Star wars: the old republic going free to play up till level

[10dollars]

I kinda expected it...

During EA's press conference at the pre-opening festivities for E3, BioWare announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be ripping a page out of many other MMOs' playbooks: Starting in July, SWTOR will be F2P through level 15.
The team also noted that new warzones, high level content, new companions, a new planet to explore and much more will be coming throughout the balance of 2012.
Check out the press conference 'sizzle' trailer on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic page.

[Toasty Fresh]

Am I able to download the free weekend client files and use it for the 15 level trial? 18gb is way too much for my quota to handle.

[Nekosan]

ROFL, free to level 15 isn't going to help them maintain subs, though maybe they're just trying to sucker people in with all the "features" before they get higher and realize how **** the game is.

[Auld]

ROFL, free to level 15 isn't going to help them maintain subs, though maybe they're just trying to sucker people in with all the "features" before they get higher and realize how **** the game is.

Its a sucker punch for sure, early on the game is very good.

[michaels750]

I could never go for this. I'd love to play this sort of game. But with a teenage income there is no chance in the world I'd be able to fork out a subscription.

[Nekosan]

I could never go for this. I'd love to play this sort of game. But with a teenage income there is no chance in the world I'd be able to fork out a subscription.

There are a couple of reasonable free to play titles out there, including Guild Wars 2 which launches next month.

[nudge]

Going free to play up to Level 50, subscribers just get benefits like more auction house slots and can run instances more often Kinda sad how badly this game failed.

[Artful-dodgeR]

People are generally sick of three mmo genre, I expected it.

[sifter132]

It's not so much that people are sick of MMOs - although that certainly part of it. I think players just have lofty expectations about what features they want, what type of quests they want, PVP etc. and then if those aren't in the game they **** massively and give up on it very quickly before putting blind faith in the next big name MMO to solve all their problems.

For someone like me that hates the $15 subscription model, then this is great news. I just unsubscribed for SWTOR this month but would play it more if it was free.

If the most expensive MMO ever made is going free after less than a year, I'd be surprised if other MMOs will be able to hold up with their subscription models for long eg. Secret World would probably go free after GW2, WoW expansion come out in the next couple of months. It will change the business model for good I would think.

[masternick13]

People are generally sick of three mmo genre, I expected it.

people are sick of horrible games that are rushed out and using a terrible engine, they tried to do some much and fail at the most basic things that make a game good

[Nekosan]

If the most expensive MMO ever made is going free after less than a year, I'd be surprised if other MMOs will be able to hold up with their subscription models for long eg. Secret World would probably go free after GW2, WoW expansion come out in the next couple of months. It will change the business model for good I would think.

I doubt it, the problem isn't the subscription models, it's the fact that you can't release an unfinished MMO anymore and expect people to pay for it just based on wishes and fairy kisses.

The base mechanics in SWTOR were fine but the map design was terrible and prohibited world pvp, there was no LFG tool (browsing a player list is 1998 **** and doesnt count) and the end game content had no long levity. They put too much time and money into cinematics and voice acting which 9/10 people just read and skip through after the first few levels anyway, if you release a game in 2012 that doesn't have 6+ months of end game content in it for the average user ON LAUNCH then you're going to fail... simple as that.

It doesn't help that the orange gear just removes peoples reason to play, within a week of hitting max level I looked exactly the way i wanted to look and it was just a case of farming raids till I got the barrels etc I needed to put in my orange gear.

Every time there's one of these threads people shoot me down for blaming the orange gear but that's at least 50% of why the game failed, I remember many an occasion in WoW/Eq2/Lineage 2 where I (as a newbie) was running around and saw a max level go running by with something shiny and said "OH MY GOD, THAT ##### IS AWESOME.... I MUST HAVE THAT!!!" but i don't remember it ONCE from SWTOR, their "customization" just reduced all gear to a **** numbers game because half the players were wearing low level orange gear with high level mods because the preferred the look.

The map design and itemization was just terrible for an MMO and you can 100% blame it on Star Wars geek developers getting to live their fantasy without someone with a brain to reign them in. How long did they think my smuggler would be using pistols for before I lost my **** because I was sick of one weapon type? How long did they think they could introduce new colours of lightsaber before the jedi got bored?

[Artful-dodgeR]

Totally agree on the 'old school' element missing, whereby you had to work your **** arse off to get the best gear. The unfortunate truth is these days everyone just wants their **** on a silver platter and it deeply disturbs me.

[Nekosan]

The funny thing is that they didn't even get the "silver platter" right, they alienated the hardcore MMO fans and at the same time they made it hard for normal players to enjoy content.

Consider something like WoW (which caters to every sort) where you can hit one button and queue for any instance you're high enough to enter, a short time later it has matched you with a group and you go and do your 10-30 minute instance. Now look at SWTOR, no reasonable way to find a group (there isn't even multi-city chat) and some of the instances can take a good hour to do(for gear you can buy from a vendor with leveling gold), who the hell is their target demographic?


Players don't really want 100% free choice, they want the illusion of choice. When you give a player 100% freedom with regards to what they want their gear to look like then inevitably most people just choose not to play after a short period of time.

[michaels750]

The mmo genre is a dying art. I'm quite exited really.
This hopefully means that devs will focus on new/different/old genre's and that the something to look forward too.
Plus we all knew STOR was going to fail, every one wanted KotR3 but nooooo.