SWTOR is going free to play and it’s happening sooner than you think. We’re all excited about the news and here’s an interview from MMORPG.com’s William Murphy to give us more info about the game, the move to f2p and other questions you might have.
It’s happening, and sooner than you might think. BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is going F2P with a hybrid business model this fall. Players have been wondering about it, journalists have been begging for it, and it seems that all this time BioWare’s been listening and reacting. After being informed of the then embargoed announcement this morning, I had the rare opportunity to sit in on a call with
BioWare’s Jeff Hickman and Matthew Bromberg (who recently took over as GM of the Austin studio. We talked about the timing, the reasons, and the way in which they believe SWTOR going F2P is just finally giving the players what they’ve wanted, and breaking down the barrier into the Old Republic once and for all. The call was brief, but this is what I’ve learned.
So that’s the news- it’s coming this fall. The interview goes on to talk about cartel coins, content updates, how staffing will change with a free to play model, if BioWare looks to others for guidance with this new model and more.
But some are skeptical about Jeff Hickman, former head of CSR and current new leader of BioWare Austin. Is he just a “yes man” as he was called out by EA Louse way back when in the blog so famously called Bye Bye Mythic.
Louse says:
“”No, he needed Jeff Hickman, promoted from customer service to produce the Warhammer project. Wait, let me let you have that sink in. The man running customer service, on the theory that the management of a large team of CSRs qualified him to run a game development project, was put in charge of a $50 million project with no previous experience.””
So what do you think?
