SWTOR going Free-To-Play

[Darth Crater]

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/press-release/20120731

Free play up to level 50, with some content locked off via microtransactions. The current monthly subscriptions will remain as an option.

[SWINE FLU]

You beat me to it :(

My view: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4275 Didn't realise you posted this.

[Darth Crater]

To respond to what you said in the other thread, if you were already paying a subscription fee, you can continue to do that and have access to the full game. Microtransactions seem to be a separate system for those not paying monthly.

[SWINE FLU]

Aye. I read that. However, the fact I've been paying that money annoys me. If I could have played for free, instead of paying per month I would have. F2P will only lead to more trolling/harassment/small children on the servers with players who have no idea about game mechanics in high end PvP matches. I will wait for F2P to happen, and see if I like it. If I don't, I'm not going to pay monthly.

[(SWGO)Kren]

F2P will only lead to more trolling/harassment/small children on the servers with players who have no idea about game mechanics in high end PvP matches. I will wait for F2P to happen, and see if I like it. If I don't, I'm not going to pay monthly.

Reminds me of SWBF2...HA most days.

[MATTHEW'S_DAD]

I know that's directed at me Krenny.

[WD-40]

Wow!...I was wondering how long it would take for them to figure out how utterly stupid it was to charge people for the monthly fee. But in the back of my mind I wondered...ahhhhh...George Lucas probably got a nice cut of that charge, and instructed them to cut the monthly fee 'in stages' as new accounts wore off. It's the 'Lucas Greed Syndrome'. Yeah...I bet that was it. The fat little [poo] always released his Star Wars stuff in 'stages' to milk the fans as much as he could. Can't say I blame him...brilliant marketing that one over the years.

[(SWGO)Kren]

I know that's directed at me Krenny.

lol Princess

[Nathan_Mates]

Wow!...I was wondering how long it would take for them to figure out how utterly stupid it was to charge people for the monthly fee. But in the back of my mind I wondered...ahhhhh...George Lucas probably got a nice cut of that charge, and instructed them to cut the monthly fee 'in stages' as new accounts wore off.

I agree that TOR would have just worked fine as a single player RPG game like its predecessors. I think, however, the expensive monthly fee (aside being a staple for most MMO games) has more to do with them wanting to make money back as soon as possible to cover the cost of making one of the most expensive games ever, if TOR turned out to me a commercial failure, of course, which it didn't. And so now we have this free offer deal. But the George Lucas idea works just as well. :P

[Darth Crater]

Going free-to-play wasn't planned from the start. Here's how it worked:

The basic premise of SWTOR was, "let's make WoW, but with Star Wars." Or alternately, "let's make KOTOR into an MMO", borrowing the basic mechanics from WoW and a hundred other MMO's. Until the past few years (after development began), most major MMO's had subscription models. While other models had been tried, the subscription model was the way to do things. Naturally, they built around it.

Now, the problem was that SWTOR had absolutely huge development costs. They had a long development time, with a lot of spending. Their budget for the obscene amount of voice acting alone must have been higher than many full game budgets. Same for their marketing budget (remember those CG trailers?). Even now they're spending more money on servers and on developing new content. So, while they could make a ton of money (they had 1.7 million subscribers at launch, and have fallen just below a million now), they couldn't make enough money to cover the costs.

They were hoping for more subscribers, but ran into a combination of problems. The WoW mechanics are getting old and tired, and most people who like them are playing other MMO's already (SWTOR is basically a direct competitor with WoW - never a fun position to be in). The price tag and subscription fee put it out of the reach of casual gamers. A lot of people (like WD) wanted a different game entirely. The Star Wars name helped, but not enough.

So, SWTOR is going free-to-play for the same reason that every other MMO in existence is. They weren't making enough money, and were slowly losing players. The free-to-play model rectifies both. It attracts a much larger number of players, including more casual players and those who want to try before buying. Once attracted, the model is actually extremely good at converting those players into paying customers. It's a much better model from all perspectives than the subscription model alone, though microtransactions can certainly be abused. Basically, SWTOR is admitting that they were built on an outdated model, and changing things up in an attempt to recover losses.