View Poll Results: How long until SW:TOR becomes Free to Play?

Voters
259. This poll is closed
  • Never

    172 66.41%
  • 1-5 months

    8 3.09%
  • 5-7 months

    11 4.25%
  • 8-10 months

    7 2.70%
  • 1 year+

    61 23.55%
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  1. #21
    Mechagnome gualdhar's Avatar
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    I think a lot of games are going to go F2P near the end of their life cycle. Eventually I think WoW will go F2P as well, unless Blizzard decides to kill the cash cow before it goes on life support. I wouldn't put it behind EA/Bioware to make it F2P eventually, but not any time soon.
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  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by RatFanatic View Post
    Your poll choices could have been more realistic.
    Poll does show anti-SWTOR bias...

  3. #23
    The Patient Devirae's Avatar
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    Voted 1+ year, because you never know what can happen 5 years down the road regarding MMO-business models. Don't hold your breath for SWTOR to go F2P anytime soon however.

  4. #24
    The Patient
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    Why do people always assume it takes so much money to make an mmo... The orignal reason they use to charge a monthly fee was because of server and bandwidth costs. As technology has gotten better both have become alot cheaper. If you look at what blizzard spends in there earning reports where it states costs, its minimal. It didn't even get a spot in the chart, it was just thrown in with maintenance costs I think it was. They will keep charging monthly fees as long as we keep paying them. And using the argument that B2P games are normally nowhere near as good... Guild Wars 2.

    But SWTOR will be good either way. I plan on playing it mainly because I love star wars not because of gameplay, it could suck I would still wanna atleast try to "beat it". We will have to wait till release or we get beta keys to find out for ourselves though.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by RevanSparda View Post
    The Secret World is F2P and is published by EA.
    Actually, TSW is not going to be F2P, but will have a sub fee and cash shop (like WoW, I guess)

    http://www.mmofringe.com/content/mmo...details-emerge

    EA has yet to publish a F2P MMO to my knowledge, and I doubt they'd start with Swtor.
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  6. #26
    This thread is actually insulting to post in...it's posed as a legit question masked in disguise. The people spent 150 million on this game and people expect it to go free to play soon...this isn't sony..this much more superior. I can't even began to discuss why they are different, and why this entire thread is just insulting.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Azsune View Post
    Why do people always assume it takes so much money to make an mmo... The orignal reason they use to charge a monthly fee was because of server and bandwidth costs. As technology has gotten better both have become alot cheaper. If you look at what blizzard spends in there earning reports where it states costs, its minimal. It didn't even get a spot in the chart, it was just thrown in with maintenance costs I think it was. They will keep charging monthly fees as long as we keep paying them. And using the argument that B2P games are normally nowhere near as good... Guild Wars 2.

    But SWTOR will be good either way. I plan on playing it mainly because I love star wars not because of gameplay, it could suck I would still wanna atleast try to "beat it". We will have to wait till release or we get beta keys to find out for ourselves though.
    It costs a lot to initially develop an MMO (Swtor and GW2 have both been in production for 5+ years), but maintaining them is indeed no longer costly. I'd argue that F2P MMOs are still of a fairly lower quality than P2P ones, and we haven't seen any real B2P MMOs until GW2 (GW1 was more like Diablo than an MMO, but granted it was still successful/well received). I think in five years, F2P MMOs will be just as good as paid ones. We're already seeing that with games like Firefall and LoL.
    Norn Mesmer: GW2
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  8. #28
    Stood in the Fire Nihilim's Avatar
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    This thread has been created in order to start a flame war. Why the hell else would you ask such a thing?
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  9. #29
    I think you have the scale wrong on your times... It should be more like 1-12 months, 1-2 years, 2-3 years, 3+ years, Never...

    If a game goes free to play in less than a year after starting with a monthly fee, you can pretty much say it's a complete failure... There have been tons of MMOs that have lasted more than a year with pay-to-play, if you can't last that long, you've done something seriously wrong (unless your model is to be free to play and sell gear/levels/etc in a store)...

    I have zero opinion on SW:TOR, but I believe with certainty it won't go free-to-play with a year. EA isn't some startup that is just going to belly-up such a huge project... I know nothing of their development team, but it'd be a huge failure of EA if they let the game do that poorly - even Star Wars Galaxies (Sony) after such a poor start got a huge revamp to keep people paying a monthly fee for 7 years... and SWG is definitely not considered one of the better MMOs ever created...

  10. #30
    The Patient
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alatian View Post
    It costs a lot to initially develop an MMO (Swtor and GW2 have both been in production for 5+ years), but maintaining them is indeed no longer costly. I'd argue that F2P MMOs are still of a fairly lower quality than P2P ones, and we haven't seen any real B2P MMOs until GW2 (GW1 was more like Diablo than an MMO, but granted it was still successful/well received). I think in five years, F2P MMOs will be just as good as paid ones. We're already seeing that with games like Firefall and LoL.
    All games take some money and Triple A titles always do. Grand Theft Auto 4 costed around $100 million to make. They somehow, without using montly fees expected to make their money back (not sure but was something around $500 million first week alone). They did it with box sales.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Mothhive View Post
    Well, being realistic, you can't say for sure it'll never go free to play, infact it's pretty likely (take a deep breath and read on before rage posting, trust me!). At some point in every MMO the time comes where the free to play model will make more money than a subscription. Whether that's 6 months, 6 years or 60 years, it depends on the game, but many MMOs that lost the majority of their subscribers end up turning to this model and finding more profitability and longevity because the fact that it's free attracts more people to try it out, who may later spend money in the cash shop, or on premium services or whatever they have to maintain an income.

    The point is, there comes a time where even giants like WoW and eventually SWTOR, will be old, ugly and can't compete with newer and more innovative MMOs and will have to rethink it's payment model to remain profitable and keep any interest.
    Free to play, as an option, is a death-knell for most games. DDO, LotRO, DCUO, EQ2.. all were going so shitty, that they were hemorrhaging money for the company. The FTP boost allow the game to stay alive, but most serious gamers view these titles as dead. Corrupted. Only "wallet warriors" are able to pull ahead. Can skill alone overcome $300-400 invested into a character? Maybe, but it still sucks.
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  12. #32
    Scarab Lord Trollsbane's Avatar
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    Those poll choices were horrible, OP.

    3+ years is my guess. Like Mothhive said, there comes a time for this, and that doesn't have to mean it's failing.

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  13. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Nakaya_Kilrogg View Post
    Free to play, as an option, is a death-knell for most games. DDO, LotRO, DCUO, EQ2.. all were going so shitty, that they were hemorrhaging money for the company. The FTP boost allow the game to stay alive, but most serious gamers view these titles as dead. Corrupted. Only "wallet warriors" are able to pull ahead. Can skill alone overcome $300-400 invested into a character? Maybe, but it still sucks.
    The alternative to going free to play when you lose profitability is to just shut down completely. That is failure. If a company can still keep the game going so that their hardcore fans can keep playing the game they love, old players can come back and check things out an catch up with friends, maybe they'll entice more people into playing, and hopefully they'll return a profit where otherwise they would get nothing. That's a success for all concerned.

    As a personal example, I was in the Star Trek Online beta and while I loved the ship combat (being a huuuuge Trek fan is probably a big factor there), the rest of the game was awful so I couldn't bring myself to pay for the game and a subscription. It's going free to play in January and I'll be taking the helm once more to have a bit of fun with the parts I enjoyed and not have to worry about it being a waste of my money. They may even get a little money out of me if there are some cool things to buy!

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Nasriel View Post
    I personally think the only reason DCUO went F2P is because SOE had a PS3 and PC version and the controls of the PC version were awful. I've never actually played PS3 but the controls of the PC version are frustrating beyond all belief. I originally signed up for it when you had to pay but due to the woeful controls I wasn't enjoying it so I quit. After it went F2P I tried again and I found that yes I still hate the way the game plays so I logged in, spent about 2hrs then logged out and havn't gone back since.

    Another forum I visit had alot of people signed up for the F2P but found they were bored within an hour or two due to lack of interesting content and they havn't bothered to login again. So unless SW:TOR is as frustrating to play and as boring as DCUO I can't imagine it would ever go free
    Pretty much this, but I would like to expand on this further.

    I honestly don't think Sony is a very good manager of games or least games that are meant to be around for years such as MMOs. Let's start with DCUO, the fact that Sony fragmented their player base by making two separate versions of the game and not allowing for cross platform play was a miss step on their part. Also I heard complaints that the service for PS3 and PC were not always on par with each other wasn't good either. Also DCUO has a rather low level cap that can be reached rather quickly and there wasn't a lot of content at the end game to justify that speed of leveling, plus I remember reading Sony saying they wanted to have monthly content updates which is something I don't believe they were able to keep to.

    Now let's talk Everquest. I've never played EQ so on this account I'm very curious why there was an EQ2 made. How much do they differ? Whatever the case having two EQ games split up the player base there because if there is one thing I do know about EQ is that not everyone liked EQ2 so they stuck with original EQ.

    Also there's Star Wars Galaxies, SWG came out before WoW opened up the flood gates to the MMO market, when WoW did this Sony responded by changing their game not once but twice. People didn't like the first change and left, but Sony for whatever reason thought it was a good idea to change the game even further which was also met with people leaving.

    Finally you have that hacking incident that put Sony in hot water, I bet that hurt profits with their games.

  15. #35
    Honestly, I don't think it will ever go F2P. But...

    Quote Originally Posted by Killmaim Deathbringer View Post
    Personally, I hope never as Subscriptions = Money to pay for developers = better quality updates
    That's really not true. Yes, subscriptions generate money, but, so do F2P cash shops. I honestly spend much more per month on games with cash shops than I do on subscription games without them. What is $15/month on WoW can easily be $50+/month for a F2P games, and I'm certain I'm not the only one in the same boat.

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by moogogaipan View Post
    Sony is not big and neither is DC- Warner brothers, rite?


    Maybe you are not getting how big DC comics are? Its the fucking superman and bat man fancises among many others.
    it's true DC and Marvel are big... but that doesn't always translate well in other markets especially if the games are shit. the fanbase isn't quite as loyal as starwars fans or say blizzard fans. everyone shit on X-Men Destiny granted it's not an mmo but yeah.

    Sony half assed it and everyone knows it.

    Bioware has put a lot of time and effort into this, they are aiming to make it last.

    Sony.... who knows? I doubt they really thought it'd last that long. the support sounded shitty from the start.

    I like the heroes genre, being a Marvel fan, and DC can be interesting .... but seeing what Sony did I just didn't care. I'm not going to get a game just because it has characters I like in it.

    same here if this was just Star Wars, and wasn't made by Bioware would I care? most likely not. if it was made by Sony, definitely NOT.

  17. #37
    Deleted
    I honestly believe that, eventually, every MMO will be F2P, or at least B2P. It will depend a lot on GW2's success (or lack of it).

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by SarSil View Post
    I honestly believe that, eventually, every MMO will be F2P, or at least B2P. It will depend a lot on GW2's success (or lack of it).
    I know this is off topic, but I hope B2P MMOs like GW2 take off like wild fire like the F2P market has.

  19. #39
    lmao...

    It's like everyone completely forgot about Star Wars Galaxies.

    True, totally different developers, but the fan base was still there, and it's only gotten weaker since.

    I voted 7-10 months. That's usually how long it takes for people to get fed up when they realize that the patches imbalance the game and they're stuck facing the same boring enemies for eternity.

    On top of that, can anyone really offer a good patch scenario that you can imagine being excited about? With WoW it was easy. Big dragon, king of the undead, giant elementals, etc. My ideas for Star Wars, though? A group of rancor could try destroying an entire civilization... ya know, while you're on another planet. Or an epic space battle... with autopilot that can't be turned off. Maybe another epic Sith/Jedi encounter? That'll be original.

    It could be due to sheer ignorance of Star Wars Old Republic lore, but I don't think it's a stretch to assume people will easily get bored after 6 months of the same.

    I dunno, just my 2 cents.
    Last edited by KoH4711; 2011-11-22 at 03:01 AM.

  20. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by KoH4711 View Post
    lmao...

    It's like everyone completely forgot about Star Wars Galaxies.

    True, totally different developers, but the fan base was still there, and it's only gotten weaker since.

    I voted 7-10 months. That's usually how long it takes for people to get fed up when they realize that the patches imbalance the game and they're stuck facing the same boring enemies for eternity.

    On top of that, can anyone really offer a good patch scenario that you can imagine being excited about? With WoW it was easy. Big dragon, king of the undead, giant elementals, etc. Star Wars? A group of rancor could try destroying an entire civilization... ya know, while you're on another planet. Or an epic space battle... with autopilot that can't be turned off. Maybe another epic Sith/Jedi encounter? That'll be original.

    I dunno, just my 2 cents.
    not even gonna reply to this


    OT: swtor will become free to play in time. the same way wow will.. all things must end... no king rules forever my 'mmo'

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