And those players are 'free players' because $60 for a boxed game and $15 for a subscription was ridiculously overpriced and not something they were willing to pay for. This is what they're expecting free players to pay. You can't actually get more than two characters (as far as I can tell), and there's plenty else you can't unlock, like getting quest rewards from completing quests or carrying more than a handful of credits. That's what it costs to play Star Wars: The Old Republic as a free player.Īnd that's assuming you're going to plunk down $180 to unlock everything (including hotbars to put your abilities on so you can actually use those abilities) on only two characters.

To begin with, I logged in to my old account and checked the in-game market to find out for myself what it would cost to have a subscription-like game experience without a subscription. This article analyzes the effectiveness of the current SWTOR F2P model and contrasts it with general principles of F2P design and the specific issues with SWTOR that led to its downfall as a subscription-based game. These games usually impose some restrictions on free players and try to sell them items in-game or convince them to upgrade to a subscription. Between the annoying grind and the recycled content - another one of those annoying MMORPG tropes - the game's single player content ended up being even less fun than a normal single player game, never mind the subscription fee to keep replaying it.įaced with hefty costs to recoup, and dwindling subscription numbers, BioWare did what everyone else does with a failing MMORPG: alter the game to be free-to-play (F2P), which lets players download and log in to the game without buying it or paying a subscription. Surprise, surprise most of the people who paid for the game didn't continue subscribing after playing through the story once or twice. SWTOR's 'end-game' was anemic at best, especially compared to the well-received storyline content. Design elements that players suffer through in order to get to the parts of the game they really enjoy: the coveted 'end-game.' However, BioWare spent most of its money on single player story content, wrapped up in all the worst time-sink tropes that pervade the MMORPG genre. When BioWare created Star Wars: The Old Republic, the developer intended for it to be a huge blockbuster MMORPG, with millions of subscribers dutifully paying their fees for years and years.

The old republic won t start