The Republic Ep114: SWTOR Free For All

Written by: Gary Gannon (@garygannon) | November 20, 2012 6:00 am

37 Comments

Star Wars The Old Republic is officially free to play and the boys are back to break it down. Topics on this weeks show include:

Is SWTORS F2P Model Fair?
Population Increase
Are Lottery Packs Worth It?
HK-51
Free Respecs
Carel Store Bugs

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29 comments

Martin Lomas

Is there any performance increases?

Being in the 5% of low fps in PvP it became frustrating as my system wasn’t exactly lacking.
rulez

As far as I remember, you cannot keybind skills, only quickslots. So in order to keybind a skill you have to put it on a quickslot first. The only exception used to be special abilities like cover.
http://twitter.com/G_Nepenthe Gabriel Kennedy

The cash shop might be sorta OK if it could be accessed. I don’t know how wide spread the problem is, but from the 47 page + thread on the customer support forums there are several of us that simply can’t spend the money to buy cartel coins because of some mysterious screw-up on B/W’s end.
http://www.facebook.com/zoltan.mester.148 Zoltan Mester

It’s important to know that you can buy all the unlocks on the GTN for ingame creds as well…
- http://twitter.com/Cpt_Badger Cpt.Badger
  
  Except you will never ever be able to have enough credits to buy them, because of the credit cap.
  
  If something sells for 900 CC or 5 000 000 credits, you’re not going to get it for 250k creds.
patrick.kershaw

The thing with the money cap, and not even just that, is in place to stop “free” players from credit farming. It’s not nice, but I can see the point.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Mac/777995513 Alex Mac
  
  That last statement is really the most important. At least this show’s watchable again.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1339406775 Matthew Riddle

Chris Farley: DA BARS!
http://twitter.com/Deadalon Deadalon

Here is an intresting fact. Xfire shows the game has got alot of players in the first days of F2P. The most intresting part tho – is its less than quarter of what it had on orginal launch… Id say thats a pretty bad F2P number.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Good to see the host enjoying playing SWTOR again. Sorry to hear Justin’s guild melted down.
http://www.facebook.com/ryanmdv Ryan Martin-DeVries

came back to try f2p and the 2 hot bars was a deal breaker for me until this changed I will not being playing even if it is free.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Shawn-Hargrave/100003202374593 Shawn Hargrave

gary when they want to charge you to take your helmet off id say thats faaaaaaaaaar off lol. People should not be paying for ui features or helmet removals or my personal lol feature having to be subbed to answer a swtor forum post or post on the official forums.

This is a john ricotellos dream come true i.e people should be paying for bullets and ammo clips.

I find it shocking people are paying for ui and helmets and other ridiculous crap just lolz. It wouldnt surprise me if they start making you have to buy shoes and put tread time on them or virtual oxygen next lol.

You know what i would pay for? swg 2 id pay 100 bucks month for that. Wish i could use cartel coins for that
http://www.facebook.com/andelormon David Scott

I can not do the 200,000 credits, and the limit to 1 Crew Skill. Both of the characters I play have more in both. Huge downer to loose so much.
http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

Ya I am sorry but the prices are way high. It would cost you 100s to unlock everything, now of course just pay the sub for that, but still some of the stuff you would just want for an enjoyable game is way out of line in price. I would not mind coming back and just buying the few things to make it playable, but not at the prices it is at now. And I am sure many people did the math and feel the same.
So I don’t even understand the point of the F2P.
- http://twitter.com/G_Nepenthe Gabriel Kennedy
  
  I was one of the beta testers last year, and F2P seemed like a good opportunity to come back and check out the present state of the game.
  
  So… yes, I concur: It really seems more like they are using the ‘F2P’ to advertise the subscription plan, which really isn’t the way to go about it. I know that GW2 for instance is not really a F2P, as it is B2P but they have much more compelling items in their cash shop. One of the big differences is that buying stuff in GW2′s cash shop augments your gameplay rather than enabling it.
  
  Compare this to the F2P experience in SW:TOR where ‘free’ players are being punished for not having a sub, and the cash shop isn’t this fun thing that you’re being invited to, rather it’s a cattlerun you’re being prodded into, where purchases restore game functionality, rather than augmenting it.
http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

I am so happy to see the hosts put away their usual fanboy egos and see how redunculous the new F2P is and how it is useless and will only cause people to feel less interested in the game. I honestly think this is one less money grab before the game shuts down 100% in a year.
- Joel Viola
  
  SWTOR is one of the most played mmos in the Occident…Ive seen so damm many mmos with 10% or even less players than SWTOR and they are still around. Tbh now that I think of it is really hard to think about an mmo that shut down, unless is really old or a new game of that frenchansing comes out.
  Dont get me wrong, I dont even play swtor im just a regular viewer of all gamebreaker shows but an mmo shutting down even with all the allegedly fails its less likely.
  I just see one reasonably possibility to TOR to shut down:
  Disney new SW movie turns out to be a major success.
  SW frenchising grows even bigger.
  With all the hype they hire a game developer to make a SW mmo in the movie’s timeline.
  LucasArts takes the star wars license from EA/Bioware like they did with Star Wars Galaxies, so they dnt have 2 star wars mmos stealing money from each other.
  
  ps: sorry for the bad english
Deucengine

I should start by saying I am a returning player thus in the Premium category.

I honestly don’t think I like this free to play model. I started a new character this weekend and the cash shop is thrown in your face. There are quest rewards that you can’t get without being a subscriber. I’m not completely opposed to there being quest rewards exclusive to subscribers but don’t tell me about. Through lvl 9 there have been I think 3 of these. To be honest it feels like demo more than a game that is free to play. Their model just seems to scream “Hey we have subscriptions. That’s the real game.”
I realize that they need to make money but if they make compelling items in the cash shop they can make money. Heck I might be willing to spend money if they made character slots available in the cash shop.
- http://www.facebook.com/stradus.woods Stradus Woods
  
  Agree with you man thought I mite go back and finish some story’s but I saw this system. They went as far as the could to make it pay to win with out actual making you OP. People still don’t understand why league of legends does so well. O wait they do there game just isn’t good enough for it.
sheduur

The section X unlock can be sold to someone _currently_ subscribed and he will still retain access then when he decides to stop subbing. Just a guess
http://twitter.com/Cpt_Badger Cpt.Badger

Rendil Nightshade sells for around 25k credits. Which translates to around 10 minutes of farming, making it WAY cheaper than standard tier 2, blue mounts. Seems that TONS of people are buying those cartel packs.
http://www.facebook.com/stradus.woods Stradus Woods

So many people ….. Lawl give it a week most of them won’t stay.
http://www.facebook.com/darran.hall.9 Darran Hall

Justin said that Customer Service in going to be worse with all the new F2P’s, I heard F2P’s cannot use Customer Services
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Gerrettie-Jr/1287578323 Bill Gerrettie Jr

Glad I watched this before wasting my time downloading SWTOR! Why on earth would I want to waste my time with a glorified demo.
protrolly

bioware killed theyer free to play and force you to sub
rippled

Well if they keep up the update pace of recent time they may yet turn in around. 5 days after 1.5 and 1.6 is already on PTS. If this pace held at launch this game could have been big.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  If SWTOR had been f2p with a fantastic cash shop, this game would have been a success.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Shawn-Hargrave/100003202374593 Shawn Hargrave
  
  it them almost 6 months and more to even realize about the content lol. I remember seeing james ohlen doing one of his gun to the head off screen videos saying there going to get content out on timely manner LOL. Like i said very incompetent stupid people there they should have been doing that all along not 6 months in go oh hey customers we just realized this pff.
  
  The other issue i still find funny is why didnt they do super servers at the start? Thats when they needed them not now.
  
  As long as thiers stupid people that tor can rely on it will survive
David Alcon

Bummer for Justin’s guild imploding. I’m surprised given the number of players leaving and lack of PvE content / META News to keep players pumped and excited.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Wouldn’t be surprised if a number of players went F2P and it tore the guild apart.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Shawn-Hargrave/100003202374593 Shawn Hargrave
    
    more likely scenario based on how darthhater members are is that those carebears finally came into reality like the 1 mill plus rest of us have about the game and left finally. Maybe they didnt like bieng charged to keep there blinders on lol
christopher longley

I resubbed
http://www.facebook.com/jtkda Joao Takada

jeez, customer service, iv been calling all the week over 2 hrs a day, not getting any answer yet
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003221982489 Justinian Ansar

F2p dont even get forum posting access so there goes a big chunk of the role play
http://www.facebook.com/people/Filip-Buhov/1379207683 Filip Buhov

this mmo is going in the history books in the graph “Do this and your game will fail”
http://twitter.com/troyh20 Troy Harris

How do I try out to be a host on this show
igabishop

Wait a second…this game had a $15 a month subscription fee AND a cash shop? Jesus! *eyeroll*

The Republic Ep114: SWTOR Free For All

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

Legendary Ep126:
Raiding Ra-Den Revelations!

GuildCast Ep71:
Blue Flowers

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