SW:TOR Going F2P Soon?

[MiRai]

Never heard of Games™ but...

http://www.gamestm.co.uk/discuss/star-wars-the-old-republic-we-are-looking-at-free-to-play-says-lead-designer/ (http://www.gamestm.co.uk/discuss/star-wars-the-old-republic-we-are-looking-at-free-to-play-says-lead-designer/)

Joystiq is showing something along these lines but only up to level 15.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/04/star-wars-the-old-republic-getting-free-to-play-update/




Updated:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/31/its-official-swtor-is-going-free-to-play/

[Treason]

The free to level 15 doesn't necessarily herald a F2P move I think. WoW has had a free to play trial for quite some time as well, and SWTOR may just be taking a hat trick from one of the industry leaders. The designers at Bioware Austin have also never kept back the fact that they had a F2P plan for a contingency but that they would have to dip well below 400k subscribers for that to become a practical model financially. What with the last news (the EA shareholders meeting) reporting current subscription levels being at approximately 1.3million I don't see us getting down to below 400k anytime soon.

Good news and bad news I'd say. I'd love for F2P just for affordability, but I can't actually say that I believe it'll happen anytime in the near future (maybe a few years down the road...)

[Crum1515]

It's not going F2P

Its going doughnut2play

[Lyonheart]

The article ( on MMO champ ) that i read said they are considering it. lets just get to the point.. if they are considering it.. they WILL be going FTP! mark my words 8)

[Crum1515]

I disagree. And if it does happen it wont be for a very long time.

[MiRai]

My money is on SW:TOR going F2P before World of Warcraft. There, I said it --You heard it here first, folks.

/thread

[Crum1515]

I will take that action.

[Crum1515]

My magic 8 ball prediction of a time line is:

SWToR Unlimited Trial - Guild Wars 2 Launch - WoW Expansion - End of World - SWToR Expansion - TiTaN Project - WoW Expansion and F2P - Batman MMO

[Svpernova09]

Batman mmo will be the next wow killer

[Lyonheart]

The only WoW killer will be that epic earthquake we all have heard about,,ie..San Diego falls into the ocean and Blizzard with it!

[flux1]

An update for anyone that might want to try the game out. They enabled the f2p trial accounts today. Any old trial accounts did not get re-enabled, so if you had one before you can't use it anymore unless you pay to upgrade.

I tried it out with making two new trial accounts. The process to get the first one actually enabled as a trial was a pain until I went to the main site and clicked the Play Free link on the right. I used it directly for the second account and it went smoothly.

In game I made two bounty hunters on different computers and was able to invite without any issues between two trial accounts. So boxing trials shouldn't have any major issues as long as your software/hardware works for the game. I saw a post on another forum saying trials couldn't be in groups or join warzones. However Bioware's trial FAQ mentions nothing of either one, and invites did work fine. So hopefully Warzones will work fine once your level is high enough.

Also currently all expired accounts have free time until July 17th to play.

Edit: Regarding invites, I had both chars on each others friend's lists, and invited by clicking on the toon in-front of me and inviting to group from their portrait. No idea yet if only this method works as I haven't had time to play yet tonight.

[Crum1515]

Yeah, I am 99% certain that our goal was to have a restriction free trial other than level cap and already in game standard restrictions. If any one would like me to get clarification I can probably do it quicker than asking CS lol.

[MiRai]

Update!

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/31/its-official-swtor-is-going-free-to-play/ (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/31/its-official-swtor-is-going-free-to-play/)

http://www.swtor.com/free (http://www.swtor.com/free)

[flux1]

Apparently everything for "The first 50 levels" will be free with most end game content requiring coins to unlock for free accounts, or needing a subscription. Subscribers will have everything unlocked along with some coins each month to buy in-game content with. The game itself will be lowered to $15 next month also to prepare for the f2p launch.



http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/email/alert/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsLang=en&newsId=20120731006602

Edit: Sorry, didn't see MiRai's reply to the other thread while making this. Go ahead and delete this to keep the discussion contained to one thread.

[Korruptor]

Update!

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/31/its-official-swtor-is-going-free-to-play/ (http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/31/its-official-swtor-is-going-free-to-play/)

http://www.swtor.com/free (http://www.swtor.com/free)

Holy Crap!

I expected this but not this soon!

[Riiker]

Is this the beginning of the end? Can an MMO survive this?

[Homer]

Is this the beginning of the end? Can an MMO survive this?

It has missed its chance to become big, I see it turning into a APB: Reloaded situation.

[Khatovar]

Is this the beginning of the end? Can an MMO survive this?

Plenty of MMOs have gone Free To Play and been very successful. LotRO (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Free-to-Play-Increased-LOTRO-Revenue-Three-Times-177324.shtml) and DDO (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27416/Going_Free_Boosts_Turbines_DDO_Revenues_500_Percen t.php) both saw seriously massive increases in subscribers and revenue after going F2P. I went back to EQ2 for about a month and that's still busy as ever. If I recall, the original Everquest also has a free to play.

Of course, I personally hated SWTOR so it wouldn't surprise me if this does nothing for their numbers, but F2P doesn't automatically mean dead.

[MiRai]

Is this the beginning of the end? Can an MMO survive this?
I think SW:TOR set a record for the shortest time a P2P game was released before going F2P...

...if that tells you something. ;)

I have no interest in this game either because there was waaaaaay too much hype before its release and waaaaaay too many bugs after its release; but, if you're still having fun now, I don't see why you won't continue to have fun even though it's going F2P.

[Crum1515]

The model they are going off of very closely is DCUO, so I think they will stay alive for a while. Like in my second week at bioware I was bored and going through the Intranet and found their F2P model documents, and new that I was doomed lol.

Only thing that I think may stop some people is you still have to buy the game, to use the F2P model. EA really stuck their dick in this one, hard.

And deep.

[Kicksome]

Ugh - have to wait till "Fall" to get the F2P deal.

Right now you can do a trial to level 15, (www.swtor.com/trial/) they claim that trials will convert to F2P when it comes out.

That article MiRai linked says "EA President Frank Gibeau revealed that SWTOR subs have dipped below one million but are still "well above" half a million."

They sold over 2 million copies of the game.

[Riiker]

I personally love the game. It's only my second MMO. The first was DAOC around 10 years ago for about 6 months. This one has sucked me in completely. Which is why I started 4 boxing after playing for only a month.

I hope that subs go up or they can at least maintain the current numbers.

[Lyonheart]

I think it will do well.. Its better than SWG ever was, and that game held players to the end. For me it was just too young, not enough content and features for my taste. As it adds features and content, I might revisit it in the future.. I loved the leveling and the companions.

[Crum1515]

They fired their entire QA staff. PvP, Endgame, Feature, Tools. All of them. The day they let us go we were testing the new raid Asation, and 4 out of the 5 encounters were unplayable without god mode on. They lost some of their best designers and writers too.

I hope they do well, but the state they are in now, anything past 1.4 will be utter crap. (1.5 and xpac are allready in development). They are going from a premium theme park MMO to EA's jewish bucket in the closet.

[Homer]

All endgame content in star wars was utter crap imo, The storyline was fantastic though.

[Crum1515]

I agree about the first tier. But D:EC was pretty fun, and the nightmare mode coming out is fucking insanely hard. And A:TFB is actually pretty good. But KP and EV were just poosicles

[Homer]

I agree about the first tier. But D:EC was pretty fun, and the nightmare mode coming out is fucking insanely hard. And A:TFB is actually pretty good. But KP and EV were just poosicles

Ahh yea, I stopped just as 1.2 was coming out.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I read a couple of days ago that it was going to a free to play with micro transaction store.

http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=696947

[Riiker]

They fired their entire QA staff. PvP, Endgame, Feature, Tools. All of them. The day they let us go we were testing the new raid Asation, and 4 out of the 5 encounters were unplayable without god mode on. They lost some of their best designers and writers too.

I hope they do well, but the state they are in now, anything past 1.4 will be utter crap. (1.5 and xpac are allready in development). They are going from a premium theme park MMO to EA's jewish bucket in the closet.

Yeah.... I'm pretty sure that I read something in the F2P article that said we will be coming out with content faster...

Doest seem feasible with only 10% of the staff they had. I wonder if they would have had more success if they just waited until after MOP and D3 came out to release the game.

Btw, Crum - It's really shitty that they fired your team. I was excited to have a boxer on the inside.