EA shutting down SW:TOR in 5...4...3...2

Ok, probably not yet, but I can assure you that the "Bottom Line Nazis" looking at profitability are watching TOR like vultures a dying animal in the desert. EA cant afford to have a black-hole moneypit running for long. And with the bond-market about to blow they are stuck between a rock and a hard place for money. I wouldnt be surprised if EA files for bankrupcy within 2 years.

ea/bioware got their deserved coming for this game.

If TOR goes full FTP,  should SOE try and negotiate with LA's for a new license to do the same with SWG and bring it back full FTP as well. Having two games that span the different era's that are FTP would be a win win for the SW franchise i think.

That would be great if they went FTP!  I no longer sub to anything with so many good FTP titles out there.  SWTOR was my last sub ever, and I quit after about the second month. I will definately come back with a FTP model, as long as it isn't too locked down.

Originally posted by Cetra

ea/bioware got their deserved coming for this game.

The game is already an huge success, you know?, some haters still didnt notice that swtor is the most successful p2p MMO post-wow. The deal with a f2p mode like AoC, lotro or STO, is if swtor go that way they gonna earn an insane amount of money unprecedented in the MMO history, BW know it and EA know it, But it wont happen anytime soon, what we will see is a shop like warhammer online, or even wow, where people can buy fluflly things etc. SWTOR is still the most populated MMO but WoW, dont know how people can call that a fail.

Originally posted by Paragus1

Originally posted by Illyssia

SWTOR is looking good here, heck, it's Star Wars folks! 

People are still clinging to this?  The same game with any other name and it would have been dead a few months ago.

 

Well, with over a million subs the game isn't a dead one. Likely the server merging will actually bump the numbers up, especially as there is a big game patch coming in next week or two.

I might even try it if it goes f2p.

Looks like they pulled the article at GamesTM.....

.....the plot thickens.  

Originally posted by zinger71
I already have a paid sub and don't logon. How will this will change this for me?

It probably won't, but it will likely bring in a lot of people. Like I've said many times, SWTOR is not currently up to the standards necessary to make it a worthwhile p2p game. It's just not. It's got a (supposedly) wonderful story, but that only entertains you for a short time, and afterward everyone is inevitably left feeling bored. F2P suits the game far more, gives people a chance to play and experience that story, get invested in the game, and since they're not paying for it they're more likely to continue logging in and populating the areas, even if only for a short amount of time throughout the week, than if they felt obligated to due to monthly fees. 

SWToR is really not a great P2P game, but as an F2P it would be one of the best in its market. A larger population would have access to the game because the barrier of entry is gone, a cash shop would get some income flow and hopefully it would stabilize the game and developers enough that they can focus on creating in-depth, additional content rather than the tripe they've been releasing for it up to this point.

In my honest opinion, they should close up shop before considering going F2P.

I dont think this has to deal with the quality of the game, but a (major) shift in the MMORPG industry.  With AAA tiltes like GW2 going B2P/F2P it will be hard for *any* MMORPG to compete with a subscription based model.

Its not just the money being pumped out, as many can pay (multiple) 20/month without batting an eye. I feel its coming down value.  With a monthly sub (at least for me) there is this commitment to play every day or for most days in a month to get your 'value' for the monthly fee you are paying.  If you only get to play 2-3 days one month due to real life, work, family, etc you start to feel like you 'wasted' that 20 dollars.  That starts the general decision process should you cancel or not.  Would this sub be better with another MMO, etc.

F2P started out as crappy Asian-themed titles.  Fun, but not as polished as the sub-based games.  Now as their quality improves and begin to offer experiences people want to play its very hard to leave that and then start paying for something else.

Case in point.  It was very easy to pre-purchase GW2 without even seeing it (though I did my research) because even if I hated the game after two months I would have got my 60 dollars worth out of it.  And even better I could return a year later and see whats new.  I dont feel obligated to play or forced to enjoy it.

Now on the flip side I am beta testing the Secret World which has actually surprised me, though I feel the combat is lacking.  But its a lot HARDER to decide if I will sub and play this game.  Where if it was F2P I would have pre-purchased it as well.

Perhaps its because I come from the console side of the house, where I'm used to buying a game then just playing it.  I dont even have XBOX Live because I dont play online that often, it would be a 'waste'

Now some claim "You pay more money without a sub, they nickel and dime you in the Cash shop"  Pay to Win is subjective on what you believe 'winning' is in a game.  Even if you could buy ultra-uber sword of power in the cash shop, what someone else does really doesnt have an effect on MY gameplay.  Though can understand it may upset others.  In terms of regular cash shops never use them and even if *I* did, I still would spend less than the 180\year a sub would cost me.

In terms of SWTOR, I had a 3-month sub and purchased day1.  Stopped playing 30 days later. 20 days after that unsubbed.  If it went F2P I would play all 8 stories.  I think others would too.

Outside of my opinion above, I do believe the shift is continuing and we will see more games investigating how to move to F2P while remaining profitable at the same time.

I had bought this game a long time ago if it was buy to play(B2P)

Originally posted by Illyssia
...

 

SWTOR is a very good game and all Bioware have stated is that they are looking into F2P options. An endless trial is a F2P option for example. However, what would be really cool would be 1-49 F2P and 50 as small sub, with DLC expansions at a small purchase cost. SWTOR is looking good here, heck, it's Star Wars folks! 

Well I spotted the sarcastic tone!

It was the last line that tipped me off... then I LOLed.

Who said that anyway?

"..., heck, it's Star Wars folks! "

was it a reviewer here in MMORPG.com?

if people thought SOE was bad with their F2P model

just wait till EA tries it lmao

On one of these forums, I am not sure if it was her or Masively, someone put up a document  from a survey that Bioware did on the upcoming expansion, and was asking different price points for thier next expansion, which some feel might be free, but by the looks of the survey they are trying to squeexe the max amount of money out of the derailing train, so how does this relate to F2P...

I think going F2P will garner them the most money out of the expansion, with the cost being probably around 29.99, with a cash shop for cosmetics (Look like your favorite Star Wars characters-which was mentioned in the survey)...

Let's say for the sake of argument that the current player subscriber is between 500,000 and a mil ( I don't think they are over a mil currently, no matter what fanbois want to argue) and most of those players are really on life support, so if they release an expansion, they will make very little money with the current playerbase (maybe 25% will actually purchase it) or they will have to give it away free because people want some sort of reason to come back to the game...

If they were a good company, they would admit that things didn't start out quite the way they wanted, drop the current cost of subscription, fix the game, and give the expansion  away free and then reboot subscription like Final Fantasy did...

If they did that, sure, they wouldn't male any money, but a lot of us might just forgive them and come back because the game would have new content, new races, and a lot of people to play with, because a lot of us genuinely wanted to like this game and make it our next big game to run with friends for the next few years, but the suits at EA/Bioware refused to think of us as a community but as dollar bills...

So as dollar bills, they will not fix the game and give us free content as a way of saying thanks, but instea, they will diguise a pig with lipstick and say "Hey, look its a free 2 play pig"....

By going F2p, it opens up the cash shop, brings in a few million players, and now that they have the hamsters in the cage, they drop the xp pack for  different prices (ala LOTRO) and stuff it with cosmetic purchases to make a cash grab from all those new F2P players, while...

Underneath, the game is still a broken mess...

They are not going the DDO, LOTRO route, but the DCU route..

Make megaservers, go F2p, and sell expansion packs after xp pack of powers that should have been in the game to begin with, or are just a rehash of effect blooms that were already in the game while still not fixing the glaring problems with the game...

Don't let them fool you, F2P is the only way they can continue to make profit off this game. They don'y care about the playerbase, period.

I wouldn't play this steaming pile of poo if they paid me to play it. It's a terrible game for having supposedly having $150 million invested into it. Such a waste of money. Hell, they should have donated that money to a noble cause if they were just going to create a horrid mess of a game like they did. And this coming from an avid Star Wars fan. May the Force NOT be with you, BioWare.

Originally posted by Razeekster

I wouldn't play this steaming pile of poo if they paid me to play it. It's a terrible game for having supposedly having $150 million invested into it.  

 Not having a sub would place this game more into the catagory it should be in, a single player RPG with multi player online capabilities.

As a SRPG SWTOR is a great game, as an MMO...not even close...so, not having to pay to play it makes it worth it.

I still remember the arrogance of the devs:
- No preorder for certain European countries at start
- Vanishing cancel subscription button
- Bans for people who found certain dumb game mechanics
- Bribes in the form of founder titles if you bought another month of subscription (lol didn't give a damn about people who followed the game from the start)

...

BW or EA I don't care they made the most expensive piece of cr.. to date.
I only hope that they are a little humbled now and that they will finally grasp the concept: the customer is always right

.. or maybe not.

p.s. Oh I almost forgot: thank you fanb...s, you really helped the game to become what it is today.

I was in the closed beta, played for a few hours, and quit, even though it was free.

If they went F2P, I would probably download it, and play a few more hours ...