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The Old Republic goes free to play

The reason F2P is on the rise has more to do with games lacking anything worth paying for rather than consumer frustration with the payment model. People payed subscriptions for games before because they spent enough time in those games to warrant it. MMO subscriptions are actually quite cheap compared to mostly every other form of entertainment as long as you play the game enough.

If MMOs were only about where your friends are, then games wouldn't lose subscribers. Games lose subscribers because people get bored with them, and when they leave, their friends leave, yes, but the initial reason for the subscriber decline is lack of enjoyable gameplay.

Just look at Eve Online. It has substantially less subscribers than WoW, but is growing rather than shrinking because it offers something A) unique, and B) designed for a target audience. The people who play Eve love Eve and so they keep paying to play it. Subscriptions aren't hurting its growth. WoW isn't shrinking because the subscribers want a F2P model, it's shrinking because the game isn't any damn fun anymore. The draw of the in-game social circle isn't great enough to counter the declining interest in the game itself. That said, it still has a massive subscriber base and is far from dead enough to need a F2P model.

If a developers could make game worlds that people wanted to spend a good portion of their free time in before, nothing is stopping them from doing so again. SW:TOR just happened to be a failure in that aspect and that is why it is going F2P.
 
Actually it is more profitable for online games to have micro transactions than a subscription based model.

But what SWTOR has done is something all games should start out with. I find it odd that we can get demos on most games, a teaser.. if they are single player off line, but when it comes to online games we have to buy the game to try it. I for one would never ever buy Secret World based on reviews, because I simply do not understand what the hell the game is about. Now I knew what Star Wars was about so I took the plunge, but Secret World.. no way. I will wait to when it goes F2P in a few months.

SWTOR as it stands now is great, very balanced and has a lot of content. It could be harder, but as all online games they cater to the 10 year old snot nose. The problem with games like SWTOR and WOW, is that the "hard core gamer" plays it to the max, finishes the game and by that time a new game comes out. For SWTOR it was Diablo and then Secret World and soon Guild Wars 2. These new games hit all online games hard since people flok to find the "new great game" and rarely, if at all, do they find it. Which means a lot return to their old hunting grounds. I for one, dumped SWTOR for a month because of Diablo 3. Now Diablo 3 was an utter disappointment and I would never have bought it, if I had known I would have to repeat the game 3 times to max out my character.

For now I will keep playing Star Wars since there is nothing out there that seems interesting at all, but I fully understand with each new game coming, SWTOR will loose people, as will all other online games including WoW, Secret World and so on. I mean Diablo 3 "logins" have totally dropped off a cliff.

I moved from SWTOR to TSW. Loving the TSW.

I actually liked SWTOR. But unfortunately my server has been empty since early access. The first ticket I sent was on the first day of launch. Standing at the Esseles Flashpoint for hours not being able to get a team.

So when server transfers came, I had the option of transferring to an equally empty server... WTF. No thanks. I don't play enough for rerolling to be an option. My main was only 38. I am not grinding all the way through that again, AND paying to do so.

Not surprised they went F2P. They should have just done it from the start honestly. You could totally tell, just like TSW, it setup for micro-transactions.
 
The only game(s) that have, can, and will challenge Blizzard in their stranglehold of the MMO community is the game that has a PvP-centric focus. The game that has done the most damage to WoW domination is Guild Wars. SWTOR had zero chance to do anything to the subscription count of WoW because, as I've found out in betas and playing of my friend's account, that the PvP system was complete and utter garbage. Guild Wars did a fantastic job at making a thriving PvP community, and in the WoW community GW2 is getting more buzz than every other up and coming MMO I've heard of combined.
 
The only game(s) that have, can, and will challenge Blizzard in their stranglehold of the MMO community is the game that has a PvP-centric focus. The game that has done the most damage to WoW domination is Guild Wars. SWTOR had zero chance to do anything to the subscription count of WoW because, as I've found out in betas and playing of my friend's account, that the PvP system was complete and utter garbage. Guild Wars did a fantastic job at making a thriving PvP community, and in the WoW community GW2 is getting more buzz than every other up and coming MMO I've heard of combined.

PvPcentric games historically do not do well. Even the ones that have had some success, the success is based on reasons other than PvP. Eve succeeds not because of PvP, but because of the sandbox design. Guild Wars succeeds due to it's different revenue model.
 
I got bored of it and cancelled a while back... Maybe I'll re-activate as free... Bleh.
 
PvPcentric games historically do not do well. Even the ones that have had some success, the success is based on reasons other than PvP. Eve succeeds not because of PvP, but because of the sandbox design. Guild Wars succeeds due to it's different revenue model.

EVE doesn't really succeed. IMO it is one of the awesomest games out there. But it is insanely hard and complicated and brutal. They refuse to nerf it and the result is a very small subscriber base. CCP isn't even really developing it anymore.
 
PvPcentric games historically do not do well. Even the ones that have had some success, the success is based on reasons other than PvP. Eve succeeds not because of PvP, but because of the sandbox design. Guild Wars succeeds due to it's different revenue model.

Ganking-centric games don't do well. PVP games where you can't grind/buy your way to victory like FPS games do well.
 
Ganking-centric games don't do well. PVP games where you can't grind/buy your way to victory like FPS games do well.

I was thinking in terms of MMOs. You are correct about FPS games.
 
I enjoyed TOR as I played it, but also realized that ultimately I played it like a single player game or occasionally as a multiplayer game....but never really like an MMO. The questing and storylines, thanks to cut scenes and great voice acting, was FAR more enjoyable than WOW....but that was the only part of the game attractive to me and paying $15 a month for essentially a single player game wasnt something I wants to continue doing
 
The questing and storylines, thanks to cut scenes and great voice acting, was FAR more enjoyable than WOW....

Definitely it is significantly better than wow graphically, but I could never shake the feeling that I was playing a wow clone. Sooooo much of the mechanics are stolen outright from wow. I totally burned myself out on wow back in the day, so that kind of irritated me... Sometimes I feel like they aren't really coming up with hardly any new games. They're all just updated versions of old games it seems like. One recent exception is ANNO 2070. That was pretty creative and unusual IMO. It's a strategy game that is mostly a city building, supply chain management game, but there is an element of combat too. If anybody is looking for a new game to check out, I'd recommend it if you're into that micromanagement type stuff.
 
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