Her future was so bright…
In news that is so two days ago, Bioware announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be getting a Free to Play option coming this Fall — Spring for us Australians. I think it’s safe to say that the decision to switch to a F2P model shocked approximately zero people. I had heard a lot of players moan that there are serious issues with end-game; encounters were buggy and PvP far too reliant on gear. Apparently content updates provided too little and were too far apart and those at end-game lost interest quickly. That meant the game hemorrhaged subscribers faster than anyone would like, with the game dipping below 1 million players. I, of course, can’t testify if any of these comments are accurate, as little old Nerisanda never made it past level 10 before I unsubscribed.
No Service With A Smile
I have quit this game not once, but twice now, and both times it wasn’t the fault of the game itself, but rather the blame falls square at the feet of the Customer Service department.
My reasons the first time I cancelled were 20% Disconcur‘s fickle interest in playing MMO’s with me and 80% because I was made to feel a fool when my account had been frozen for too many incorrect security answers. I only figured this out when I noticed that no-one else was bitching about the constant maintenance and I logged into my account via their website. I received no email about a potential security breach and the actions that had been taken, and no error message when I tried to log in saying I was frozen out, just a generic, ‘This game is down for maintenance’ error. I brought this up in my ticket requesting my account be unfrozen, and it was completely ignored by the automated response.
I unsubscribed that night.
The second time I cancelled my decision had nothing to do with my treatment at all, but it was the same half-arsed excuse for customer service all over again. Many of you may remember Battlechicken’s fight for her account a few months back. Essentially, she was incorrectly banned for botting, and when she appealed wanting to know more details she was met with a wall of automated emails. It wasn’t until the blogosphere exploded with outrage and threw their weight behind her that a Customer Service Representative contacted her to work out a resolution. It irrationally aggravated me that it took a mass public outcry for anyone to speak with her directly. What chance does the average player have of receiving fair treatment if it takes the possibility of negative publicity to get the attention of Customer Service?
Third Time’s The Charm
With all my complaints about customer service, I really did enjoy the game. The thing is, I was only really interested in the story and so I played it more like a single player game. Now that the game is going free to play and the storyline is included at no charge, I can continue my adventures without spending any more money on it. I was very impressed to see that they had included the storyline, and I believe that this will bring people back to the game, at least initially. I’m no game designer and so I can’t speculate whether or not this will help them keep the lights on, so to speak, but I am interested in seeing where this leads.
Congratulations, Bioware, for doing the impossible and putting this game back on my radar. Now I have yet another game to put on my MMO play list, and I’m really not sure where I’m going to find all the time! Mists of Pandaria, Guild Wars 2, TERA and now Star Wars: The Old Republic. Please excuse me while my teeny tiny little brain tries to process all this time management I’ll need to do!
How do you feel about Bioware’s decision to move SWTOR to a F2P model? Are you excited, or do you feel it is too little, too late? Have your say in the comments below!
Despite all of my brothers and cousins and uncles and aunts and (oh, dear, my family is all nerds!
) saying that it was SO much better than WoW … and quitting WoW to play it, I haven’t touched it.
When it’s F2P I’ll probably download it to give it a shot. I suppose the F2P model just gave me a reason to try it, haha!
Trust me, a family full of nerds is so much cooler than a family of nerd haters like mine!
That’s another good point about it going F2P, people who were curious but couldn’t justify paying money for it just got an incentive to have a crack at it. The story mode is great, and I say that as someone who isn’t big into the Star Wars franchise. It’s definitely something you can play side to side with WoW
I was pretty surprised to hear that they were going F2P! Although, from hearing the terrible stories from you and many other players, I guess it makes sense they would try this attempt to bring in more players. This is great for me though, since I’ve been tempted to try it out… Hopefully it will be better this time around for you, too!
Just go and prove me wrong why don’t you!
F2P won’t address how terrible they treat their customers, but since I’m not giving them money, I can deal with it. It’s such an engaging storyline, and it’s a real shame that they’ve dropped the ball with it. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!
Yeah, I’ve been expecting the announcement for a while. Honestly, all the things tying me to it are falling away. After the initial leveling experience and getting the raids under my belt, I was finding less and less things I wanted to do.
Right after getting my account reinstated, I started playing for a bit, but other than raids I just wasn’t feeling it at all. I’d sit down and look at my computer…and open WoW. Now our raid group is crumbling a bit, and even my husband is talking about walking away until it’s F2P. I haven’t renewed my subscription since it ran out 2 weeks ago, and I’m wondering if I will. I feel worst for my husband, because he WANTED this game to be awesome, and he feels like it let him down.
Factor all that in with the ridiculously difficult Customer Service (btw, I never got my follow-up call and their service still stinks), and I just…well, I’m not surprised by this development. It will be interesting to see how F2P affects things, at least.
They never called back? Wow, seriously poor form! I’m very glad I cancelled when I did. They don’t deserve a cent of my money. F2P will probably make their Customer Service worse, since we’re not even paying them anymore. At least we’re not paying for the privilege *cough* of being treated that way.
I’m sorry to hear that things are falling apart in-game for you and your husband. With that kind negative experience, it’s no surprise that you don’t feel as attached to it. Crushed hopes are the worst
I also had been expecting them to go F2P. Isn’t it amazing how WoW has set such a benchmark for MMOs that none seem to be able to last the distance with that much success? Well, I unsubbed my SWTOR last month and this comes out so I guess I can go back to my massively slow levelling again.
Ha, yep. Whenever someone cries that X game will be “The death of WoW!” I just roll my eyes. I firmly believe that the only thing that will kill WoW is Blizzard.
Oh thank goodness, I’m not the only one who levels at a snails pace in that game! I think it’s because I don’t want to skip the cut scenes, etc.
I played SWTOR unil about level 40, but I was so completely over it. Aside from there being no dragons, I hated all the damn videos…I don’t want to wait 10 minutes to pick up a quest…I read fast enough and I HATE having to constantly spam the esc key to move it along – therefore missing out on storylines.
I think they released a game that was great in concept, but they failed to deliver on the basics like an auction house search function. I do miss the space battles, they were all I did really towards the end.
But waiting 14 days for a static response broke the camels back. Even free – this game is too crap for me to spend my time on
Its funny, but hands up those who remember Bioware quite boldly stating that it would “… never be a free-to-play title”? *Raises his hand*
Oh the hypocrisy .. anyways here is a quick write up of my thoughts and key points on the failure of SWTOR…
The selection of the HeroEngine sealed the game’s fate combat wise is highly debatable, but the big thing BioWare underestimated is just how valuable smooth combat is to players in both PVP and PVE.
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They also used a 90% story, 10% everything else ratio which was both the game’s greatest strength and also its biggest weakness. The narrative experience is fantastic, and one of the most ambitious in a video game, but it’s very clear that BioWare gave it more emphasis than anything else.
Those people who grew tired of the story (not everyone is a lore buff) was left wondering where the rest of the game’s six-year development cycle went. The environments were bland and functioned only as massive corridors filled with nothingness but to “guide” you along the story. This style of game is literally a cut and paste from KOTOR which makes me believe that SWTOR would have made a much better single-player title than an MMO.
The distinct lack of features are my second biggest complaint. At launch there was simply very few features present, which should be considered standard in today’s climate, particularly when you wish to enter WoW’s “The King of MMOs” court. Things such as not including a group finder for almost a year is highly questionable, but denying players the ability to customize or alter the UI in any way, shape, or form is mind boggling. Healers especially had an up hill battle as there was next to nothing for monitoring various parts and being able to move the UI parts about or change text/colours. Admittedly they did change this a bit later but the then the damage was done. Macros were also missing, so anyone expecting to be able to bind assist and focus macros was simply out of luck and this impacts on the abilities and timing of things since you now got to click on a target each and every time to ensure your heals got to the right person.
To be fair a significantly large portion of the levelling experience was fun and entertaining. Endgame, my third major gripe, was hardly captivating. Bioware had to rush to throw together patch 1.1.0 and get it launched in a frantic effort to keep the more “hardcore players” satisfied, but it wasn’t enough to sustain them. And remember those fantastic voice-actors? You know the ones from your levelling cut-scenes? Well they also disappeared from existence at endgame and in fact the whole story you got told as you levelled sort of disappeared entirely too.
The fourth issue, and really this one was preventable, was how they addressed the game’s overwhelming demand. It likely made heaps of sense at the time, but by adding over a dozen servers to de-saturate the crowded servers to ridiculous levels was at least 10 steps too far. The result being that a very few servers had a “high” population, that is they had more than a “light” load on the server, and the rest were literally ghost towns. The whole concept underpinning an MMO is the “Massive Multi-player …” part which does work when you spread your player base around like a farmer putting 2 sheep in each paddock to play by themselves.
This simply screamed “another rushed EA MMO” from the rooftops, the issues about are characteristic of this type of rushed development. The proof of this claim? Well people like to think that they are original when in many cases the are following in existing steps of others. This same tale is what killed Warhammer Online in cold blood, a game that was supposed to “…shake the foundation of the genre.”, You’d think by now somebody started to do some napkin maths and think: “Hmmm, something about this just isn’t adding up …”. Perhaps if they took their time and put effort into content like they did storytelling and release with the features they have F2P would not have happened in 8 months after release.
The end feeling I found many, including myself, to have about SWTOR is it just felt like they were playing a severely underdeveloped World of Warcraft clone. But this is another MMO to be killed off by these things.
As for the F2P its something that many more investors are thinking of using since the $15 a month p2p model is not working as well anymore.
As for their CS is was almost non-existent as well :/
I literally had to threaten to maim children before I finally got someone to from CS to response with an automated message …
Personally, I’m excited for the F2P. I can afford to play one MMO at a time and, sorry SWTOR, but WoW won
. I am eager to finish my class quests! I really want to see how my Jedi’s story will turn out!
Like the previous commenter noted, SWTOR really was kind of like playing an underdeveloped WoW. The visuals were good but the game play lacked the spark that WoW has. The number one driving force behind me playing SWTOR is the story line. And I think that will be what brings me back.
Now, to just find the time to play…[glances at Sept. 25 on the calendar].
Oh, I know what you mean about finding time. I really have no idea how I’ll balance it all!