Darth Hater

I find their plans extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. According to the available info from EA the cornerstones for the changes are 1) people leaving because they disagree with the monthly-payment system and 2) they want to bring people back to the game (and by association in my mind, to increase their revenue). 

For point 1 they are flatly wrong. People didn't leave because of the paying scheme. If that was the case they wouldn't even buy the game to begin with since it was clearly stated for a very long time prior to release that the game had a monthly fee. And still, many many people bought it. For the people choosing the "monthly fee' as an option for the reason they left, the reality was that for their taste the game did not justify the fee, not that the fee itself was the problem. In other words, their problem is the game and not the relevant-for-them financial plan. But EA chooses to blame something like this rather than openly acknowledge their shortcomings in terms of what they delivered.

For the 2nd point, how is this new model going to help BW and SWTOR is beyond me. So in this all-or-nothing scheme in terms of payment, what do they expect to gain? For people who left because of the fee or the game not justifying the fee, as long as BW does not offer substantially different activities and game systems than the ones already in place, then nobody will get back to the full monthly fee. At best (or worst), these people will stay with the game but never contribute financially so in the end they become a burden (server strains, tech support, customer support etc etc). On the other hand, you have the new customers that might give it a go now that is free. The problem is that SWTOR now is facing much stronger competition in every aspect other than the license/setting (Star Wars or Sci-Fi), plus some of the competitors are F2P right from the beginning. As such, it must really impress any new players if it's going to retain them, let alone as paying customers. Realistically speaking, with the game offering nothing original other than the SW/Sci-Fi setting, it will be difficult to do so since by far most people who were willing to pay for this, they already do. So a potential dead-end there as well.

IMO the least they could do for now is to break different aspects of the game they plan to limit for the free version into smaller monthly fees. So you like WZs and want no limitations only for that? That would be 3 dollars/euros please. You want to do the Ops only? That's another 5 dollars/euros. You like playing on the galactic network or the mini-games o whatever? That's another X amount. So collectively all these would add-up to the regular fee. For those getting the full-fee, give them some extra perks or something. 

Long term, this game needs its own ID, pure and simple. There was another, recent thread on this here on DH so there is no need to repeat ourselves. Hopefully they really got the message (BW an EA) and start trying to be original and more successful, because WoW and Blizzard could do with some serious competition right now, and not just from 1 game only. Unfortunately, everything they said regarding this change into F2P doesn't make me very optimistic.

Overall I agree with you. But I can tell you this, if they sell Yoda species for US$ 100 bucks, I would buy it. But I know it's not gonna happen... /sad

I'm excited about the opportunities that a free to play model can bring to SWTOR.  I have a lot of family members that haven't been willing to commit to a subscription, but are now anxious to join me in exploring the Galaxy this Fall.  The proposed model seems like it has great potential for reducing the level and valor grind in the game and I also like the various digital items that have been advertised.

I got friends that play LoL, brag about how its free to play, then drop 50 - 80 bucks on it every other weekend getting the latest and greatest lol.

I think everyone expected it to be superior than WoW from the get go, right off the bat. Its not WoW.Its a brand new game made by a company that never made a mmo before and made some bad choices and they are trying to redeem themselves by giving the crybabies what they want. You want WoW  stuff go play WoW.  my god they really are trying. the entitled mind set of this generation of games never gave them a chance. and i dont mind paying 15 bucks a month for a game. Its 15 bucks big deal. i wont mind payng 15 bucks for no restrictions.

I've lost alot of faith in bioware from this, I'm going to have a serious think if this game should have my time or money anymore.  I might give it to the end of the year but if it looks like it's going P2W like all over F2P mmos are, I'm out.

I left the game after the first month.  It was slow, literally hours were spent running from place to place, repetitive,  buggy, lacked basic features such as looking for group and was full of people going on about the much-vaunted 'community' aspect.  Well so much for community whatever that is or was supposed to be.

The game was basically a poor clone of WOW and was over-hyped beyond belief.  From what I have seen and read since nothing much has changed. 

My question is simple: why pay for a clone when the 'real thing' is still there and getting a huge update very shortly?

Quote from Sanctobellum »

I left the game after the first month.  It was slow, literally hours were spent running from place to place, repetitive,  buggy, lacked basic features such as looking for group and was full of people going on about the much-vaunted 'community' aspect.  Well so much for community whatever that is or was supposed to be.

The game was basically a poor clone of WOW and was over-hyped beyond belief.  From what I have seen and read since nothing much has changed. 

My question is simple: why pay for a clone when the 'real thing' is still there and getting a huge update very shortly?

I played WOW from vanilla until Cata.  The story was virtually non-existent and it began to feel like you couldn't progress without a rediculous daily quest grind.

While SWTOR does have the level 50 grind, you really don't need to do it to achieve the gear required to do the hardest PVE content in the game.

PVP in SWTOR is also a grind, but they're going to continue to implement more warzones, (hopefully like Huttball, which is by far my favourite).  Although there are problems with lag if you are running on a less than optimal machine, I still prefer the style of PVP in SWTOR where there are a ton of CCs, stuns, knockbacks, pulls, etc.  I feel that SWTOR pvpers get a much larger toolbox (I have a war hero healer spec'd Sorcerer).

The game has changed substantially since the first month when you left.  Substantially. 

So many years spent playing WOW has also deadened the joy I receive playing fantasy based games.  Pandas & Pokemon were the nail in the coffin.  It's still a great game, it's just not for me.  I started considering it a chore to log on and help out guildies, which is when I knew that I needed a change in focus.  SWG was my first MMO, and they did a marvellous job of killing that with the NGE.  At least Bioware is continually enhancing their game.  I love the increased customization of our character appearance.  Yes, it's a credit sink.  But they implemented it within the space of half a year.  It took wow 6+ years to do the same thing. 

I'm willing to give Bioware a shot to make this the game it should be.

Quote from Sanctobellum »

I left the game after the first month.  It was slow, literally hours were spent running from place to place, repetitive,  buggy, lacked basic features such as looking for group and was full of people going on about the much-vaunted 'community' aspect.  Well so much for community whatever that is or was supposed to be.

The game was basically a poor clone of WOW and was over-hyped beyond belief.  From what I have seen and read since nothing much has changed. 

My question is simple: why pay for a clone when the 'real thing' is still there and getting a huge update very shortly?

because

1 the game has changed and improved, and

2. because the "real thing" looks like monkeys ass , has been dumbed down to fuck, is incorporating facebook games into it, is cloning pokemon, is putting in black market auction house, is making the talent trees diablo 3 esq, has got rid of all the good staff to titan, caters to the mainstream morons who cant complete a cataclysm heroic because its too hard so everythings Ez mode, still has that prat ghoscrawler leading,  are cloning "rifts" sorry adding scenarios,  because they dont update it at an acceptable pace anymore- 11 months by the time Pandaland hits since last patch, because they rehash content too fast (see troll instances), DS was all rehashed locations and boss models, because they cant design half engaging dungeons anymore(the 3 DS ones were terrible), PVP is still a clusterfuck, and the balance is still horrible (but we'll get it right with the next exapnsion - WoW's motto since WOTLK).

i definatly could go on, it used to be the mac daddy of MMO's now its a terrible casual infested piece of crap, Rifts way better then it, and updates alot faster, if i wasnt sick to the back teeth of fantasy mmo's id be there ahead of a game i put a good 5 years of my gaming time into that was WoW.

Quote from aallya»

because

1 the game has changed and improved, and

2. because the "real thing" looks like monkeys ass , has been dumbed down to fuck, is incorporating facebook games into it, is cloning pokemon, is putting in black market auction house, is making the talent trees diablo 3 esq, has got rid of all the good staff to titan, caters to the mainstream morons who cant complete a cataclysm heroic because its too hard so everythings Ez mode, still has that prat ghoscrawler leading,  are cloning "rifts" sorry adding scenarios,  because they dont update it at an acceptable pace anymore- 11 months by the time Pandaland hits since last patch, because they rehash content too fast (see troll instances), DS was all rehashed locations and boss models, because they cant design half engaging dungeons anymore(the 3 DS ones were terrible), PVP is still a clusterfuck, and the balance is still horrible (but we'll get it right with the next exapnsion - WoW's motto since WOTLK).

i definatly could go on, it used to be the mac daddy of MMO's now its a terrible casual infested piece of crap, Rifts way better then it, and updates alot faster, if i wasnt sick to the back teeth of fantasy mmo's id be there ahead of a game i put a good 5 years of my gaming time into that was WoW.

If you're equating "Rifts" to "Scenarios" then Rift and WoW have both ripped off LoTRO.

You're saying that PvP in TOR is more balanced than WoW?  Sorry, but it's not.  They're both horribly imbalanced.

And what do you mean by "changed" and "improved"?  It hasn't changed.  Aside from a few bug fixes here and there, there hasn't been a ton of improvement.  Was EC a step up in raid design from EV and HH?  Definitely.  Is EV and HH still riddled with bugs after 8 months?  Yep.  Is EC still riddled with bugs after 3 months?  Yep.  Are WZs still glitchy as hell and riddled with bugs (invisible barriers anyone?)  Yep.  Is there still ability delay?  Yep.  Is there a massive amount of server side lag?  Yep.  And, most of all, does anyone in the company bother communicating with their playerbase?  Not in the slightest.  Hell, the lack of improvement is the reason why I quit, although F2P just made me convinced that I was making the correct decision.

no improvement? are you on drugs? no ability delay, Hi-Res textures, UI customisation, bug squashing everywhere, ranked warzones, group finder, EC and EC hard mode

Its way more balanced and better then the garbage WoW has, the only minor point is probably PT's are a bit too OP maybe, And no they arent riddled with bugs anymore have you even done them recently? ive cleared them all many times over weekly for the past 3 months, as soon as they fixed the SoA and Ancient pylons bugs its all worked for me, and the warzones aren't glitchy as hell they've all ran pretty smooth, you sound like you've not played the game recently or your just flat out lying to back up your points.

Is it the most awesome bug free MMO to walk this earth? nope, but saying theres been no improvement is just a big lie

I find it funny that people compare newly launched games to a game that has a revenue stream of over 200 million per month and has had over six years to "perfect" their game. That would be like comparing Harvard to a state university in the United States. Is there really any comparison? Probably not, but is the state university good for what they have been able to do? Definately. Is there room for improvement? Of course, but without people being willing to support that "inferior" product there will not be any true competition.

Also, the majority of WoW players came in during either Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King, which means they came into the game 2-4 years after the game began. I played at the tail end of Vanilla. The game was good, but not great. Many talent trees were complete rubbish. There was NO LFG system at all (not even the basic one that TOR launched with). The majority of the leveling experience REQUIRED group work (almost no leveling in TOR requires group work, even Heroic 4s can be soloed at 2 levels above if you are a good enough player). Burning Crusade didn't even introduce a LFG. It wasn't until Wrath of the Lich King that Blizzard decided that a LFG system was necessary, which was about four years into the game. So, if you want to compare SWTOR to WOW, realize that the state of WOW is really pathetic when you think that they have had approximately three years of $200mil / month with subs and about $500mil / every other year with xpacs. When you look at how much they've made, you can see that they are clearly not working to their best potential. Since TOR released WoW has launched 1 content patch (I think...), where as TOR has released 3, with approximately 1/4 of the budget. Now, which company is doing more for their players?

/end diatribe

Quote from tuviel023 »

I find it funny that people compare newly launched games to a game that has a revenue stream of over 200 million per month and has had over six years to "perfect" their game. That would be like comparing Harvard to a state university in the United States. Is there really any comparison? Probably not, but is the state university good for what they have been able to do? Definately. Is there room for improvement? Of course, but without people being willing to support that "inferior" product there will not be any true competition.

Also, the majority of WoW players came in during either Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King, which means they came into the game 2-4 years after the game began. I played at the tail end of Vanilla. The game was good, but not great. Many talent trees were complete rubbish. There was NO LFG system at all (not even the basic one that TOR launched with). The majority of the leveling experience REQUIRED group work (almost no leveling in TOR requires group work, even Heroic 4s can be soloed at 2 levels above if you are a good enough player). Burning Crusade didn't even introduce a LFG. It wasn't until Wrath of the Lich King that Blizzard decided that a LFG system was necessary, which was about four years into the game. So, if you want to compare SWTOR to WOW, realize that the state of WOW is really pathetic when you think that they have had approximately three years of $200mil / month with subs and about $500mil / every other year with xpacs. When you look at how much they've made, you can see that they are clearly not working to their best potential. Since TOR released WoW has launched 1 content patch (I think...), where as TOR has released 3, with approximately 1/4 of the budget. Now, which company is doing more for their players?

/end diatribe

Not they don't.  As of their last quarterly call, Blizzard was operating with a little over $80 million/month in net revenue.  Just getting your figures straight.

To be honest, Blizzard forcing group ups did more to generate a feeling of community than installing heroics that can be soloed or are completely unnecessary altogether.  That just hammers home the argument people have made that TOR is a single player game in an MMO atmosphere.

I agree that Blizzard has done an extremely poor job with Cataclysm and that they don't release content fast enough.  However, TOR has NOT released 3 content patches.  With the possible exception of Kaon, 1.1 was mostly shit that was supposed to be released at retail.  Since Blizzard is gating their raids, it would be like people saying the two raids they're releasing a couple weeks later is "new content" despite the fact that they're not.  1.3 had NO content.  Group Finder is not content, it's a QoL feature.  Hell, Blizzard released their LFG tool WITH ICC and 3 new dungeons.  Ranked WZs are also not content.  1.2 was the only TRUE content patch that they've released since TOR came out.

me thinks you should actually get your numbers straight.

Yours were too low and his was too high, the average Blizzard revenue per month since 2009 is circa $111million, but thats includes other suff, if you just look at blizzards Online subscriptions line and average that out since 2009 its $102m a month revenue from online subscriptions only.

The last 2 quarters have been their lowest since 2009 so it suits your point to use the lowest numbers(with no expansion money either) and say thats how much they get, why didnt you use Q4 CY10? that was 540 million? but i digress..

an average of 3 years is a much better test, so we've shown the average to be $102, Warcraft launched in nov 2004 so thats 8 years of revenue, i'll be generous and say they had no revenue the first 3 years and no development costs up front, so that'll leave 5 years revenue, at an average of $102million a month, you do the math about how much money blizzard have had to plough into the game, and compare that to TORS budget(which people roundly critsise)  let me know the difference. ;) I'll give you a clue of by the way, if TOR costs a billion to make WoW's revenue would be 6 times that ;) its brought them in just shy of $4bilion since Q1 CY09, now stack on the first 3 years revenue and development costs to build the game......... and is it a suprise no MMO can launch these days with the amount of polish and features wow has?

I think that this change is a positive one.  There are probably a lot of people posting who haven't seen the chart comparing the two payment models here:  http://www.swtor.com/free/features

Essentially... those who want to play the game casually can.  Those who prefer to experience more of the content can pay their $15 a month, which is still by far the cheapest form of mass entertainment out there (going to the movies once can cost me more than that).

I wouldn't be happy playing this game on the F2P model.  There are far too many portions of the game that I consider critical, ranging from unlimited warzones to operations access and a high number of GTN auctions (yes, I frequently hit my limit, even while posting sales with multiple characters).

This change will bring back at least two people I know, simply because they were interested in the story, but were not used to MMOs in general and paying for them specifically.  This gives them the opportunity to continue playing up to max level and then, if they enjoy it, they may decide to stick around and do more, becoming full subscribers.  If not, then they will at least tell their friends about the new game that they are enjoying for free.

Does it suck that we've gotten to the point where F2P was necessary?  Absolutely.  However, I'm exceptionally happy that they didn't go all the way and simply make the whole model F2P only.  They would've lost me immediately.  I'm quite happy sticking with the subscription model.