News Star Wars: The Old Republic release date announced

BioWare announces the European and US release dates of its new Star Wars MMO.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/09/26/star-wars-the-old-republic-release-date-ann/1

 

I've been looking forward to this game for years. But after playing the beta I was hoping Bioware/EA would announce a nice, long delay and turn it into the game it deserves to be.

 

A tad pricey. I usually pay less than £57 for games and I can play then for as long as I want.

 

I'll wait 6 months for it to become free to play.

 

"which translates into roughly £11, £31 and £57 respectively."

Wrong. You got the Euros right, but the Pounds Sterling amounts were way off. These are the official amounts:

1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/€12.99)
3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/€35.97)
6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/€65.94)

 

Either way that's more than I want to pay for a years game play. Forty odd quid should buy at least two years.

 

It's the standard amount for an MMO.

 

A couple years ago, maybe. But the one-tier, fixed monthly fee model has become somewhat antiquated now. Give it 6 months to a year (depending on how stubborn EA decides to be) and there will be a new 'free' tier. This is not at all a statement as to the quality of the game, just a fact on how the industry has changed.

 

Brb opening my free WoW account.


Or is that the exception to prove the rule?

 

And that's the most popular MMO in the world - a success that will probably never be repeated. Even Blizzard themselves have said their new MMO (Codename Titan) will be more 'casual', so expect that to also be entirely micro-transaction based.

 

That is a demo. Nothing more. Free to play is completely different...

 

Though wow is down a million users at current, free to play models are definelty very popular with mmo's now, STOR could proably do with a free to play up to a certain level to let people try the game.

Unless the game is good to go at launch, as pretty much every new mmo 'wow' killer at launch has failed and then died off.

 

It's still a "free WoW account" - your words, not mine. You were proved wrong and now you're just being pedantic as to what qualifies as a 'free' tier.

In my original post I never specified what EA should offer for free (be it Level, Zones, Class or general gameplay restrictions), only that all modern MMO's should at least have some gratis offering to give new players a taste of what is on offer.

 

^ which has been known for years, as a trial or demo.
Capped play, though free, does not make free to play.

Most MMO's do not launch with any kind of trial at all, this is usually reserved for around 6 months after launch after which some kind of level capped or time limited trial will start.

Free to play would be that you can enjoy ALL of the game content without spending anything, or with a single transaction. Guild Wars is a good example of Free to Play with only the client and subsequent expansion clients being charged for rather than a subscription to play it.
Micro-transactions unless for vanity items only, would kill the game IMO. They are a bane on gaming if handled incorrectly, and can turn in to "whoever has the deepest pockets wins" which isn't right.
Stick with the sub model I say, or do a Guild Wars.

The sub could do with being cheaper but I enjoyed playing it at Eurogamer and am no stranger to paying for an MMO. It equates to 2 less pints a month which I can sufficiently do without anyway.

 

No because there's also EvE

 

As the poster below you nailed it, demos are not the same as free to play.

I urge you not to respond to this as it will only serve to make you look more dense.

 

lol interenets

This MMO looks extremely interesting to me but I can't bring myself to justify a monthly subscription...

 

You're basing the argument on one specific MMO, and even WoW has a basic free model up to Level 20. Like it or not, the distinction between F2P model and subscription based model is not as clear cut now compared to a few years ago. Just look at games like APB, Lord of The Rings Online and Champions Online; they started out with subscription based models and moved towards microtransaction after a while.

WoW is still one of the biggest MMOs out there, so ActiBlizzard will continue to milk the subscribers until they lose a substantial amount of players. When that happens I think the level cap on the free account will be raised, or they might even introduce a new F2P model. Like NuTech mentioned before, other MMOs don't have the level of success as WoW so they have to rely more on F2P models to attract players.

 

Been paying my eve subscription with in game ISK for about a year now, dunno if you class that as free?

 

You tell them .

With regards to sub-based games... surely we're over this discussion already? Either you're willing to pay them, or you're not. The same with pretty much everything else in life.

There's a reason why Blizzard earned more (with what... WoW and Starcraft 2 i believe) than the rest of Activision combined (inc. Call of Duty, Guitar Hero etc.).

Subscriptions make money and i'm pretty sure that TOR will be successful, especially since they stated they only needed 1 million subs to break even and ideally they want around 3 million for it to be a comfortable success.