The Monetization Timebomb

[Falensawino]

This whole thread is outdated.

 

The "timebomb" went off years ago. This game barely gets any new playable content in its updates, compared to what it did from 1.0-3.x, and less so during 4.x. Ever since the chapter model of KotFE didn't work out, SWTOR hasn't had much of a creative direction aside from making sure to sell as much from the CM as possible, though 6.0 did bring some changes to gearing and combat.

 

This isn't to take anything away from the developers who do work hard on the game and make the small story and group content updates SWTOR does get, but it doesn't have enough of a budget to even support all its existing game modes, let alone do so well. The budget is just enough to keep around a certain base of Old Republic fans, with an emphasis on selling CCs/CM items to any type of player who might log in. The Steam launch last year seems to have given BW and EA some ideas on how to sell the old content/CM items all over again to newer audiences.

 

Overall, the microtransactions in this game have never been terribly exploitive, certainly nothing that directly affected gameplay, and added a lot to its cosmetic aspects. If you accepted that EA wasn't going to support the actual game well, which again has been the case for many years, there's nothing particularly new going on with monetization in SWTOR.

 

Galactic Seasons daily objectives often take as little as 5 minutes to complete, and the weekly objectives are typically 3 of those. There's literally no reason to ever use CCs on the system, and in-game credits are even available as a catch up mechanism overall if you can't log in 3-4 times in a week during the season.

 

so what you're saying is. through galactic season, bioware has to pay us Cartel Coins to continue playing and populating this game