T'was a sucker bet.
Can't say I'm impressed with the implementation though. Just reeks of cash grab.
Oh,
here is some more info I found... interesting.
Quick, kick the game while it's down... repeatedly.
Quote:
2:03: Disappointing performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic was offset by powerful performance of Battlefield 3.
2:11: Lowered expectations in SWTOR, future outlook affected by it.
2:20: Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3).
2:26: Star Wars is the primary driver for adjusted guidance to a lower number. Battlefield 3 offset SWTOR performance.
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Some tid bits on the F2P scheme.
Quote:
2:14: Giving people choice along side subscriptions should give people plenty of options and drive players to the game. Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers. Offering two-tiered pricing plan in November. For players who cancelled their subscriptions, feedback provided as they cancelled indicated that 40% were turned off by the monthly subscription fee.
2:16: SWTOR will retail for $15 along with a free month of subscription. Premium players: $15 a month, currency for boosts, customizations, and faster level progression. Free: players move at their own pace and comfort level, can buy new stuff when/if they want.
2:50: Question on expectations of the future of Star Wars. Frank Gibeau: The idea with F2P is to open the funnel and get some of the players back that we lost to churn. We anticipate that the mix between subscriptions and free to play are going to be balanced but we don't foresee free to play revenues as incremental to anything that we discussed in the call.
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Honestly EA was to greedy (queue laughter), and Bioware was probably to ambitious for an entry to an already saturated MMO market. It's a pity too, because the game isn't bad, per say. There are quite a few nice things, and the quest dialog is nice. It's just to slow on the content, lack of organised pvp, and the world not being... exciting... enough, its far to linear. It's almost like playing in a diorama at times with all the static set pieces, and obviously 'false' scenery. That and like most MMO's its too similar to WoW, and because of that it gets weighed against WoW which has had years to be refined. People that leave WoW don't want to play WoW again.
It'd be nice if we could go back to the day of people making games for fun rather than meeting quota's and profit margins, but the sun will probably explode before that happens (outside of indie's (EA cracks me up when it tries to claim indy 'cred')).