Not so good news about F2P

[koro]

Welp, regular maintenance on Tuesday. Guess 1.5's not going to be this week.

Maintenance has now been postponed, so who knows what is happening now.

As of last night:

https://twitter.com/Joveth/status/265585178833985536

nope. No 1.5 this week. This was going to be a normal maintenance for our systems.

[Sky]

Email about "You have been rewarded with Cartel coins!"

Get ready to visit the Cartel Market loaded with coins to spend this November - and turn these golden coins into valuable items such as pets, vehicles, XP boosts, and more! Remember, you must return as a Subscriber to take advantage of this golden opportunity!

Emphasis theirs  

Not much of a 'reward' if I have to pay for it, eh?

[Nebu]

Not much of a 'reward' if I have to pay for it, eh?

It's more than you got the month before with a sub, so yeah... it's a reward.

I'm back playing this again on Jedi Covenant, Sky... just saying.

[Lantyssa]

Wait.  I have to sub again to spend the 900 coins I earned for six months of subscription?  The fuck?

[tazelbain]

Fake F2P.  That dog ain't going to hunt, monseigneur.

[Amaron]

It really is just a glorified demo.  The cost to unlock purples alone is plain stupid.

[Kageru]

On the positive side they've taken so long most people have forgotten the game exists.

[Sky]

Strike while the pile of rust is still cohesive, I say.

[Nebu]

I enjoyed Rift, SWTOR, and the Secret World far more than GW2.  Perhaps I've lost touch with what the gaming community wants.

I'm currently subbed to SWTOR again and I'm having a lot of fun. 

[Lantyssa]

Maybe you just like different things.  GW2 is the closest I've found to a lot of my tastes since SWG, but that doesn't mean it's the game for everyone, or that it's perfect.

[Zetor]

Yep, different tastes, etc.

FWIW I enjoy GW2 more than SWTOR/TSW/Rift, but I liked those 3 games too for different reasons (story for SWTOR and TSW, better DIKU mechanics / character building system for Rift)

[Kageru]

Personal tastes are just that, and not that interesting to discuss.

A more fun one is how this f2p does anything useful for the games profitability, popularity moving forward or solves the core problem of setting content expectations it will never be able to fund.

[koro]

1.5/F2P is officially November 15th.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20121108

Also: Cartel coins are $4.99 for 450 of them, or $1 per 90 coins, which is about where everyone predicted the price would be, but... kinda worse.

[Fordel]

I need to sub for at least a month to get my bonus coins from my previous sub months, correct?

[Ingmar]

I think so yes. You also need to sub if you want more than 2 character slots, since they don't have a way to buy additional slots, at least so far. For me that's by far the biggest must-sub factor.

[luckton]

Bullshit.  And I bought the freaking Collector's Edition, too.  Nickel and dime me some more, EA 

[Sky]

Not to mention the whole Stan Cholo and Juke Whybother thing. It's all about your personal story, except where it's not.

Would you like Stan to shoot first? Please pay $4.

[Sjofn]

I have literally no idea what you are trying to say, Sky.


I understand the desire for snappy one-liners and shit, but sometimes I have the hardest time understanding what the hell people actually mean. 

[Ingmar]

At least it wasn't a post about FFH! 

[Amaron]

Press Q&A summary here: http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/22284-bioware-press-q-a-reveals-free-to-play-launching


So extra character slots are on the way pronto.

A more fun one is how this f2p does anything useful for the games profitability, popularity moving forward or solves the core problem of setting content expectations it will never be able to fund.

The real angle here is to sell cash shop stuff to subs.  With 500k+ subs they don't have to pull in as many with F2P.  They want to milk the current subscribers.

[Amaron]

Found another interesting tidbit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/12vfma/psa_two_character_freepreferred_account/

So basically they won't implement the two player limit for a while.  Probably after they put character slots in the cash shop.

[Reg]

At least it wasn't a post about FFH! 

Wow, do you think it's possible to distract his endless crushing on Kael into this thread? That way maybe I could actually find out whether Fallen Enchantress is any good in the Fallen Enchantress thread.

[eldaec]

Am I dumb or is this absurdly complicated?

[Nebu]

Allow me to change my look and my race for cash and they will get more money out of me.  I'm sick of looking at my stupid blue twi'lek head.

[koro]

I always weigh the chances of stuff being done against a simple metric: "Does this seem less technically difficult to accomplish than getting voluntary character transfers to their Test server working?" If "yes", then I put all hope for it out of my mind. If "no", I file it away back at the end of the queue behind all the other stuff that they should do some time or other with the small staff they have left.

[ghost]

Allow me to change my look and my race for cash and they will get more money out of me.  I'm sick of looking at my stupid blue twi'lek head.

You deserve to be punished for making a blue Twi'lek.   

[Ingmar]

Am I dumb or is this absurdly complicated?

I think it's pretty simple really! Subscribe -> get everything. 

[Lantyssa]

I think it's more simple:  I'm done with subscription games.

[Sjofn]

Allow me to change my look and my race for cash and they will get more money out of me.  I'm sick of looking at my stupid blue twi'lek head.

You deserve to be punished for making a blue Twi'lek.  

FUCK YOU, DUDE TWI'LEKS ARE AWESOME

Although I prefer pink ones.  

[eldaec]

Am I dumb or is this absurdly complicated?

I think it's pretty simple really! Subscribe -> get everything. 

I may just do this.

I don't actually think it is terrible value to pay $15 every now and again to play through an expansion pack's worth of 'things'.

The wider Micro-trans 2 Play thing seems like it should have been designed more like WoW's free-for-a-substantial-trial. As it stands attempting to play by microtransaction sounds pretty fucked up and way beyond the analysis I want to do when I could have just paid the price of a cheap round of drinks and then started playing. 

Holy shit I just said a thing should be more like WoW.

[Sjofn]

<marks that down in her calendar>


But yeah, I very briefly thought about letting my sub run out and just dicking around as a NON-PAYING LEECH (since they're giving away the BEST part (the story shit) for free), but then I decided the whole thing is too complicated and since I am perfectly fine paying them a sub already, it's not worth the headache.

Oh God, I've played right into their hands. Again!

[Fordel]

YOU FOOL!



As I am not Sjofn and don't have DragonAge syndrome, I may just F2P my trooper to do the occasional daily or whatever.

[Amaron]

I think it's more simple:  I'm done with subscription games.

Just out of curiosity, do you spend much on GW2 cash shop?

[Lantyssa]

Nope.

[Kageru]

Am I dumb or is this absurdly complicated?

I think it's pretty simple really! Subscribe -> get everything. 

If they could get subs they wouldn't be doing this at all.

But a game needs to be designed and budgeted to fit the revenue stream. Trying to chop a game designed for subscription into f2p, without cannibalising subscriptions is why we see these sort of pointless semi-conversions that are just stealing focus and resources.