I'm sorry to say I agree with the OP to a certain extent. Calling player housing a "Digital Expansion" is truly sad. Rise of the Hutt Cartel, for all its foibles, was worthy of being called a "Digital Expansion". A bunch of QoL stuff that really has minimal impact on gameplay and doesn't expand any of the story isn't. Galactic Starfighter was more of a Digital Expansion than this. Player housing is just a band-aid that will only appeal to a very small set of people, the same small set of people who subscribed to games like CoH only to putz around with Supergroup bases. Having the story lines in complete limbo and the vague roadmap for the year - which, honestly, doesn't add much, especially not for elder game - has made me consider dropping back to preferred status. As it stands, I was already only logging in maybe once or twice a week and there's very little which I find enthusing over the forthcoming months. If this development time in player housing was applied to actually expanding the story, maybe I'd be more interested in staying subscribed. If this is what passes as a "Digital Expansion" going forward, I'll happily save my $15/mo.

We already had "housing": our ships. Unless they completely alter the game and find some way to make these houses like City of Heroes' SuperGroup bases - which is highly unlikely given the constraints of the game's instancing - this is going to be little more than the ship with different scenery. We might be able to customize cosmetic bits, but the functionality won't be any better or worse than the ship has been since day 1. This is just a complete and utter waste of resources that could be used on creating more actual playable content... you know, the reason people keep playing. Even IF - and remember, big IF there - these end up as versatile as City of Heroes' supergroup bases, it will still only appeal to a very, very small percentage of the playerbase. For every one person I met in CoH who loved spending hours upon hours modifying and customizing their SG base, there were a dozen who just didn't care. Conversely, adding new story content appeals to almost everyone and will keep people playing far long. No doubt in my mind this is just another band-aid for the actual lack of "content" with a double jackpot of finding milk money from via the cartel market.

I chalk the bump up to the fact that it was the holiday season and they had a lot of post-Blizzcon hype. It won't last long, however, because they're dragging their feet on the WoD beta and people are sick of Timeless Isle and Siege of Orgrimmar. I was in a guild that finally went 14/14 normal SoO just before Christmas with the intention of farming normal a bit early in January for gear and then pushing into some heroics and guess what happened? The same old "end of expac" malaise hit. Two weeks ago, my guild was pretty much in its death throes. 75% of the raiding team had vanished and those who remained didn't feel like trying to pull in new people because they knew that meant we'd be running normal rather than pushing heroic. Those who remained are running flex raids on alts, or leveling new alts while just riding out the time until WoD beta. I finally decided to pull the plug as well, as I'm really not interested in taking a third character through the same, tired, SoO... and I'm certainly not interested in LFR by any means. Edit: Meant to add - We're certainly not alone. We had a cross-realm collaborative guild with whom we did alt flex runs who was 10/14 heroic SoO... they've pretty much imploded in the last month. Most of their raiders are MIA and the officers hadn't signed on in about 3 weeks, leaving everyone else in a bind. Meanwhile, despite Blizzard's bold claims of faster turn around (which, I should add, they've said for every expansion since Burning Crusade, and it's never come to pass), there's no news on when beta will show up. A whole new PVP season just launched which will probably be 20 weeks, minimum. Chances are there's at least another 6 months of SoO/Timeless Isle as current content. The 200k they picked up will vanish by the next report, and probably be down further. The pattern always repeats: They get a massive spike after Blizzcon before a new expansion, then attrition drops the numbers. When the expansion comes out, they get a temporary spike for a quarter, and then there's a gradual drop off over time that usually brings the overall subscriber base lower than before as more people move away after years of playing the same game. I see no reason to expect anything different this time.

Being profitable doesn't equal being "good". Correlation is not causation. There are many MMOs that are profitable based on their financial plan but they're not high quality MMOs. Star Trek Online comes to mind. SWTOR is profitable based on their post-F2P financial plan. Because of their F2P model, they don't have to fear player churn nearly as much as subscription MMOs - in fact, they can embrace it because fresh players means more potential revenue streams. However, this model comes at the cost of content delivery. Yes, I've seen the roadmap and, frankly, it's really not THAT impressive if you breakdown the list of supposed new content (2 new flashpoints, the exact same OPs as currently (only with increased difficulty & tier gear) and a smattering of PVP bits). They're effectively in a holding pattern, making as much money as they can (and I don't begrudge them for that) but, as you've pointed out, modern MMO players are more nomadic than ever and they'll be quick to bail on a game that doesn't give them regular content updates or is too similar to every other offering. Sadly, SWTOR is guilty of both. Content updates that AREN'T exclusive to the market are slow to come and it's still just your typical WoW-esque clone MMO that doesn't offer anything fresh to the genre. Frankly, it's the longevity of the source IP that's been propping up the game, nothing else. The Star Wars IP can draw people in no matter what. What I'm waiting to see is what impact, if any, Wildstar has on SWTOR. Wildstar has the sci-fi theme that appeals to many SWTOR players but will it be fresh enough in the genre to pull people away?

Every MMO since EverQuest and UO have essentially followed this model. Even "gear-less" games like City of Heroes was still beholden to repetition in the forms of enhancements and, later on, crafting gear for supergroup bases and special enhancements. It's not likely to change soon because the business goal of an MMO is to keep people playing to keep people subscribed and/or spending money on the game while spending the smallest amount of resources on the actual development. The most efficient way of doing that is by gating content behind time locks and other content barriers. Constant story content would be interesting, to say the least, but I doubt it would be sustainable. As previously mentioned, there's a very real cost to content development. Making monthly, or even every-three-month, story content updates would be cost prohibitive or they'd be painfully short. I'll point to City of Heroes again which, towards the end of its lifespan, tried doing precisely what you propose: They started dropping monthly, or every two month, story "episodes" with key world heroes (example: Death of a Hero). The missions were so ridiculously short that people were finishing them on the hardest setting within a few mere hours of them going live. They had all their alts through in a matter of days - then they had no reason to bother doing them again, so they bellyached that they wanted more content again. It was a never ending cycle. They would have to drop good sized story content every month - think if they made each mesa in Makeb a different month "story" - just to make it work and, really, what are you accomplishing? It's still just a time gate. I'll be brutally honest here: Their "come play our MMO, it has story!" was always a sham to begin with and was also unsustainable on its own. It's not like other MMOs didn't have story, the only thing different was the story's delivery. Vanilla Warcraft has a million times more detailed storyarcs than SWTOR but the text-only delivery turns people off of it. People spacebar through TOR's story missions just as they auto accept WoW's missions. Even for those people (i.e. myself) who enjoy the stories, the fact is class stories account for only a small portion of each class' gameplay and provide a finite end point to each character arc where it's really no longer about "the story". I've known more people who have quit because they've seen all the stories and decided they had no more reason to stay than I've known people who quit because they were tired of running [insert flashpoint/op/daily here]. As for making them repeatable.. what would that serve? I've already completed the Consular line, why would I want to go back now and do the whole thing over again? How would you even propose to do that? Make it like a newgame+ where you stay at level 50-max level and gain gear scaled to your level? That would obliterate flashpoints and SM OPs because people could just endlessly run the story missions for higher level gear with higher level mods. In essence, you'd just be shifting the grind from dailies/fp/ops to repeating the same storyline over and over and over again.

People really need to do their research. Extended Universe IS canon and has been canon for a long time. This guy says so. Leland Chee is responsible for maintaining the vast repository of LucasFilm/LucasArts canon and has established a set of canon "tiers" that work from the top down, in order of priority: G-Canon: Directly from the mouth or pen of George Lucas (this will also apply to future movies) T-Canon: Officially licensed television programs* C-Canon: Officially licensed extended universe items (games, books, comics, etc) *Note: One example of a TV program not considered T-Canon is the Star Wars Holiday Special. G-Canon can retcon T-Canon and C-Canon. T-Canon can retcon C-Canon. C-Canon can retcon other C-Canon, but only in specific circumstances. Regardless, it is ALL considered canonical and keeping this straight is Leland Chee's entire job at LucasFilm. It also makes it easier for people like myself who belong to clubs like Rebel Legion or the 501st Legion, where maintaining canonical standards is necessary.

I realize it's an old post so: This may have been the case back then but the Czerka Flashpoints and the CZ-198 dailies say it's not the case anymore. Both CZ-198 and the FPs are very light on story and have no dialog interactions. The FPs are fairly linear and streamlined. They're both very WoW-like, facilitating players to blow through them as fast as possible. Even Oricon is light on story compared to the rest of the game. Once you're past the introductory chain, which isn't very long itself since it merely sets up the dailies and the lead up to the Op, it's just a typical, static daily hub.

A paradox indeed. The idea that Oricon is a "gear check" is laughable since the rewards from it are level 53 artifact gear and more tokens for basic gear. So if a player needs basic gear or better to complete it then that's an admission of bad design. Necro of a necro. Sorry, but having come back recently I find a lot of fault with many of the design choices made with Hutt Cartel and subsequent other additions. Hutt Cartel, for example, is way overtuned, as if it was designed around the idea that everyone leveling from 50-55 had run Ops until they were in mid-tier or higher gear. I have never run into so many densely populated lieutenants (which roam in packs on Makeb), elites and champion level mobs. This certainly wasn't tuned for someone newer to the game who hit 50 and figured they'd "progress" to the next planet. Someone without ANY of the old legacy or artifact gear going into Makeb are going to be stuff on a rock. Most people I talk to in game admit they don't even level on Makeb. Instead, they do the old 50 dailies and then go to Makeb for the quests to get Basic Commendations. That, right there, should tell you something's wrong. Oricon is even more overtuned than Makeb. Why? Oricon smells like it was designed to be a catch up mechanic in order to get people into pre-basic gear in order to expedite their ability to farm into gear progression. So far, these fights have been stupid to the point of ridiculousness.

I can't believe you wrote that with the intent to be taken seriously. UO, DAoC, SWG, EQ, EQ2, CoH/V, and, yes, even WoW are MMORPGs. TOR is a hallway game that you can play single player like KOTOR and KOTOR2, only you might run into other people. It's barely an MMO by game definition because the ONLY THING you actually NEED other people for are Operations, and you can get decent end game gear without ever setting foot in one. It is, by all accounts, the most single player oriented "MMO" on the market today, even including all the modern conveniences that WoW has put in to their game which has made it easier to "solo" group (LFG, LFR, etc). Also, none of the aforementioned games actually built a leveling design that penalized players for grouping with other players who weren't your class. All evidence of TOR points to it being a glorified single player game with opt-in cooperative/competitive multiplayer. Secondly, your attempt to justify griefing by trying to roll it into your definition of "MMORPG" is quaint. Too bad it's also wrong. Someone intentionally taking the plague to Fleet - or worse, Tython/Korriban or Coruscant/Dromand Kass - just to get their jollies off by making the lower level players' experience less fun is the very definition of griefing. Imagine new F2P players signing in for the first time: They can't afford the vaccine, not at 2k a pop, and having some high level come in and infect them and laugh about it in planet general chat pretty much ensures they won't walk away with a good impression. And yet, playing my newb Jedi Knight this week, I've seen several 55s do precisely this and then talk smack in general chat. Just because an event is temporary doesn't give anyone an excuse to be a jerk and purposely griefing lowbies is a clear violation of the TOS. Not to mention, BW/EA has a vested interest in making lowbies' gameplay appealling since getting new microtransaction/F2P players is the foundation of their business model now.

Fixed that for you. Wall Street's view of EA probably doesn't really care about TOR. Their view goes far deeper than that. Riccitiello simply hasn't delivered the turn around Wall Street expected. As the article pointed out, he claimed a three year plan, but we're five years into that plan and it would likely need another 2-3 years for the "three year plan" to run its course. There are many factors behind this, as I posted many pages ago. I would argue that a bigger concern amongst investors is the long term viability of EA's staple franchises, especially since quite a few of them (mostly in the EA Sports stable) are nothing more than annual incremental upgrades. Battlefield has been underperforming and The Sims seems to be (finally) dying off after years of riding the gravy train. Combine this concern with the fact that EA doesn't seem to have too many new IPs in development (or the ones that came out have fallen apart, thus far [looking at you, ex-38Studios]) and you can start to get a clearer picture of why investors are nervous. Imagine what would happen, overnight, to EA's stock if the NFL decided the cancel their exclusivity contract and allowed other companies to make NFL licensed games again.

*Sigh* 1.3 on June 26th. That means I get to look forward to a double dose of disappointment courtesy of BioWare. The ME3 "Extended Cut" DLC comes out June 26th, too. Oh well, there's Dawnguard to look forward to on the 26th. Hopefully the day doesn't turn into a disappointment trifecta.

Same here. I hit 50 as I finished Quesh - a "36-37" level range planet. All because I went out of my way to do content while it was level appropriate. Yet by doing Heroics and FPs at their level appropriate ranges, I ended up pushing others further out of range. One problem: Even when you overlevel you're still "handcuffed" into a linear path, which is part of the problem. After Quesh, the game became boring until I reached the back half of Voss and Corellia/Ilum where the mobs had finally begun to catch up in level and lethality. I couldn't skip forward, I still had to follow the linear story progression path even though a wet sneeze would kill normal mobs. Ironically, I also ended up missing out on heroic quests and FPs on that character because level 37s-45s don't seem to want to take a 50 along. I fail to believe the only solution is to purposely "skip" content as some have mentioned in this thread. That's a poor solution.

Well said, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, as someone who has been a paying subscriber to City of Heroes since day one launch, I pretty much went through my own form of this when PlayNC and Paragon Studios announced the shift to F2P with MTs. I spent weeks - no, months - along with others on the forums complaining about F2P. Complaining about all the negative stereotypes of F2P players and "freemiums". Complaining the F2P players have no loyalty and would "destroy" the game. They went F2P anyway and the game has never been stronger. Since the game went F2P, we've seen an across the board increase in population and PlayNC has seen significantly increased revenues. VIPs and Freemium players are spending more than ever before. Our supergroup has grown, and many of the free players are now paying VIP members or freemiums who are spending more than $15 a month in stuff from the market! And yet, none of the things in the Paragon Market are "pay to win". They're almost ALL flavor items. Some extra buff slots, or extra enhancement slots. Yes, I can "pay" to get recipes, but those recipes are readily available in game, or on the consignment shop from other players - it's not like they're offering uber-recipes that you can ONLY get through RMT means. People complaining about F2P often haven't played a F2P game. They just make the same tired arguments based on the same tired stereotypes, just as I did to Paragon Studios. In the end, if done correctly, F2P benefits gamers by increasing player base and gives more money to the publisher and developer to reinvest in the game (thus benefiting gamers, again, with increased content). And isn't that the entire damn point?

Honestly, I can't see it making that much of a difference. As people have already said, it's basically just a permanent "trial". But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, in the last 6.5 months, anyone who was interested in playing the game has had the opportunity. In the last six months there have been several free 3-day weekends and subscribers get a ridiculous amount of friend referrals that last a full 7 days. I can't speak to the friend referrals, but the 3-day weekends capped at level 15 (I made a second account during one of them), and I would imagine the friend referrals work identically. Therefore, I don't see the forthcoming permanent change doing much. A handful of new people, sure. But, again, most people who wanted to try this game have already had ample opportunity. If anything, I think this is EA's full F2P litmus test. If it looks like they'll get enough interest, and microtransactions are profitable later this year, they'll expand from level 15 to full blown F2P with Free/Freemiums/VIP divisions like other F2P games.

Everyone who is making the claim of "it's happening to everyone" is only showing the world they failed to read the article. Anyone making that claim skimmed the article, looked at the first graph, and then tabbed back over here and commented. Meanwhile, the article shows, in painful clarity, how EA and Take Two are performing compared to everyone else on NASDAQ. Their performance woes are not "happening to everyone". If they were, the NASDAQ average would look similar. It's not. NASDAQ has been seeing slight growth over the last quarter while Take Two jumped off a bridge and EA drove off a cliff. You can be in denial all you want, but the article is spot on. The issues with TOR are just one of many issues within EA, as a whole, that is indicative of management problems. Investors were already unhappy with Riccitiello and his failure to deliver the turn around he promised when he took the job. EA Sports, alone, won't keep EA a float forever; just as the article points out Activision's Call of Duty franchise will, inevitably, decline, so too will Madden, NCAA Football, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, FIFA, et cetera. Beyond the staple games, EA hasn't had a very good year. TOR has been hit or miss. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning got decent praise but wasn't a critical hit with gamers. Mass Effect 3 sold like hotcakes and then became the internet's biggest s**tstorm. PC gamers are pushing back against Origin. 38Studios financially exploded in a storm of political controversy, killing Project Copernicus (the Amalur MMO). Smaller niche titles, like Grand Slam Tennis 2 in the EA Sports stable, were poorly reviewed or sold poorly. PopCap, acquired by EA, is underperforming - mostly because it had practically reached market saturation before EA got it. Investors see all of this. Investors remember what Riccitello promised 5 years ago and haven't seen it come to fruition and doubt they will. That's why EA went off a cliff and is well below NASDAQ average. Why should you care? Because this will probably end with a complete management shift at the top of EA if things don't turn around. A management shift will be driven by investor desires, which means the new management will start swinging the axe to get back to profitability. I've seen this happen a lot in my 36 years and investor-driven management gives less than a damn about the consumer wants or needs. Where have I heard all these arguments before? Oh yeah, I remember: DC Universe Online. "It'll never be F2P! It's too unique! It's a great game! SOE knows how to run a subscription game! You're just a hater, go back to WOW!" What happened? The game made it one year before going F2P with microtransactions. Let me say this with clarity: I want The Old Republic to go Free to Play. Everyone here acts like F2P is a kiss of death. It's not. Cryptic, SOE, Turbine, and PlayNC have proven that, with careful planning, a F2P game is significantly more profitable than a subscription model. Yes, there are "free" players who will never spend a dime, but most players gladly open their wallets for small items at first. Then they'll be hooked and buy larger items, then even more items until, suddenly, they're "Freemiums", which drives them to spend even more. Meanwhile, subscribing "VIP" style players not only pay monthly but often spend substantial amounts monthly above the subscription fee for instant gratification items. F2P could be a shot in the arm to this game, so long as it's planned out and they avoid pay-to-win models. It could bring more people in AND vastly increase the amount of money EA makes on it. That's a win for gamers and a win for investors so I'm failing to see the problem.