A Dev posted in another thread and said that they had something planned, but that technical issues caused it not to happen. Who knows what it was, but they did have something else planned besides extra CCs.

Agreed. I've always thought it would be nice if there was a legacy perk that increased your RE chance. If they don't want to tie it to legacy, you could have special items that increase your RE rate for the next item you RE (similar to the crit items in LoTRO). Just don't sell them in the CM!

Based on playing MMOs for the last 13 years, this is what I understand the commonly accepted definition of P2W means. Of course it is a matter of opinion to some extent; I mean I could question whether you can even have P2W for PVE, since you can't really win PVE. But for the purposes of argument it's generally best to go with the common definition , unless you can definitively prove that the common definition is wrong. Honestly I think this whole discussion of P2W clouds what could actually be a good discussion to have - whether or not the restrictions on F2P players are too strong or not. That is a topic that I think is worthy of discussion. But because some people insist on framing the discussion as a P2W issue, there isn't going to be as reasonable of a discussion, since that is a much harder position to defend.

Not continuing the class stories. I'm sure they are time consuming to produce, but for me the stories are one if the best parts of the game.

We are paying for a service, just like Netflix or Hulu Plus. If I didn't think the service was worth the cost, I - wait for it - wouldn't pay. No one is forcing me to play, just like no one is forcing you to play. If you don't think the game is worth it, then don't play. There's nothing wrong with that; not everyone is going to like every game. But if I had to guess, I'd say you do want to play, but just don't like that it costs money. Otherwise you wouldn't be here.

Not everything is so black and white. You can criticize EA without thinking they are the worst company in America. Should EA do better? Of course they should; I don't know of anyone in this thread that thinks they are perfect, or even close to it. But there are worse companies out there in my opinion.

QFT It really just goes to show how messed up some people's priorities are. I certainly have issues with EA, but they haven't ruined anyone's life...

I agree. There is definitely a discussion to be had about whether people feel that the F2P restrictions are too strong, though it's hard to make a good case to change it as long as people are paying. But I wouldn't classify it as P2W personally.

http://www.riftgame.com/en/store/#patron $15 a month for "patron" status. Looks like a subscription to me. Okay, so the reason TOR is P2W is only because of the armor restriction now?

So based on your examples of why TOR is P2W, let's look at some of the other freemium MMOs you mentioned in this thread: LOTRO is P2W because F2P players have a 2 gold limit, they only get a couple of trait slots, and cannot earn rest XP. Rift is P2W because subscribers get 15% more currency and daily XP/reputation boosts. Tera is P2W because subscribers get daily XP, gold, and reputation boosts. Aion is P2W because F2P players can only gather/extract a limited number of times each day, and their instance cooldowns are much longer. Subscribers will always get benefits that F2P players don't get; otherwise there would be no point in subscribing. Now you can argue that TOR has more restrictions than other games (and I would actually agree with you on that), but having restrictions doesn't make it P2W. Otherwise every freemium MMO would be P2W.

Then the game isn't worth it to you. Nothing wrong with that, not every game will be worth the price to every person. But that doesn't mean there aren't people who do think it's worth the cost.

A bit of advice for you. Saying things like this is more likely to make people not take you (or your opinion) seriously. Not everyone is going to agree with you, but that doesn't make your opinion any less valid, just as it doesn't make my opinion any more valid. And just because someone doesn't agree with you, that doesn't make them a fanboy. Of course it's greedy. All companies are greedy, because the number one goal for any company is to make as much money as possible. F2Pers may not like the fact that they may actually have to pay for something, but as long as enough of them do actually pay, the model was successful. Let's take a different approach. What model would you suggest that will generate just as much revenue per F2P player as TOR currently generates?

Ah, the old "I can't actually prove my claims so I'll just call everyone who disagrees with me a fanboy". In all seriousness, if you really want to give EA feedback on where they've gone wrong, the best way to do so is with your wallet. EA isn't really going to care if F2Pers feel there are too many restrictions if they continue to spend money. The only time they will start showing interest is if they lose a significant number of paying customers over it.

According to EA back in March, SWTOR had added 2 million new players since launching F2P. As for server populations, I have no idea when you play, but there are way more than 344 people per server during both the day and night on my server. And at night the majority of the servers are heavy to very heavy from my experience. Though honestly number of players isn't really that meaningful when talking about hybrid games. If SWTOR has 1 million players that are spending an average of $10 a month (counting subs), and Rift/Tera have 1.5 million players paying an average of $5 a month, SWTOR would be doing better. In that way, the SWTOR business model is probably more successful simply because they do force people to pay more money, even if F2Pers don't like the extra cost.

This is how I understand it as well. But I can't remember in what thread I saw that posted unfortunately.

Please provide proof that "these games are doing much better than swtor is now". Ideally in terms of how much revenue each is generating.

That's pretty much what I do. Augments are nice but they are by no means required for the vast majority of content.

GW2 isn't technically F2P, it's B2P with microtransactions. But yes, a game can theoretically survive with just box sales and a cash shop. The question is whether that is more profitable for the company or not. If SWTOR had been able to maintain the 2 million subscribers they had at launch, they'd be infinitely more profitable than GW2 can ever hope to be. Now, they get $15 a month from around half a million subscribers, and extra money from people buying from the CM. Although I have no idea how much the two companies make in microtransaction sales, I'd be surprised if GW2 was more profitable. Again, game companies don't provide F2P/B2P/hybrid services out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so be because they want to find ways to extract money from you. Some are definitely worse than others, but I have yet to play one of these MMOs where there wasn't some sort of restriction or incentive in place to entice people into spending money. That's the point of the whole model.

If you think it was with the money, then it was worth the money. Honestly you're the only one that can make that call. I personally refuse to spend money on CCs just out if principle - $15 a month is enough in my opinion - but I would also never criticize someone on how they choose to spend their money.

That's kind of the point, to get you to spend money. I'm always amused at people who think developers release F2P games out of sheer kindness. They do so to hook you enough that you end up spending money to remove some of those restrictions. I can't speak for League, but LOTRO has quite a few restrictions as well. Limited inventory (which is a pretty big problem in that game), limited trait slots, gold limit, fewer skirmishes, and no automatic access to zone quests outside the starter zones. Now granted you can earn Turbine points in game, which is a nice system and something Bioware could possibly consider. But even so, it's pretty hard to go all the way through that game without spending money. Which is, again, the point of these hybrid systems. Not sure why you think anyone is being forced to do anything. If I no longer enjoy the game, I cancel my subscription and stop playing. Simple as that. Oh please, this tired excuse again. I stopped using my parents money 18 years ago. $15 a month is less than 20% of my cable bill; it's pretty much insignificant for me.

Heh this is exactly what I don't understand about people who complain about undercutters. When I see someone undercutting for 50% or more, I'm thrilled, because I can buy their stuff and repost it for an easy profit. It sounds to me like maybe someone is upset about having to adjust their prices due to the changing dynamics of the market.

As someone else mentioned, veteran rewards would be a pretty awesome thing in my book. Something similar to EQ2 or SWG, only more frequent. For example, I'd like to see a different reward given for every 3 months that a person is subscribed. Rewards could be anything from titles, to special appearance gear, to mounts, to XP boosts for alts - really anything that could be considered a cosmetic or convenience item. And if someone doesn't like a particular reward, they could instead choose some number of free CCs. The key thing for me is that these should be items that are only available to loyal subscribers, and not purchasable in the CM. It's not altogether different from the pre-order gifts that we had, so it's not like this is something that should shock people. And before people say "what about F2Pers who spend money"? Honestly I'd be alright with doing something similar for them. For example, spend $45 lifetime and get something similar to a 3 month reward; spend $90 lifetime and get something similar to a 6 month reward.

Or $0 for those of us who never buy CCs. Which I would bet is a nontrivial number of subscribers.

It does, thanks. As you mentioned there are a lot of definitions of casual vs. hardcore, so I was just curious in what context you were using the terms.

Out of curiosity, what do you define as being the attributes of a casual player (vs. a hardcore player)?