As If Millions of Voices Cried Out...

Forced to be F2P

A long time ago in a corporate boardroom far away, somebody thought it would be a phenomenal idea if  World of Warcraft took place in space. Fans had been clamoring for a follow-up to Knights of the Old Republic II since its release, and so EA seized the opportunity to cash in on the popularity of the Star Wars IP (Intellectual Property, sorry, sometimes I bandy acronyms about and forget not everyone speaks geek) that they had obtained when they purchased BioWare.

What you want to do.

At the time World of Warcraft had roughly 12 million subscribers, and it looked as if the juggernaut showed no signs of slowing. Even competitors like Trion Worlds' Rift seemed to find its place in the already saturated market of MMOs. Betting on BioWare's pedigree, EA threw ludicrous sums of money at a project that they were sure would turn a healthy profit in subscription fees. It's rumored to be the largest video game budget ever, to the tune of somewhere between $150 - $200 million dollars. Whoa. That's a lot of credits.

What you will actually do.

Then it was released. Despite the insistence that the game would not go F2P (free-to-play, as opposed to traditional subscription based services like WoW), tomorrow it is doing exactly that. You will be able to play to level 50 and experience all of the main story lines for each class without ever having to pay a cent. But not all of the content is accessible to free loaders. Things like high-level raids and other content will be walled off until a subscription is paid (which is what the developer dubs "preferred status." As in, "We would prefer it if you paid us money"). Although it had over a million users sign up in its first three days of release, they continued to decline after that, which while it is normal to see a drop in MMORPGs after the first month (since the first month is usually free, in what I can only compare to heroin dealers giving their customers the first taste for free), but the numbers obviously were on the darker side of things than BioWare or their parent company EA cared for. Hence the change.

I played back during beta last year and got a bounty hunter character to level 15 or so before the open beta came to a close. It was fun-ish, but not quite what I wanted in an MMO. I might check it out now that it's F2P, but honestly I don't have the time to dedicate to those kind of games anymore. MMOs are notorious time sinks, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is no exception.

If you want to get your Jedi on (or Sith, whatever, I don't judge) you should be able to download the client from http://www.swtor.com/ on the morrow.