Warning, this is a depressive, negative post. Fanbois are free to shut up.
So it has come to pass. Swtor is now going free to play and announced it’s colors, free to play until level 50 and then pay for the endgame. I hate it.
A lot of people in my guild don’t mind this switch at all because they figured, rightly I might add, that they are already paying 15$ a month to raid so in the end, things stay pretty much the same and they will even have extra coins to pay for fashion and fancy stuff. So I should be happy right? I keep paying my 15$ a month and I keep raiding and I even have more stuff.
But it’s not how I see it. What I love out of this game is raiding with my guild. I’m a raider at heart and I love doing that. The message I’m getting from Swtor move is that the new focus will be making money off a vanity store. It will soon be 6 months since the last raid came out and there’s still no confirmation of when the next one is due. Worst, EC is still bugged after all this time and there’s no sign of when it will be fixed.
I know Swtor promised more regular content and all kind of new stuff to compensate but I have trouble believing them. First and foremost because Swtor is headed by Jeff Hickman, the man who was accused of finishing off Warhammer Online by the EA Louse. I was there for the the Warhammer debacle and as much as it pains me to say, Swtor is following an eerily similar pattern.
Same man, same pattern. Sorry, but I’m not feeling reassured.
So here’s my take on this. I’m being asked to pay 15$ a month for the privilege of raiding in buggy raids and have to wait forever between raids while I finance a cash shop. I feel like EA is going to squeeze me for all I’m worth and play me for a fool while dangling a carrot of “It will get better” in front of me.
So why am I still playing? Because I found of the greatest group of players ever and I don’t want to let that go. It took me 6 years to find a group this awesome who actually raided and I will fight to keep playing with them. Simply, I’m ready to pay 15$ a month for the privilege of playing with them.
So please EA, prove me wrong for once.
I’m with you, Lono. This F2P crap scares the hell out of me.
Not fond of it myself either. And I’m more of a casual raider, I like my guild but I raid like once a week and it’s very chilled. And I don’t honestly think that’s worth paying £9 per month for if everything else I want to do is free.
I’m more worried about what this will do to their plans to work on more story to be honest. After all, if raid content is something they sell, that at least gives them some incentive to keep making more of that. More fully voiced and epic storylines for all classes? Probably not so much.
This was an interesting read for me since I haven’t played MMOs long enough to know the history behind these kinds of changes. The EA Louse article you linked was certainly eye opening.
I recently came back to SWTOR because I missed the story and even though I don’t currently, the Free to Play left me uneasy. I’m here for the story and I love it – and I’d hate to see an epic story ditched in favour of designing a new vanity pet.
Well, if you love the story and haven’t done it all it’s certainly still a great game. But if you’re here for the endgame… well, let’s cross our fingers.
EA’s really in a damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation here. By making the bulk of the game(all the leveling content) F2P, anyone not interested in raiding is now a non-payer. Anyone who might have injected money via an unlock are out, and if they’re like me and SWTOR isn’t delivering for $15 a month, now they’ve lost those subs.
So the only real paying customers left are the ones really invested in PvP or Raiding, and as you point out, it’s been 6 months since the last raid was released. I’d wager most of them have quit, too.
So, to sum up: I expect to see a release from EA about how F2P is a dying thing.
I think there is no future for this game. I bet they shut down the game in 2013.
[...] Many bloggers and current SWTOR players share their reactions to the news that SWTOR is transitioning to F2P in November. Ravelation compares her experiences in LOTRO with the proposed SWTOR setup. [...]