Many industry experts said that SWTOR could be setting the stage for a new F2P model for MMORPGs. Other said it would be the last subscription-based MMORPG and that they expect future games of the same caliber to be based around F2P models. That hasn’t exactly happened yet.
While there are more free to play MMORPGs than ever before, there are still games coming out with subs, at least for now. And this brings up a great conversation about free to play MMOs.
While a game may be labeled “free to play”, this doesn’t make it play for free. You still may end up needing to pay for certain features or items you want in the game. And you might have to pay for features that subscribing members don’t have to pay for.
The upside is that you only have to pay for the features you want and you can skip the ones you don’t but the downside is that if you’re not careful, you just might end up spending more on the things you want than you would have by just getting a sub in the first place.
For a game to be truly play-for-free, you need to be able to fully enjoy the game without paying a dime. But not all F2P games follow this model. Some are so restrictive in what they let free players have access to, you just can’t experience the game the way it was intended. Some games call themselves free to play when in reality, you need to spend money to really get anything good from the game. So free to play isn’t “play for free”, at least not with every game.
So here’s a big question about SWTOR F2P- do you consider it too restrictive to play without paying for anything at all? Does it truly allow you to play for free?
