Having
to take a title designed as a subscription game from the start and morph it
into a free-to-play game cannot be easy. Nothing can be shoehorned or
half-assed. You don’t want to alienate customers – new, old or current – yet
you can’t have the game be too open or two velvet roped. BioWare is juggling
this exact problem with Star Wars: The Old Republic right now. Lead Designer
Damion Schubert has just announced some changes ahead of the November
(re)launch.
•Free players receive
two quickbars, up from one.
•Free players can
participate in five PvP Warzones a week, up from three.
•All players will see
reduced Cartel Coin item locks (cash shop cooldown timers). Free players have
been reduced to three days while subscribers are down to two days.
The
changes have been made after analysis of the action on the test server.
Schubert
spends a substantial amount of the post explaining the delicate balancing act
of the subscriber vs. free-to-play experience. In fact, he believes that the
PvP Warzone queue should increase despite the restriction, since many titles
have seen subscriber numbers increase after converting business models. The
past doesn’t guarantee future results, so Schubert was quick to state that if
Warzone queues do go the other way, the restriction will be modified to correct
it.
