Previous to finding out about the slight improvement in the quickbar (IMHO) debacle I decided to find out what It would cost on the free to play option to get what I consider a fully playable character for each of the 16 advanced classes minus consumables. It would cost 101840 cartel coins, bought the most affordable way is a few cents shy of $730 USD Meanwhile if you unlock things like Sector X, Crew Appearance, Additional Cargo, Titles, Legacy Name, etc and also things like Speeder Piloting and Legacy Race unlocks, You can up that total to 144765 cartel coins or just short of $1060 USD. That is at $15/mo 5.9 years of play or just short of 7 if you by 6 mo at a time. That is without consumables like passes and medical probes, without weekly passes for conflict content, and then, if I understand it right, you after spending all that money have a second class citizen account that will never be as good as the subbed players. Maybe someone didn't mention this but you make a profit in the free to play space by making it up in volume. The design of this model is so hostile to free to play players that as soon as they realize you play with a crippled version of the client that doesn't do necessary things, they have to pay for those things... for every single character they make and play, you will have killed of most of your replay incentive right there. You at Bioware/EA are very smart people so the only conclusions I can come up with are either you designed it to MAKE people who want to play multiple characters subscribe or you are setting up the first dominoes that will fall and bring SWTOR down with it.
Previous to finding out about the slight improvement in the quickbar (IMHO) debacle I decided to find out what It would cost on the free to play option to get what I consider a fully playable character for each of the 16 advanced classes minus consumables. It would cost 101840 cartel coins, bought the most affordable way is a few cents shy of $730 USD Meanwhile if you unlock things like Sector X, Crew Appearance, Additional Cargo, Titles, Legacy Name, etc and also things like Speeder Piloting and Legacy Race unlocks, You can up that total to 144765 cartel coins or just short of $1060 USD. That is at $15/mo 5.9 years of play or just short of 7 if you by 6 mo at a time. That is without consumables like passes and medical probes, without weekly passes for conflict content, and then, if I understand it right, you after spending all that money have a second class citizen account that will never be as good as the subbed players. Maybe someone didn't mention this but you make a profit in the free to play space by making it up in volume. The design of this model is so hostile to free to play players that as soon as they realize you play with a crippled version of the client that doesn't do necessary things, they have to pay for those things... for every single character they make and play, you will have killed of most of your replay incentive right there. You at Bioware/EA are very smart people so the only conclusions I can come up with are either you designed it to MAKE people who want to play multiple characters subscribe or you are setting up the first dominoes that will fall and bring SWTOR down with it.