I think they should have gone with the pay-to-play model a la Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, they seem to be doing well. Or observe how Nexon handles f2p, Nexon seems to be in good shape too.

And while I've spent:
DDO: over 200 USD (but I played it a fuckton)
LoL: 50 USD
Firefall: 75 USD
Path of Exile: nothing yet, but need to get a package since I've had fun
SMITE: 30 or 50 USD (forget which)
AoEO: 25-ish USD

Good job convincing people like me, who actually pay sometimes, to never even try your game. They're like the car salesman looking at the people he never got a shot to even convince going home with empty pockets at the end of the day.
I think you might be confused about how many of the more successful F2P models work. Let me give you a hint: not in this way.

Keep paying, your servers are likely to be shut down in the near future, before the game's 3rd birthday if I have my guess.
Oh dammit, I've been ranting about 3 week old posts! Eh, I like my rants too well...

@ Orcishgamer. My only question is this. Would you play this game because it is Star Wars, or because it is an MMO?

I would play it to see if it's in any way good, I believe the license kills the concept of in game content, but I wouldn't mind seeing if that's true. I don't spend a lot of time on MMOs these days, but even if I did, I'm not sure why someone would play the game just because it's a MMO.

Regardless, if it was true F2P, there would be nothing to lose and plenty of fun to have before I decided if I liked it enough to "commit". Right now it's gonna be strangled in its crib for the very people they were hoping to draw in.

To be clear, I don't care if I need to pay or grind to earn extra inventory space or a shared stash. But restrictions like this do really make the game of limited appeal. If you try and force someone to pay just to do their next quest... well, you probably lost that person. Limiting some questlines to premium? Fine. But you always have to have somewhere obvious for the F2P people who aren't paying to go next. In the end those that don't pay end up populating the game world and driving the in game economy along. People who pay are in the minority. Whether you think that's right or wrong, in F2P the few subsidize the many. As for this case, it wouldn't have gone F2P if they weren't up shit creek without more revenue.

So, they're fucked.

Defeated at last, the Galactic EAmpire signed peace terms with the Rebellion.

Maybe Bioware will go back to making engaging games again, and *#&$ off making DLC vehicles and subscription-based titles.

Free Trial characters can still have 3 crew skills, so go make your characters now, beat the starting world, and pick 3 crew skills in time for F2P!

You can't use the trade network without paying, so gathering materials is not useful unless you have crafting. If not crafting, go slicing or diplomacy?

If they let me play as Mickey Mouse I'll give it a try.

I plan on joining in after the launch. Hopefully, EA would have ironed out the sudden gush of new players by then. I fully intend to go through the Class Quests and quit because I never was interested in anything else but the main quests.

The biggest problem these games face when going F2P, or offering a F2P option is disenfranchising "old timers" who are happy paying you month to month.

This is apparent both in the presentation and structure of the game, and the power levels available. I have no problem with the developer limiting access to the freebees, and otherwise incorporating them with the rest of us. Where I have a problem is the Turbine model, where you have consumables you can buy which give you an advantage, which means that person A that pays $X a month is weaker than someone that plays F2P, but spends $100 on items. This cannot be. If a game is going to allow microtransactions to allow free access, it must only sell freebees items that grant them what the subscribers have for a time.

Secondly, if I am a subscriber, I do not want to see advertisements for microtransactions items, or even know they exist. I want the same seamless experience I had before the freebes were allowed in.

In short, the subscribers should stay exactly as they were, and the freebees should be able to buy X percent of that experience at $x/item, not to exceed the subscribers experience.

Cool, the day of my birthday it will go F2P. I enjoyed quite a lot the 20ish assassin sith i played on my bro account a while back.. Now signing for the free 15 level trial until then, very much loved kotor and bioware dialogue and story presentation.

Given that KoTOR2 itself ignored half of what happened in KoTOR2, that is hardly surprising.

I find this a very convincing argument for playing the game. I'll see if I have some free space on my disk and install it. I feel that it would be a real pity to lose out on the experience this game offers.

I'm not sure why you'd think about it another way. It's as if you're looking at playing an MMO as a chore.

Building up a character to have it wiped in the near future would be a chore , yes :)

I would only play a MMO that has years in longevity, not months, at least with a single player RPG, you can continue to play it after you finish it, unlike a MMO, where your character is gone when the server closes.

I never bothered with SWTOR as a MMO at release, as the general consensus seemed to be that it was more of a SP experience, I wouldn't pay for the game and a sub for something like that. The restrictions would prevent me with bothering with it as a f2p.

On saying that, if it was re-jigged into a SP, I would probably buy it. from what I can gather it was pretty good.

Well they are giving "Kotor III" for free... I don't enjoy MMOs most of the time so this is good news to me, but I expected something more like DDO or LOTRO... Maybe the license costs too much?
Also this ^