hype alone. I felt extremely burned when I decided I no longer wanted to play these games. To be fair, I no longer wanted to pay a monthly fee to play any of these games as I had already paid the 50+ initial investment.

This is why I believe all MMO games should have a complete open beta or, at least, 30 days free (or up to a certain level cap). If I buy a crap PC or Console game, I can say "well, i only lost X amount on this game...at least I can force myself through it and get my monies worth". That, or you can trade it in for a reduced amount and chalk the difference up as a loss. With MMO's, there is no trade in and if you don't want to pay access the game...you can't play it. I don't like that. If I had a chance to sample the game, prior to purchasing it, I could determine if the $50 game + $15 monthly fee is truly worth it.

This is why I probably won't be playing SWTOR. You can run around screaming about how awesome it is and what a WoW killer it's going to be but it ultimately won't matter. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that all before only to be let down. I don't need another MMO dud sitting on my shelf of shame.

As for pricing. I think if you pay for 30 days of game time, you should get 30 days of game time. There are 720 hours in 30 days. I have paid for 720 hours so I should get 720 hours of gameplay. If, for some reason, I need to travel for work (which happens often), I don't like that I am ostensibly paying for a game that I am unable to play (as I play on my at-home personal pc).

I don't know, maybe my ideas are crazy. Maybe I'm just a complainer. Maybe I'm just jealous and bitter that I signed up for the beta a while ago and never got an invite. Other players are in the game already determining if it's something they want to continue to invest in (and i'm sure there are people going both ways on that decision). I don't like that I'm ultimately forced to blindly buy into something I can't even test drive. Imagine buying a car you never get a chance to drive around the block. A house you never set foot inside prior to sale. A guitar you never get to jam on before buying. Hell, even entering into a relationship blindly with a girl you've never met before (ie, skip the blind date and go straight to marriage). Do any of these sound like a good idea to you? Not me.

It's easy to say "well, lots of single player games force you to buy them based entirely on reviews alone". That is true. Granted, many (if not most) single player games have a demo (which is the equivalent of a free trial/open beta in an mmo) and if they don't,? Well, they deserve just as much ire as the MMO's I already mentioned in this post. I can walk into a book store and read a book before buying it and books cost anywhere between 5-15 dollars. Game publishers are asking me to invest 60+ on faith alone. No thank you. If there is no demo for a game, I'll rent it first and then buy it. I'd rather pay the extra 5 dollars (for the rental) to know that the subsequent 60 dollars isn't going to waste. Again, you can't do that with an MMO. There are games that I will blindly buy (zelda, etc) but that is because they have already proven themselves to me. MMO's are too big of an investment to do that with.

These are just a couple of the issues I have with the current way big title MMO's work (especially at launch). I still haven't played rift, though I want to, because there is no free trial (even after it's been out this long). To me that is a mistake. I could love the game and want to play much more of it. As it is, the initial investment isn't worth it to me when there is this much risk/reward associated.

c'set la vie.

I don't see the lack of an open beta a problem for TOR because anyone that really wanted to play the game got the weekend deal if you signed up for it and if you didn't that's weird.. I also see where you come from in the price but that's just what games sell at, I mean you pay 50 bucks for every WoW expansion (Might be 40 but not that big a difference).

I don't see the lack of an open beta a problem for TOR because anyone that really wanted to play the game got the weekend deal if you signed up for it and if you didn't that's weird.. I also see where you come from in the price but that's just what games sell at, I mean you pay 50 bucks for every WoW expansion (Might be 40 but not that big a difference).

Like most MMOs, I would imagine SWTOR will offer a trial invite with a free 15 days or whatever soon enough. That sounds like what you're looking for.

Like everyone else before mentioned, anyone who posted interest in a beta on the SWTOR website got in for the final one a couple of weeks ago.

@Blackmoore, That is exactly what I am looking for. I am not a get-something-for-nothing kind of guy. If I like your game, I have no issues paying to play it. I can't tell you how much money I have sunk into WoW since it's launch. It's insane.

Honestly though, I don't see them doing a 15 day free trial. Not until they have made enough money on their initial investment for it to be worth taking the cut in revenue. Initially, they are going to go off of good faith alone. They have enough pre-sales and pre-orders to ride off of right now. By the time we could see a free trial, it could be months later (if at all). There are MMO's who went from pay-to-play to free-to-play without ever having a free trial in between. Seems like a missed opportunity to get people interested. The way I see it: if your game is good, people will want to continue to play it. A free trial would be perfect in this situation.

as a criticism people could say "well, people will play in the beta for free and then when the game launches they'll play for another 15-30 days for free and that is lost revenue for the developer". To counter that, I suggest this: give an incentive to people who played in the beta to buy the game at launch. Sort of like a pre-order bonus. If you have a beta account that you update directly into a paid account (instead of a free trial account) you get in game items, faster leveling for X levels, etc. That is just an idea that could tie in with the already existing pre-order bonus'

@irvandus, You are looking at a person who got neither the weekend deal (by my own fault as I didn't know about it until it was over) and who never got an invite into the beta (and I do receive newsletters etc from them so it wouldn't have gone to spam).

Where were you when people couldn't give away Thanksgiving beta codes away...  you could have easily played it no problem in that time frame.

@Blackmoore, That is exactly what I am looking for. I am not a get-something-for-nothing kind of guy. If I like your game, I have no issues paying to play it. I can't tell you how much money I have sunk into WoW since it's launch. It's insane.

Honestly though, I don't see them doing a 15 day free trial. Not until they have made enough money on their initial investment for it to be worth taking the cut in revenue. Initially, they are going to go off of good faith alone. They enough pre-sales and pre-orders to ride off of right now. By the time they we could see a free trial, it could be months later (if at all). There are MMO's who went from pay-to-play to free-to-play without ever having a free trial in between. Seems like a missed opportunity to get people interested. The way I see it: if your game is good, people will want to continue to play it. A free trial would be perfect in this situation.

as a criticism people could say "well, people will play in the beta for free and then when the game launches they'll play for another 15-30 days for free and that is lost revenue for the developer". To counter that, I suggest this: give an incentive to people who played in the beta to buy the game at launch. Sort of like a pre-order bonus. If you have a beta account that you update directly into a paid account (instead of a free trial account) you get in game items, faster leveling for X levels, etc. That is just an idea that could tie in with the already existing pre-order bonus'

@irvandus, You are looking at a person who got neither the weekend deal (by my own fault as I didn't know about it until it was over) and who never got an invite into the beta (and I do receive newsletters etc from them so it wouldn't have gone to spam).

Yeah.... just to chime in with others but basically the last beta they ran lasted like 4-5 days and literally EVERYONE who signed up for beta prior to like .... a week or so before the final beta got an invite. If you didn't get to play the game prior to launch it is basically because you didn't even bother to sign up for the beta.

Second.... like all mmo's it comes with the first month covered so you don't have to pay monthly until month 2. Very few games get played for more than a month on consoles last I looked so it isn't like you don't get your moneys worth unless you pay for sub fees meaning play for 2 or more months.

@the_laughing_man

Yuppers, Opted-in, submitted computer info. Went through the whole kit and kaboodle. I'm sure there are people who are fine paying into an MMO without having ever tried it before. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. LIke I said in my initial post: i've been burned one too many times. I have a whole shelf of MMO's that I bought that were just not-that-good. I have PC and console games as well that are crap sitting around. If i'm drunk as a skunk and want to play them in some ironically retro hipster kind of way (or MST3K them) I can pop them in and have a good ol time. I don't have to pay a cent. If I want to jump back in warhammer online for the same reason, I have to pay even more money than the intial cost of the game and months I already paid for.

Like I said before...I'm just bitter because I am super excited about this game and I we are on the cusp of it's release. I really really really want to give this game a go before I decide to buy it or not and I already have friends asking me if I'm going to be playing it upon release (because they are). I just don't have a lot of expendable cash right now and I was stupid and bought rage on release through steam and now i'm stuck with that crap-tastic game. I don't to buy this game and come out thinking "man, just another WoW clone...no interest". Which is a total possibility.

@karkarov,

there are no console or PC single player games that lock you out of play if you decide to not pay anymore. Sure, there are games you can't play online (via xbox live) if you don't pay but that's a whole 'nother rant.

It's entirely possible that my not playing in the beta is my own fault. I did sign up a while back so I am sure that I made it within the deadline. Though, like I stated before, I didn't know about the beta weekend thinggie until it was over with. That is my fault. Still, the game is going to come out and I don't see the point in paying 50 dollars, even with a free month, if I might ultimately dislike it. Like I said in my original post: if after that first month I don't like the game (and honestly, would I be playing it for an entire month of play time if I didn't like it) I can't trade it in. If I buy an xbox 360 game and determine in the first week or so that I don't like it (which is usually how long it takes) then I can sell it back and recuperate at least 50% or more of my initial investment. I can't do that with an MMO on launch. I either eat the initial 50 dollars investment, or I hold out for a free trial (and ultimately, who does that benefit in the end?).

@Karkarov said:

Second.... like all mmo's it comes with the first month covered so you don't have to pay monthly until month 2. Very few games get played for more than a month on consoles last I looked so it isn't like you don't get your moneys worth unless you pay for sub fees meaning play for 2 or more months.

I was wondering if it was going to have a 30-day trial when you bought the game. Seems like the norm, but I couldn't tell if Deavyin was complaining about the lack of one or simply wanted hours instead of days.

@Deavyin: While I can understand you wanting 720 hours instead of the 30 day trial, that's a little unreasonable, isn't it? It probably took me a year or so in WoW to reach the 24 day mark on my /played, and if I had gotten that plus 6 free days with the game, then Blizzard would have lost $180 of subscription from me.

@Deavyin: I understand what you're saying about it being in their benefit to do free trials and ultimately when the subs hit its peak there will be a free trial, but they aren't even realising the game for sale in all territories (like Australia) at launch because they are worried about their server load so it doesn't seem at all in their best interests to allow people who aren't giving them money in at launch to help clog up the servers and add to the launch queues.

@karkarov,

honestly, the 30 total days worth of hours vs 30 days in which I can login is a total side issue. I was just saying it would be nice since I travel often and can't call up blizzard and say "hey, i'm only going to be in town for 1 week out of this month...anyway I can get a pro-rate?!". That's all.

As for the wanting the 30 day trial. My issue is that I have to pay an amount of money for this game before I even get to try it out. I would be more okay with it, if I were able to recoup my investment to a certain degree if it turned out to be something i'm not interested in. I can do that with single player games. Hell, I can trade in my single player games towards the purchase of a new game at gamestop (honestly, not something I ever do; i prefer to collect games).

I have to be willing to eat at least 50 dollars going into this game. It's too much of a risk for a cash strapped gamer like me. It's one of the reasons I no longer buy games off of steam, or on the pc, without having played a demo prior. You usually can't return/trade-in pc games (or any steam games) and RAGE f'ing burned me so bad...that game sucks.

I am pretty sure The Old Republic does give you 30 days free when you buy it.

@ARTB, I see where you are coming from, to an extent. I could also read that as "they aren't prepared for the user base". It's also the reason why these companies don't do free trials. They have enough people who are willing to buy the game, at launch, that it's likely to congest their servers to the point of failure. Unfortunately, that kind of leaves me out in the cold. I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way about this subject. I've read plenty of people who operate the same way. They are going to make enough money to justify not giving out a proper free trial. Either they will be successful and subscription numbers will hold steady (and increase) or they will drop off after the first couple months or so as so many other MMO's have done recently. I honestly hope the game is successful. Maybe it will do so well so fast that they'll give out a prior 10 day free trial in a couple months. I just know that I won't plop down a cent on this game until I have gotten my filthy little mitts on it prior.

Game companies will nickel and dime us to turn a profit. I don't see why it's wrong for us to be frugal as well...especially when the cost of MMO's, over time, can really hit your wallet hard.

@fullmetal5550

Keyword: when you buy it. If, during that 30 free days, you realize "man, this game just isn't for me", you eat that 50 dollars and that game becomes a brick. You can't even load it up for a couple hours to see if "maybe i'll give it another go an like it this time" without plopping down for another month. With WoW, a game that I have quit and re-joined too many times, I can create an email account, play the free trial and determine if I really do want to get back into it or not. If I do, I just re-subscribe on my main account.

The initial investment of 50 dollars is too high for a game that I can't access unless I want to continue to pay for it. If I like the game, sure then it's worth it. If i'm going into the game blind, then i'm risking throwing 50-60 dollars straight down the drain.

if they believe their game is truly that good, then I challenge them to do this: give a 30 day money back guarantee. I pay for the game and if, during the initial 30 day free trial, I realize the game isn't for me I get my money back on the cost of the game. If would be totally fine with that.

I played the beta. I liked it. However. I am not an MMO person. I have played alot and only one I played for 6months.

I am partly afraid to get it ever since I dont know if i will keep at it after the beta. Since for some reason I never have the attention to do much things again. I have went into horrible "I have payed to play this for a month....I have only played an hour...but i dont feel like it." feeling and just never touched again. I felt bad.

So I am looking at TOR and thinking "Am I going to get my moneys worth in one or two months?" "They are still asking for full price on an MMO? That best give me 30 days time included. and that is still steep. I should be able to download it then subscribe."

@Deavyin said:

I don't know, maybe my ideas are crazy. Maybe I'm just a complainer. Maybe I'm just jealous and bitter that I signed up for the beta a while ago and never got an invite.

Nailed it.

@akyho

I totally agree with you as I have done the same thing many times (and i'm not a huge MMO player even though I get overly excited about them when they initially launch). Here is another thing i'd be willing to do. Download the game clinet for free and set up an account. Pay 15 dollars for the first month and, if I want to continue on after that, pay for the retail price of the game (which includes the second month free). That way, I'll at least be able to play the game for a month (and pay for that month) and, if I don't like it, I don't have to feel like I wasted 50 dollars on a game I can't even play ironically.

You're a man on a mission. If I ever saw one, its you, sir.

Nobody is forcing you into subscription based gaming. There are other games. BioWare/EA can charge for their game any way they'd like and you'll still be the one in charge of whether to enter their pay to play domain, or not.

You're talking about risks as if 50 bucks means life or death. I've bought plenty of terrible games and I've basically just sucked it up and moved on.

@sharkeh

haha, you got me. I'm really bitter because there is a big chance I might really enjoy the game and watch to switch over from WoW. Unfortunately, I won't know until I try the game and I won't try the game until I can without investing at least 50 dollars into it. I'm always looking for a game to draw me away from WoW and that is why I have a shelf full of MMO games I paid for initially and have no interest in ever touching again. That is something I want to avoid here. I don't think there is anything wrong in that. Game companies protect themselves very well. Shouldn't the gamers be entitled to a bit of protection too?

@Funkydup,

that's the problem. I too have bought planty of terrible games and i've been forced to do the same. Almost anything else, if it's terrible you can return it. Hell, if I order a pizza and it's crap I can return it. I dont' see why games should be any different. They can obviously mitigate this by demo's. If there isn't a demo you can personally mitigate this by renting the game. I am not a rich guy. I have a mortgage, car payments, credit card bills, i'm in school paying for my masters degree, and my girlfriend sucks me dry. I've learned to be frugal with my money. I honestly can't afford more than 1-2 games a month on my budget. If one of those games is going to be a continued investment, I need to know that it's a worthwhile one. So yeah, it does mean life or death. I learned from rage recently. I bought the game for 60, off of steam, at launch. I hated it it (HAAAATED IT) and now i'm stuck with it. From now on, I play the demo or rent the game prior to purchasing it (and I wait for reviews to properly put it in it's place).

@Deavyin:

They have the preorder thing. You could have preordered way back, got a pre order code and put it in, then you would have gotten in on the pre order early access on 12/13. You would have had 5-6 days to make a decision and if you didn't like it just cancel the pre order before the 20th.

I see where you are coming from really but it is almost like people complaining about the game in the last month because it didn't try to reinvent the mmo wheel and they thought that was the whole point. Anyone who has paid any real attention to the game for the last 1-2 years knew exactly how the game was being designed and had plenty of chances for beta. Complaining about it now is just plain too late. Bioware never made any of this stuff secret so saying "I didn't know" only ends up as "I didn't try to find out".

In essence, yes it sucks you didn't get to try before you buy. But you don't get that option on alot of games and Bioware did give plenty of chances.

Thanks Karkarov,

you just totally solved my problem on this one. I just checked with Amazon and I can pre-order the game and gain early access 10 days prior. That should be enough time to determine if I want to buy the game or not. If I don't, I just cancel the pre-order before the game ships and viola...I never get charged.

@Deavyin: Really man, i dont think MMOs are not for you. You played enough of them to get that hit. That would be like playing a bunch of FPS and then buying MW3 and saying you did not like it :/

Sounds like you just don't like MMO's. I suggest picking a new hobby.

I have a Collector's Edition of Star Wars Galaxies that I played for maybe 4 hours. I think I spent more time installing Final Fantasy XI than I did playing it. I quit playing Champions Online after my character, who selected Super Jump as his travel power, would take falling damage from jumping. I had to beg some Steam CR person to refund my Star Trek Online money after I got a taste of the beta. I got more use out of my Guild Wars CE headset than I did out of the game. There was no way I would have let my SWTOR preorder stand if I didn't have the opportunity to participate in the beta.

I can't believe that you signed up for the Beta but didn't get an invite. You're very unlucky.

Afterall, I didn't even sign up for the darn thing but still got a Beta code. It seems that you only needed to be a BioWare Social member to get one without trying.

Guild Wars 2 Guild Wars 2 Guild Wars 2

Sounds to me like you just don't like MMOs.

Its just about how much you value it. I preordered SWTOR for 44euros, I get to play it for 30days (+whatever few extra days the early access gives) and I'm happy with that.

@Giefcookie: I bought Skyrim, and played it like crazy for a matter of days, exhausting all guilds and now that game just sits there, gawking at me.

If it wasn't for my friends, I wouldn't buy this game.

It is as simple as that to me.

As has already been said, swtor comes with 30 days play-time (like almost all MMOs). As far as not being able to try before you buy, I completely agree that it's a bad trend for videogames. However I disagree that MMOs are in any way worse, I would actually say they're better. Almost every MMO will give players an opportunity to get an early try through beta, which is far from a standard for most other games. Of the 25+ games I've bought this year I can count on one hand how many of them that allowed anyone access before release. And even if you don't get into the beta there's usually plenty of leaked videos and coverage past NDA that allows you to get a feeling for the game before you buy it. 
 
As for the whole monthly subscription or pay-as-you-play debate, Asian markets already operate with the pay-as-you-play model. In the western world however there are a few factors that makes it not as viable. Firstly the playerbase will resist it based on a "pay to get better" argument. While you still had to actually put in the time your success would also be very connected to how much money you spent. Secondly the pricing scale would in most cases not be beneficial for the company as most people would end up paying less, while a majority of the people that in the current system spend a lot of time in the game would find it too expensive. Basically as long as the games stay as similar as they have for the last few years, as long as there's one game that operates with monthly subscription anyone that would find themselves paying let's say twice as much in a pay-to-play system would most likely just switch game.
 
Edit: after reading through your replies to others it really just seems like your only problem with the game is that you can't trade it back if you don't like it. Which doesn't really have anything to do with MMOs or betas. As you basically said yourself, what you don't like is downloadable games because of the no-returns policy. On one hand I just feel like saying "oh, boohoo, poor you" as I've grown up without ever being able to rent or trade back games (Gamestop just started operating here like 2-3 years ago). I do get that it's concern for people who are used to that luxury though, but as already said of all the games out there swtor is far from the worst offender when it comes to trying to mislead people into a bad investment. If you go to twitch you can find archives with tens of hours of gameplay, and I remember already seeing "first X hours" videos like 2-3 months ago. How many other games have that much exposure one week before release ?

So you want the entire industry to change because you can't do enough research before you buy to see if you will like the game?

@Karkarov said:

@Deavyin:

They have the preorder thing. You could have preordered way back, got a pre order code and put it in, then you would have gotten in on the pre order early access on 12/13. You would have had 5-6 days to make a decision and if you didn't like it just cancel the pre order before the 20th.

I see where you are coming from really but it is almost like people complaining about the game in the last month because it didn't try to reinvent the mmo wheel and they thought that was the whole point. Anyone who has paid any real attention to the game for the last 1-2 years knew exactly how the game was being designed and had plenty of chances for beta. Complaining about it now is just plain too late. Bioware never made any of this stuff secret so saying "I didn't know" only ends up as "I didn't try to find out".

In essence, yes it sucks you didn't get to try before you buy. But you don't get that option on alot of games and Bioware did give plenty of chances.

Yeah, but this leaves an issue with when the game is released, people who have no interest in the game but will, or people who never heard of it (newer gamers) will have to put down 50-60 dollars just to play the game. That kinda sucks. Doesn't matter if there was a Beta for people to try, if they weren't around than, how do they try the game?

Its an issue that MMO games should address, you know before they fail and go F2P. WoW does it, and its worked for them. Course they're fucking huge, but such a steep cost for new consumers after the launch of the game isn't good to get people into the game. There is already a stigma of bad use of money for MMOs, no need to make it worse with game that don't have free trials or F2P to a certain level.

@Deavyin:

1. Open betas are not a form of product advertising like a demo. They do not represent the final game. They should not be the deciding factor on a purchase. They are intended to be used to iron out issues, not sell copies.
2. 30-day trials and demos for MMORPGs are becoming significantly less practical as we move forward. I don't know about you, but most people I know have a 30-90gig monthly download cap. The SWTOR beta was 36.6gigs, and thankfully has been trimmed down to just under 20gigs for launch. In either case, this is not a practical form of advertising for both the company who has to manage their mass scale bandwidth, and the consumer who has to manage their own personal monthly caps. Going over this cap can easily overthrow the cost of the game outright, making the 'free demo' a piss-poor investment.
3. Not all games have demos. In fact, I'll say that most games don't.
4. Your reinvention of the payment model does not work practically. You will modify your playing habits in order to min-max your value per hour. The relaxing social elements native to the MMORPG genre will fall apart if everyone's concerned with being time-efficient. It's the same reason that you don't sit there and have a solid conversation on the phone if you're over your limit.
5. While I hesitate to make this point, because it makes assumptions about your/everyone's financial situation, the value proposition of a $50 game for several hundred hours of a leveling experience (per character) is a pretty solid deal with the free 30 days of play. And, compared to average entertainment value propositions, a $15 dollar value is worth about 2 hours of quality entertainment (compared to the average blockbuster movie or video game experience). I hope that you can manage to play 2 hours of an MMORPG in 30 days to suffice that comparative value. This is all to say that $15 a month is not a lot of money, especially when you factor in the fact that this likely results in hundreds of hours of entertainment.
6. Related to the first point, and more a personal note/story than anything, I'll say that I bought Rift a while back to save money. Rather than purchasing a full-priced games a week like I tend to do (which is a nasty habit, I know), I bought the MMO to avoid from my weekly purchases with a newfound, all-encompassing distraction. I only played it for the initial month, and I was pleasantly comfortable with my money situation after that month had passed. It leveled out to be a $30 investment for $240 in savings. Probably doesn't apply to your lifestyle. But I think it's a relevant little story that I like looking back on. And I had tons of fun throughout that month with the game.

I was a little miffed at first....for about a minute. Then I realized that the game will be out soon enough so I'll be happy however many days they give me before launch.

@byterunner:

For one thing SWtOR is highly unlikely to go free to play ever, certainly not in the first few months. It had over 750k preorders over a month ago. That is more copies than Warhammer Online sold in it's first month if you are curious. Second WoW never gave any free trial or beta on release other than to a few people. It had no free trial until burning crusade I believe, this means we are talking like 2+ years after the games original release. It is hardly a model to hold up as a beacon for a new mmo to follow because the whole idea was it never risked a free trial until it had already made it's money back. So using WoW as an example of how to do a free trial is not really a good idea. In fact using WoW as any kind of mmo success strategy is a bad idea. It only succeeded as well as it did because it was the right game at just the right moment. If Blizzard had released WoW 1 year later than they originally did I have no doubt in my mind it would not have gotten the success it did.

@amir90:

This dude right here knows what the real secret to mmo success is. WoW doesn't thrive today because people like playing it. God knows I have played it for years and I can't wait to jump ship, but I am not jumping alone.

@Deavyin: Or you could whatch videos of the game and see if that convinces you ... therre a ton of them on the interwebz duder

@Karkarov:Did I say that WoW was a good model? No, I just said its worked for them to offer some kind of way to test the game for free. I didn't say that you should do it like WoW. I'm saying that this is something that game studios should fix on launch, not later in the games life. It might save you from going f2p, and I wasn't saying SWTOR is going to be going F2P. (Though, I wouldn't mind personally since I'm not paying $50 +monthly fee) I was saying a general statement to p2p games. Its a dying business model and swtor is the last big game to have. Except FFXIV, but fuck that.

@Deavyin: If you don't like MMOs why would you even care about TOR?

@Deavyin: MMO's that are pay-for-client and monthly fee dependent should *never* have an open beta if they're expecting decent numbers. The opening push for a game like SWTOR is all about getting the hardcore audience in and invested. You're more likely to pay 15 bucks for month 2 and beyond if you paid 60 bucks for the client, and they want as many people as possible choosing that route. This is why very few games have open betas or trials at launch. They want you to buy it if you're interested and if you're not interested enough to buy it, you can wait until they do have trials sometime after release. Once the initial hype dies down they'll add in trial time, and run sales on the client through Origin.

@Deavyin said:

As for pricing. I think if you pay for 30 days of game time, you should get 30 days of game time. There are 720 hours in 30 days. I have paid for 720 hours so I should get 720 hours of gameplay. If, for some reason, I need to travel for work (which happens often), I don't like that I am ostensibly paying for a game that I am unable to play (as I play on my at-home personal pc).

Okay, this is just silly. You'd be paying 2 cents per hour of gameplay. When they come up with the $15/month pricing plan, they don't expect most people to play any more than 40 hours or so a month. As a consumer, I don't think an average of $0.38/hour is a bad deal, especially compared to overpriced cell phone bills and cable television subscriptions.