Star Wars: The Old Republic release date announced
Europeans will get access to the game two days after their US counterparts.
The announcement was made at the Eurogamer Expo in London over the weekend, and brings to an end the speculation surrounding whether or not BioWare would hit its target of getting the game released in 2011 or not.
‘This is an incredible moment for everyone at BioWare and our partners at LucasArts who have dedicated their lives to building this extraordinary game,’ said Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka. ‘We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game's release.’
Those eagerly waiting to get stuck into the game will be happy to know that BioWare also confirmed details of the game's pricing structure. Players can expect to pay €12.99 for a single month, €35.97 for three months or €65.94 for a full half-year subscription, which translates into roughly £11, £31 and £57 respectively.
BioWare also took the time to announce that those who pre-order the game will get early access to the world, although the developer remained tight lipped about just how early.
Are you looking forward to The Old Republic? Does that pricing model seem a little steep, or those he prices you would expect to pay? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyWrong. You got the Euros right, but the Pounds Sterling amounts were way off. These are the official amounts:
1 Month Subscription: $14.99 (£8.99/12.99)
3 Month Subscription: $13.99 per month (one-time charge of $41.97/£25.17/35.97)
6 Month Subscription: $12.99 per month (one-time charge of $77.94/£46.14/65.94)
It's the standard amount for an MMO. :?
Brb opening my free WoW account.
Or is that the exception to prove the rule?
And that's the most popular MMO in the world - a success that will probably never be repeated. Even Blizzard themselves have said their new MMO (Codename Titan) will be more 'casual', so expect that to also be entirely micro-transaction based.
That is a demo. Nothing more. Free to play is completely different...
Unless the game is good to go at launch, as pretty much every new mmo 'wow' killer at launch has failed and then died off.
In my original post I never specified what EA should offer for free (be it Level, Zones, Class or general gameplay restrictions), only that all modern MMO's should at least have some gratis offering to give new players a taste of what is on offer.
Capped play, though free, does not make free to play.
Most MMO's do not launch with any kind of trial at all, this is usually reserved for around 6 months after launch after which some kind of level capped or time limited trial will start.
Free to play would be that you can enjoy ALL of the game content without spending anything, or with a single transaction. Guild Wars is a good example of Free to Play with only the client and subsequent expansion clients being charged for rather than a subscription to play it.
Micro-transactions unless for vanity items only, would kill the game IMO. They are a bane on gaming if handled incorrectly, and can turn in to "whoever has the deepest pockets wins" which isn't right.
Stick with the sub model I say, or do a Guild Wars.
The sub could do with being cheaper but I enjoyed playing it at Eurogamer and am no stranger to paying for an MMO. It equates to 2 less pints a month which I can sufficiently do without anyway.
No because there's also EvE
As the poster below you nailed it, demos are not the same as free to play.
I urge you not to respond to this as it will only serve to make you look more dense.
This MMO looks extremely interesting to me but I can't bring myself to justify a monthly subscription...
You're basing the argument on one specific MMO, and even WoW has a basic free model up to Level 20. Like it or not, the distinction between F2P model and subscription based model is not as clear cut now compared to a few years ago. Just look at games like APB, Lord of The Rings Online and Champions Online; they started out with subscription based models and moved towards microtransaction after a while.
WoW is still one of the biggest MMOs out there, so ActiBlizzard will continue to milk the subscribers until they lose a substantial amount of players. When that happens I think the level cap on the free account will be raised, or they might even introduce a new F2P model. Like NuTech mentioned before, other MMOs don't have the level of success as WoW so they have to rely more on F2P models to attract players.
Been paying my eve subscription with in game ISK for about a year now, dunno if you class that as free? :D
You tell them ;).
With regards to sub-based games... surely we're over this discussion already? Either you're willing to pay them, or you're not. The same with pretty much everything else in life.
There's a reason why Blizzard earned more (with what... WoW and Starcraft 2 i believe) than the rest of Activision combined (inc. Call of Duty, Guitar Hero etc.).
Subscriptions make money and i'm pretty sure that TOR will be successful, especially since they stated they only needed 1 million subs to break even and ideally they want around 3 million for it to be a comfortable success.
You're confusing free 2 play with a game demo. Anyway I'm bored of talking about this, I don't care if people are wrong on the internet
there is no difference from Free WOW - level 20, Vanilla WoW - level 60, TBC lvl 70 WOTLK lvl 80 Cataclysm lvl 85
They are all capped at certain levels, or are you telling me that vanilla wow is a demo too?
There is considerable content from 0-20, I wouldn't call that a demo or a free trial, free trial was 10 day play time. Demos do not exist in MMO's
How much Level 20 content is there in WoW?
I remember when i was playing i hit Level 30ish before my Week's trial was up. In fact i think i hit Levels 16-20 on the second or third day.
That's not really the same as "Free-to-Play" model since the content just isn't there compared to say Champions Online where all the original content till Level 50 is free.
I was hoping for a 300$ lifetime sub, but i can handle paying a year at a time.
Yours in paying for excellence Plasma,
Star*Dagger
Because everyone knows that MMOs are the pinnacle of graphical technology?
The game looks perfectly fine and the style was chosen so that it would age better than the more "realistic" looking games out there.
Lest we not mention that WoW rakes in more cash than almost every other game and yet still looks like cack.
And the reason why it's such a big hit no?
Whilst AoC might have looked graphically amazing at the time, i wouldn't say it's aged that well. I've been browsing through some screenshots and i think i'd still prefer an Unreal 3 based game over it.
I'm not saying SWTOR looks any better, just that since it's not meant to look realistic, it'll age much better.
I guess we'll just agree to disagree.
I found SWTOR to be rather a nice twist of the traditional MMO, more specifically the voice acting/dialogue choices.
The Imperial Agent was also rather fun and the cover system made him very engaging to play.
Age of Conan on the other hand never appealed enough for me to bother contemplating it.
I may at a push, give guild wars 2 a go...
All I can say is that I'll give it a go and if it's good and there's enough PvP (as PvP planets sound pretty cool) to keep me busy I will play it.