I understand your concern but based on other F2P games' success I think there's quite a few people who do spend many dimes. That's the beauty of it. You don't need to spend anything if you don't want to. You can just play. And those who do want some fluff item can pay and keep the servers running.

While I agree that can be a risk if you're living and breathing the game, I think the F2P crowd is much more casual in general. They'll drop in, play one character for 20 levels, then be gone for 2 months, then come back and play that character for 10 more and maybe start another for 15 levels...then be gone for some time again and then come back for more again...at such a leisurely pace, it will be a lot easier not to burn out on a game.

I think F2P is basically a feature these days that an MMO needs to be competitive. Like endgame, or group finder, or customization or whatever. It's just another angle that an MMO needs to have in order to keep with the times.

They're going to pay $x or so (y months' equivalent) in order to have some cool stuff that they can use in-game for several years without paying a sub. Makes a lot of sense that way. Play forever and use money when you want something, instead of having to constantly bleed money. It's basically the option of being able to buy to own, in addition of the option of buying to rent. Some people just plain prefer buying to own and having it in perpetuity.

I think it's very likely that only a limited amount of quests will be F2P (enough so that they can claim that you can theoretically F2P to 50) and you'll have to buy access to the majority. That's how DDO and LOTRO did it and they're the poster children of how to transit to F2P.

* Hide companion head slots * Same sex romance * Redo completed quest cinematics

IIRC, those two were quite some time ago. Had DDO and LOTRO popularized the F2P idea as viable by the time they shut down?

I think Pay to Gay would be a PR disaster. I think it has to be one of those things they provide for free, if they ever get around to it at all.

We don't know that they'll get the bulk of the game. For all we know they won't get any quests at all included in F2P, the road to 50 might have to be grinded with storyless trash mobs without any quests. Or a less extreme option, possibly only class quests are included in F2P and you'd need to grind the rest to keep your level apace with class quest level progression. The planet quests other than class would need to be purchased. That's more or less how DDO and LOTRO did it, and as two of the most successful F2P transitions, you can bet EA is looking at their model very closely.

There will be people who will only or mostly cough up money for more romance. It makes sense to cater to them. I dread the moment when we'll have to pay $15 to unlock Vette Fertility to progress the baby plotline...

I really wish that we had an episode text crawl at each chapter break. As it is, you can barely tell when one chapter ends and another begins. In fact, there is nothing at all ingame showing it. You have to log out and then log back in for the loading screen to show that you're on a different chapter. I'd REALLY like to see a "Chapter X" text crawl when you change chapters. It'd also help with the feeling that some time has passed.

After doing all the convos, you'll have to wait for the affection cap to be raised before new convos become possible. It would be nice if you could go back and re-do previous convos, even without any rewards, just to refresh your memory and interact with the companions.

Not yet.

If Warhammer Online -- one of the most spectacular sub fails of the industry -- is still around after four years, I'm absolutely certain that we'll have TOR for years to come. As of now we only have two subscription data points for TOR -- the launch number 1.7m and the later 1.3m. Two data points are hardly convincing to build a trend around. When TOR gets more data points that show a decline like WAR, then I'll start believing that it only has about five years of life in it.

I think they figured that with only eight people in diagram, MAX, having three people on the same level was enough. But if/when they ever implement more character slots and/or being able to add companions to Legacy, I think they'll need to revamp how the tree shows and allow for more complex diagrams. Hopefully they'll also allow for same-sex spouses and characters having *two* parents (right now they can only have one).

I think it's a very good idea that "Legacy Quests" would open up as you gain Legacy levels, say, maybe one Legacy quest would open up per each Legacy level. These could be things depending on what sort of ties you have in your legacy diagram. If two characters are spouses, then you could play as either one of them a "save the wedding from enemy assassins" scenario. If there's a parent/child relationship in the diagram then maybe a quest opens up for the parent character where they would save the child from kidnappers. If there's a rivals relationship then maybe a three-quest line would open up where the two characters get into progressively bigger conflicts foiling each others' plans. The one thing I'm a little hesitant about is two of your characters actually meeting each other face-to-face, because it might be a little overwhelming to choose dialogue options on *both* sides of the same scene. But I could keep an open mind until seeing how it'd play out.

Of the classes already in the game, I'd consider Leia a Trooper. Having re-watched the original trilogy earlier this month, it struck me how at home she was with guns and action. Definitely no shrinking violet or damsel in distress, she had no problem blasting her way out of problems. She often spent time leading troops, so if a class were built based on movie Leia, I'd definitely give that class AoE/group buffing/shielding/morale type powers.

Yeah, Nok was supposed to be a con man, but if one friggin' belt was all he left behind he was a really BAD con man. This guy was supposed to be one of the galaxy's best con men and all he managed to accumulate in life was one damn belt? And yes, it sure wasn't conveyed well in-game. Heck, one of the convos with Risha afterwards had her saying, "What, you already spent it all? Remind me not to let you near my treasury." I suppose it could have been meant ironically but still, it was far from clear that the treasure was a con. Personally, I think a better explanation than "the treasure never existed" is that "the treasure still exists, is waiting for Risha to claim it, and making us think that it never existed is the con".

Can we get this done already?

So I just finished Smuggler Chapter 1 and I received a mail telling me that Nok Drayen's lost fortune is... ...wait for it... ...one single class 3 lockbox containing a green strength belt. What. The. F***? Not even a purple. Not even an orange. Not even a BLUE. And not even anything my smuggler can personally use. And a SINGLE ITEM. Is the whole lost fortune. WHAT THE ¤#%&

I don't think you'll find anybody who agrees that'd be an even better idea. All you've come up with is a straw man.

In City of Heroes you got the ability to phone up contacts after doing a couple of missions for them. It really eliminated tedious travelling and allowed to move on to the next part of the quest without always having to go back to the one spot where the quest giver was. Result: traveling which felt much more pointful because you were traveling to places where you actually needed to go do something, as opposed to feeling like the travel was a time sink. It should be noted that even in TOR, some quests do allow you to turn in and go to the next part via holocall without having to do a tedious travel back to meet the quest giver in person. I haven't heard complaints about these quests somehow ruining the experience.

Since I don't like playing capped characters this game suits me just fine. Emphasis on 1-49 is exactly what I want out of a game. Playing at cap is completely irrelevant to me.

I've loved every moment of DA2 so no skin off my nose.

Bioware doesn't need to. *I'm* the one that makes the determination whether a downtime is too much or not, based on how much it matters to *my* monthly playtime. Whether Bioware cares or not doesn't matter a monkey's whistle.