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F2P wasn't planned - it's just a farce and another P2P to Freemium with the expectation that it's th
Karteli
Member CommonPosts: 2,646
To all those who think this game was meant to be Freemium (ie, corrupted F2P) from the start, lets look at some facts.
A very basic interview reveals Biowares true intentions, 9 months ago.
Greg Zeschuk
Dec 20, 2011
http://kotaku.com/5869732/star-wars-mmo-wont-go-free-in-the-foreseeable-future
"Free-to-play works best when a game is built that way from the ground up,"
[asked about [Freemium (corrupted F2P)]]
"We're not saying never ever, but we certainly have no plans like that in the foreseeable future. We're going to support the game to make it better and better as it goes on. It's going to be worth showing up for."
So all those (theres still a few) who saw that this game was intended to be Freemium (corrupted F2P) should now evaluate their standing. Bioware left the door open for Freemium, but like hell they anticipated it within less than a year from launch.
More treasures:
Greg Zeschuk
Dec 28th 2011
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/28/bioware-docs-defend-subscription-model-tease-free-to-play-itera/
"The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create."
James Ohlen
January 23, 2012
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/01/23/the-challenge-of-creating-star-wars-the-old-republic
"It didn't really impact us. We felt, and we still feel, that there is a place for subscription-based games and if you're going to build a subscription-based game it's got to be huge in scope. People have to feel that it's worth paying a subscription fee every month, so the scope of the game has to be much bigger than the free-to-play games. The quality, the polish has to be very, very high, and then you need to have a plan to continue to deliver free content on a regular basis. If you do those things, I think you can succeed as a subscription-based game. Obviously, there can only be a few subscription-based games. There is a limited MMO audience and not a ton of that audience is playing more than one MMO, but I still think there's room for more than just one really successful online game. I think Star Wars: The Old Republic can coexist with World of Warcraft and other successful games like Rift. You can have multiple MMOs with a subscription being successful as long as those games fulfill the requirements of high quality, good polish, lots of content, and continuing to do high value updates on a regular basis."
Free content on a regular basis!!! woo .. when does this start?? Yes like a dummy I'll still ask 8 months after the comment by James Ohlen. Free fast & updated content .. derp
Will the graphics engine ever see this supposed "polish?"
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Comments
Except it's not really F2P, Looks more like BNS (Bait N Switch) to me
Agree, I switched F2P to Freemiun, because that is what it is proposed ot be. Calling it F2P is an abomination to what F2P means - F2P to me is like playing the game for free, with revenue gained from a fluff cash shop. SWTOR will not have this feature.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
"Free-to-play works best when a game is built that way from the ground up,"
To me that is exactly what the game feels like - it was built to account for the possibility of going f2p.
"We're not saying never ever, but we certainly have no plans like that in the foreseeable future. We're going to support the game to make it better and better as it goes on. It's going to be worth showing up for."
Nowhere in this quote do they say they didn't build the game for f2p, they didn't have any plans in the foreseeable future, but that doesn't preclude plans for the longterm - after all this was said at a time when they had 1m+ and growing - the foreseeable future didn't need f2p then.
I'm not sure you've proven anything.
I think my post speaks for itself. This game was not built for a F2P / Freemium model.
If it were that far off, well they would just switch Freemium on, right? But nope, EA needs to code all the infreastructure for a cash shop. The reason for no content is because all effort is being made to make Freemium happen.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
It’s called facts, it’s called being observant, it’s called having an opinion, these are all the things that humans are born to do, this passive attitude that I see coming from so some many people these days is alarming.
What you consider hate is what allowed people to progress and improve on what has come before, it’s the basis for our evolution.
In other words don’t be afraid to have a strong opinion, don’t be afraid to call people out when they change their story and twist things to fit the situation. It’s what humans do, there has to be check and balance system in place for human behavior.
Stop demonizing peoples unveiling of others peoples inaccuracies, incompetence or double talk and labeling it as hate simply because you don’t have the fortitude to participate in anything other than a conversation about butterflies or how cool someone’s Facebook page is.
Why are some people unhappy with someone saying the Emperor has no clothes?
[mod edit]
Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot this was an MMO themed topic on an MMO themed site! Without people like you (and me), people would continue to buy bad games and increase the stagnation of the genre. It's games like SWTOR that add to the dimunition of the pasttime we all love and love to talk about on these great boards.
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
I base all my original posts on facts, or assertions with justification.
If that was the only reason to not respond constuctively, then I can only assume that you had nothing to dispute anything said. I'll continue to put facts over optinion, and if you have a problem with that, then by all means .. keep complaining. I feed on the denials of fanboys. Yum!.
I would like to see this game become better, but I won't allow my gamer peers sitting around telling me that a pile of crap is fine and I should accept it. No.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Looking at: The Repopulation
Preordering: None
Playing: Random Games
The fact is 2 million people played the SWTOR beta: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/star-wars-old-republic-hits-2-million-beta-users/.
Fact is 2.4 million people bought the $60 game knowing it had a $15 a month recurring subscription fee.
Fact is at least 1.5 million people thought the game didn't merit a $15 a month subscription fee and cancelled the subscription.
Fact is Bioware announced that an unknown amount of people filled out an exit survey where Bioware cites 40% of the respondants said they left because didn't want to pay a subscription fee. That 40% itself, of an unknown amount of respondants, is unqualified because the respondants didn't really say if they were unwilling to pay a subscription fee in general or specifically SWTOR. From that exit survey, Bioware/EA has announced that the game underperformed because somewhere from February to June of 2012, the MMO community collectively decided that MMOs are no longer worth subscription fees. WoW's millions of subscribing customers are of course an aberration. Furthermore, the same gamers will conversely be willing to pay the same ammount of revenue in the in-game cash shop as the subscription fee they were unwilling to pay.
EA says it has been doing a great deal of research into the FTP arena, but in the years leading up to SWTOR's launch, they decided BTP, Freemium, and FTP were not the payment model that SWTOR should go with. According to EA, that all dramatically changed in July of 2012. SWTOR was announced to switch to FTP (following layoffs at Bioware Austin) and the 6 month released game would undergo a 3 to 4 month retrofit to a Freemium system. (In that time little to nothing in the way of content was, or is schedeuled to be released.)
If you add up 2+3=19, well that's your prerogative.
Based on the comments that JR and others made at the EA conference call the game clearly was not intended to be F2P at this point in time. And I disagree that it was built to account for the possibility of F2P from the ground up. If Ea had said F2P but they were going to provide missions etc. as paid for DLC then that would, The fremium model is something that many players find annoying.
It is interesting to contrast Valve's approach to TF2 to EA's:
The articles suggest that Valve took a couple of years to get F2P right (and it is F2P not fremium) and what they deemed acceptable and what was out of bounds. The talk about the need to keep platers coming back is spot on as well. No talk about profit of course - "increased revenue" but I doubt they were selling many copies of TF2 four years after launch so using it as a testbed will have made sense.
I definitely did. I don't think anyone could have convinced EA to do that though. They spent way too much money with the result being much less than anyone would expect.
Hater or not. Truth is truth regardless of who it's coming from when facts are presented to back it up.
Exactly what I was thinking.
If I had some serious money invested then I would have been concerned, I don't, and as a normal gamer I'm not concerned how they make money, the game is what concerns me, I actually enjoyed the game "Shock horror" however I'm giving GW2 a go atm, I'm enjoying that aswell "Another shock horror", as I said I play MMO's for the game, not the other stuff that happens in RL, I want a game, not a flippin argument with some idiots on a forum who are too far up their own backsides to know what fun is anymore.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Oh you made my day with that response. Beautiful. One wonders why these people who seem to be offended at any expression of disagreement / correction even bother to post here.
It wasn't any different for DDO and LOTRO.
DDO was already dead, so Turbine had the time to code in the Cashshop and then revive it with an Add campain.
But LOTRO suffered greatly and we didn't get any content updates for over 8-9 months because of the shift to Freemium and their focus for the Freemium/Cashshop infrastructure implementation.
Which Emperor? Oh you mean the peasant?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR