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So, with Bioware constantly sending me emails about trying The Old Republic out again, I decided I'd give it a shot. After all, the game wasn't bad (it was actually quite good, if not derivative) and with it going free to play, what could I lose?

Now, I knew the free to play model was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad.


First thing's first, I log on to find that I have too many characters. One of the neat things in TOR was the legacy system, which allowed you to organize your characters into family trees, and gain benefits. If you have a smuggler who was the brother of a Jedi, then that smuggler might find himself with some force powers that can be called on in extreme need. This promoted you having lots of alts, building storylines for them, etc etc.

Free to play players are only allowed 2. Ok, whatever... let's log in to my old toon.

First thing I notice off the bat is that all of my money is missing. I still have some credits, but I quickly learn that free to play players have a limit to how many credits they can hold. The vast majority of my fortune is now held in 'escrow,' but not to fear! I can choose to resubscribe to the monthly fee to get access to it, or I can pay a one time fee to transfer a specific amount out of escrow. That's right... I CAN PAY REAL MONEY TO GET ACCESS TO THE FAKE MONEY I PREVIOUSLY EARNED.

Also, my super ugly headgear is showing. But I can't turn it off, this is only available to subscribers, or I can pay $3 for the option to hide my head slot. Also, what's with the clown colors? TOR had the neat ability to customize colors of all gear so it matched... which is now only available to subscribers.

Whatever, I'm going to make a new character anyway. I never did play a bounty hunter, and the story is the best part of the game, so let's do that.

Hrm, my bag is awfully small. But that's ok, because you can pay credits to extend your inventory space, and this was the first thing all of my characters would always spend their credits on. Except... no, that option is only available to subscribers. If I want to expand my inventory slots without subscribing, I have to pay real money to do so.

Ok... let's do this quest. Thank you npc, I know I just managed to intimidate you for extra credits, give me that mission reward.

THIS MISSION REWARD IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

Let's go to the cantina, which is a rest zone.

REST EXPERIENCE IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

Oh hey, I got a companion customization that can change the appearance of my companion.

COMPANION CUSTOMIZATION ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

Hey, I have a mission to use the new looking for group tool to do two flashpoints (TOR's version of dungeons). Flashpoints are really fun, and this LFG tool is new. Let's check it out.

Ok, one done, now the se-

MORE THAN ONE WEEKLY FLASHPOINT IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS

Let's do a space batt-

SPACE BATTLES ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

How about a pvp wa-

WEEKLY WARZONES ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.

....

/sigh

EMOTES ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS


Fucking really? Emotes are behind a paywall too? I shit you not, every single piece of this is true.

Fuck you, The Old Republic. You deserve to fail for this.

Sounds like they got tired of everyone saying they needed to go to a F2P model, so they finally relented and said "You want F2P! Here's your fucking F2P!" And put everything they could think of behind a pay wall out of spite.

Oh hey, I just found a purple quality item, which isn't super rare, but is nice! It's basically the highest you can get without going into super rare spawn drops.

Oh look... I can't equip it. It requires 'artifact item authorization' which I can buy for 1500 cartel coins. That's roughly $15.

Jay said:

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I played the Old Republic beta for exactly half an hour, went hey this is like a shitty WoW and never touched it again.

I feel I've missed very little, especially after learning how they shit on the Revan storyline.

I really, really wanted Kotor 3. If I could play all of those storylines they made and which, apparently, are quite good, as a single player game, I would. Seriously! Give me the whole package, offline, no multiplayer, no auction house, no whatever, no interaction with anyone whatsoever, with pust perhaps a few tweaks to make it solo-playable (not even difficulty- screw that - just some timers and RL time limits that need removing), and I'd pay $50 for it. Even knowing how much they crap all over practically every character I like, I'd still pay to play it.
but not on line. Not with 100 other dickheads around. Certainly not with a subscription model. And also certainly not with a F2P model like that. Still waiting.

I bought the game when it came out. Played it. Loved my Sniper Imperial Agent and storyline. Was a guild leader with 10 other gamers who played with my back in my raiding days in WoW.

We owned the server. We owned PVP. My sniper was known across the server, has most DPS in raids and battleground it wasn't even funny.

Heck, PVP battleground had other teams forfeit games.

The game was solid, not great. We knew for what it was. A Kotor/Mass Effect wanna be game with serious flaws.

End game was A JOKE.

We cleared all end game content during a weekend.

Cleared it.

The next week we cleared it on the hardest level.

Then there was NOTHING to do 1 week after hitting the end game.

PVP? 95% of all matches being Huttball?

Pathetic.

We had the best gear and kept pounding people in the face in PVP to the point NO ONE WANTED TO PLAY AGAINST US.

There was nothing to do.

Then everyone stopped playing because we had all the gear we wanted, cleared all we wanted. Everything was easy. Casual. Server was dead after 6 weeks as most people transferred off or didn't bother to renew after 1 month.

I initially paid for 6 months. The last 4 were AFK.

The game bombed? What did you expect with barely a few hours of end game content? One flash point every 10 levels?

How much did this game cost to make?

Please.

I played more Guild War 2 than TOR.

We spend most of the time talking about our WoW days, our DAOC days.

Jay said:

End game was A JOKE.

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This is why it failed with the MMO crowd.

The always-online, no-actual-impact-on-the-world, and so on was why it bombed with the KOTOR crowd.

Decent-but-nothing-special graphics are why it bombed with the GFX crowd.

Really - had they invested the same amount of money in making a single player KOTOR 3 + a SW-based MMO with little story but lots of different fighting and socialising options (in other words, an updated version of KOTOR2 and an updated version of SW Galaxies) they'd have had a much better return. And frankly, it'd haev been difficult to use all ofthat insane budget on those two games, if you didn't start from scratch.

Oh, and I'll say it now - TESMMO will fail for pretty much the same reasons, though perhaps a bit slower.

One aspect I miss from Galaxies was the ability to have your own house and create your own cities. I liked showing off my trophies from all of my adventures in my house. I was the barkeep in my town's tavern, and went trough the trouble of getting a Krayt Dragon skull to display in front of the bar. I thought that was neat.

I still play SWG @Cheesy1

http://www.swgemu.com/forums/index.php

I play occasionally with some friends on it.

It's a classic game and if it had the budget TOR had, the MMO world would have turned inside out.

Is that on a private server? I was under the impression that SOE nuked the SWG servers.

Bowielee said:

Is that on a private server? I was under the impression that SOE nuked the SWG servers.

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SWGEMU is the star wars galaxies emulation project. It's private servers running the old version of SWG before SOE fucked it all up.

Was in this from Beta up until about August 2012. My time with the game basically consisted of me doing all the single player story lines. Enjoyed those but the moment they went free to play (or rather announced it) I decided they'd had enough of my money.

AshburnerX said:

Was in this from Beta up until about August 2012. My time with the game basically consisted of me doing all the single player story lines. Enjoyed those but the moment they went free to play (or rather announced it) I decided they'd had enough of my money.

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A good free to play model can inspire players to sink money into something they enjoy. I don't want to think of how much money I've spent on League of Legends over the year or so I've been playing it. And even The Secret World has scored some of my dough, just because I liked the game enough to want to support it.

This, though? This game spits in your face if you try to play it for free. It's not a good way to earn player loyalty.

Ravenpoe said:

A good free to play model can inspire players to sink money into something they enjoy. I don't want to think of how much money I've spent on League of Legends over the year or so I've been playing it. And even The Secret World has scored some of my dough, just because I liked the game enough to want to support it.

This, though? This game spits in your face if you try to play it for free. It's not a good way to earn player loyalty.

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Marvel Heroes has been my most recent pocket drain. Freakin' costumes man, they get me every time. I would have said a month ago that it was a terrible F2P structure, but the changes they implemented in the last patch made it an extremely streamlined progression to unlock the content that was previously behind a pay wall or straight up luck.

I totally sneak off to Target and buy Riot point cards so that they don't show up as Riot points on the bank statement.

Dei said:

I totally sneak off to Target and buy Riot point cards so that they don't show up as Riot points on the bank statement.

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You could always get the Riot Bank Card...

Thank god I'm still unemployed, or I would have that.