ok MikeB, that's your final warning.  3 day suspension from your own website for starting a flame war.  Epic trolling for the win. :P

And seriously, after starting this, I think you owe me an appology for several banning incidents from Jul to Nov of '09 lol

Originally posted by black_isle
Yeah if it was f2p i would definitely play it, because i don't pay monthly for single player/co-op games.

Definately another reason why it would be better as a F2P or B2P. It's practically a single player/Co-Op game. No reason for me to pay 15$ a month for a game that I can just sit at home and play the old school Old Republic classics.

I don't see why there can't be both. 

I played Guild Wars, much to my regret, while also maintaining subs to a few other games at the same time.

Give me a sub based payment method any day of the week. Or if you are going to go free-to-play, follow along Turbines footsteps, the LOtRO model is pretty nice if you are inclined to grind out all there is to grind.

Originally posted by Eletheryl
Here we go again, Warhammer online and Daoc are still P2P MMOs, SWTOR have more than 1 mill of subs after almost 6 months and people talking about it need to go F2P. They have already 4 more content updates for this year and ¨a space secret Proyect¨ that is probably the 1st expansion of the game, all for this year, by the end of the year the population could rise and not go down.  Is ok guys if you dont like the game, but you should live with the facts, swtor is the most successfull MMO in the west Post WoW, like or not, that guys, is a fact.  

I'll explain it to you. Tor needed to hit a homerun, because of the money invested into it and the IP. It didn't. Tor is a big boat, but its sinking. "Oh it still has X number of subs", but how many has it lost? How far has the water risen?

The population isn't going to get better than what it was when the game was released. You know how a moive with a strong IP will do well at first and even hold its own for a bit, but then falls quickly when word of mouth gets around about it and other big name moives are released? Same thing with an MMO.

It isn't the most successfull MMO, because its faling so fast. In fact you might say its the least successfull MMO.

F2P = Massive chinese gold farming and bots. Because they have nothing to lose at that point. I see all the people bitching about server population on the boards but for the love of jesus do you really want a game where the server load is heavy because some gold farming company is paying kids for swtor credits?

Some guy posted on 4/27 that if game update 1.3 didn't come out by 5/1 he would unsubscribe from the game, THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH SWTOR. Impatient people who make unrealistic demands because they don't have a clue how a game is designed in the first place, holding the company hostage with crazy demands that lead to the company releasing updates before they are properly tested on the PTS. \

Originally posted by Skarett

 THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH SWTOR. Impatient people who make unrealistic demands because they don't have a clue how a game is designed in the first place, holding the company hostage with crazy demands that lead to the company releasing updates before they are properly tested on the PTS. \

[mod edit]

 

 

 We've moved on to this stage already have we? That's okay. Next is acceptance so you're almost there :P

The game should have been B2P, like Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. A subscription fee would be justifiable if SWTOR was an actual MMORPG but it's not. It's more of a single player game with a co-op element. Sure you see other players but there is really no need to play together and good luck finding a group for an instance.

The only thing that keeps this game relevent is the Star Wars IP. SWG conveniently shut down a few months prior to SWTOR's release, so for the fans of the IP, SWTOR is pretty much the only option.

At this point they might as well keep it as a subscription. They spent too much on it (and it wasn't even the full product they wanted it to be at launch) to make enough profit if it were B2P.

The problem is that it is designed to be "completed"(1-3 characters to 50) in the short term and very little to keep them interested. F2P or subscription revenue will suffer because of that.

As I see it should they have released the game as B2P from the beginning instead.

The game isn't really a  massive multiplayer enough to justify a monthly fee and that is the core of the problem. But what they really should do now is not to go F2P, they must instead fix up the game, and I am talking about multiplayer PvE and PvP here.

The game is a excellent sologame or a game you play with a few of your friends, but DDO already learnt the hard way that those things ain't enough to pull of monthly fees forever. And go F2P would be the easy thing to do but instead add more massive multiplayer content to the game is the right way to go instead.

It is not a bad game at all but it don't have the MMO feeling over it. They need to fix that instead of changing the payment model before it is too late. They already have all the basics working so while it is a lot of work it is possible to fix it, and I have a feeling they would win a lot more in the long run that way.

Bioware really did what they do best: a storybased game close to kotor you can play with your friends. The problem is that EA also did what they do best: which is charging as much money as they can.

Originally posted by Snikz

Im sorry, but you guys from MMORPG hailed this game and hyped it up so much that it was the biggest MMO since WoW = ?And

What happend? No more PR money from EA?

 

No the game should not go f2p, they should start makeing improvements for GFX + Performance and make much more content

 

LMAO!!!!

I think if the game is hurting then yes, change to F2P. The game is to good to allow to die.

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Ethian
TOR won't go F2P because its run by Bioware and EA. Whether it should or not doesn't really matter because its not going to happen unfortionately. You can expect them to try for as much profit as possible.

And I am arguing that going free-to-play in some form (hybrid F2P with subscription option, for example) seems like a no brainer in order to do that. Subscribers could still be given all manner of incentives to continue subscribing (see other games of this type) while also opening up the game to additional streams of revenue from free-to-play users. Even the ones who don't pay are valuable as they help fill the game worlds and make the game feel alive. This would do wonders for some of the lighter servers, for example.

I agree with you there. With all the free MMOs out now it would likely greatly benefit TOR. It may very well bring in even more profit then they are bringing in now. Question is how dedicated are the Star Wars fans playing now? If enough have been sucked into the IP then TOR will likely never go F2P IMO. Time will tell.

Lol no, every good game should be Sub based. Have you seen a super quality F2P MMORPG game yet that dosen't rely on P2W? I haven't. 

Mike, we know you think everythings going to go free to play, and we know you like free to play for whatever reason, maybe you like asian things, but I want a great quality game with constant updates and a lot of staff to be able to take care of things when needed. Have you ever used Perfect world customer service? Horrible. 

F2P is a fad that will fade. I and many others would rather pay a sub fee, instead of paying for extra bag space which we should get in the freaking first place. Remember SWG? You had 80 slots just in your bag at the start, and you had a bank on top of that. 

Why do we want to make the MMO genre worse? That is what will happen if everything goes F2P. It will get worse, and less fun. Yea you might save some money, but you won't find a quality game with more than 8 bag slots ever.