Leaked SWTOR developer's meeting

SWTOR Dev Lackey: GUYS GUYS GUYS GUYS GAIZ GAIZ! I has idea! What if we take our game, which nobody thinks is worth paying for... And then strip content out of it, and sell it back to them as individual components at a collectively higher price?

SWTOR Dev Lead: GENIUS. Let's take 6 months to covertly plan and develop our new F2P features, while subscribers continue to pay a monthly fee and receive no content updates. Then when F2P arrives, they will have to pay TWICE just to get back the items and perks they've earned and already paid for.


And thus, an already shitty game became a cosmic joke. In retrospect, I guess they achieved something original with the franchise after all, instead of just cloning another MMO.

If you haven't heard, SWTOR announced F2P some time ago, after the TORtanic prophesies proved true. Waves of players and developers abandoned the sinking ship, and EA hastily branded it a failure, and the sole unpredictable blemish on their otherwise flawless business strategy, deferring all blame onto Bioware. When your own parent disavows and abandons you, you know you've fucked up. Around that time, BW/EA tried to excuse themselves with data claiming that subscription based MMOs were dead, and an unsuitable payment model for the times. They also tried to reference F2P MMOs like LOTRO, DCUO, etc for their relative success. But the truth is, F2P isn't a cureall. I will probably make a dedicated post about that later, but F2P doesn't automatically make your game better, nor will it alleviate the existing flaws. However, no need to worry, because SWTOR never got the memo on how to make a F2P game; they focused all their time on fixing their public relations problems instead, so it would be a farce to even call this F2P.

Back to the headlines then: SWTOR officially launched their F2P today, and now all servers are open for you to play for free. Not that I would recommend it.

SWTOR's F2P restrictions are so tight, that many players are labeling it an 'extended trial', as it allows a player to level from 1-50, but little else. For the first time in any F2P MMO I've heard of, SWTOR restricts your UI, and makes you pay money to use it. It doesn't end there. Let's list some moronic restrictions:

1. Only get 2 of the available 6 hotbars for skills (and believe me, you need at least 4)
2.  Pay more at vendors and every time you exchange tokens for gear (the primary way to get good gear)
3. Can't use guild bank or regular banks (any items inside are locked)
4. Can't mail or trade
5. Cant accept common quest rewards
6. Can only post 2 auction house listings
7. Cant have more than 200k credits on you (the rest is locked into an account that is never released until you subscribe)
8. Can only talk in 2 channels at 1 message a minute
9. Cant wear epic gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
10. Cant wear event gear (even if earned from being a subscriber)
11. Can't hide headslots or display titles or legacy name (even your 'founders title' awarded from being a long term subscriber)
12. Can only roll 3 times for loot in dungeons PER week (failed rolls count)
13. Can only do 5 battlegrounds a week (losses and incomplete games count, and the weekly quest requires 9 battlegrounds won)
14. No access to the LFG tool
15. No access to raids.
16. Only 1 of 3 professions allowed
17. Emotes are locked
18. Half your inventory size. Anything in the other half is locked until you pay.
19. Quick Travel (town teleport ability) cooldown is quadrupled, now at 2 hours. Emergency fleet pass (teleports you back to main fleet hub) completely disabled
20. Only 2 characters per server. Returning players must select 2 and lock out the rest.
21. No rest xp.
22. No using /who.
23. No using out of combat move speed passive ability until level 14.

What the fuck? So for the past 6 months, instead of adding new content that people will want to pay for, they took content that people were ALREADY paying for, and removed it. I guess that's one way to slack off as a developer. And even though you can buy back the features you want piecemeal, they are horrendously expensive, outweighing the monthly subscription. Just paying the weekly passes for raiding and battlegrounds ONLY, will make your monthly bill around $20. And you still won't be able to wear any epic gear or use hotbars.

SWTOR Devs: Herp derp, you don't want to pay $15 a month for my game? How about $20 for only 1/5th of my game? ULTRA DEAL!

It is clear that this F2P change won't draw in any more players than their free trial did. Because that's all this is: another free trial. And a chance for Bioware to double-dip into their subscribers and make them pay again for something they've already paid for months ago. And which ex-subscriber would be stupid enough to pay? If they didn't think the entire game was worth the money then, why would it be worth the value now? Nothing's changed, except for getting even less content. Sickeningly, it also means Bioware gets an excuse to put in a CASH SHOP into a P2P game. People would have been outraged if they did it while it was still technically P2P, but now they can call it F2P, however unfaithful it may be to that label. It shocks me that Bioware promises more content every 6 weeks from now on, when they've broken that promise repeatedly since release, when people were already supposedly paying monthly for content. Now that people don't have to pay monthly... They're promising monthly content again? How gullible do you think your subscribers are?

These guys have no fucking clue how to run a MMO, or a F2P game. Since release, more than half their employees and major project leads were fired, and I'm not sorry to see them go. They were trash and should never work in the industry again. My only regret is that their replacements are just as deluded and out of touch with gaming and the community.

What a fucking waste. And I'm not even surprised. I came to my senses in March, but that was already too much time wasted on this crap. So I'll redeem myself with a prediction, nay, a prophecy: SWTOR F2P is going to flop hard, and will not get any more players than a wave of trial offers. Not even close to the 50 million predicted (this guy should be fired too btw). Bioware won't shut down SWTOR so soon, so I foresee massive revamping of the F2P system, an admission of guilt and a shallow apology, then a reduction in its restrictions, and more incentive for ex-subscribers to return. New periodic content of substance will still be scarce. Cash shop profits will keep SWTOR afloat, and they'll attempt to use it to bolster their reputation and initial claims, despite subscriber numbers not actually increasing (but they'll conveniently avoid that data).

Update: Just read this at wired.

The $15-a-month subscription game is dying. But it’s not because players are cheap, it’s because they’re bored.

As the game development website Gamasutra put it, the most expensive game in history is now free: With a reported $200 million budget, the massively multiplayer RPG Star Wars: The Old Republic wasn’t attracting nearly the number of subscribers that publisher Electronic Arts needed if it was going to see returns. So EA added a business model that has been lucrative for other online games: Allow gamers to play for free, then charge them small amounts for upgrades once they’re hooked.

But that may not be enough. Experts in the space say the reason Star Wars struggles while other online games are killing it isn’t because of the money, it’s because of how the games themselves are designed. It’s not the business model that’s obsolete, but the product.

 While the rest of the article points at a conclusion I'm not quite ready to accept, this segment of it is spot on. The game is bad, that's why it's not worth $15 a month. If they focused on trying to make the game better to match the $15, it would be harder, but ultimately a better product. Instead, they weakened the product to market it at a deceptively cheaper price. I also don't think the problem is with the p2p MMO archetype, it is with the games being lackluster and ultimately, lacking the frequent updates you'd expect with a monthly bill. Imagine subscribing to a magazine, and paying a monthly fee only to get the same issue over and over again. Not enough content? Re-read it! Read it backwards! Fold it into origami! Keep yourself warm at the fireplace! The sad thing is, f2p moba games update every 2 days, yet $15 a month, despite server maintenance costs, give you an update every 6 months if you're lucky? I'm afraid the problem lies with the developers and publishers, not with the model.