* People who bought the game have UI and gear restrictions unlocked.
* Non-subscribed players can enter into flashpoints and PvP matches but they do not gain any points. Instead all the xp and pvp currency accumulated is saved and able to be purchased from the store.
* In addition 25% of the experience earned in PvE is also taken away and placed in the store to be purchased by player. They can not buy xp they did not earn.
sounds kind of convuluted, although I like the intent. Would be much simpler to just offer xp boost consumables for sale, rather than have to keep track of earned xp converted to purchaseable xp, for each character.
Originally posted by mnwild1998 The problem is not the game. The problem is the ones who feel entitled to get everything for free. The game is fine, the f2p is what they said it would be. A game where you can play 2 different char all the way to 50. Stop this childish crap stop whining its "its not free enough" its a pathetic argument.
That whole attitude has been getting worse and worse over the last year. I'm not sure if it's because people are just getting cheap, or if the majority of MMO players are teens who don't have any real form of income, yet still want to play games. The fact that anyone complains about paying $15 a month for quite a bit of entertainment when they are probably spending $10 a day on lunches, is just weird. Complaining about something not being free enough is just silly.
I was stunned that as a returning "premium" player, I was asked which 2 of my characters I wanted to play. I didn't want to play any of my old characters, I wanted to make a new one to play a new story. Well, that required that I delete almost all of my old characters! Are you kidding? What if later I decide that I want to subscribe again....and now most of my characters are gone! What a joke.
Hence, I had to create a completely new account, which means that I'm not a "premium" or "preferred" F2P character. As such, a lot of the things I was expecting as a previous subscriber were now completely gone.
WTF!?
As a result, I think I played about 3 hours on my new character and haven't logged back in. It's just too restrictive. I was amazed that some of the quest rewards (under lvl 10) were locked! I mean, that's really really too many restrictions.
I would like to play through more characters, and would subscribe if most of the content was not the same. You get the main class story plus the side quests that all classes do. If each class had their own side quests then it would be a different matter, and worth a sub. The game is likeable to begin with, but then when you want to create more chars then it is time to unsub as going through the same quests gets boring and you find yourself logging in one or two days per month to try and forget the quests, making $15 for that too much, and need F2P, but then you don't have the slots to do so.
They really should not have concentrated on mergers / server consolidations, and certainly not F2P until more content was done. This is what SOE did with SWG, and it worked well, it kept a steady flow of people coming back to the game.
If F2P was more inviting and less restrictive. then people would have stayed more, even with no new content.
I will be able to play SWTOR again, when they let you unlock more char slots. I can not create any more in F2P, and I am not subbing, it is not worth it.
I don't know why people keep acting like SWG was doing so well. It was bleeding subs from month one, and never really recovered.
Anyway, like all games, no one is forcing you to play SWtOR. I don't understand why you being able to unlock more character slots makes any difference when you obviously don't like the game in the first place. It's like you have to contradicting criticisms here where the existence of the first (not worth playing due to game design) makes the existence of the second (too many F2P restrictions) moot.
So which is it? Do you like the game and want to be able to play it at no cost, but can't because of the restrictions are too harsh for players that don't sub? Or do you not like the game and think it's not worth playing because things like quests are the mostly the same across various classes?
I want to play it but not always, and the $15 is too much, in comparison
SOE offered a 3 day sub per month to EQ2 and that would have suited me here. Also before APB shut down and went free, they offered sub by game time, buy 20 hours and use it whenever - 5 hours in Nov + 10 hours in Dec + 5 hours in Feb - no need to play all within one month, this would have suited me too
Other MMOs with F2P make it all possible to play at minimal expense too. SWTOR does not
I like SWTOR but it is not the only MMO I play, and to pay a $15 sub to all that I play would bankrupt me, as SWTOR is so limited and EA shows no future with it, it will have to be the one that gets the chop, but if they make it more accessible and I would play it.
SWG may not have done well, but it no way bled subs as fast as SWTOR has. SWG did better overall as did not cost millions to make. SWG had its full 26 servers for 6 years, SWTOR went from 200 to 20 in 6 months.
SOE put a lot of effort into it in its final days with probably less than a tenth of the devs that SWTOR has, with actual new stuff and improvements. Making the terminal missions support BM xp was certatinly not stuff held back, that was new stuff requested from the playerbase. SWTOR devs show no signs of this kind of playerbase - dev interaction.
Originally posted by mnwild1998 The problem is not the game. The problem is the ones who feel entitled to get everything for free. The game is fine, the f2p is what they said it would be. A game where you can play 2 different char all the way to 50. Stop this childish crap stop whining its "its not free enough" its a pathetic argument.
Exactly, the game is great. I just got my ninth level 50 character and I am no way near tired fo the game. It is awesome!!!
Regarding the F2P complainers, they only do that because they cant enjoy the game as they want without paying.
Some seems to think that F2P is the ENTIRE game and then future content costs but that is no way near the case.
I am happy they put in alot of restrictions, I hear everyday somebody subscribing because they want to be able to play the way it is should be.
Even I have spent around $150 on cartelcoins eventhough I am a subscriber and I am not regretting it at all.
In life you dont get anything for free, why should you in SWTOR?
Subscribe and be a happy player like the rest of us
Originally posted by mnwild1998 The problem is not the game. The problem is the ones who feel entitled to get everything for free. The game is fine, the f2p is what they said it would be. A game where you can play 2 different char all the way to 50. Stop this childish crap stop whining its "its not free enough" its a pathetic argument.
Exactly, the game is great. I just got my ninth level 50 character and I am no way near tired fo the game. It is awesome!!!
Regarding the F2P complainers, they only do that because they cant enjoy the game as they want without paying.
Some seems to think that F2P is the ENTIRE game and then future content costs but that is no way near the case.
I am happy they put in alot of restrictions, I hear everyday somebody subscribing because they want to be able to play the way it is should be.
Even I have spent around $150 on cartelcoins eventhough I am a subscriber and I am not regretting it at all.
In life you dont get anything for free, why should you in SWTOR?
Subscribe and be a happy player like the rest of us
Because a single-player story game (essentially what SWTOR is) isn't worth $15 a month for a lot of people (look how many quit). The fully-functioning single-player story portion of the game is probably worth about $5 a month. I'd pay $5 a month to access the class story PvE game, which would exclude all "end-game" content and restrict the # of warzone matches. Instead, I got a severely restricted game experience that doesn't exceed the cost of my time playing the game (i.e., I'm better off doing almost anything else rather than the restricted PvE SWTOR experience).
If I were a subscriber, I'd want to have as many people playing as possible, in the hopes some percentage shifts to a full-paying customer, which increases revenues for EA and thus would help finance future expansions to the game. With the current set-up where the restricted playing experience doesn't even cover the cost of my time, I suspect the total number of new paying customers is really dropping.
Perhaps EA knew all this, and instead of trying to get people to convert to a full subscription, they simply hoped people would just purchase the cartel coins.
SWTOR critic: ToR going FTP in under 9 months shows that ToR is a failure.
SWTOR defender: ToR is not a failure. FTP is the wave of the future, people don't want to pay a monthly fee anymore. There are lots of great FTP games like LOTRO, AION, and even GW2.
November 16th:
SWTOR critic: ToR doesn't even have a true FTP system. You still have to sub to really play the game. This is another failure.
SWTOR defender: ToR is not a failure. FTP is never trully free. Besides, FTP is stupid, what's $15 a month? P2P has always been the true way to play a MMO. FTP is just for entitled freeloaders. SO what if ToR's FTP system isn't ike LOTRO or AION, besids, you have to spend money, $60, even on GW2.
I'm not a Vulcan, but I can say that ToR's defense over time is a bit illogical.
Considering F2P, it seems Planetside 2 has it done right as does Guild Wars 2, Aion and City of Heroes (minus NCSoft's decision to shut that down). I have no problems spending money in Planetside 2 for unlocks because they're cheaper to spend with station cash than to rack up 1000 cert points to unlock the items and then use ingame certs to upgrade the purchased items. The game is worth playing to me for now and I just purchased double station cash on black friday. I also bought a few things in City of Heroes too in the past.
TOR on the other hand, I won't even spend a penny on anything in that game, I can understand charging for character slots (that's what City of Heroes did), gear and unique looking weapons (yeah right) but what ran me off are the quickbars, title, head slot and bank access. As mentioned earlier they can be found on the GTN, but at prices F2P players simply cannot afford.
Originally posted by Kabaal It doesn't matter how it's defended, EA's version of F2P is abysmal when compared to the F2P models in pretty much every other game out there. You say people don't have the right to complain, since when did people lose the right to voice opinions on open forums?
This right here. SWTOR's F2P model is awful when compared with every other F2P game out there and we can complain as much as we like thank you very much. I'll lose the right to compain when i die and only then.
It can be awful but broken. It's ok, F2P players can buy unlocks from the auction house but the bad part in it: F2P players have credit cap and they can't buy unlocks for 350-500k when their limit is 200k. It can be solved when subscribers realize no one buy their unlocks on auction cuz other subscribers won't need unlocks and F2P-ers can't buy it due to limitations - or they should remove credit cap. If you compare STO's F2P with SWTOR you can see; STO is playable for free SWTOR not. Until they not balance the F2P-P2P player base SWTOR is a P2W game.
I would give everybody the ability to progress through content without paying a cent. Instead of forcing it upon them I'd make all paid options nothing but optional perks and go from there. You're probably thinking that the game would fail hard, right? Well, that's assuming that it's made from the same old regurgitated mold as the last 100 MMORPG'S released. You make a quality game with reasonable pricing and players will flock to it. There's really nothing else worth thinking about.
I think a good portion of you guys are insane. Stuff like the game is not the problem, people not wanting to pay is. Or the self entitlement thing. Want to know a major problem? Forum goers at swtor website, being deragatory and confrontational, trying to come up with restrictions to add themselves. Just overall douche behavior at the finest. Call the potential spenders names and stuff, hell I wonder how many people see that and just pass up the game. Not sure what it is like in game. I did the beta stuff and got to like 15 or so and then never bought the game. But if the chat in game is ever 1/8 as noxious and poisonous as most of the forum discussion then I will be beyond shocked if a large amount of people 1.)Get a membership. 2.)Spend much money on cash shop
I played today. PvP is as fun as ever, but Bioware's idea of "F2P" is totally messed up.
Why would I pay for basic UI elements??? For example.
Bioware have decided that the best way to get people to pay for their game is to give them less-than-half a product for free, and force them into buying things should they want the full deal. That's one way of doing things, I suppose, but it's certainly not the way to encourage consumers.
XFire stats are telling. Player numbers peaked on F2P launch, then declined, then rose again at the weekend, and are now declinging again. It seems to me that EA arrogantly misunderstood what a F2P game should be; hopefully they'll pay the price for that as SWTOR flops even under a F2P model.
The restrictions on the game have further posioned and MMO community that was already notorious for its cynicism and bullying. By restricting the forum to paying customers only (along with practically pointing out the people who are playing for free in game), EA Bioware have cemented a toxic atmosphere that is likely to drive customers away from - and not towards - paying for the game.
There just seems to be a lack of business sense at EA. Either that, or they genuinely believe that SWTOR is a bad product. The ONLY reason I would choose to market a game I had made in the same way EA did and have with SWTOR is if I knew the product was substandard. The funny thing is that it ISN'T substandard! With less restrictions, a more open playing field, and more content diversity, SWTOR would make a great game that I would happily pay for on one level of another. As it stands, EA are trying to bully and manipulate me into paying them, and I'm not going to do that.
Game has already been uninstalled. I'll reinstall it if they fundamentally alter the entire payment model, and add in some real, original content.
Originally posted by Kabaal It doesn't matter how it's defended, EA's version of F2P is abysmal when compared to the F2P models in pretty much every other game out there. You say people don't have the right to complain, since when did people lose the right to voice opinions on open forums?
mmmmm, it seems to me that most of the F2P games out there are bad with a few exceptions like Aion. I do not like Aion but its F2P system is great for players
To all those that say, " You have no right to complain about something that's free...."
Well......you could leave a flaming bag of poo on my porch and even though its free, I'd complain about it. " But no one is leaving anything on your porch technically. This is something you could just ignore...."
Which is true. Except they could also be offering free flaming bags of poo near the local intersection at the "Flaming Bag of Poo" stand. Would people complain about it? Yea. They'd say, " Have you seen that ridiculous stand near the interseciton trying to give out free bags of poo? Why? That's just stupid. Nobody wants that. "
What does a free flaming bag of poo have to do with Swtors F2P model? I might be tempted more to take the free flaming bag of poo thats what. In other words.......EVERYTHING.
I played today. PvP is as fun as ever, but Bioware's idea of "F2P" is totally messed up.
Why would I pay for basic UI elements??? For example.
Bioware have decided that the best way to get people to pay for their game is to give them less-than-half a product for free, and force them into buying things should they want the full deal. That's one way of doing things, I suppose, but it's certainly not the way to encourage consumers.
XFire stats are telling. Player numbers peaked on F2P launch, then declined, then rose again at the weekend, and are now declinging again. It seems to me that EA arrogantly misunderstood what a F2P game should be; hopefully they'll pay the price for that as SWTOR flops even under a F2P model.
The restrictions on the game have further posioned and MMO community that was already notorious for its cynicism and bullying. By restricting the forum to paying customers only (along with practically pointing out the people who are playing for free in game), EA Bioware have cemented a toxic atmosphere that is likely to drive customers away from - and not towards - paying for the game.
There just seems to be a lack of business sense at EA. Either that, or they genuinely believe that SWTOR is a bad product. The ONLY reason I would choose to market a game I had made in the same way EA did and have with SWTOR is if I knew the product was substandard. The funny thing is that it ISN'T substandard! With less restrictions, a more open playing field, and more content diversity, SWTOR would make a great game that I would happily pay for on one level of another. As it stands, EA are trying to bully and manipulate me into paying them, and I'm not going to do that.
Game has already been uninstalled. I'll reinstall it if they fundamentally alter the entire payment model, and add in some real, original content.
In a nutshell: EA did give up on the game, three times.
They gave up when they told the slow-poke, overspending Bioware to pare the scope of their game down in mid-development.
They gave up on the game when they set a firm x-mas 2011 release date despite the fact Bioware was still months behind from being ready to launch.
They finally gave up on the game in early spring 2012. Bioware tried playing catch-up with Groupfinder and custumizable UI. They also had a major patch release. They saw that they were still bleeding subs and decided the best course of action was more live events, and to release major content monthly.
EA said enough of that, the bleeding subs are jepordizing EA's executive positions. They canned SWTOR's management, and stockpiled the content. They annonced a cockamaney FTP system to hide sub numbers. The FTP system itself is designed to milk the die-hard fans still subscribing.
I'm not blaming EA for all of SWTOR's woes, Bioware shares that blame. I'm just saying that in the spring, EA decided to pull the plug. What you are seeing now is just an orderly retreat frm the MMO market.
I think a good portion of you guys are insane. Stuff like the game is not the problem, people not wanting to pay is. Or the self entitlement thing. Want to know a major problem? Forum goers at swtor website, being deragatory and confrontational, trying to come up with restrictions to add themselves. Just overall douche behavior at the finest. Call the potential spenders names and stuff, hell I wonder how many people see that and just pass up the game. Not sure what it is like in game. I did the beta stuff and got to like 15 or so and then never bought the game. But if the chat in game is ever 1/8 as noxious and poisonous as most of the forum discussion then I will be beyond shocked if a large amount of people 1.)Get a membership. 2.)Spend much money on cash shop
"I was on tython (I decided to play a jedi knight) and whenever a new person asked a question what was the answer they got, a insult, or a sarcastic remark. Now if I was a newcomer I would be mad, mad to the point of quitting. These are people we need to keep the game alive, but no making them mad is the better way to go so they don't play anymore."
I think it is down to the fact that the game is single player centric and people just want to play the game and not be bothered by anyone else. ergo SWTORs game design is complete failure for a MMO, and so the game is the problem.
To all those that say, " You have no right to complain about something that's free...."
Well......you could leave a flaming bag of poo on my porch and even though its free, I'd complain about it. " But no one is leaving anything on your porch technically. This is something you could just ignore...."
Which is true. Except they could also be offering free flaming bags of poo near the local intersection at the "Flaming Bag of Poo" stand. Would people complain about it? Yea. They'd say, " Have you seen that ridiculous stand near the interseciton trying to give out free bags of poo? Why? That's just stupid. Nobody wants that. "
What does a free flaming bag of poo have to do with Swtors F2P model? I might be tempted more to take the free flaming bag of poo thats what. In other words.......EVERYTHING.
Great Explanation!
Also I think these people have not played any other F2P game as F2P, and if they do play them they sub to them so just assume that they are all as restrictive in F2P.
I was stunned that as a returning "premium" player, I was asked which 2 of my characters I wanted to play. I didn't want to play any of my old characters, I wanted to make a new one to play a new story. Well, that required that I delete almost all of my old characters! Are you kidding? What if later I decide that I want to subscribe again....and now most of my characters are gone! What a joke.
Hence, I had to create a completely new account, which means that I'm not a "premium" or "preferred" F2P character. As such, a lot of the things I was expecting as a previous subscriber were now completely gone.
WTF!?
As a result, I think I played about 3 hours on my new character and haven't logged back in. It's just too restrictive. I was amazed that some of the quest rewards (under lvl 10) were locked! I mean, that's really really too many restrictions.
+1 a returned ex-subscriber; +1 a new account. Without doubt EA's F2P model will be heralded as a triumph come EA's next results!
Comments
sounds kind of convuluted, although I like the intent. Would be much simpler to just offer xp boost consumables for sale, rather than have to keep track of earned xp converted to purchaseable xp, for each character.
You make me like charity
That's why I have no opinion on the matter. The game was terrible in beta. I didn't pay a dime then, and enjoyed nothing.
Hearing that EA's locked UI options makes me happy.
Because honestly they should stay out of the market for MMOs. They do it wrong.
a yo ho ho
That whole attitude has been getting worse and worse over the last year. I'm not sure if it's because people are just getting cheap, or if the majority of MMO players are teens who don't have any real form of income, yet still want to play games. The fact that anyone complains about paying $15 a month for quite a bit of entertainment when they are probably spending $10 a day on lunches, is just weird. Complaining about something not being free enough is just silly.
You make me like charity
I was stunned that as a returning "premium" player, I was asked which 2 of my characters I wanted to play. I didn't want to play any of my old characters, I wanted to make a new one to play a new story. Well, that required that I delete almost all of my old characters! Are you kidding? What if later I decide that I want to subscribe again....and now most of my characters are gone! What a joke.
Hence, I had to create a completely new account, which means that I'm not a "premium" or "preferred" F2P character. As such, a lot of the things I was expecting as a previous subscriber were now completely gone.
WTF!?
As a result, I think I played about 3 hours on my new character and haven't logged back in. It's just too restrictive. I was amazed that some of the quest rewards (under lvl 10) were locked! I mean, that's really really too many restrictions.
I want to play it but not always, and the $15 is too much, in comparison
SOE offered a 3 day sub per month to EQ2 and that would have suited me here. Also before APB shut down and went free, they offered sub by game time, buy 20 hours and use it whenever - 5 hours in Nov + 10 hours in Dec + 5 hours in Feb - no need to play all within one month, this would have suited me too
Other MMOs with F2P make it all possible to play at minimal expense too. SWTOR does not
I like SWTOR but it is not the only MMO I play, and to pay a $15 sub to all that I play would bankrupt me, as SWTOR is so limited and EA shows no future with it, it will have to be the one that gets the chop, but if they make it more accessible and I would play it.
SWG may not have done well, but it no way bled subs as fast as SWTOR has. SWG did better overall as did not cost millions to make. SWG had its full 26 servers for 6 years, SWTOR went from 200 to 20 in 6 months.
SOE put a lot of effort into it in its final days with probably less than a tenth of the devs that SWTOR has, with actual new stuff and improvements. Making the terminal missions support BM xp was certatinly not stuff held back, that was new stuff requested from the playerbase. SWTOR devs show no signs of this kind of playerbase - dev interaction.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
SWTOR is so content light that they need to charge for odd things like hide helmet.
Imagine if we had 4 character slots, all action bars, all crew slots and maybe an increase on the credit cap and market slots.
I know I wouldnt have to give them any money for more than a year.
I would level 4 different classes to 50, put them in adaptive gear and be done with the game.
Most people would do that and the game would shut down.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Exactly, the game is great. I just got my ninth level 50 character and I am no way near tired fo the game. It is awesome!!!
Regarding the F2P complainers, they only do that because they cant enjoy the game as they want without paying.
Some seems to think that F2P is the ENTIRE game and then future content costs but that is no way near the case.
I am happy they put in alot of restrictions, I hear everyday somebody subscribing because they want to be able to play the way it is should be.
Even I have spent around $150 on cartelcoins eventhough I am a subscriber and I am not regretting it at all.
In life you dont get anything for free, why should you in SWTOR?
Subscribe and be a happy player like the rest of us
Because a single-player story game (essentially what SWTOR is) isn't worth $15 a month for a lot of people (look how many quit). The fully-functioning single-player story portion of the game is probably worth about $5 a month. I'd pay $5 a month to access the class story PvE game, which would exclude all "end-game" content and restrict the # of warzone matches. Instead, I got a severely restricted game experience that doesn't exceed the cost of my time playing the game (i.e., I'm better off doing almost anything else rather than the restricted PvE SWTOR experience).
If I were a subscriber, I'd want to have as many people playing as possible, in the hopes some percentage shifts to a full-paying customer, which increases revenues for EA and thus would help finance future expansions to the game. With the current set-up where the restricted playing experience doesn't even cover the cost of my time, I suspect the total number of new paying customers is really dropping.
Perhaps EA knew all this, and instead of trying to get people to convert to a full subscription, they simply hoped people would just purchase the cartel coins.
So in a nutshell:
August 2nd:
SWTOR critic: ToR going FTP in under 9 months shows that ToR is a failure.
SWTOR defender: ToR is not a failure. FTP is the wave of the future, people don't want to pay a monthly fee anymore. There are lots of great FTP games like LOTRO, AION, and even GW2.
November 16th:
SWTOR critic: ToR doesn't even have a true FTP system. You still have to sub to really play the game. This is another failure.
SWTOR defender: ToR is not a failure. FTP is never trully free. Besides, FTP is stupid, what's $15 a month? P2P has always been the true way to play a MMO. FTP is just for entitled freeloaders. SO what if ToR's FTP system isn't ike LOTRO or AION, besids, you have to spend money, $60, even on GW2.
I'm not a Vulcan, but I can say that ToR's defense over time is a bit illogical.
Considering F2P, it seems Planetside 2 has it done right as does Guild Wars 2, Aion and City of Heroes (minus NCSoft's decision to shut that down). I have no problems spending money in Planetside 2 for unlocks because they're cheaper to spend with station cash than to rack up 1000 cert points to unlock the items and then use ingame certs to upgrade the purchased items. The game is worth playing to me for now and I just purchased double station cash on black friday. I also bought a few things in City of Heroes too in the past.
TOR on the other hand, I won't even spend a penny on anything in that game, I can understand charging for character slots (that's what City of Heroes did), gear and unique looking weapons (yeah right) but what ran me off are the quickbars, title, head slot and bank access. As mentioned earlier they can be found on the GTN, but at prices F2P players simply cannot afford.
Apparently, u havent played turbine`s lotro
u grind mobs (100/200/300) to earn cashshop point aka turbine pts to purchase cashshop items.
That is also one of the reason lotro was succesfull due to the ability to grind to buy cashshop items
It can be awful but broken. It's ok, F2P players can buy unlocks from the auction house but the bad part in it: F2P players have credit cap and they can't buy unlocks for 350-500k when their limit is 200k. It can be solved when subscribers realize no one buy their unlocks on auction cuz other subscribers won't need unlocks and F2P-ers can't buy it due to limitations - or they should remove credit cap. If you compare STO's F2P with SWTOR you can see; STO is playable for free SWTOR not. Until they not balance the F2P-P2P player base SWTOR is a P2W game.
I think a good portion of you guys are insane. Stuff like the game is not the problem, people not wanting to pay is. Or the self entitlement thing. Want to know a major problem? Forum goers at swtor website, being deragatory and confrontational, trying to come up with restrictions to add themselves. Just overall douche behavior at the finest. Call the potential spenders names and stuff, hell I wonder how many people see that and just pass up the game. Not sure what it is like in game. I did the beta stuff and got to like 15 or so and then never bought the game. But if the chat in game is ever 1/8 as noxious and poisonous as most of the forum discussion then I will be beyond shocked if a large amount of people 1.)Get a membership. 2.)Spend much money on cash shop
I played today. PvP is as fun as ever, but Bioware's idea of "F2P" is totally messed up.
Why would I pay for basic UI elements??? For example.
Bioware have decided that the best way to get people to pay for their game is to give them less-than-half a product for free, and force them into buying things should they want the full deal. That's one way of doing things, I suppose, but it's certainly not the way to encourage consumers.
XFire stats are telling. Player numbers peaked on F2P launch, then declined, then rose again at the weekend, and are now declinging again. It seems to me that EA arrogantly misunderstood what a F2P game should be; hopefully they'll pay the price for that as SWTOR flops even under a F2P model.
The restrictions on the game have further posioned and MMO community that was already notorious for its cynicism and bullying. By restricting the forum to paying customers only (along with practically pointing out the people who are playing for free in game), EA Bioware have cemented a toxic atmosphere that is likely to drive customers away from - and not towards - paying for the game.
There just seems to be a lack of business sense at EA. Either that, or they genuinely believe that SWTOR is a bad product. The ONLY reason I would choose to market a game I had made in the same way EA did and have with SWTOR is if I knew the product was substandard. The funny thing is that it ISN'T substandard! With less restrictions, a more open playing field, and more content diversity, SWTOR would make a great game that I would happily pay for on one level of another. As it stands, EA are trying to bully and manipulate me into paying them, and I'm not going to do that.
Game has already been uninstalled. I'll reinstall it if they fundamentally alter the entire payment model, and add in some real, original content.
mmmmm, it seems to me that most of the F2P games out there are bad with a few exceptions like Aion. I do not like Aion but its F2P system is great for players
To all those that say, " You have no right to complain about something that's free...."
Well......you could leave a flaming bag of poo on my porch and even though its free, I'd complain about it. " But no one is leaving anything on your porch technically. This is something you could just ignore...."
Which is true. Except they could also be offering free flaming bags of poo near the local intersection at the "Flaming Bag of Poo" stand. Would people complain about it? Yea. They'd say, " Have you seen that ridiculous stand near the interseciton trying to give out free bags of poo? Why? That's just stupid. Nobody wants that. "
What does a free flaming bag of poo have to do with Swtors F2P model? I might be tempted more to take the free flaming bag of poo thats what. In other words.......EVERYTHING.
In a nutshell: EA did give up on the game, three times.
They gave up when they told the slow-poke, overspending Bioware to pare the scope of their game down in mid-development.
They gave up on the game when they set a firm x-mas 2011 release date despite the fact Bioware was still months behind from being ready to launch.
They finally gave up on the game in early spring 2012. Bioware tried playing catch-up with Groupfinder and custumizable UI. They also had a major patch release. They saw that they were still bleeding subs and decided the best course of action was more live events, and to release major content monthly.
EA said enough of that, the bleeding subs are jepordizing EA's executive positions. They canned SWTOR's management, and stockpiled the content. They annonced a cockamaney FTP system to hide sub numbers. The FTP system itself is designed to milk the die-hard fans still subscribing.
I'm not blaming EA for all of SWTOR's woes, Bioware shares that blame. I'm just saying that in the spring, EA decided to pull the plug. What you are seeing now is just an orderly retreat frm the MMO market.
Nutty nutshell over.
According to this thread on the official forums:- This game needs to die!
it is just as bad in game
"I was on tython (I decided to play a jedi knight) and whenever a new person asked a question what was the answer they got, a insult, or a sarcastic remark. Now if I was a newcomer I would be mad, mad to the point of quitting. These are people we need to keep the game alive, but no making them mad is the better way to go so they don't play anymore."
I think it is down to the fact that the game is single player centric and people just want to play the game and not be bothered by anyone else. ergo SWTORs game design is complete failure for a MMO, and so the game is the problem.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Great Explanation!
Also I think these people have not played any other F2P game as F2P, and if they do play them they sub to them so just assume that they are all as restrictive in F2P.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Another good post on the official forums - "Free to Play - Feeling the Failure":
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=561643
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
FYI - That thread was deleted before the googe-bots even got to it.
It's absolutely hilarious that they're deleting thread with constructive criticism in so aggressively.
That's not likely to make things worse at all. I mean... it's worked SO WELL in the past for them!
Morons.
+1 a returned ex-subscriber; +1 a new account. Without doubt EA's F2P model will be heralded as a triumph come EA's next results!