Photo-Receptor Focus on: TOR F2P
By Maer
Bioware has announced that SWTOR will be going Free to Play sometime this fall. Even though we don’t have all the details yet, the great debate has begun. The Doom and Gloomers are dancing in the streets, crowing to anyone who will listen about how right they were. While many other players appear to be taking a cautious “Wait and See” attitude. So what does all the hoopla mean? Will you continue your sub or cancel in favor of the free model?
More after the jump…
Personally, I’m leaning toward re-subbing and at my current six-month subscription.
To recap briefly, subscribers have complete and total access, while the free players have limited access. F2P players will not be able to access operations, at all. There are other limitations that make continuing the subscription the attractive choice.
This is the official Q&A, which answers some of our initial questions.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with what Bioware is doing. Going F2P has been discussed for ages. Perhaps, this is being implemented a bit earlier than expected, though. The problem, from what I can gather, seems to be an overwhelming distrust of EA (Electronic Arts), who owns Bioware. While Bioware itself seems to get a lot of love, the parent company does not appear to enjoy the same regard by the player base.
However, reading the comments in the official forum has raised an interesting point. The concern was that the Free to Play model will morph into a Pay to Win model. I can certainly understand why this would cause concern. It’s happened in other games and the lack of player trust for EA compounds that issue.
They promised that they will continue to release new content, including new space missions. HK-51 will be making his debut appearance in the future, and a new Operation, Terror from Beyond, has been announced. I’m certainly looking forward to all of these.
Hopefully, the release of new content will meet the expectations of those who’ve played the game since the beginning. We can hope that it does and also that they and stays true to their current proposed model and they don’t introduce a lot of extra features that must be purchased with extra money by subscribers.
As long as the model does not translate into extra dollars over and above my subscription price, I won’t have a problem. I’ll happily stay with SWTOR and continue to rain purple lightning down on my victims…, um, I mean my well-deserving and evil enemies.
So, right now, put me in the camp with the cautiously optimistic people.
That’s my two credits. What’s yours?
Ready… Set… Discuss…
I’m alright with the change to Free to Play. Back before we knew much about the game I actually expected a F2P model where you pay for class story chapters and I’m a bit surprised the story is that part that’s coming free.
I do Operations, so I don’t have much choice in subscribing. If I have any complaint about it, it’s that I don’t have an opportunity to save any money because of that. I could do with limited Warzones and Flashpoints and gladly pay less for it, but that doesn’t look like an option.
My only concern is that Bioware doesn’t know if HK-51 or Makeb will fall under paid content yet, or even when they’ll launch – and we’ve been teased about these for a while now. It makes me wonder how prepared they are.
Before SWTOR, I played many asian mmos so I’m really used to the f2p-sub model. To me, that hybrid model is the way to go to increase significantly the player base and to ensure long term success for the game. It gives way more options for the gamer and that’s great. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we go back to 1.5m+ players toward the end of the year and much more during 2013.