Did Bioware ever Intend to use the Sub model or was F2P always the plan?

[Yinata]

Just wondering now if F2P was always the plan, they just didn't have the features needed at launch to make it work. I feel that all their time developing the legacy system was just a way to create a F2P shop w/ our subscription fee's and game sales paying for it. This makes me sick, many of us waited on dead servers for months while they developed their terrible legacy system, and obviously worked on their cash shot. While this game continued to fail, all I can say is it's their fault this game has failed if they had server transfers back in March/April when they were needed, they would likely have enough subs still to make this game work. Instead for the last two patches most of the work was spent on the new cash shop(legacy system) they implemented, that honestly few really care about.

 

After looking at all these facts and failures by BioFail I am lead to the conclusion that F2P was always the plan, and they just needed subs/money from our game sales to pay for this final stage of their development because they went overbudget pre-release and couldn't afford to develop it themselves. Really though if one looks at 1.2/1.3, they were simply ways of implementing the Cash Shop through the legacy system, and use our subscription payments to further destroy the game.

 

In other words I feel that Bioware has lied and cheated us and for one can say I will never support their company with one dollar of my money.

 

I hope EA disbands and demolishes all of Bioware it's what they deserve, they are nothing more than a finger puppet that continues to lie to it's former players who loved games like KOTOR and continues to fail and making quality games anymore.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Yinata

[Ratham]

Probably was always the plan. Edited July 31, 2012 by Ratham

[Revan-the-knight]

Just wondering now if F2P was always the plan, they just didn't have the features needed at launch to make it work. I feel that all their time developing the legacy system was just a way to create a F2P shop w/ our subscription fee's and game sales paying for it. This makes me sick, many of us waited on dead servers for months while they developed their terrible legacy system, and obviously worked on their cash shot. While this game continued to fail, all I can say is it's their fault this game has failed if they had server transfers back in March/April when they were needed, they would likely have enough subs still to make this game work. Instead for the last two patches most of the work was spent on the new cash shop(legacy system) they implemented, that honestly few really care about.

 

After looking at all these facts and failures by BioFail I am lead to the conclusion that F2P was always the plan, and they just needed subs/money from our game sales to pay for this final stage of their development because they went overbudget pre-release and couldn't afford to develop it themselves. Really though if one looks at 1.2/1.3, they were simply ways of implementing the Cash Shop through the legacy system, and use our subscription payments to further destroy the game.

 

In other words I feel that Bioware has lied and cheated us and for one can say I will never support their company with one dollar of my money.

 

I hope EA disbands and demolishes all of Bioware it's what they deserve, they are nothing more than a finger puppet that continues to lie to it's former players who loved games like KOTOR and continues to fail and making quality games anymore.

 

Biowares Co Founders were against Free To Play in the beggining, it wasnt their original Plan, And if Bioware is scrapped then all of those that STILL believe in them(and rightly so) would be devestated, Think before you type, they do not deserve the punishment, EA does

[TheBBP]

Does it matter? Having both is a win.

[Yinata]

Biowares Co Founders were against Free To Play in the beggining, it wasnt their original Plan, And if Bioware is scrapped then all of those that STILL believe in them(and rightly so) would be devestated, Think before you type, they do not deserve the punishment, EA does

 

LOL Bioware is to blame they designed a sub par MMO that would never survive in a subscriber model every serious Beta tester told them that and they ignored us.........Now since they did absolutely nothing since launch to fix this and likely made it worse, yes they are to blame. What did they spend our sub fee's on? Mainly a legacy system that is a glorified cash shop and will be used as such once F2P hits. So in other words they lied to you for 6 months while they used our sub fee's to develop a F2P system........Sounds like BIOFAIL is pretty responsible to me.....

 

Next Fanboi in line please.......

[KennethHoover]

I don't think F2P was in the plan from the beginning. As has been pointed out, they were pretty vocal about not going F2P when the game launched and I believe they honestly wanted to stand by that. But now that they've made the F2P move it's apparent the game has had more trouble than they ever expected or planned for.

[BEVINCE]

lol bioware is to blame they designed a sub par mmo that would never survive in a subscriber model every serious beta tester told them that and they ignored us.........now since they did absolutely nothing since launch to fix this and likely made it worse, yes they are to blame. What did they spend our sub fee's on? Mainly a legacy system that is a glorified cash shop and will be used as such once f2p hits. So in other words they lied to you for 6 months while they used our sub fee's to develop a f2p system........sounds like biofail is pretty responsible to me.....

 

Next fanboi in line please.......

 

^^^this^^^

[Evil_Santa]

Here's what I wrote in another thread.

 

You should know that i've worked for a couple of software companies, am familiar with development practices, project management and how long it takes to implement changes. We saw a pretty lackluster patch with 1.3 where they released 2 minor features that have been worked on for over 6 months and some balance changes to a couple of AC's. That is not 6 months of work, even for a shop of 50 developers.

 

BW/EA has been spending their time building up the F2P system because it takes a lot longer then 3 months to adjust the game code, test and deploy that large of a change to a video game, and it's infrastructure.

 

I am more patient on some issues when it comes to development. I understand that when the Community team says X bug is fixed, and it isn't, that it's because QA signed off on not being able to reproduce the bug through their automated testing, and gave it to the community team to post. I understand that there are a lot of components in software and changing one, breaks 10 others. I understand that not everything promised by a marketing/sales team is going to be delivered by the developers.

 

I don't understand how a company can expect to keep it's customers in the dark on future plans, can change releases at the last minute and can operate on unwanted features while being paid. I deal with enterprise software and if any of my clients found out that they had been paying me to work on a feature that wasn't discussed in the project outline, not only would I be fired from the project, but also sued for misappropriation of funds. THAT is what EA/BW just did, and for that (and the RWZ issue in 1.2) I will never purchase another game that has been produced by either company. My sub's canceled, you can have my stuff and i'll be deleting my character when the sub is up.

 

Turbine announced that LOTRO was going F2P the day they made the decision and it took them almost 9 months to implement the F2P model into their game -- and that's with already having experience with it through DDO with the same engine. BW/EA has been working on this for months while their customers suffer for it, and have had zero concern with their customer's satisfaction of a product they purchased and are paying to maintain.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Evil_Santa

[DahLliA]

At least they've known it for quite a while.

 

To me it feels like EA just threw the (clearly unfinished) game out for the christmas-sales and then when it failed massively they decided to go F2P, sack half the team and stop new content until after F2P is announced.

 

Still gonna be subbed until I see whether EA's greed makes the Cartel-shop P2Wville, but Bioware has gone on my sh*t-list since they're clearly beyond salvation.

 

And seriously. $200m, 5 years(or more?) and the Star Wars IP and they last 8 months before going F2P?

[BEVINCE]

And George Lucas just /facepalm'd into the huge wad of cash he got off of this game.

[Yinata]

At least they've known it for quite a while.

 

To me it feels like EA just threw the (clearly unfinished) game out for the christmas-sales and then when it failed massively they decided to go F2P, sack half the team and stop new content until after F2P is announced.

 

Still gonna be subbed until I see whether EA's greed makes the Cartel-shop P2Wville, but Bioware has gone on my sh*t-list since they're clearly beyond salvation.

 

And seriously. $200m, 5 years(or more?) and the Star Wars IP and they last 8 months before going F2P?

 

To you and the poster above you, you have the exact correct idea, one doesn't implement a F2P system in 3 months since they are releasing in November. More than likely this has been going on since release and they left us in the dark until now to get all our sub fee's they could to fund this F2P venture.

 

The only reason they released at Christmas is they had run out of funding and needed to recoupe some of it, every beta tester knew the game shouldn't have been released for another 2-3 months. Bioware ignored us and released a game that would never survive a sub model.

 

In other words BioFail has lied to us since release, been developing a F2P system behind our back, and waited till their 6 month subs were up, and had gotten more people to resub before saying anything.

 

Thank you for agreeing.

 

The word of the day is......

 

BIOFAIL!

[IlexGlabra]

And seriously. $200m, 5 years(or more?) and the Star Wars IP and they last 8 months before going F2P?

You talk like F2P means going bust. Other games (including LotRO) have gone to F2P and seen tremendous growth. This is not a death knell for SWTOR. In fact, I would expect servers to become more crowded.

[Vellem]

You talk like F2P means going bust. Other games (including LotRO) have gone to F2P and seen tremendous growth. This is not a death knell for SWTOR. In fact, I would expect servers to become more crowded.

 

Lotro seeing tremendous growth is a myth. There was an initial surge after f2p and after expansions (hint: every mmo sees a population surge after an expansion) Tracking log in numbers per month on a high pop server (because Turbine does not release player numbers) shows that logins have declined to levels that they were at before. Check out lotrocommunity.com and see. Expect the same to happen here.

[DarkZeron]

You talk like F2P means going bust. Other games (including LotRO) have gone to F2P and seen tremendous growth. This is not a death knell for SWTOR. In fact, I would expect servers to become more crowded.

 

That tremendous growth was from the rock bottom. Of course they grew from dead. But i have my doubts LotRO ever reached the fraction of the income they had in the first good years.

[Yinata]

You talk like F2P means going bust. Other games (including LotRO) have gone to F2P and seen tremendous growth. This is not a death knell for SWTOR. In fact, I would expect servers to become more crowded.

 

LOL all F2P games fail to make the money back that they would w/ say 1 million subs, which wouldn't be hard for SWTOR to have if the developers weren't brain dead jackal lanterns!

 

The word of the day is.......

 

BIOFAIL

[Deviss]

They probably always considered it an option. But why do it if people keep on paying. Things were going very well in the first month, 2 active million subscribers sound very promising... the number dropped by almost 75% though, and that is A LOT. They are no longer making enough profit to maintain this game on subscription-only pay model. Time has come to initiate Plan B.

 

Don't get me wrong, this might in the end prove to be the best solution for everyone - for both players and the BioWare itself. There are many very successful games out there that are based around f2p model. It might also be the beginning of the end. Only time shall tell. I keep my hopes up for the better future.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Deviss

[Andryah]

Probably was always the plan.

 

We will never know for sure probably.

 

I'd would absolutely bet that Marketing put together a number of different product scenarios depending on different success assumptions for the game post launch. I'm sure Freemium was one of the more reasoned and serious ones they would do even before launch.

[Diktat]

Here's what I wrote in another thread.

 

You should know that i've worked for a couple of software companies, am familiar with development practices, project management and how long it takes to implement changes. We saw a pretty lackluster patch with 1.3 where they released 2 minor features that have been worked on for over 6 months and some balance changes to a couple of AC's. That is not 6 months of work, even for a shop of 50 developers.

 

BW/EA has been spending their time building up the F2P system because it takes a lot longer then 3 months to adjust the game code, test and deploy that large of a change to a video game, and it's infrastructure.

 

I am more patient on some issues when it comes to development. I understand that when the Community team says X bug is fixed, and it isn't, that it's because QA signed off on not being able to reproduce the bug through their automated testing, and gave it to the community team to post. I understand that there are a lot of components in software and changing one, breaks 10 others. I understand that not everything promised by a marketing/sales team is going to be delivered by the developers.

 

I don't understand how a company can expect to keep it's customers in the dark on future plans, can change releases at the last minute and can operate on unwanted features while being paid. I deal with enterprise software and if any of my clients found out that they had been paying me to work on a feature that wasn't discussed in the project outline, not only would I be fired from the project, but also sued for misappropriation of funds. THAT is what EA/BW just did, and for that (and the RWZ issue in 1.2) I will never purchase another game that has been produced by either company. My sub's canceled, you can have my stuff and i'll be deleting my character when the sub is up.

 

Turbine announced that LOTRO was going F2P the day they made the decision and it took them almost 9 months to implement the F2P model into their game -- and that's with already having experience with it through DDO with the same engine. BW/EA has been working on this for months while their customers suffer for it, and have had zero concern with their customer's satisfaction of a product they purchased and are paying to maintain.

OMG, then this is the super secret space project!!! A free flying cash shop

[jarjarloves]

LOL Bioware is to blame they designed a sub par MMO that would never survive in a subscriber model every serious Beta tester told them that and they ignored us.........Now since they did absolutely nothing since launch to fix this and likely made it worse, yes they are to blame. What did they spend our sub fee's on? Mainly a legacy system that is a glorified cash shop and will be used as such once F2P hits. So in other words they lied to you for 6 months while they used our sub fee's to develop a F2P system........Sounds like BIOFAIL is pretty responsible to me.....

 

Next Fanboi in line please.......

 

if WoW launched today it wouldn't survive.

 

It's not the qualtiy of the MMO anymore it's the fact that there are more games competing for you rmoney in the genre.

 

Games like GW2 are the future for MMOs as far as payment models go.

[Yinata]

They probably always considered it an option. But why do it if people keep on paying. Things were going very well in the first month, 2 active million subscribers sound very promising... the number dropped by almost 75% though, and that is A LOT. They are no longer making enough profit to maintain this game on subscription-only pay model. Time has come to initiate Plan B.

 

Don't get me wrong, this might in the end prove to be the best solution for everyone - for both players and the BioWare itself. There are many very successful games out there that are based around f2p model. It might also be the beginning of the end. Only time shall tell. I keep my hopes up for the better future.

 

F2P systems take an average of 6-12 months to develop, so BioFail has been working on this likely since launch while keeping the players that stayed subbed in the dark, I can guarantee you if they had announced the F2P model when they had started working on it, at launch, or before that they would have 1/5-1/10th of the subs they have now. In other words BioFail pulled a bait and switch, got you to buy a game and promised a sub model when the whole time they knew they were going F2P, but waited until they had recouped sub fees from us for 7 months w/o saying anything. BioFail and EA are criminal companies that will never receive another dollar from me.

 

They planned this all a long be nieve and think they just started developing the F2P system, they've been implementing it into the game and testing it on us since 1.2 when the legacy system hit. They were getting statistics from this legacy crap to see what people would buy and not, this is how they will adjust their cash shop prices. In other words they used our sub fees to pay the development of their F2P venture, knowing full well they were going F2P for 6 months or more before they told us.

 

BioFail has lied to us for 6 months, hold them responsible for their thievery, don't make excuses for their backhanded business practices.

[RealDalamars]

Sorry. I paid to play a game for the months that I did and I have no ill feelings about that. If this model was in place day one, I would have paid monthly as well. I had fun and still do. Given the trend for even new releases to drop to F2P immediately I think it was in the plan from the start. Subs will continue after F2P and get unlimited access, just like they do now. The fact that there are retro credits for tokens based on sub time indicates again this has always been in the cards for the game. In fact, I counter that from a business perspective EA/Bioware would have been stupid for not building with this model in mind. It's the trend in the industry. Look at Facebook games and the like. Mobile Games that are free with in-app purchases. Look around everyone, this is the new order of things. I'm a little sad about it as a long time gamer (measured in decades) but I have to adapt to change or get out.

 

I will continue my sub and keep the access to the game I have. Like group finder, transfers, the F2P stuff probably wasn't ready at launch. This trend of F2P started during their dev period and likely they had to start to retool a while back. It just wasn't ready at launch, but I bet if it was, that is the way it would have been released.

 

I despise EA, and Bioware is part of it now. I do enjoy this game. When I don't enjoy it any longer, I will turn it off.

Edited August 1, 2012 by RealDalamars

[GalacticKegger]

If F2P was all there'd be then I could see a huge issue. But it won't be. Subs will continue to be subs and provide access to all the content ... most of which the F2Pers will have to pay microtransactions for. The drama is unfounded because the game loses nothing while merely gaining another way for people to play it.

 

You want drama? Check this out: http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/316AzLYfAzw&autoplay=1&rel=0

Edited August 1, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Celebrus]

If F2P was all there'd be then I could see a huge issue. But it's not because subs will continue to be subs and provide access to all the content ... most of which the F2Pers will have to pay microtransactions for. The drama is unfounded because the game loses nothing and gains another way for people to play it.

 

You want drama? Check this out: http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/316AzLYfAzw&autoplay=1&rel=0

 

The subs will also provide just enough cartel points to not be able to purchase anything probably, coaxing you into paying more money on top of your subscription, make no mistake, subscriptions will still be their primary form of income unless they really lean heavily on the cash shop and f2p players to make their bills.

 

This model will simply try to goad subscribing players into paying more than their monthly fee for access to all of the game's (limited) content, the drama is definitely warranted because the game's content isn't going to be nearly as accessible, because without paying the subscription, free play has already been confirmed to be extremely limited.

 

Actually on topic...no they never intended to use the sub model, I've had a strong feeling this was coming from the moment I saw that legacy was perfectly laid out to be cash shop material.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Celebrus

[AviorOsis]

Having a success like WoW was their plan.

[GalacticKegger]

The subs will also provide just enough cartel points to not be able to purchase anything probably, coaxing you into paying more money on top of your subscription, make no mistake, subscriptions will still be their primary form of income unless they really lean heavily on the cash shop and f2p players to make their bills.

 

This model will simply try to goad subscribing players into paying more than their monthly fee for access to all of the game's (limited) content, the drama is definitely founded because the game's content isn't going to be nearly as accessible, because without paying the subscription, free play has already been confirmed to be extremely limited.

Just a guess (like everyone else who isn't a Bioware employee) but I suspect that subscribers will have access to all of the game's content included in their sub. I expect most if not all of the advanced content like heroics, FPs, OPs, etc. to not be included in the F2P model, but purchasable by the F2Pers via µtransactions as modules the way Turbine does it. Most of the rest of the store will likely be about character customization & vanity, some crafting materials & schematics, mounts, pets, etc. Edited August 1, 2012 by GalacticKegger