Spending one hour to play for a year is a chore?

Ah, I think I get it. The issue isn't the chore but the attachment you feel to the character. Even if you enjoy the game and its story you'll feel a pain when that character is deleted. I can understand it, but I think it's not a good enough reason to miss on all the content.

That it's a good SP experience is what makes me excited about playing it. What about the restrictions bothers you? Far as I can tell it should be possible to play through most of the game's content with these restrictions.

I don't know about you, but having to stop experiencing said story on one of my free Saturday mornings due to a poorly implemented F2P velvet rope would piss me off. Those restrictions could limit you to a couple of hours of play per week (or at least it sounds that way). I don't know about you, but that's not how I play games. I suspect most people gorge themselves on a game in short spurts and Bioware knows it and hopes to get folks to open their wallet. There's a bunch of dead F2P games that also thought the same thing...
You realize that Turbine gives VIPs (subscribers) 500 DDO points per month, in addition to the points you may earn via favor, right?

And if someone pays 100 dollars per month, they are actually paying more than you. I never had a problem with DDO's consumables, I've done Shroud and a lot of the older high end content (none of the new stuff) and never needed any of that shit even once. The summonable rest shrine could be a raid saver, I can see that, I've just never been in a raid that needed one.

Turbine is the model I like best for F2P, you can get most of that shit in game, hell, they give away extras during holidays, winter cookies do much of the stuff those consumables do. All the money does is saves you a bit of grinding.
I have less time than there are games in which to invest. SWTOR, if it were on the brink of being gone, would be a poor investment. There's a ton of other games that might still be there if I were to come back in a year.

Pretty much all of them, I know its F2P, but I think its the most restrictive F2P I have seen, I currently play Lineage 2, there, they bend over backwards to accomodate F2P players :)




You'll be able to buy Weekly Passes for each though in order to get unlimited access. There will be restrictions on both Cargo Bay and Inventory storage which can be removed using the new Cartel Coins currency.

so you'll need to buy a Weekly Pass if you want to get your hands on the best loot. Having said that, according to the chart you'll be unable to equip "most purple items unless a license is purchased", so it may not appeal that much to you anyway.

Most of the other restrictions are essentially matters of convenience; those who sub will get priority on login queues, a shorter Quick Travel cooldown and the ability to use the Emergency Fleet Pass to instantly return to their faction's space station. You'll also only get one Crew Skill slot with the free-to-play version of the game, and get a limited number of Field Revivals to use when you die in the middle of nowhere.

Is it something new? In every F2P MMO I tested, the best items were restricted to people who pay.

This is exactly why I piss on mmo's.

If you change from a "subscribers get everything" model to a "pay more to get more" model, you have fundamentally changed the game. My preference would be to allow users to spend UP TO a months sub fee, at whichtime they wluld get the same benefjts as a subscriber for 30 days starting from the first purchase, and nothing more.

Not in Lineage 2, in fact as you level up through the different equipment tiers, the game essentially "mails" you top tier weapons, armour, jewellery and enhancements for each character, each tier of free equipmet lasts 30 days, the final tier lasts 90 days, all allowing you more than sufficant time to aquire enough gold to equip yourself and become self sufficant. As the game has double XP, these 30/90 day periods are more than enough time for you to gear yourself up and either way, the game gives you slightly less than top tier gear permenantly on completion of class quests that is more than adequate to use if you want to be totally self reliant and not take the top tier handouts.

You can abuse the system by making alts and exchanging gear you dont need, between them as well.

I've played both City of Heroes and Everquest 2 in their F2P models (and before they went F2P) and I've never had a serious problem with the limitations, which are similar to here. In EQ2 I've read that the restrictions become annoying at the high levels, and I haven't experienced these levels. In CoH since the limitations are more or less equivalent to how the was some years before, it's still playable.

More correctly, I found the pure free to play versions a bit too limiting, but paying a little ($5) transforms the game into something that's pretty playable. Here too there will be preferred status, which should make things more palatable. I don't know how much it will cost.

Edit: The thread I linked to says that any purchase from the store will confer preferred player status, so imagine that it won't cost more than $5 to get it.

Edit: I think that the bottom line is, if you're into an MMO's to get an uber character and play raids or PvP then the free model is a lot more problematic than if you're just into the game to experience the story (which is what I play for).

To a large extent yes, thats correct, But I also take into account the social/guild aspect and story as well.

But, I'm not talking about EQ here, (which is a great MMO, I stopped playing back when the brought in some race of flying faries), All MMO's I guess have their own merits, I dont really consider SWTOR "enough" of a MMO for me to sink my teeth" into, short story length and the financial future of the game make it (for me) a waste of my time levelling characters up, only to get them wiped in the near future.

If I thought the game was "worth" my time, I would actually sub, but there are better (for me) F2P MMO's out there, which make SWTOR less attractive to me, either subbed or F2P.

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is not available in your region :P

Actually I have an issue with this, due to financial reasons I'll have to terminate my ISP contract at the end of the month and will be without internet at least until June next year, if this was Kotor III I'd still be able to play it, but as it stands I won't.

I stopped a little before that. I actually have the Echoes of Faydwer box still shrinkwrapped. I went back to it when it went F2P and quite enjoyed it.

Regarding SWTOR's longevity, far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) it has more meat than DCUO had when it turned F2P, and that was about a year ago. So I figure it still has some life left.

I never played DC and I dont know for certain how long SWTOR is myself, but I dont want to start a MMO in its last stages, if I wasnt inspired when it was new, then I think it's too late to bother with it now, as I said, if it was a SP game I woud buy at release, story would probably be better too :)

I registered my collector's edition key now and am starting up with a couple friends that were playing before.

I get why people would be reluctant to play an MMO that seems like it's dieing. Obviously this game isn't doing great, or else they wouldn't be doing F2P. I'm going to try it out though as I liked what I played so far during a free weekend back in the spring.

To me, the biggest annoyance with MMOs is if you want to play more later on, you have to pay upfront again to get time. Also when I am paying, I end up using most of my free time to not "waste" my money. By the end of the month I'm burned out with the game. So MMOs that are free to at least try that look interesting, I'll play.

I may just be missing something obvious, but have they said how many character slots free players will get?

With each class having its own storyline, I'm going to want to play through most (if not all) of them while pretending they're single player games, so it'll be annoying if I have to do them one at a time and delete my character once I've finished each story.

Obviously I don't expect to be able to run them all simultaneously, but at least three would be nice. I expect it'll be two though. Or one, because EA.