Possible F2P incoming for SWOTOR

[chipper]

i think its a good idea but im surprised how quickly its happened i thought maybe 12-18 months down the line we would see this happen

 

[Dossi]

Thats what I said awhile back, F2P DAOC capped at RR4 or such + higher rr's for paying players (right upto rr20 or so) still not sure why they haven't yet, pretty sure they said "We're managing to stay afloat with our current subscribers" which in itself is a wanky excuse, nothing would stop them opening additional servers when the need arises for it, F2P and a tiny bit of advertising would rake the players in for DAOC because it still to date has the best PVP around despite its age.

I've never understood why Mythic decided to never advertise, the only reason I came to play this game is because I heard about it through a friend at school back in 2000 and something! I agree with the F2P to a certain level/rank but I disagree regarding the people who actually pay to be able to hit rank20 or so, that would put the F2P guys (and I'm sure there's a lot of people who play only f2p games) at a major disadvantage. I really hope they do something with Daoc but I'm afraid that Daoc may be too difficult for the majority of the player base nowadays, most just want to smash buttons and see fancy gfx. I think Daoc is the only mmo (that I know of) which has an interrupt system which can be critical in 8vs8 or whatever, and im pretty sure it has the longest duration of CC in a mmo EVER

 

[Ctuchik]

DAoC isn't to difficult. It's to old, to outdated, to restrictive and has f all content that's worth mentioning. The only thing DAoC survives on is that there are no other games that does 3 way pvp good enough.

Once such a game emerges DaoC is going to die, violently and messy. And no, GW2 isn't going to be that game.

 

[Soazak]

I don't think any game will kill daoc, the people that are left are the hardcore that just wont switch to anything less. Like what's left of the UO population.

 

[rynnor]

Free to play from next week....

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Tomorrow F2P starts and they've announced new space missions. I rather liked those so I'll check them out. Don't see me spending long back there though.

 

[rynnor]

I quite like the game tbh - the endgame is still pretty bad (as it is in most MMOs) but the class stories have some great bits. Good for chronic alt sufferers...

 

[Mabs]

F2P is fucking tragic, the amount of pointless limitations theyve put on is laughable
cant hide helmet without paying
cant unify armour without paying
cant access guild bank without paying
cant have more than 1 or 2 hotbars without paying

i can understand limiting the warzones/dungeons/whatever to X/unit time.. but crippling the UI is not the way forward, they can ctfoadoa if they think im paying them anything

 

[Mabs]

oh and youre limited to 350k per character, logged in my Jugg with 1.6 milll on her.. shes down at 350k, bought something for peanuts, and shes now got 349.xk .... /facepalm

 

[BloodOmen]

F2P is fucking tragic, the amount of pointless limitations theyve put on is laughable
cant hide helmet without paying
cant unify armour without paying
cant access guild bank without paying
cant have more than 1 or 2 hotbars without paying

i can understand limiting the warzones/dungeons/whatever to X/unit time.. but crippling the UI is not the way forward, they can ctfoadoa if they think im paying them anything

The hotbar limitation is fucking comical, stupid cunts.

 

[Mabs]

The hotbar limitation is fucking comical, stupid cunts.

well quite, limit content, not UI functionality, its laughable
you also cant use a Title, cant Recall To Fleet, and some other stuff but i gave up in disgust

 

[BloodOmen]

Benders, typical limitations of F2P is normally

limited character slots
limited money allowed on each character or account
limited use of auction house and chat channels
limited dungeons

thats normally it, to actually charge people for hotbars and titles is just wahahahahaha.

 

[rynnor]

Your money isnt lost just in escrow until you re-subscribe.

You can pay to get extra quickbars etc but I agree that messing with the ui seems stupid.

On the plus side as a subscriber some stuff that was really expensive in-game like a trade terminal (3 mill credits?) on your ship is cheaply bought with the free cartel coins they gave out.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I sense this will be used as a classic example of how not to run an F2P MMO in years to come.

 

[Mabs]

Your money isnt lost just in escrow until you re-subscribe.

oh i know that, but afaik a crappy lvl 50 item costs more than that on the auction house, so you couldnt even buy gear - assuming you can use the AH, i never got to find out, and i wouldnt be surprised if you cant

 

[rynnor]

Its not designed for 50s - its not really free to play - its free to level then you either level another or subscribe.

There are people who will play it for months enjoying the class quests - thats who its for tbh.

 

[Mabs]

Its not designed for 50s - its not really free to play - its free to level then you either level another or subscribe.

There are people who will play it for months enjoying the class quests - thats who its for tbh.

had this discussion hte official forums, and i dont get it:
you can get new players with "perma lvl 10 trial (hello WARHAMMER)", recruit a friend schemes,e tc
so why not try to get old players back with F2P, which it clearly failed to do

 

[rynnor]

had this discussion hte official forums, and i dont get it:
you can get new players with "perma lvl 10 trial (hello WARHAMMER)", recruit a friend schemes,e tc
so why not try to get old players back with F2P, which it clearly failed to do

Your right - it also makes no sense that they gave away the complete class quests which arguably are the best thing in the game for free.

It seems targetted at getting in entirely new people rather than tempting back previous subscribers - its unusual.

On the other hand they do seem to have tempted a lot of prior subscribers to re-subscribe to get their free cartel coins and the demand for coins was so high last night on the payment site that it pretty much knocked it out for hours - I think EA are probably quite pleased so far.

 

[rynnor]

Lol - the cartel system seems pretty buggy.

I bought a couple of account wide inventory expansions and it came up with an error where it kept re-sending them to me so I ended up with a full set of them plus 2 to sell...

 

[Aoami]

Have a few days to myself as the mrs is away, so thought id D/L SWTOR and have a little go as its F2P and i never tried it... it's been downloading for fucking days. How big is it?

 

[rynnor]

Have a few days to myself as the mrs is away, so thought id D/L SWTOR and have a little go as its F2P and i never tried it... it's been downloading for fucking days. How big is it?

10gb ish I think - its largely due to all the multi voiced/cut scened class quests.

 

[rynnor]

Oh BTW - come to the Ebon Hawk East Coast US server and I can help you out - my main is Lassiter.

Its worth going US as the Euro ones have queues and become a real pain in our peak.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I took another look at this. Wasn't impressed.

Bioware should not ever be allowed to run an MMO again. Crazy limitations on what you can/cannot do unless you effectively sub. This is not a F2P game. You are effectively playing a trial version at all levels.

 

[Fafnir]

dunno but the credit cap, do i get my cash back if i subscribe or are the 15 mil gone?

 

[Mabs]

dunno but the credit cap, do i get my cash back if i subscribe or are the 15 mil gone?

yea its held in limbo for you, its there, you just cant spend it all at once

 

[Madmaxx]

I recently tried it again for free, but as I subbed @ release I'm a prefered player. And a patch yesterday changed somethings, such as the char cap has been increased to 6 etc. It's that not bad really I did like the pve in the game and I'm trying jedi for the first time, I'm lvl27 crafts @200 x3 and I never feel like I'm grinding in this game all I can say; any other MMO and I probably would have burnt out by now. Just a shame you can only do 5 wz's per week etc, but I don't really mind as I'll probably only go 0-50.

 

[Ctuchik]

No they are hiding the grind pretty well with the bonus objectives.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

SWTOR is not F2P. You effectively play a trial version unless you sub or pay a crazy amount of money per month. I think Nico worked it out to be around £58 per month unless you sub if you want to activate the various features.

 

[Ctuchik]

£58 a month?

There is as far as i've seen nothing on the coin market that only works for a set period of time after you bought something. Limited USES yes, but that's different and as far as i know only affect boosts and passes. Now i could be wrong, i'm subbed so didn't pay that much attention to all the stuff in there.

But either way, most of the older F2P MMO's are way WAY worse (even the true F2P's that were developed for that model). For example most only allow you to rent bag space or mounts on a weekly or monthly basis...

Or take EQ2, there you have to pay PER ITEM SLOT just to be able to use legendary equipment. I logged in with my level 90 a few days ago and ALL my gear were locked for use unless i paid to unlock them. And then i'd have to do it all over again on each of my characters that have legendary items.

BW might have some odd ideas but they are far and away as bad as people try to make it.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Thats the number he quoted at me, aye. I wasn't interested enough to go confirm. Once I saw you had to pay to make the interface work and that the content was extraordinarily limited without paying I was pretty much finished with it right then and there. I don't mind paying a sub for a game thats worth it and has a decent endgame. I don't mind F2P if you can effectively play the game without having massive amounts of the content curtailed. If you look closely at the F2P model, some stuff you only unlock stuff for say a week, then you have to pay again. Nasty.

SWTOR F2P is just a greed-driven clusterfuck and you can tell EA/Bioware really grudge having to adopt that type of model because basically most people stopped playing when they realised there was no end game.