Do you think SWTOR has increased its revenue going F2P?

[Kelimbror]

you speak the truth. As someone who partakes in all examples involved, I can't even explain why I am drawn to WoW more than anything, It is literally an anomaly. And this is coming from someone who quit smoking cigarettes, so I know what addiction and breaking it feels like...and that's not it. I play WoW less and less each year, but get more and more out of it. Granted Cata was the closest I got to getting away fromf it, because it was awful...which is why I found SWTOR.

[LilSaihah]

Um. Bro.

Eve and Tera use a F2P model. You just have to become "established" first. Then you can "pay" for your subscription with in game currency.

Being able to do that in SWTOR would be really really nice. Add xmonth subscription to the cartel market, add direct credit->CC conversion to the market. Make the whole deal a bit more fluid, seeing as people post "selling x CC" on the trade channel.

[Edge-]

Eve and Tera use a F2P model. You just have to become "established" first. Then you can "pay" for your subscription with in game currency.

That is not a F2P model. It is a variation on the subscription model that adds more flexibility, but it is absolutely not F2P in any way, shape or form. Both games still require an initial box purchase. Both games still require an ongoing payment that someone has to pay for. So they're still getting the subscription money, whether it comes directly from you, or from someone who sold you Plex/Chronoscrolls.

[Morros]

Eve and Tera use a F2P model. You just have to become "established" first. Then you can "pay" for your subscription with in game currency.

It's not Free to Play, because you have to pay for it. Not to mention that paying for your play time in Eve Online is no small feat. It requires a lot of time, effort, and intelligence to be able to support an income like that in the game, as well as being able to support whatever you do in game.

Still, saying it's Free to Play, when you have to pay for at least one month, is like saying Guild Wars 2 is Free to Play, and we all know how much people rage when you call GW2 Free to Play.

[Argroth]

But seriously.

I think the only MMOs that have failed were ones that DIDN'T transition to f2p.
IE: WAR

You know except for the most successful one ever.... (I don't like it but I can't deny it's successful)

If Bioware just stepped up and made a better effort to make their game better instead of copping out to F2P they wouldn't of had to resort to these desperate and pathetic measures.

Instead they left vital bugs in for months and piddled around with a not so strong end game. Instead of fixing it they took the stupid/easy way out and went F2P.

Not saying make an exact WoW clone but they coulda done a lot better, instead they rushed it out the door, let the game boil with all it's problems then just gave up and tanked after a year going from a $60 subscription game to a $12 F2P game. If that dosn't scream failure I don't know what does.

[RoninaThorstone]

That is not a F2P model. It is a variation on the subscription model that adds more flexibility, but it is absolutely not F2P in any way, shape or form. Both games still require an initial box purchase. Both games still require an ongoing payment that someone has to pay for. So they're still getting the subscription money, whether it comes directly from you, or from someone who sold you Plex/Chronoscrolls.

True.

However, it's nice that they include a way of getting around the sub that doesn't break the TOS.

I get to play rift for free because of recruit a friend. I am up to like 6 months free so far with like another 9 or so on the edge.

[Deleted]

I recon the problem would be that you get very little for free so ppl have to really like it to spend money but the same problems with end game content with see ppl drop they're subs so it'll get a bad reputation. that's my 10 cents.

[Clattuc]

You know except for the most successful one ever.... (I don't like it but I can't deny it's successful)

If Bioware just stepped up and made a better effort to make their game better instead of copping out to F2P they wouldn't of had to resort to these desperate and pathetic measures.

Instead they left vital bugs in for months and piddled around with a not so strong end game. Instead of fixing it they took the stupid/easy way out and went F2P.

Not saying make an exact WoW clone but they coulda done a lot better, instead they rushed it out the door, let the game boil with all it's problems then just gave up and tanked after a year going from a $60 subscription game to a $12 F2P game. If that dosn't scream failure I don't know what does.

They could have designed the game to make coffee for you in the morning and detail your Acura on Thursdays, and there would still only be 350-400k players willing to pay for it. The only reason SWTOR "failed" is that EA conned itself into thinking it had a multimillion player game, and invested accordingly. It was never going to be that game, and it never will be that game. Free-to-Play has taken us back to roughly August's numbers and so far we seem to be holding, which is nice news compared to October, but hardly the hoped-for breakout. Once the Cartel Market honeymoon is over, everything will depend on the devs' ability to churn out saleable items on a regular basis. It's a different world. But I'm not worried about the game going away -- until Disney has a replacement ready.

[RoninaThorstone]

EA conned itself into thinking it had a multimillion player game, and invested accordingly. It was never going to be that game, and it never will be that game. Free-to-Play has taken us back to roughly August's numbers and so far we seem to be holding, which is nice news compared to October, but hardly the hoped-for breakout.

Swtor should have launched as F2P. We would have had more people at launch, we would have kept more people from the start, and we wouldn't have people going "I paid 60 dollars for the box and all I got was this 5 dollar status?".

Just... Good god.

I remember being so pissed when I heard they were dead set on subscription.
They were so slow to switch to f2p too.

[Edge-]

I remember being so pissed when I heard they were dead set on subscription.
They were so slow to switch to f2p too.

Well, them being dead set on being sub based made sense at the time (before launch).

And this is actually one of the fasted transitions so far, they moved quick on this and it's definitely been a good decision.

[RoninaThorstone]

And this is actually one of the fasted transitions so far, they moved quick on this and it's definitely been a good decision.

For sure, but it was clear that subscription wasn't working by 1.2 / 1.3.

I mean, I was pointing out that they were at 1.3 and they still needed to lose another .8 million before they switched models. I was quite pessimistic about the switch occurring quickly. So this switch is great and the fastest we've seen, but so much more could have been done had they transitioned in 1.2 and handed out tauntauns to people who paid the 60 dollar box price and gave them like 6,000 coins.

edit: What I mean is that we would have even more players had they transitioned in 1.2.

[FusedMass]

I know it has. How? it allowed players to buy things directly even one sale is doubling what it used to make so kinda impossible for it not to increase it's profits.

[Clattuc]

EA sold two and a half million boxes at $30 wholesale, so I'm sure they are glad they didn't launch fully F2P. A B2P launch might have slowed the player exodus, at the cost of the 100 million they made from subs before the bottom fell out. But nothing can change where MMO's are at now and what Star Wars means in the game world. They could pay YOU five bucks a month to play, and this still isn't going to be a million player title.

But as I've said before, there is one ultimate secret weapon out there, one announcement that would truly open the floodgates.



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[anyaka21]

Well, them being dead set on being sub based made sense at the time (before launch).

And this is actually one of the fasted transitions so far, they moved quick on this and it's definitely been a good decision.

to an objective eye, and probably most of BW/EA I don't think it did either. I think their investors were getting antsy and pushed for the game to be released. EA/BW had to know that releasing a game without a lot of core game mechanics that WoW would be a bad move.

Let's just list some of the basics:

1) very stiff character creation
2) no dual spec
3) no add-ons - this includes damage meters
4) no macros
5) not a lot of end game content
6) not a very user friendly UI with not a lot of customization
and the list could go on and many people could add a lot more to it.

If you make a game that is very WoW-like but doesn't have a lot of WoWs convenience features, then it's going to get beat down. And rightfully so. EA/BW had to know this before launch.

I think the more interesting question to be asked is how successful do you think SWTOR would be they had waited 1 year and launched now?

[RoninaThorstone]

I think we can almost all agree that the game was released half a year too early and suffered greatly for it.

[SirRobin]

That is not a F2P model. It is a variation on the subscription model that adds more flexibility, but it is absolutely not F2P in any way, shape or form. Both games still require an initial box purchase. Both games still require an ongoing payment that someone has to pay for. So they're still getting the subscription money, whether it comes directly from you, or from someone who sold you Plex/Chronoscrolls.

Wait... You still have to buy the game, if you haven't before?

I think we can almost all agree that the game was released half a year too early and suffered greatly for it.

Dating myself a bit here but TOR had bigger problems than launching too early. Launching too early is just about standard operating procedure for MMORPG's.

[RoninaThorstone]

Dating myself a bit here but TOR had bigger problems than launching too early. Launching too early is just about standard operating procedure for MMORPG's.

For sure, but they might have been manageable had they launched with 1.2.

And yes, they had issues before launch, "han and chewie didn't go dicking around in space".

[Clattuc]

I thought the launch was quite smooth overall. Every MMO has features added later, but the ones BioWare launched with basically worked, and that's about all you can ask for.

They had one major production black eye in Ilum - a doozy - but otherwise the game pretty much works. Single-issue fanatics (Imperial Hat!!1!! QQQQ) don't see the whole game.

The real sins were strategic. Selling all those boxes, opening all those doomed servers - these changed the story from modest success to blockbuster disappointment.

[RoninaThorstone]

I thought the launch was quite smooth overall.

The real sins were strategic. Selling all those boxes, opening all those doomed servers - these changed the story from modest success to blockbuster disappointment.

The sever explosion was, in my opinion, part of launch since they did it throughout the prelaunch week and into the next few.

Also, a lot of people were having FPS issues. I wasn't one of them but it was definitely a problem. Which then got worse when people started blaming L2P issues on "lag". Scapegoat ftl.

[Edge-]

opening all those doomed servers

They had to. They actually opened fewer than you see during the initial boom of player population at launch in other MMO's. The complaints of the 3+ hour queues had to be addressed, and they did so pretty reasonably. They could have opened even more servers but didn't, which was a good move on their part. I don't think anyone could have predicted the rate at which players would leave though, it was higher than most people expected. Had they retained more players, they would have only had to do minor server consolidations.