SWTOR Dev Says He Is Looking At F2P

Written by: Ryan Verniere (@Shaddoe) | June 15, 2012 8:30 am

84 Comments

Big and drastic news sets on the horizon for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The rumors of SWTOR going free-to-play might actually be true.

Although the article has now been pulled, Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi admitted to UK video game magazine Games that F2P is a distinct possibility for BioWare‘s MMORPG.

“The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well. Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations,” He explains, “So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.”

Does this give credence to the expansion pack rumors on Reddit a couple of weeks back?

[Update: Just after we recorded this hit, GameIndustry.biz reported that EA President Frank Gibeau said, "We're going to be in the business from a long term standpoint so absolutely we're going to embrace free access, free trial, ultimately some day we can move in and embrace [a free-to-play] model.”]

Free To Play TV

FreeToPlay TV Is Now LIVE

FreeToPlay TV, a division of Gamebreaker, is now live and even has some goodies to give away to celebrate!Read more »

13 comments
1:02

Star Wars: The Old Republic

New Character Customization Features Come To SWTOR

SWTOR adds many customization options and the ability to change your species, character name, legacy name, and guild name in Game Update 2.1.Read more »

11 comments
SWTOR

Cat People Invade Star Wars

Bioware has announced that playable race, the Cathar, will be available in patch 2.1Read more »

15 comments

http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson

2011:
Bioware: “We will never go free-to-play. SWTOR is too expensive to maintain with less than 500k subs”
2012
Bioware: “We’re looking at free-to-play”
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Dustin-Brookens/100003510262900 Dustin Brookens
  
  Last Quarter 2012:
  Bioware: “We are shutting down the servers”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Stephen-Robert-Woodhouse/720201353 Stephen Robert Woodhouse

Lol just LOL
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sid-Laurent/850944692 Sid Laurent

I think that if it were to go F2P, then I just might have to reactivate my account.

As to why they pulled it article early, I know if I were still subbed to it, I’d cancel almost instantly. Why continue spending the money, when I won’t have to in the future. Hopefully not to many people saw it.
- Old Ben
  
  > Why continue spending the money, when I won’t have to in the future.
  
  Because you’re in the present…?
  
  Most movies, books, songs, etc., will eventually become public domain. Does that mean you never buy them, and just prefer to sit and wait for 70+ years?
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/ADEN6X6TYCORSSGEHKWMBIHDHY Eclipse
    
    Uhh no. Wrong analogy. The proper one would be, why go buy a book – when I can go borrow it from the library?
    
    The fact is the game is barely 6 months old and it’s already talking about going F2P. Because of that, there’s a good chance it’ll happen this year even.
    
    I know I would have cancelled too.
    - Old Ben
      
      > Wrong analogy. The proper one would be, why go
      > buy a book – when I can go borrow it from the library?
      
      Well, if that’s “the proper analogy”, you problem is solved: get SWTOR from your library.
http://www.facebook.com/nik666 Nikolai Tzolev

Free-to-play is a desperate business model, trying to gather as many players possible for a mediocre product, and make profit only from a small player base, which is *really* into the game. I can’t believe Bioware is thinking of their game in such light.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
  
  Plenty of F2P games are actually good…. Maybe I’m misreading your statement but it seems like you’re saying F2P in general. SWTOR IS a mediocre product and the fact that it has a monthly sub doesn’t make it any better. It just means it’s mediocre and charging for an inferior product.
- Jay
  
  Have you played TOR? Star War fans may be loyal, but investors only look at bottom line.
- Marc Allen
  
  Obviously you have not played many of P2P games that have gone F2P and are thriving because of it. DDO, LotRO, CoH, CO, STO, Aion, Lineage 2 ect. DDO is releasing its first ever expansion because of F2P. LotRO has continued to thrive because of the switch. Just because the game goes F2P does not mean its mediocre. It means that the current number of subscribers are not enough to keep the game afloat. F2P can bring in a shit TON of money if your game is good, and if SWTOR does it right i can bet without a doubt it’ll bring them a ton of money as well. I love reading all the current subscribers bullshit talk about how its going to degrade the game and that their unsubbing and whatnot. I got a Lifetime Sub to STO right before it went F2P because i love the game. I dont feel at all that my money was wasted. I get access to everything, plus store currency every month to buy and play with stuff. People need to keep a open mind and not auto to Armageddon whenever a P2P game goes F2P.
- http://www.facebook.com/fimbulvetrr Dovah Kiin
  
  as lex luther says int he superman movie,
  
  WROOOONG.
  
  swotr is pretty mediocre though.
- http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey Jenkins
  
  That’s a popular misconception. There are plenty of free to play games, or free once you buy the box games that are extremely high quality. I.E league of legends, Guild Wars 2, tribes, Planet side 2 etc. I think you should play more games that use this model before you try and generalize it with inaccurate information. SWTOR is almost at the point where it needs this in order to survive at this. The numbers in an MMO usually only go south when there is no one around to play with. That’s kind of the point of an MMO, to play with other people. I can almost guarantee that if they make this free to play with some micro transaction cosmetic skins etc, that they will bring a lot more players back and possibly bring in even more revenue as well as help it thrive in the long run. As long as they don’t make it pay to win.
http://twitter.com/cipero Matt Cipriano

You should see the swtor official forums.. just a bunch of fanboys dismissing this because it wasn’t daniel erikson who said it.
- jgelling
  
  I don’t know – it seems like there are very few fanboys left to defend SWTOR, and even they were like, “F2P = unsub”
  - Old Ben
    
    If it’s free to play, they don’t need to “unsub”, they’re kind of automatically unsubbed.
- Deacon1979
  
  TBH I am dubious about this story, i suspect the interview took place before the e3 announcement of f2p up to 15 and that is what emmanuel is talking about, because if full f2p was on the plate for anytime soon then the original article wouldnt have been pulled so quickly after they posted it
http://www.facebook.com/mert.matthews.3 Mert Matthews

If they do go F2P they will lose whatever left of their player base imo because people are paying subs so they won’t see things like oh you want to enter to a new planet? You gotta buy it which makes me think will only increase the amount of entitlement and it will hurt its publicity so bad even most rabid fanboy won’t touch it with 10 foot stick. If it gets confirmed without may/may not’s then well they already lost the race against gw2 before it started
- Marc Allen
  
  If subscribers continued to sub i seriously doubt they would have the problem of locked content. No other P2P to F2P MMO has ever locked content to Subscribers. Subscribers usually get everything free plus various other perks.
Jay

First the yellow dress, now Mike S is wearing dat fruity shirt… Idk man, kinda suspect.

“The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well” – We all know what game he was referring to. I think GW2 has shed light on the misconception that you need a subscription to have a quality MMORPG.

Until SWTOR gets dodge, I’m not going back…
- Andrew Downing
  
  It does have dodge, play a trooper or bounty hunter.
  - Jason Milligan
    
    Because it takes special tactical training to avoid being hit by something amirite? #lackofcommonsenseindesign
  - Jay
    
    That’s what you call dodge, play GW2.
    
    Seriously though, TOR’s WoW in space combat formula just aint cuttin it. Bioware can do better than that…
- H S
  
  the only thing BW uses dodge, is to dodge being honest
  - Jay
    
    LOL
jgelling

I’d call SWTOR a slow-motion train wreck but at this point, the pace of carnage keeps picking up. In 2 months they’ve gone from “server population is fine” to merging up to 90% of servers, mass layoffs including their Community Manager, and now put free to play on the table.

Maybe if they’d spent some time thinking about building engaging, replayable content into the game, or some way of releasing story content on a regular basis, they would have a product worth charging for every month.
InvaderMig

I still can’t believe that they truly believed full VO was more important that gameplay. Boggles the mind how stupid they are. All those bugs, and lack of quality of life features fanboi said weren’t a big deal are pretty much sinking this game. God awful shame too, because there is so much potential. If only they had their priorities in order.
Cyclops07

I think it needs to go f2p for sure it’s the tortanic
http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis

I was wondering why they werent posting any swtor hate article lately.
- jgelling
  
  The truth is very hateful, apparently.
- H S
  
  posting reality is hate now…got it.
  - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
    
    By looking at the comments its pretty obvious that a large part of GBTV viewerbase hate swtor and, hey, they have to appeal to their viewers.
    
    the phrase “looking at free-to-play” could be spinned in any way by haters or fanbois.
    
    Frank Gibeau, President of EA also said:
    
    “We have a great business right now and we’re not looking to make any abrupt changes ”
    
    but I guess gbtv forgot to include that in the article…
    - H S
      
      then they would totally have to ignore that EA announced just two weeks ago that all their games will be F2P eventually.
      
      Look just because you believe everything EA/BW spins as truth, doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to live inside your one sided bubble.
      - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
        
        I wouldnt be surprised if they make their games free to play “eventually” or as Frank Gibeau said “ultimately some day”. But even years ago Blizzard said they were possible going to be free 2 play, so yeah, I would say the wise thing is to pretty much ignore all the article that talk about “looking at” “analyzing” and “studying” the free to play model until they come up with something more concrete.
        
        Also, I dont know what show you have been watching, but The Republic panel are anything but fanbois of the game, Justin Lowe is not afraid of beign very critical and say what needs to be say even if it is negative, and Ed Park has always been very objective and I would like to see him in other shows such as Twimmo or Guildcast,
        
        A good chunk of the gamer community are very hateful and vocal about it. Even if we can say that swtor is just an average MMO, it boggles my mind how many haters are actively wishing for the game to fail in media articles, in the swtor facebook page, and not the mention the forums, It’s pretty disgusting to be honest.
      - http://twitter.com/cipero Matt Cipriano
        
        Just going to point this out… you judge GBTV’s fanbase as SWTOR haters based upon their forum and user comments, so what does that make SWToR’s fanbase? Because I go to their general discussion threads all the time and all you see is the same comments you see here.
      - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
        
        Actually the the opinions on the SWToR forums are pretty split, many players are skeptical of the article and the vague lines quoted from
        Lusinchi and Gibeau.
        
        I have even read some positives comments here and there, that Free2Play will revitalize the game and when I was reading the the news on IGN there were interesting comments of paople saying “good, if they go free2play I’ll play it”
        
        So yeah, I think a good part of the viewers here are pretty hateful, rejoicing at any bad news about the game, but the fools dont realize that what they are clapping and cheering about are not good news for the MMO industry in general, you want to have several MMOs that are doing good, instead of every game failing except your favorite one.
      - http://twitter.com/cipero Matt Cipriano
        
        Speaking the truth doesn’t necessarily make GBTV viewers hateful. I’m sure most of us played the game and saw it for what it was: mediocre at best. The storylines are awesome! But unless they are pumped out at a pace to keep up with the market it’s not going to work as a mmo no matter how you try to construe it. I played through a couple class quests and quit shortly after. Because the hard truth is SWToR does nothing better than other mmo’s other then the single player element (story lines).
        
        In the SWTor forums right now there is a debate on this very topic “:SWTOR looking at free to play”. Go read it…The reactions are in essence the same as here. And then you have the blind fanboys:
        
        “That’s it I’m quitting if it goes f2p”
        “f2p model might actually work”
        “No..this is star wars it will never work!”
        “But many mmo’s do it and it actually preserves the game.”
        “No this is star wars! argh! STAR WARS!”
      - http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
        
        Right, it does not “necessarily” mean they are hateful, but more often than not, it does. And for an average MMO with great single player elements, this game gets much more hate than praise.
        
        This article is just another example of bad journalism (if we can even call it that) IGN pulled a quote from the Gameindustry article, gbtv took that and ran with it and you already see people on the forums saying:
        
        “What? they are going f2p? that’s it! Im unsubscribing”
        
        Those are the guys that accoring to you “speak the truth and see the game for what it is” and those that are skeptical about this broken telephone are “the fanbois”
        
        And thats not even going into the whole argument if going free2play is good or bad, with free MMOs like Planetside 2, Neverwinter and End of Nations coming up, it might be a smarter desicion than most would think.
      - 7BitBrian
        
        Did you even listen to the video? Larry even says that it’s more than likely not going to happen at all, just something they are considering for the possible future, the same way Blizzard or any game ever does.
        
        He basically says he thinks it’s not going to go F2P and good. Maybe you just assumed you knew what was in the video and decided not to watch it.
        
        They end saying it’s possible, but not likely and ask us if we think it was taken out of context or not.
      - snikendelarveføtter
        
        Ed Park was in the last guildcast.
      - http://profile.yahoo.com/ADEN6X6TYCORSSGEHKWMBIHDHY Eclipse
        
        I’m going to be totally honest here. Yes, I do want the game to fail. I truly do. I want its failure to be so glaring, so obvious, so talked about and apparent that NO future mmo developer will EVER think again of totally and completely ripping off WOW and simply adding a gimmick feature to think it distinguishes them.
        
        I want NO future mmo developer to treat and patronize and condescend to their beta testers the way Georg Zoeller did to the TOR testers. I want NO future mmo developer to talk about “E-sport viability” of their mmo but release with glaringly obvious and debilitating ability delay. I want NO mmo developer to deny immersion factors like day/night cycles because they’re trying to create “set pieces” of the environments – but then make said environments totally vapid, lacking ambient sound, NPC animations, dialogue, intrigue, excitement and exploration.
        
        I want NO mmo developer to announce in developer blogs about how their MMO wasn’t going to have 10 people on one boss, as that isn’t “heroic”, or how their MMO is going to walk a centrist path between themepark and sandbox and focusing on community; only to release THE MOST linear, repetitive, anti-social, unimaginative rip-off of WOW yet.
        
        I want NO mmo developer to design a game constantly dictating to the player what the company wants them to do, instead of letting the player choose that for themselves.
        
        YES! I want this game to FAIL – for the good of the future, TOR *must* die.
Rezze

This game should have been F2P from the beginning and don’t mean that as a jab at the game. The P2P model is getting dated and I would be surprised if many more MMOs attempt to use it in the future.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  True. SWTOR would have been perfect for box purchase and cash shop. Give players 5 character slots, allow players to purchase additional slots if they want all the 8 story lines. Release a new story every few months and players would have purchased the slots for them.
  
  Give players basic moddable gear and allow for a cash shop for cosmetic gear with mod slots.
- Jay
  
  Absolutely. I’m more than happy to see it go… We’re talking about a video game, not cell phone service.
http://twitter.com/dannywolt Daniel Oehlschlaeger

Interesting. When it goes F2P I will consider trying it.
- http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P
  
  I would too. I enjoyed playing it during beta, I just wont pay monthly for it.
Paul Allen

My question is, even if TOR goes F2P in the future..will anybody be around to give a shit? Going into the second half of 2012 you got a batch of new and very promising MMO’s(along with a WoW expansion) coming up and with all the bad publicity TOR has gotten (along with its fairly large game size) will people still want to play it?
- Spatology
  
  lol, new and promiseing MMO’s…..
  
  GW2 = beta was not fun, played on 4 diffrent weekends.
  MoP = kungfu panda’s and pokemonz?
  Titan = nothing is known nearly
  throw some more at me, honestly im only renewing my SWTOR sub because my alternatives are even worse.
http://twitter.com/ItsatrapLOL Targeter

Wow, Gamebreaker didn’t even read the whole quote from GameIndustry.biz. Sheesh. The quote is very long and, as usual, gets miscontrued. Here’s the full quote.

“We’re really proud of Star Wars. We’re really excited about the launch.
We’ve had tremendously positive feedback from our fans and our
subscribers. You’re right, it is a complex and difficult market out
there on the PC because of the availability of free-to-play products
like our own, like World of Tanks, League of Legends… WoW is a free
download that you pay a subscription to after a period of time. We’re
cognizant – we see that,” Gibeau told us.

Gibeau stressed that EA will continue to evaluate the business around
Star Wars and implement changes as needed, so free-to-play isn’t out of
the question at all (indeed, BioWare recently said as much too).

“We’re going to be in the business from a long term standpoint so
absolutely we’re going to embrace free access, free trial, ultimately
some day we can move in and embrace that model. It’s all a matter of
timing and thinking things through. We have a great business right now
and we’re not looking to make any abrupt changes. We made some good
announcements in terms of giving you the first few levels free, because
our telemetry told us that if we can get you to around level 8 or 9, you
stick with us for the long term. So really the strategy right now is
about opening up the funnel at the top so we can acquire more customers
who are interested in Star Wars who perhaps aren’t ready to pay the full
price,” Gibeau continued.

“[We want to give them] an opportunity to try and it and say, ‘You know,
I really do like this. I’m going to make that commitment.’ MMOs,
obviously, are a big commitment of time and money and so giving people
an opportunity to access it for free, try it, we found in our telemetry
and our experiments is a really good strategy and a good tactic. We’re
going to do that. We also announced a… mass amount of content thats
coming for the service, so we’re going to be in the Star Wars business
for ten years, who knows? We’re still publishing Ultima Online for
seventeen years. So we’re definitely going to be in the Star Wars
business for a long time and if the business changes in accordance with
how the market is reacting, then that’s just good process for us since
we’re trying to create the best possible service for our gamers.”
Alex Mac

I love the notion that this means anything other than the market is changing. If they make this change, I can imagine it would be a slow change. But FTP might actually *benefit* the game in the long run. Populations are being condensed, which has already helped the game. New content is coming, which will help the game. If FTP happens, it might actually be a boon.

And right now, it’s definitely an “if” in terms of them doing this at all (since they, still, have the sub numbers over their benchmark)…but if it does happen, I could see it actually helping with the game.
http://www.facebook.com/matthew.ulmen Matthew ‘Raving Rendal’ Ulmen

Nope. 1. No cash shop capable of maintaining it. 2. until they break even on their massive investment they wont even bother.
7BitBrian

I personally think it would be better if they went B2P, had a purely
cosmetic cash shop, and focused on adding story content and PvP.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Gabriel-Suarez/100000176754219 Gabriel Suarez

Meh… another fail attempt to capture the awesome Star Wars Universe. Maybe next time they will work on making it a MMO first and leave the RPG to the Fans. Guess it also proves that a 1990′s Rail Shooter isn’t going to attrack any players. BioWare had some great ideas but in the end is just to WoW in Space for me.
lee long

why ppl called EA Louse a troll?? look at this game now. looking for free to play? before they said they never goes free to play.i dont understand. if it goes f2p, what happen to the ppl BOUGHT the game for $60 or $150 CE and pay $15 a month???
http://twitter.com/Nathiest Nathiest

I’ll reinstall and start playing again. If it does go F2P
http://twitter.com/Latinkuro Latinkuro

unless you can match and surpass LoL and GW2 level of quality, innovation polish the subscription is no longer justified. Dev’s used to say the sub cost was for server cost and ongoing game updates and development neither reasons hold true anymore. so why do we still pay a sub ?
reason 1: to many crappy F2P games out there people think they’re all like that.
reason 2: we are stuck in the past and still think the only good games are the ones that have a sub attached to it.
- http://twitter.com/Nvrdie666 Nvrdie
  
  I agree, SWToR cannot justify a subscription. Not when Arenanet can deliver a game of GW2′s quality (I would argue a higher overall quality than SWtoR) for just a box price.
http://twitter.com/RagnarKon Bryan Woolsey

“they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations”
Exactly!!!
“So we are looking at free-to-play”
*facepalm*

Free-to-play ≠ Content
- Paul Allen
  
  To quote a great actor, “Wrong wrong wrong wrong…..wrong wrong wrong wrong. You’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrooooooooooooong.”
http://www.facebook.com/jetmorph Jason Taylor

I think he said something he wasn’t supposed to, and bioware is doing some pr cover up
http://www.facebook.com/Jamandos Joshua Lee

It would actually make sense for Swtor to go free to play since it would appeal to their target audience, young gamers.
Semperf1delis

They are looking at free to play from 1st of july AS the first 15 lvl`s will be completely free to play… Pretty easy to see that the “teaser” was pull out of the context.
- jgelling
  
  If that were the case, EA/BW would’ve done more to slap down this story. They would’ve point blank said, “This quote referred to the free 15 levels in July, and was taken out of context by the reporter. We [insert random corporate rambling about how much they love their subscribers] and remain committed to delivering the best MMO experience possible to our [loyal/devoted/valued] fans.”
  
  The fact they didn’t do that, didn’t respond on their own site even to this very-damaging story, speaks a lot about what’s going on at EA. I bet they’re strongly considering F2P more and more every day, given the impact D3 had and the slew of games flooding the market by fall.
  - Semperf1delis
    
    JG,
    
    They infact reacted the day the “teaser” of the interview came up, as the teaser was drawn down pretty fast after it was released online. Im pretty sure that in these cases no larger company start defending themselves publicly and raising more incorrect rumours, but only go through the legal dep. and take down all the bits of stories that actually are not facts…
http://www.facebook.com/Thenatoes Jason Matzke

Let’s think here Bioware makes SWToR and EA own’s Bioware. We all know what EA does to MMO’s release them unfinished, fast, and sink those things for all they can get out of it look at Mythic’s Warhammer 5 year of suck no one playing to finally make free2play! Even that SWToR is in a bad state they could rebound make profit out of it. They just need to catch up in time with rest of the MMO’s out there. -or- Invent something that totally new and exciting fast to the MMO space. Story is good but once your done leveling your bored off your mind. This is why WoW is adding so much fluff! burn out happen’s you need tons to do with your mains. pvp and bad pve will not just cut it these day’s! Just can’t release a MMO these day’s that isn’t covering what every other MMO out there already has that is 6 years behind. People already have build friends, investment of time, and status in the communities.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Lilianah-Baro/100003577266521 Lilianah Baro

I just wonder what EA will make bioware pull out of the game to put it in the cash shop.
http://twitter.com/justQQing Brian Day

only thing that stoped me from playing swtor was the sub
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kaden-Smith/100003905493006 Kaden Smith

I like this: we can’t make the game fun, so we’ll make it free. pathetic
nexxe

What do all the fanboys have to say now? Hahah. You defended this pile of …. so vehemently too.
nexxe

Biggest budget ever for a video game, and it goes to F2P in 6 months. HAHA. WOW. EA seriously needs to liquidate the whole Bioware studio. They failed hard.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Philip-Kappe/100000264050711 Philip Kappe

Whats up with that B roll? Key turner and ability clicker.. Get someone who knows how to play before recording the B roll. Lol.
http://profile.yahoo.com/THJWE4XEXAMAPW3CUGPFYCUDHE Prime

They went Free To play for BAD reasons. Not because its a “good business model”

Its different if they were all “OOOO we are FREE TO PLAY”

Its more: WE FAILED might as well go free to play so we dont have to worry about content so much….if they PAY for it they EXPECT stuff from us — BIOWARE…EA

Its not like they “supported” “Free to play”
http://profile.yahoo.com/THJWE4XEXAMAPW3CUGPFYCUDHE Prime

People especially Game breaker have to realize….

Free to Play IS NOT going to work…. its NICE id LOVE all free games….

But cmon we KNOW money has to be made…especially for SMALLER companies.

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS is a unqiue hit…its like Blizzard.

Persistent service NOT EQUAL Free to play.

Free to Play actually is MOSTLY for FAIL games… Even if they are OK .. they ones left in the dust… LOTR, yada yada… now FAIL SWTOR…

I mean cmon you have to COUNT on players buying your “WIDGETS” if you are “FREE TO PLAY”. if they dont.,,,,uh yea…
- http://profile.yahoo.com/Z36GPOU3Q2QIQYBIDVNQAVGNGE Raul
  
  Planetside 2
  Firefall
  Hawken
  Path of Exile
  i could go on, but
  -either You know something these Guys don’t…..
  or the other way around.
  Either way, I’m betting on them.
- XvShadow
  
  LOTRO made more money as a F2P.
- RolyVento
  
  LOTRO and EQ2 and GW1 has made more money going F2P than the sub model.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

what should be looked at is why is it going f2p? The reason in my view is the extreme amount of incompetence from before launch with EA/bioware. They lost so much money from launch with people who pre-ordered and EA who didnt ship the game off ahead of time to meet the grace period for those who downloaded. So all those people just cancelled thier pre order Boxed CE editions and other versions and went down to the store and bought a copy to keep playing during that idiotic “grace period”. That was the most ridiculous stupid thing ive ever seen a company do. F2p might get some more people but until james ohlen and gabe and the “best pvp team” are fired the game will always be crap. Seriously jame and gabe have destroyed that game worse then any other game could ever have.

F2p or not it will be the same until gabe and james get the can the sooner the better
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

James ohlen: “coming soon” star wars the old republic will be free to play! This exciting new content f2p will allow you play with your friends!! We will now pay you to play our game 15 bucks a month! This revolutionary new feature called desperate to play is exciting new content awaiting you in the star wars the old republic!

James ohlen
Noctover

Am i the only one that hopes this happens? Paid a fortune for the game, asking for a top quality sub price……Their customer support was horrendous..the bugs that were in the game on release were COMPLETELY unacceptable, they had a huge PVP quest bug for months, that they claimed to fix 3 times which wasn’t….clueless on prioritisation total lack of testing left me with a bitter taste. I hope the game fails, cant wait for it to go F2P for the ultimate humiliation for Bioware and EA. They can dress it up however they like, we will all know why….
Deacon Szabo

I stopped playing SWTOR not because I couldn’t afford the sub.. not because I wasn’t willing to pay a sub… but because the game was designed in a very flawed manner and failed to capture what a Star Wars MMORPG should be, imho.

Making it free to play will not make the game any better of a ‘Star Wars’ experience. It’s too late for that. I hope there will be another Star Wars MMORPG in the future… and whoever does it, does a much better job of it.
http://twitter.com/rizzla103 Marky Mark

I was looking so farward to this game when it first came out. I was sooo let down. bored after lvl 30. f2p won’t save this game!!!
http://twitter.com/SwarmAM Swarm AM

It’s the only move they could make, to sustain and stay alive as a game.
http://profile.yahoo.com/5RZ7RAJVV6MNLH4257ZJ6DIKDA Garrett

Not only do you make it nearly impossible to subscribe to this failure of a blog, you delete half of the admissions that do not agree with you and actually have a reason to like this game, what are you talking about going free to play? There are millions and millions of people who enjoy it, and would be very happy paying their 15 USD a month. Not only did you display a completely inept player spamming ONE skill that you gain upon level FOUR (the character displayed is level 20 at best, yet uses one ability, gained 16 levels prior why aren’t they using the 12 or so skills/spells/abilities you gain up to that level? Can’t say, besides make this game look like a piece of crap), you displayed it being used in a TERRIBLE manner. No one that plays this game is that bad. Oooohhhhh check out my gnarly sorcerer, I have one giant button that I constantly press the living crap out of- WRONG. NO ONE IS INTENTIONALLY THAT BAD. Why cant you show the true fun gained in the game, say a level fifty mercenary battling Karagga, or better yet a level 50 warrior/knight who is skilled, playing in a PVP setting? no you have to say OMG ITS GOING FREE TO PLAY GUYS LETS SHOW YOU A CRAPPY PLAYER DOING A LEVEL TWENTY QUEST, HALF AN HOUR LONGER THAN IT WOULD TAKE FOR SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY USED ALL OF THE SKILLS AND ABILITIES AVAILABLE TO THEM SO WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW CRAPPY IT IS. Guys, c’mon. Don’t be so quick to force-feed (no pun intended) and gorge yourself on the garbage that would just try to trash this game in comparison to what? They didn’t say… (So definitely don’t play this game because some guy who sucks at playing it and can use one ability among a dozen and a half says that it’s trash and that it doesn’t deserve your money {Holy crap that sounds familiar doesn’t it}. What about the hours of conversations and several different dialogues and approaches you can take to each quest???) . If you really think the game is this bad and should go free to play why don’t you pick it up and see for yourself, instead of taking the word of someone who spams the same damn skill over and over and over and over and says he doesn’t enjoy it, frankly not ours or anyone’s fault that you suck at the game. Did you quit playing wow because spamming frostbolt and only frostbolt on your mage did not work for you? Usage of your brain is all I imply.
http://www.facebook.com/eddie.rus Soda FreeRealms Rus

Bioware never ruined this game, EA did. Hopefully they can get better, but I jsut wished it was a Kotor 3 for xbox 360 instead.

SWTOR Dev Says He Is Looking At F2P

FreeToPlay TV Is Now LIVE

New Character Customization Features Come To SWTOR

Cat People Invade Star Wars

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sign in to your account