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Is it possible to unlock all content without real cash?
BrokenSilence
Member UncommonPosts: 321
Hello everyone,
I've never played SWTOR before but I'm a big fan of Star Wars. I was considering downloading the game and giving it a go. I was curious if you could unlock all the content without spending cash?
Comments
If by "content" you mean story content, everything up to the expansions is free and fully accessible without spending money. For expansions, I suggest to wait until you get a character that can do them. The are elder content pass level 50, so depending how fast you go through the story stuff you won't need them for a little while and last year they actually made the first expansion free for subs and it is cheaper to sub for a month than to buy them.
Nowadays it's $20 to get both expansions at once. http://www.swtor.com/buy
As for the restrictions you'll be facing as preferred: http://www.swtor.com/free/features
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
What they said.
Also, to directly answer the question, I'm pretty sure there's no way to get cartel coins by doing stuff in the game.
There's a number of QoL limitations in the free game as well. The ones described above, and the one that sticks in my craw, limited quickslots. If you're not willing to spend at least a few bucks by, say, level 20-ish, TOR life is gonna be a PitA.
The devs have made it very clear that they designed the system to where subbing is definitely the best way to go, and I think they hit that mark. Practically, the sub level 20 experience is on par with, say, Lotro, in terms of limitations. The big difference being that there's no ingame means to grind for points to buy away those limitations that become more and more an issue as you level.
Funny thing is, I think he posted the very same question for LotRO a few days ago, and based on that probably there will be a STO one as well
As for the question, OP, I don't think so. If you mean unlock everything, then it's defintely no (some unlocks used to appear on GTN but even if you're extremely lucky and manage to catch all of them below your credit cap, there are still subscriber-only stuff you can't unlock). If you strictly mean the content (expansions)... I still don't think so.
You can get CC from the game through the Legacy system, but that's limited, not unlimited like in LotRO's case (or STO's, if you'll ask in there too
) For example, if you unlock something on Trooper, it doesn't matter if you delete and create a new one, you won't get the CC for the second time. So, with a massive grind you maybe can gather enough CCs for one expansion, but to be honest, haven't done the math so can't say for certain. Though the grind would be massive. Or Massive, with a capital M.
Agree. Would also add that many (most) unlocks are uncommon on the AH; consequently even if they are affordable you would also need to "check often and be lucky".
However as said you don't need to buy anything in order to play through the first 50 levels. And if you want to continue beyond that you can decide then.
You can get the CC reward multiple times by doing it on different servers (since the reward is awarded to a Legacy, which is only server based).
But it's a rather tiresome process for measly amounts of CC. And you can't get the expansions with it since they aren't on the CM, only on the website. You can use them to eliminate some of the restrictions though.
Doing it on multiple servers would get you several thousand CC though, but in exchange for a huge time investment. (You get 20CC per Chapter finished per unique Class IIRC. Along with a few other rewards for doing things like gaining a certain PvP rank)
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Yeah, you can unlock all the crafting slots with CC. You still won't be able to queue up items when crafting, but you'll be able to have three different skills. (Don't even need the queueing thing if you're only going for gathering/trading skills like scavenging and underworld trading)
And yep, the referral works for everyone that hasn't used one yet. As a former sub you'll get 7 days of sub time in addition to the unlocks that actual new recruits get. I get CC for referrals that sub.
Friends of Swtor rewards & info
Edit: Forgot to answer the part about the quest rewards. Nope, you won't be able to get the credit boxes that come as quest rewards, but you'll be able to get the rest. The credit boxes are supposed to be a little extra for subs I guess.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
LOL,
Everything should be FREE FREE FREE!!! Asking for a sub is a rip!
also if you can get a security token you will get a small amount of cartel coins each month.. they can be used to unlock stuff... But it is a glacier slow way of doing it.
My opinion... Run the free content and then if you still like the game... Buy the things you like/need. It will still not run you much more then a few nights on the town or a movie or two.
This have been a good conversation
This!
Game creators should be forced to spend millions of their money to make a game then nobody should be expected to pay for it!
I got a throne, artifact unlocks, races, couple of speeders, all kinds of passes and other unlocks I don't remember on a completely F2P account. The throne was like 1.5 million... lol @ impossible to buy. But after I played 500+ warzones the game became boring.
Then you weren't f2p. The cap is around 200k for f2p, and 350k for preferred. You get credits in escrow (spillover credits), but you can't use them unless you subscribe (from what i remember).
That seems like a massive grind for cartel coins. Can f2p even get an active Legacy? From what i remember, it was limited to preferred status and subscribers.
Nope, I was F2P. You just don't know what I know.
I suggest you look at escrow unlock tokens on the GTN and then come back and say how you were wrong about not being able to unlock all the rooms for your house. . . .
. . . I've done it as preferred on all of my mansions. . .
Don't quote what you remember as current fact. . . this way you won't be wrong all the time. . .
Escrow is why I said in my earlier post "if you get the credits". However the OP should not go away with the opinion that "it is possible":
Unlocks in general are "uncommon" on the AH. If they are listed at all prices are usually - not always but usually - very high. This wasn't always the way things were but it has been for a while now.
The prospect of purchasing escrow unlocks within the credit cap of a pure f2p player - if you even see them - zero (technically not true but ...). And remember the escrow unlocks - you probably need more than one - are simply the tools to enable you to buy an actual unlock.
You can enjoy the story to 50 however without buying anything..
The "truth" is which company do you think really did it right? I'd say the one that makes you spend some money, giving your game away totally for free is pretty much illogical.
Which is one reason why EA is doing well financially with SWTOR ...... you have to find a way to part people from their money
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Game creators have every right to recover their costs and make a profit. There are different ways to do this, one is to work out an appropriate price and sell the game at that price.
Consumers have the right to know what they are getting and should be able to get it for a "fair price". This is not mandatory however but unhappy consumers hurt profits.
The problem with subscriptions is that they are no longer seen as "fair". The actual running of a game is "relatively" inexpensive: games like GW1, GW2, etc. couldn't exist if this wasn't so.
An interesting question is: did Blizzard benefit or lose out - financially - by not releasing any content for 14 months. For sure they saved on development costs but over time they "lost" 3M+ subscribers. Some would have gone anyway but if each subscriber who left spent 1 more month in game and 50% of the 3M were US/EU then that's $22M. .
In fact in many cases having a sub is a very bad business model for companies. People get lots of content for the price of a month or twos sub. Contrast that with what TSW does now for example. People buy the game; if they want to get the extra content they buy that as well. Not free but no sub.
I really need to remind you what you said?
"you cant use credits held in escrow unless you subscribe"
care to flip-flop again on the issue?
The cash model for this game breaks down in simplest terms as such.
If you want to play for the story, and get your KoToR kick, then just download and play the game as-is. Enjoy the story, and deal with the minor hindrances like no purples, no hide helmet, no color matching, limited bar space (Which is less detrimental since the new expansion removed a lot of abilities that were less meaningful outside of certain class specs), and restricted crafting and quest rewards/xp.
If you want to play the game as a true MMO, specifically end-game oriented content. Then you MUST pay a sub. Not necessarily every month. But you must sub to unlock features, like unlimited dungeons/raids, use of purple gear, unlocked credit cap, and full crafting access. As well as the expansion content of course. What many people do, is they sub for a fewmonths, use the cartel coins from the sub to buy unlocks and use up their credits on crafting/consumables/miscellaneous stuff needed for PvP or PvE for awhile. Then they remove the sub for a month and continue to play with some minor restrictions and use of PvP or PvE weekly passes. Then resub as needed/desired.
So while many will snub TOR for it's not necessarily "true" f2p model. The fact is, you don't have to stay subbed the entire time you're playing it like WoW either. Play the game for awhile subbed, get unlocks and weekly passes, then unsub for awhile. Rinse and repeat as needed. A friend of mine played subbed for three months, and unlocked and bought enough passes and such to last him two months before he had to resub to continue end-game content.
you can get pretty far in terms of unlocks if you get a subscription for at least a couple of months, save up credits for unlocks like crazy to buy on the GTN and use your cartel coin sub alotment for unlocks you want, but don´t see on sale.
my preferred account is almost free of restrictions but I still need to buy the latest expansion
That's what I ment too by "limited", after OP is done for example the Trooper intro on every server, then it's over, no more CCs from that.
LotRO doesn't have such cap. At one of Sapience's hobbit-to-Isengard event they said it's a visible number on that charts now, the folks who are playing totally free, and that's why Turbine is trying to tweak the rewards, putting less TPs into the late expansions and quest packs, etc. In LotRO the only cap is your time, if a no-lif... errr I mean a student for example (
) is willing to spend a month for farming, especially if finds a group of like-minded folks for company, they can make 500 TP in a day easily, in a few hours... that's $5, if they're doing it for 20-25 days, that's 100-125 bucks worth of TPs, with that they can unlock most of the game.
My bad on the second part, I forgot that Hutt Cartel and Revan are not in the Store
so OP, even if you grind for months, you can't have those without real cash. It's better to start coughing up some right at the start instead 
Starting as free is indeed terrible - a lot of misinformation in F2P related threads concerning SWTOR comes from people starting as totally free and concluding that the "F2P model sux". You want to sub for 1 month so that you get both preferred status and a decent level up experience. Before that though, search for a guild with serious mature people, that's very important to live a good free life in the game.
I have not played since 55 (i did everything in game multiple times so i was bored) so this might be a bit outdated, but if I were to start fresh on a new server, that's how I'd do it:
In your sub month, level, level, level (if you can do two classes to 50, that would be excellent), From that point, you just start doing dailies and buying unlocks from the GTN. You get A TON of credits by just running really quick dailies. Almost every unlock in the game can be bought from GTN (auction house). With your initial credits buy account versions for Sector X unlocks and for the gear unlocks.
The credits cap, this is the most annoying thing but spending money on escrow unlocks is not how you ideally do it. For this you use:
Method 1: find an item with a lot of vendor value and buy that off GTN when you are close to reach your 350k cap limit (i' remember i had a bank full of some useless mineral with high vendor value, which sold on the GTN close or sometimes under that value) When you want some unlock, you pass the stacks of items to a friend with a sub, he sells the stacks to some vendor and buys the item for you.
Method 2: make a good friend in a guild, a guy who is subbed and ask him to make an alt which acts as your "bank". When you need something about the credits limit, you just ask your friend to buy it for you.
After this, you'll have just to spend money on expansions (usually they are cheap), the other limitations are really not restrictive. I've subbed for two months (the first one as i've posted above and a second one when Makeb expansion was launched and it was 20 bucks if you were not subbed and 10 bucks if you were subbed, which made it a 25 bucks expansion and 1 month sub - good deal) and had everything I ever wanted from GTN.