The monthly allotment does make me worry a little. The longer I sub, the more benefits I can buy so that I get closer to being able to buy everything if I stop subbing. A six month sub gets 3000+ cartel coins, that's enough to buy the inventory slots, quick bars and so on, and suddenly you can drop the Premium and keep playing just the same. But we'll see how it goes. Maybe they'll find the DDO route and actually put story packs in the shop, something interesting to always keep Premiums buying for more content, instead of worthless cosmetics.

I think 200 hours give or take is pretty serious commitment. By the time you're level 50, you've more than earned the title. What do you want, people to spend half their life just to get a basic title that everybody who's seen the movies wants to have? I'm all game for some elite titles for the people who spend a million hours, but Darth is such an iconic title it needs to be accessible for the casual player. Everybody wants to be a Darth, and if you don't please your audience you're dead as an MMO.

They are not a fricking charity. They're not "giving" things. They're trying to make money, and if they just "give" everything then they will not make money, they'll go out of business, and you won't have a game to /cry about. For god's sakes, they're letting you go through the entire game 1-50 for free, and you want still more? What, exactly, *would* be "reasonable" restrictions to you, if restricting emotes is restricting "to death"? Maybe they should give away everything except the ability to use a medpack in the Ilum Cantina on wednesdays? Would something that small be a "reasonable" restriction, or would that still be restricting "to death"?

I honestly think it's less the financial figures and more the loss of control. Having basically built the company and its whole image, credo and everything, and then having to watch it dragged through the mud while being powerless to do anything because you're not the top boss anymore. I bet, even if TOR was a financial success, they would've eventually left in a situation where, "We want to do this, this and this", and EA is all, "Nope, nope and nope."

Sounds like you understand perfectly.

It's not a question of if they will sell character slots. It's only a question of when. I can't think of very many cash shop games that DON'T sell character slots. In fact, are there any? DDO sells slots. LOTRO sells slots. STO sells slots. I think Champions sells slots (not sure).

That's a little weird. So with eight servers, a subber can do 8x12=96 character slots? And a Premium, to match that, has to buy 94 additional character slots? That seems like a lot.

Yeah my 50s are just sitting in carbonite, occasionally to be pulled out to grab HK-51 or such that you need max level for. Other than those special occasions though, levelling is where this game is at. It's clearly what this game was always designed to be, so I have no problem with leaving the 50s in limbo and not looking back until an expansion.

I also think it'll be very soon. I don't think they want to hear the outcry when the cartel coins subbers start dropping to Premium and can't buy access to their alts.

Claimed my cartel points, unsubbed again. With all the classes that I (due to admittedly entirely personal preference) won't play yet because I'm waiting for the f/f romance dialogues to be enabled, it leaves me with very few classes and very little to do. The one or two character concepts that aren't held up by same sex romance, I can play on a premium account I'm sure. I'm definitely keeping tabs though, and the day a definite time table is announced for same sex is the day I drop cash for the six month sub.

Since I have a sub again for a brief time (I decided to get the launch cartel coins, in case they become not-useless in the future), I thought I'd chime in on this thread and say I'm out of here again as soon as the sub runs out. My f Smuggler -- I didn't like either Risha or Akaavi so I went ahead and capped My f Jedi Knight -- stuck after Coruscant because I don't want to miss Kira romance dialogue My f Sith Warrior -- stuck after Korriban because I don't want to miss Vette romance dialogue My f Bounty Hunter -- stuck after Hutta because I don't want to miss Mako romance dialogue My f Imperial Agent -- stuck after Hutta because I don't want to miss Kaliyo romance dialogue There's a whole lot of nothing to play. I'm still pacing my f Consular and f Inquisitor slowly through the levels and trying to delay until they hit their stuck points too, but it's only a matter of time until I can't progress them either anymore. I'd really like to hear whether I can move on with my JK, my SW, my BH and my IA or not.

Omg, F2P restrictions are annoying and might drive people to sub? Stop the presses, I'm sure EA will change this right away now that you've alerted them to this obvious error!

No wonder you're having trouble with that kind of thinking, because it's a straw man and very few people would take the first option in your scenario. More analogous to F2P MMO situation is receiving a bare frame of a house as an inheritance/gift, and proceeding to decide what type of flooring, what type of walls, what type of furniture you want, and paying for each of the aspects you want to splurge on in your house, as opposed to just renting a nice apartment whose outfitting is predetermined. Because the key aspect of F2P is that you get to choose what you want to pay for. Don't like warzones or operations? Leave them out and don't pay for them. Crazy about alts? Buy more character slots. Find the latest released planet interesting? Buy access to it. You get to build your own experience a la carte, deciding exactly how you want your game. None of it is of worse quality than a subscription. It's the exact same quality of game, you just decide which aspects you want to pay for and which ones you're happy to do without.

We're not avoiding it, we've explained this over and over again. Some people prefer the points model because when they buy things, they have them in perpetuity. When you buy a character slot, you'll always have it. In comparison, when you stop paying a subscription, you lose access to everything you've paid for. It's basically the difference between pay to own and pay to rent. Some people don't like paying to rent the game, but they are okay with paying to permanently buy things.

True, I agree that the game is over once you hit 50, but I think there could be some token measures to pretend like the world is still alive. Companion dailies would help with that IMO.

Agreed. Companion-bestowed dailies once you reach 10,000 would be a great solution allowing for continued dialogue with them.

I think you're wrong here. Yes, I agree that the 40% will (mostly) not re-subscribe. However, that does *not* mean they won't give dimes. In fact, the very success of the F2P model is based on the fact that those people *do* pay money. Significant amounts of money. But not through the subscription model, which they don't like. But they will pay through purchaseable points. This is undeniable. If there wasn't a significant segment of people who will do this, then all the F2P games we've seen in past years would have fallen flat.

Probably the industry standard $10 for 1000. It's used by just about every MMO I can think of. Of course, that's just a meaningless number until we know the prices of items.

Your argument seems to rest on this, but I have never experienced this in any of the F2P MMOs I've been playing. My money expenditure has not grown over time.

If we use that analogy, it's like the prostitute who gives <censored kind of> service when no other prostitute will, which is why you keep returning to her, and every now and then you buy her a coffee afterwards.

So because they don't want to play the way you think an MMO should be played, they're somehow what, a lower class of gamer or something? It doesn't matter one whit whether they want to join a guild or not, all that matters is whether they bring in money -- and they do. *Because* they can enjoy it at their leisure, rather than having to join some ratrace you seem to decree is mandatory.

I think you'd want to make the best part available to all the free players to hook them. Basically give them what they can't get anywhere else. If you kept the story pay to play, all the free players would just grind and be all, "well this is just like any other MMO" and walk.

There's no way in hell they're gonna remove Legacy after making a whole update about it.

City of Heroes/Villains.

It may indeed be that Legacy will be a way for sub players to obtain the same things for free that F2P people have to pay $$$ for. Which makes you wonder, were they planning for F2P when they were putting Legacy in place.