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.
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
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Buy to play atleast. It's not like you are socializing in that game if you don't have friends playing it, i do have friend playing it since 1 month ago. It's not really worth a monthly subscription.
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.
I dont believe this game coudl survive being f2p, EA wants money money money, they covet the wow money sadly this product isnt going to do it. I can see this game shutting down before going f2p ala tabula rasa style. "Hi folks swtor is shutting down, here's a free copy of the sims 1, have a good day"
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
Id like to add also thatpeople are not impatient by demanding game improvements. They are taking subscription money and if peopel arent satisfied they shouldnt just keep paying those sub fees and hope it gets better. Dollars are just too hard to come by for most nowadays
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
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.
BioWare had all the tools to make SWTOR fantastic. They didn't. I played for 4 months before quitting. Sure I expected there to be bugs at launch, even expected serious bugs. Bioware developers ignored the important aspects of the game, i.e. bosses actually working properly... and instead focused more on optional features that really had no impact on player happiness. Nothing could make me go back to SWTOR, nothing.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is fine the way it is. In my honest opinion, it is the best MMORPG on the market today and I will be playing it for years to come. Its the game I always dreamed Star Wars Galaxies was going to be, but never was due to technology restrictions of the time. I am very happy with this game. I guess its like they say, "Haters gonna hate".
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
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.
The cost for regular and DE are already cheap, I think EA is and will keep lowering the price down and make all they can from digital/box sales. Doubt they go free to play anytime soon. Main reason is Bioware would have no clue how to do it very quickly. They stated that they knew players playing would go down and servers would be lower but had nothing in place to alleviate the problem? I think BW are just in over their heads, I mean they couldn't even give high level characters to us in beta for more than a couple of days, they kept breaking stuff and lots of stuff was borked on the characters, so they took the back. They can't get them right for public test servers live, probably for the same reasons, they do not know how.
It's sad to see the game going down like it is, but BW's lack of knowledge and experience with mmo's, coupled with huge egos makes for a disaster ..SWTOR. It's fine for a single player game, but in the end you will have a niche game where only extremely casual players and Star Wars/Bioware fans will stay loyal to it. I would have liked to have seen it succeed, I think we need variety in mmo's to keep game companies on their toes, working hard to keep us as customers. It's a win for us all.
I love the Star Wars genre, but I don't care if BW paid me to play SWTOR, I still wouldn't . SWTOR is a pitiful excuse for pvp, mmo, and especially Star Wars. Until BW realizes its more important to stay true to the canon that made Star Wars what it is instead of being greedy, SWTOR will always be a fail in my book.
There is a huge difference between being profitable and being greedy.
+1
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
*Shrugs* Only if they find that they can make more money by being free to play. I don't think it matters if subs will drop for certain or not all that matters is the bottom line of how they can make the game viable to continue to run it and improve the game.
Further if we are going to invoke gaming experience as a reason why they should or shouldn't do something let's atleast use a game that is out, you mention GW2 as a AAA b2p title but the game isn't even out yet so we can't say what kind of experience it will provide overall especially considering this site was flooded with less than stellar reviews of peoples experience beta testing the game.
Star Wars is a big deal in America, but it's just not that big in Europe. Man, I sure know that I could never even get into the movies, so I doubt an MMORPG would be any better for me. So no, I wouldn't try it if it was F2P, it just doesn't appeal to me, nor does the story-missions where you see an entire film before doing anything.
I see the game as a niche, due to it's "spacy" theme, I might be wrong, but then again, who is going to read this and prove me wrong lol..
I dont pay for cheap carnival attractions that just nickel and dime you to death which is all ftp games are.
Only way i would ever go back to swtor is if they finally made the game play fun. Balanced the classes, specs, and roles. Not playing to be three diffrent flavors of dps.
Till then the game is not worth playing free or not.
There is a f2p trend becasue the new p2p games have been bad.
People expect a p2p game to be better than a f2p game. P2p games need to step their game up. If they make a good game 15 bucks isn't a problem.
SWTOR is the first mmo I played that I said to myself "I'm not giving them another 15 bucks. It's not worth it." It's the first game that I ever canceled. I always just let my time run out.
Make a good game and charge me a sub imo.
That's far too general statement to make, though, considering for every single P2P MMO out there, there are people who find it worth the subscription fee. This includes MMOs as recent as Rift, and as old as Dark Age of Camelot or Final Fantasy XI.
What it boils down to is if there's enough people paying a sub for the game to continue being supported and developed.
There's also this trend I notice from people who will insist that no game they play is worth a $15 sub fee where, at the end of the day, they're just blowing hot air because what they really want is to play a game they enjoy for free.
Case in point, Final Fantasy XIV. We all know the train-wreck that game was at launch. Still there are people who stuck with it, leveling up their classes, completing content and what-not. For all its flaws and shortcomings, they still enjoyed it enough to keep going. They continued to play when subs were disabled, and they continued to when subs were reinstated. The thing about these people, though, is that they complained and insisted for months that the game was not worth a subscription fee.
Further, these people were outright indignant and outraged when SE announced they were reinstating Subs. They insisted they (and everyone they knew) would quit the game when subs were activated because no matter how much they played the game, it was not worth paying a sub fee. It just wasn't "finished enough". It's "still a beta", and so on. They argued and protested and threatened in post after post in thread after thread on the official forums.
Meanwhile, they kept playing.
Interestingly enough, but not at all surprisingly, many of those very same people are still posting on the official forums, which means they have, in fact, subscribed to the game. You can't post to the official forums unless you have an active account and at least one character. Now their arguments are "if SE don't fix "x, y and z" then they'll be canceling their subscription. Of course, they'll still be there months from now, making the same threats.
So is the game worth a subscription fee for those people? Despite all their arguments that it's not, obviously it is. They're subscribed.
So what was all their fussing and huffing and threats for? Simple. They wanted to play the game for free. That's it.
The point is, most times when I see people claiming that a given game isn't good enough to charge a sub or isn't worth a sub-fee, what I'm really seeing is someone basically saying "I like this game enough to play it, and will pay a sub fee, but I'd rather not. So maybe if I make a big enough fuss and complain..."
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.
It will be like Warhammer
sub plus a cash shop with perhaps free trial for low levels. (WAR cash shop has P2W items btw)
maybe some stupid Star wars Moba with cartoon graphics while they're at it.
Companies should realize that $15 a month to play a game is a rip. I buy a game and they want me to spend $180 a year to keep playing. That's 4 months mobile phone bills for me and I'd rather clear that first.
There is still a place for p2p mmo's but I think they are charging too much. How many more players would stick with a game if it was $5 a month? Alot more than what they have now I bet.
Comments
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.
[mod edit]We've moved on to this stage already have we? That's okay. Next is acceptance so you're almost there :P
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
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.
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
GRIND DOES NOT EQUAL MAKING A GAME CHALLENGING!! YES I AM YELLING LOL
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.
LMAO!!!!
I think if the game is hurting then yes, change to F2P. The game is to good to allow to die.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
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.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
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.
(-_-)
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
lol thanks for the laugh
btw fix the "many of them" to "one of them".
There are simply a number of high-profile MMO releases coming this year and many of them are going in the F2P/hybrid F2P direction
The cost for regular and DE are already cheap, I think EA is and will keep lowering the price down and make all they can from digital/box sales. Doubt they go free to play anytime soon. Main reason is Bioware would have no clue how to do it very quickly. They stated that they knew players playing would go down and servers would be lower but had nothing in place to alleviate the problem? I think BW are just in over their heads, I mean they couldn't even give high level characters to us in beta for more than a couple of days, they kept breaking stuff and lots of stuff was borked on the characters, so they took the back. They can't get them right for public test servers live, probably for the same reasons, they do not know how.
It's sad to see the game going down like it is, but BW's lack of knowledge and experience with mmo's, coupled with huge egos makes for a disaster ..SWTOR. It's fine for a single player game, but in the end you will have a niche game where only extremely casual players and Star Wars/Bioware fans will stay loyal to it. I would have liked to have seen it succeed, I think we need variety in mmo's to keep game companies on their toes, working hard to keep us as customers. It's a win for us all.
http://store.origin.com/store/ea/html/pbPage.SWTOR_NA?easid=Origin-SWTOR_Web_Hero_BuyNow
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
+1
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
*Shrugs* Only if they find that they can make more money by being free to play. I don't think it matters if subs will drop for certain or not all that matters is the bottom line of how they can make the game viable to continue to run it and improve the game.
Further if we are going to invoke gaming experience as a reason why they should or shouldn't do something let's atleast use a game that is out, you mention GW2 as a AAA b2p title but the game isn't even out yet so we can't say what kind of experience it will provide overall especially considering this site was flooded with less than stellar reviews of peoples experience beta testing the game.
Star Wars is a big deal in America, but it's just not that big in Europe. Man, I sure know that I could never even get into the movies, so I doubt an MMORPG would be any better for me. So no, I wouldn't try it if it was F2P, it just doesn't appeal to me, nor does the story-missions where you see an entire film before doing anything.
I see the game as a niche, due to it's "spacy" theme, I might be wrong, but then again, who is going to read this and prove me wrong lol..
I dont pay for cheap carnival attractions that just nickel and dime you to death which is all ftp games are.
Only way i would ever go back to swtor is if they finally made the game play fun. Balanced the classes, specs, and roles. Not playing to be three diffrent flavors of dps.
Till then the game is not worth playing free or not.
That's far too general statement to make, though, considering for every single P2P MMO out there, there are people who find it worth the subscription fee. This includes MMOs as recent as Rift, and as old as Dark Age of Camelot or Final Fantasy XI.
What it boils down to is if there's enough people paying a sub for the game to continue being supported and developed.
There's also this trend I notice from people who will insist that no game they play is worth a $15 sub fee where, at the end of the day, they're just blowing hot air because what they really want is to play a game they enjoy for free.
Case in point, Final Fantasy XIV. We all know the train-wreck that game was at launch. Still there are people who stuck with it, leveling up their classes, completing content and what-not. For all its flaws and shortcomings, they still enjoyed it enough to keep going. They continued to play when subs were disabled, and they continued to when subs were reinstated. The thing about these people, though, is that they complained and insisted for months that the game was not worth a subscription fee.
Further, these people were outright indignant and outraged when SE announced they were reinstating Subs. They insisted they (and everyone they knew) would quit the game when subs were activated because no matter how much they played the game, it was not worth paying a sub fee. It just wasn't "finished enough". It's "still a beta", and so on. They argued and protested and threatened in post after post in thread after thread on the official forums.
Meanwhile, they kept playing.
Interestingly enough, but not at all surprisingly, many of those very same people are still posting on the official forums, which means they have, in fact, subscribed to the game. You can't post to the official forums unless you have an active account and at least one character. Now their arguments are "if SE don't fix "x, y and z" then they'll be canceling their subscription. Of course, they'll still be there months from now, making the same threats.
So is the game worth a subscription fee for those people? Despite all their arguments that it's not, obviously it is. They're subscribed.
So what was all their fussing and huffing and threats for? Simple. They wanted to play the game for free. That's it.
The point is, most times when I see people claiming that a given game isn't good enough to charge a sub or isn't worth a sub-fee, what I'm really seeing is someone basically saying "I like this game enough to play it, and will pay a sub fee, but I'd rather not. So maybe if I make a big enough fuss and complain..."
It will be like Warhammer
sub plus a cash shop with perhaps free trial for low levels. (WAR cash shop has P2W items btw)
maybe some stupid Star wars Moba with cartoon graphics while they're at it.
Thats what EA do, EA don't do free
There is still a place for p2p mmo's but I think they are charging too much. How many more players would stick with a game if it was $5 a month? Alot more than what they have now I bet.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot