Star Wars: The Old Republic F2P
So by the end of the year SWTOR is going free-to-play. Anyone planning on getting into it/going back?
Personally I played it for the first month (or so) that I had it, got to level 42 with the Jedi Sage and around level 25 with the bounty hunter, and then lost interest.
You can see the restrictions they are putting up for free players, its pretty ridiculous in my opinion but its their choice as a business.
http://www.swtor.com/free/features
Personally I played it for the first month (or so) that I had it, got to level 42 with the Jedi Sage and around level 25 with the bounty hunter, and then lost interest.
You can see the restrictions they are putting up for free players, its pretty ridiculous in my opinion but its their choice as a business.
http://www.swtor.com/free/features
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Comments
If it becomes free-to-play, then I might try it. I'll pay for the software, but there is no way, after my finally *very* negative experience with WoW, that I am *ever* going to agree to a monthly charge to play a game again.
EDIT: I followed your link and read it. This is not "free-to-play". This is exactly the same crap that Blizzard pulled with "free" WoW. That's how they got me hooked in. You cannot actually play the game and have full interaction privileges with anyone else who plays the game unless you subscribe. It's a kind of classic "bait and switch" tactic, similar to what drug pushers do. "Free sample of *insert illegal drug name*, come on, you'll love it, no obligation at all, you have nothing to lose". "Oh, you want another dose, well, that'll cost you the very reasonable price of *insert unreasonable price that is going to destroy you financially and then destroy your whole life*"
I seriously doubt that Bioware is going to get away with trying the same marketing technique with a tainted product.
I will be especially interested if they create a single-player version of the game. The trouble is, most of the single-player content in games designed to be MMORPG's, is very, very shallow and boring. The whole design of the game is centered around PvP competition and "guild" raiding, and if you want to just play by yourself, then, forget it. There is only a token effort to make single-player, rpg, and story even remotely interesting.
And whatever story is there, you will never get to read if you are a latecomer, because the anonymous players you are almost forced to play with will not be interested in story or rp. They will be hurry, hurry, hurry; move, move, move; loot, loot, loot; "What kind of lame player are you? You're not standing there trying to READ, are you? You *curse, curse, profane insult, profane insult*, how dare you slow me down by trying to roleplay anything or pay attention to *story*?" Bleagh.
EDIT: Even Jennifer Hale voicing the female trooper could not save that storyline for me.
I tried to like this game. I really did. After $60 for the game and god knows how much for the 3-month subscription, I stopped playing it after about 40 days. They got $100 from me, I got to maybe level 20 and found that I just didn't care enough to load the game to play.
I knew there was a reason I don't play MMO's. Now I know the specifics of that reason.
It sounds like SWTOR has all the bad things about WoW, and few or none of the good things. (VERY few "good" things.)
The only draw for these shallow, hollow shells of gaming stories is, for me, the potential to socialize in real time with other players. But then, most other players that I might actually wind up playing with do not have even close to my own interest in myth, story, teamwork, friendship, cooperative play, or anything else in common with my own philosophy of gaming.
And, I can get a pretty good amount of high-quality socializing in forums like this one, without having my game time play ruined by total idiots.
I have come to *hate* MMO's. No matter how enticing the advertising, the marketing, the promise of a good story, the promise of a good play, WoW has taught me to know better - quite bitterly to know better. I do *not* want other people ruining my play time.
I played the game for about 3 months and liked many things in it - the storylines were cool (I completed the Sith Inquisitor one and got to chapter 3 with the Jedi Knight and Imperial Agent), the flashpoints were interesting (when you were for the 100th time in one you'd fast-forward the dialogues too ) and the classes / characters were well designed. Had it been a single-player game it would have been perfect. Alas it wasn't / isn't, and seems to be going the same way WoW is without having the luxury of a (still) big playerbase. I don't think I'll play again when is free to play (got a bonus free week during the summer and after 5 minutes on-line I logged off), but the fact that I found more things against than for playing it doesn't make it a failure of a game. It depends what you want / expect from it.
Is strange that you say this as I always skipped some quests and never did the bonus missions on planets after completing the personal / planetary storyline, I did no PvP whatsoever and also avoided the piloting missions, yet by the time I reached a new planet I was 1-2 levels above the starting lvl for it. It is true I ran flashpoints too but going 2-3 times through a FP is not enough to grant 2 levels of experience.
I found that for the first maybe 32 levels I was always above my level expectation (2 levels at least), but after I gradually began to have less and less experience available to the point where by 42 I was expected to be 43 or 44 for quests. I suppose its possible that I missed quests, but I was pretty thorough. I even did piloting missions even when they were only green, did flashpoints, a lot of arena time etc. Ohh well whatevs. Obviously someone blew up Alderaan on me haha
That being said I did love the Rakghoul plague. Now that was fun event!
Iirc the Alderaan bonus series was for players level 40 - I never did it but had a friend who had the same issue as you and he went and did those missions to catch up in XP.
The root of the problem in my opinion is that RPG =/= MMO. The pace of the game is quick fight-fight-fight, rather than immerse in an environment and interact with quality PC's and NPC's. They're hoping the addiction of wiping out 100's of the same enemies will keep you going. At least, that is what I think they are hoping.
Places don't feel alive. Just a bunch of standing figures that look the same and don't add much. The characters run around for the 45 second quests and you get to repeat the fight TO the quest on the way out because they all regenerated.
When it comes to being upset/surprised by the ways Free-to-Play models limit game features, I can only assume that the person is new to this term. From what I know, you're better off thinking of F2P as a different kind of demo. Where traditional demos limited you to certain levels or to a specific amount of time, F2P limits you in other ways. I mean if F2P included full functionality, no-one would pay and how would the company make money? Complaining about how F2P is just some underhanded way get you hooked on the game is kind of silly since that is literally the entire point of using the F2P model for big games like this.
I'm not defending SWTOR or F2P, as I've never played the former and I avoid the latter. But some of these complaints seem on par with someone complaining that the latest Call of Duty lacks originality.
They didn't. I'm disappointed because WOWTOR is not KOTOR 3-12. I'm not the one that said it would be. If I told you I'm making a pizza and I bring a ham sandwich... Just saying.
You make a good point. I really didn't follow the marketing campaign for SWTOR so I don't really know what was promised. If they failed to deliver on what they promised then that's a pretty legitimate complaint. My bad.