Through a strange combination of time I had accumulated and my three months sub that renewed itself on November 15th (suspicious) it seems I am subbed to swtor until May 13… how did that happen I have no idea but my idea of seeing how the game played as a F2P player is out of the window for the foreseeable future.
Fear not! I have asked a close friend of mine who was waiting for F2P to come out to tell me about his experience playing the game and how he felt about it. Luckily for me, this guy doesn’t follow game news or blogs so he’s often my sounding board when I need someone not tainted by the internet opinions. To put things into perspective he pretty much played the entire weekend, has never played before and started from a new account. To make this easier to read I’ll call my friend Jay (not real name obviously)
Friday
Right at the start Jay is faced with a problem. He wants to make a Sith juggernaut and really wants to make it a Pureblood but the race is locked. He tells me he’s a bit miffled but he sorta expected to have to spend some cash so he spends a 20$ and gets 2400cc minus the 350 for the Pureblood and he creates his Sith pureblood juggernaut.
Then he’s off to Korriban and he told me he pretty much had a blast there. Lots of people, the quests are fun and he really digs the storyline. Then store rears it’s ugly head again. Soon enough Jay realizes he needs more space in his inventory so he’s off again to the store and finds out it will cost him 175cc for 10 inventory slots. Then he notices the “for account (375cc)” option and he gets a bit pissed. He tought 175 was for account and he figures that at 375 it’s a bit pricey for only 10 slots. But he really loves the story and he wants to see more and try more classes. He asks me over gtalk how many he would need until max level and I tell him that 20 more slots should do it, 30 if he wants to be comfortable.
In the end he spends another 750cc for 20 more inventory slots account wide and end the night ready to start Dromund Kas and with 1300cc left. I ask him what he thinks about the game and he tells me that he loves the story but he hopes it won’t cost him too much.
Saturday
When I get up, Jay is already plowing through Dromund Kas at lightning speed and really loving the story. To my surprise, he didn’t mind much about the restriction on crafting. He’s not much of a crafter so while it bothered him a bit it wasn’t a big deal. However, he did buy additional quickbars for his account so there went another 540cc.
And then tragedy strikes at about 4pm. Jay had just gotten his ship and heads out to do space combat which he likes so far but quickly he can’t do it anymore because he has used up all his space combat allowance, and then he realizes it will cost him 240cc to do more of these…. he’s really not happy.
And that’s when he starts really looking at all the items in the store and realizes that he will have to pay for raids, to not display his helm, to unify color and Jay writes me this on gtalk: “C’est des criss de voleurs!” which translates as “They are f***** thieves!”
I ask Jay not to give up and that the story is still worth it and he tells me he’ll get back to it tomorow.
Sunday
Sunday is pretty uneventful. At the end of the day Jay is just starting out Tatooine and he hasn’t spent a dime in the store. When I asked him what he thought about the entire experience he told me he thinks he will finish up the story on his character, maybe do the Republic side once but that’s pretty much it.
His reasons were pretty much that he thought it was too pricey and that it wasn’t worth the cost.
Conclusions
I won’t make any because I want this to stand on its own. If any of you were wondering what a new player would think then here’s the experience of my friend. I’ll just end by thanking him for being my test subject.
Screaming monkeys 
The sad thing about this story is that he simply could have paid $15 to sub for a month, bought access to Purebloods with the complementary cartel coins and then would’ve had access to everything else without having to spend another dime.
(And no, I don’t expect someone who’s trying the game for free to think like that / know what the best deal would be. But it’s still kind of sad.)
I thought about that and I’ll ask him about it. He has very limited playtime during the week (none) so I’m curious to see if he would think it would have been worth it. Would he prefer to sub while he does the story or more now but not have to worry about subbing…
good question.
The crazy thing is, BioWare sites the cost as being one of the major reasons that people left the game during the mass exodus. Do they think this will fix it? F2P or Subscription, people won’t pay if they feel they are not getting value for their money.
I agree with Shintar
Regardless of wether he has much play time or not during the week, if you knew your friend was willing to spend 20 bucks in cash shop even before trying the game, should have told him to just pay one month subs. He would have save 5 bucks, would have been able to create sith pureblood, those race are unlock for sith warrior, would have had everything (bar, cargo, bank, space missions) and could still have bought some bag space with complimentary cartel coin. Finally, Even after the first month, he would be a preferred costumer.
He couldn’t have known since he is not familiar with the game. If you are goind to spend $15 or more in the cash a given month, it’s probably better to sub that month.
If you want to help him a bit, you can push a few credits his way (I believe he has no cap now that he has preferred status) and let him know that the unlocks he wants can be bought from the GTN. He just needs to be a bit vigilant and look for some bargains. I think I saw a hotbar unlock the other day for around 200k credits (which is not too bad really).
Interesting article I think I now know what I will do when and if I change my trial account which I started even before F2P was announced. I would like to know if you are allowed to talk in general chat without paying and if you do have to pay how much is it? It can get boring even with the great story as you are levelling plus it is nice to actually be able to do things like group up for Heroic missions.
Until you gain prefered status (buy something in the store), you’re limited on chat. You can buy anything and I think that with 5$ you can buy something and get it.
Small correction lonomonkey: you don’t even have to buy from the store. Just get the $5 worth of coins and you are preferred immediately. You can hold onto the coins if yiou want for whatever reason, they don’t have to actually be spent.
That’s good to know! Thanks