I would like to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone that ever decided to buy or spend any money on Star Wars: The Old Republic on account of my fansite influencing them to do so. I am sorry, I have deceived you into giving money for something that will be free in a few months. I chose to believe everything Bioware was telling me about SWTOR and I supported it wholeheartedly by telling people it is a great product that will last for years and years to come and that investing money into it will bring joy into your gaming life. It will still bring joy to gamers, as a free offering, and that is a huge difference.
  
We, the first customers of SWTOR, have given about $90 to EA and Bioware on average (game cost + three month subscription to average things). Money none of the people playing from November 1. will have to pay. That is why I feel like I deceived you.
  
I have supported and recommended SWTOR to everyone for one simple reason. All along we were promised a top notch product that will justify paying a monthly fee. We have seen many MMORPGs of the past not reach the highest quality at release. Age of Conan was unfinished past level 20, Warhammer Online was boringly easy, Star Trek Online had only the space combat done well out of all the parts of the game and so on. Star Wars: The Old Republic was not to repeat these mistakes. It had 200 million in funding, it had people that brought us KOTOR, Dragon Age, DAOC, Ultima and many other great games working on the project. It was hailed as a pivotal product for Electronic Arts. Some of the people working on the game even got permanent tattoos displaying their full commitment to the game.
  
We were all deceived.
  
Past the first month subscription numbers started to plummet. There were things that needed to be done in the game that took way too long to be done (more on that in another article) and people simply voted with their wallets. Apparently, SWTOR did not warrant a monthly subscription. The game is not half that bad to be honest. Maybe the subscription model is dead. If anyone should have known this it was Bioware and Electronic Arts. They should not have deceived us by saying they have something we will want to pay a monthly subscription for.
  
Not even six months after release we saw the first people from Bioware, Austin get fired. Electronic Arts started cutting expenses and changing direction for SWTOR. John Riccitiello labeled SWTOR as one of the top 10 products for EA (but not a top 5 product) and started firing people. So much for Electronic Arts’ full support for the project and the game. What was to be an ongoing service for years to come was being crippled 6 months into the service going live. Bioware was deceived into believing they have time to fix the problems and take SWTOR in the right direction. I am guessing month 3 was when support stopped. By month 8 not many original people are in Bioware, Austin anymore and EA has changed its stance towards SWTOR from flagship product to disappointing. In MMORPG world this is a very short time and going F2P after 10.5 months is like straight to DVD for movies.
  
Sticking to that movie analogy, SWTOR is the Waterworld of the gaming industry.
  
I can understand Electronic Arts’ logic. They were deceived into believing that Bioware is capable of delivering a world class product that will create over a million subscribers in years to come. Obviously that did not happen within the timeframe EA thought as comfortable for them.
  
I feel that I need to make one thing very clear. This article is not about SWTOR being a good or bad game or about Free to play model and what it means for SWTOR (it is a very natural progression and a very good thing for gamers). This is about everyone being deceived and the announcement about Free to play bringing that to light. If you check out this Gamespy article they have a very nice layout of all the Bioware quotes from past talking about free to play. What Bioware has been telling us all along (for the past two years) is that free to play might be the future, but they have a product that warrants a subscription. They back-paddled only 8 months into release and switched their story completely (firing half the staff along the way). This tells us that they are capable of deception , or are completely incompetent. Either way, it is now obvious the only price you should have been paying for SWTOR is FREE.
  
P.S. I had the honor of having dinner with Stephen Reid and David Bass in Austin. I had the privilege of interviewing James Ohlen and asking questions to Damion Schubert, Daniel Erickson and Blaine Christine. I chatted with the writers of the Old Republic. All of those people were very passionate about the game they were making. They loved it very much and they lived and breathed that game. That is why I believed them and believed in them. That is why I wholeheartedly supported SWTOR for the past 2 years and recommended it to everyone. That is why I find this a bit tragic, because apparently loving your work does not necessarily translate into success and than all the love is forgotten and everyone is just feeling deceived.
  
DISCLAIMER: All the opinions and conclusions in this article are that of its author. The author reserves the right to be proved he is wrong and is willing to hear the opinions of others on the subject. Please leave your comments in the comment section bellow.
  
UPDATE: You can hear me talk about this article and the reasons I wrote what I wrote in a podcast with SWATHRadio.com You can find the podcast on their website or download it here
  

Before going in deep into making an educated opinion about SWTOR’s conversion to a F2P model I wanted to go over what happened at yesterday’s EA Earnings call. You can find the recording of the call as well as all the documentation at http://investor.ea.com/ . I will try and list the facts as they happened and offer my analysis of the events.
  

1. 1 hour before the earnings call began it was announced that SWTOR will be adopting a F2P model alongside its regular subscription model and that it will be introducing a cash shop
2. John Ricitello, CEO of EA, said the following in his fourth sentence of his speech to the investors: “The disappointing results of Star Wars: The Old Republic were largely offset by a powerful performance from Battlefield 3 Premium service“
3. No exact number of subscribers was revealed but this was said: “Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers. Offering two-tiered pricing plan in November.”
4. SWTOR and BF3 were mentioned again in the following sentence: “Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3)”
5. EA lowered their expected revenue and profit margins for the quarter and this is what they said about why they did it: “Star Wars is the primary driver for adjusted guidance to a lower number.”
6. There was a question near the end about the future of Star Wars and this is what Frank Gibeau had to say: “The idea with F2P is to open the funnel and get some of the players back that we lost to churn. We anticipate that the mix between subscriptions and free to play are going to be balanced but we don’t foresee free to play revenues as incremental to anything that we discussed in the call.”

  
Lets analyze this information. Less than an hour before the investors call we find out that SWTOR is going F2P only 8 months after its launch. This is a major change of strategy and direction only 11 months after the game launched. Never has there been so much money invested, nor strategy about the subscription plan so quickly changed in the history of MMORPG games. The closest to come to this time frame is DC Universe Online by Sony Online Entertainment.
  
The next thing that happened is that CEO of Electronic Arts, owner of Bioware and the one that paid for development and marketing of Star Wars: The Old Republic, said in his fourth sentence of the address to the investors that SWTOR had disappointing results. The CEO of EA chose not to downplay how bad SWTOR is doing and basically opened his address to the investors by blaming SWTOR for disappointing results. Further into the investors call we also learned that they blame SWTOR for not reaching their revenue guidelines. This is huge in every way. When a CEO says something like this about one of company’s products this probably means the product is being discontinued at best. Combined with the fact that they fired half the people in Bioware, Austin, including higher-up staff, we see a company blaming and punishing everyone involved in a project for bad results and acting accordingly.
  
The subscriber numbers were not explicitly mentioned. We were given a range of bellow 1 million (which means out of 2 mil boxes sold they retained less than 50% customers), but well above the 500.000 bottom line they mentioned during their last investors call. This statement makes no sense when we calculate in the facts that they fired half the staff and announced one of the fastest conversions to F2P in MMO history. The moves they are making tell us that SWTOR is trending towards well bellow their bottom line and they are doing damage control right away. Their actions tell us that EA has labeled SWTOR a failure and is now just salvaging what can be salvaged.
  
The last thing I wanted to discuss is the statement by Frank Gibeau on what they expect in SWTOR’s future. This part is important “we don’t foresee free to play revenues as incremental to anything that we discussed in the call“. This tells us that EA does not believe in the Free to Play model as the one that will bring them significant increase in revenue and that they are probably doing it just to salvage the situation the best they can and perhaps get a few more dollars in the process.
  
Conclusions:

• EA blames SWTOR for not meeting its Q1 goals and calls SWTOR’s performance disappointing
• EA anticipates that at current trends the subscribers would go bellow the bottom-line number of subscribers needed for the game to keep operating
• EA is making moves to salvage the situation and is now doing damage control and not trying to “fix” the game or “improve” the gaming experience
• EA does not believe in the F2P model for SWTOR

  
These are all terrifying conclusions for any fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I will be discussing the impact of these conclusions on the game itself and its future in my next article tomorrow. In the meantime please share with me your opinions in the comments section. I would love to hear everyone’s take on what happened during the investors call yesterday and what impact it will have on SWTOR’s future.
  
DISCLAIMER: All the opinions and conclusions in this article are that of its author. The author reserves the right to be proved he is wrong and is willing to hear the opinions of others on the subject. Please leave your comments in the comment section bellow.
  

It has just been announced that less than a year since launch Star Wars: the Old Republic will be going free to play. They are adopting a hybrid model where you can choose to be a subscriber and get full access to the game or a free player and have (severe?) restrictions to what you can do. You can see the official page comparing the free and subscribed players’ restrictions and advantages.

http://www.swtor.com/free/features

  
Together with the announcement about the conversion to free to play we have also seen a promotion of the page detailing all the new content that we’ll see “by the end of the year”. The page also details that current subscribers and those that keep a subscription going will be rewarded with “Cartel coins” with which they will be able to “buy unique items as a part of our Reward program”. You can see the official page detailing the Cartel coins and the cash shop (or Cartel market as they call it) here.
  
I’ll be doing an editorial about this in the coming days and we are still waiting for official subscription numbers that will be released within the next 2 hours.
  
I would love to hear your opinions about what this means for SWTOR and whether this is a good or a bad thing. I would also love to hear what you think if this means that SWTOR has failed, succeeded or just changing plans according to the current state of the MMORPG market. Any community feedback is welcome.
  

Tags: f2p

  
Bioware did a great thing by adding the defense stats to PvP warzones and adding votes where you can vote for that one healer that kept you alive throughout the whole match. Still, gamers always look for the easiest way though a game and groups usually give votes to each other no matter how well they actually did during a warzone match. I did it as well when I was playing with the guild I was in. Still, it hurts as hell when you win the most medals and are ranked number one in a warzone and get no MVP votes whatsoever. I am almost over the fact that can happen … almost.

UPDATE: The list of source and target servrs has become too large to maintain by hand. I highly recommend everyone interested in which server is allowed to transfer checks out this thread on the official forum maintained by official SWTOR staff.

Together with the end of today’s SWTOR maintenance it got revealed which servers are eligible for server transfers initially. This got posted on the official website on the server transfer page. For those of you not able to acess the official website – here’s a summary:

UPDATE: The list of servers eligible for transfers has been expanded with additional 5 NA servers and 3 EU servers. Additionally, Joveth Gonzales (Senior community manager) has posted on the official forums a list of Destination servers as well (while the transfers page on the swtor.com website only has source servers). Transfer table bellow has been updated to reflect this new information and we will keep updating it as the situation progresses.

NA Servers:

  
EU Servers:

To start the character transfer process, login to your account on swtor.com, click My Account and then click Character Transfers in the left hand menu. From there you will be able to select Start a Character Transfer and see if you have any characters eligible for transfer to selected servers.

I would also recommend you read the Character Transfer Service FAQ before you initiate the transfer process.
 
 

Tags: server list, transfer

Surge of The Old Republic related news is starting along with the appearance of patch 1.3 on the Public Test Server. The most awaited piece of news is certainly how will Character Transfer Service work and when will it start. Answers to both of those questions can be found at the official blog post on swtor.com entitled “Character Transfer, Server Populations and You“. We find out that the Character Transfer Service will start on June 12th 2012. – even before patch 1.3 is deployed. Character transfer will only be allowed between certain source servers to certain destination serves (which servers exactly will be offered to move where exactly remains to be announced). The intention here is to try and improve the population on certain servers. Albait limited, this service might get extended later on with a paid option where you can move to wherever you want for a fee.  
It seems that a certain level of manual labor will be involved in character transfer so this process will not be instantaneous and you can even expect to see long transfer times in certain situations where there is a huge number of characters to be transferred. They are hoping to do it in hours, but it might take much longer than that if there is a huge rush.  
Here are some more details that will be covered in more detail in an upcoming FAQ:  

Legacy will be transferred to your new server and your unlocks will be available there too. If you have already unlocked your Legacy on your destination server, the higher level Legacy will take precedence. For guild members and masters, you will not be able to transfer your guild as a whole to your new server; instead you will need to reform it. If you have a guild bank, it will be re-granted to your new guild on your destination server by Customer Service. This is not an automatic process and you will have to contact Customer Service directly. If your transferred character’s name conflicts with an existing name on a destination server, you will be asked to rename your character. In the case of Legacy names, unless you have unlocked your Legacy on your origin server, you will need to rename your Legacy upon transfer (although you may pick the same Legacy name as on your origin server, if available).

  
We wish everyone at Bioware good luck with this new Character Transfer Service and may it be the first step towards complete recovery of this great game.  

Tags: character transfers

During the pre-E3 press conference in Los Angeles, dr. Ray Muzyka announced the new content we will be seing in The Old Republic this year. It was not mentioned whether this will be a paid expansion or a patch update, but from the rumors it seems this will be given to players for free (unverified). The amount of new stuff certainly warrants for the patch to be called an expansion because every aspect of the game will have something new added to it. Here are the most important things announced along with the content trailer.
 

• New companion – HK-51 (we had him on our companions page since December)
• New playable race – Cathar
• New level cap
• New planet – Makeb
• New warzone – Ancient Hypergates
• New Operation – Terror From Beyond
• New Space Mission – Space Station Assault
• New abilities
• New version of Nightmare difficulty mode.
• Free to play up to level 15 starting this July

Tags: Ancient Hypergates, Cathar, Makeb, Terror From Beyond

In light of the most recent news coming from Electronic Arts, Bioware and Star Wars: The Old Republic camps I have come to the conclusion that it is time to change the direction and the intensity of my involvement in the SWTOR community and my support for the companies that made this game.

We will stop posting up-to-date news about the game on SWTOR Life. I would like to thank Joshrooms for working diligently these past months to bring you all that news goodness and I thank all who visited us because of that. We will also steer away from trying to be a column driven fansite or any kind of serious fansite for that matter. I intend to turn this into a personal SWTOR related blog where I’ll share a blog post or two when inspiration hits me and I hope I’ll make a few webcomics that have been floating in my mind for a long time now and that I never was able to do because there were “more important” things to be done. I am telling you all this so you are not surprised with all the incoming changes on the site.

We are now back to where we were in June 2009. when the site first started. This is again my very own, personal pet project, just as it was back then. In the past two years we tried to make SWTOR Life one of the most prominent TOR fansites on the internet. Considering the funding we had ($0) I am very proud with what was accomplished. This is all thanks to a lot of great people that joined and left SWTOR Life over the years. Thanks to SWTORCrafter, Mr. Warlock, Flagg, BorukBH, Dalqak, Rosie, Daelda, MJ and Josh we were able to bring the SWTOR community interviews with the developers, reporting from events, amazing weekly columns and tongue in cheek articles consistently over a long period of time. I had nothing to do with this – it is all accomplishment of the people I just mentioned and therefore I am in their debt forever (and I think the SWTOR community a bit as well).

Sadly, in light of all the things happening with the game and the fact that none of the above people are with SWTOR Life anymore (my fault mainly) I had to make a decision and scale down SWTOR Life considerably. From now on it will be a “if I feel like it” thing. I have overextended myself working on SWTOR Life and SWTOR Spy for a very long time and that has to stop yesterday.

I want to make one thing very clear though (in before the trolls). I believe that Star Wars: The Old Republic is a great game that has a lot to offer to any true gamer. There are so many things done very well that it is a shame if you do not attempt to experience at least a part of it. Personally, I will be enjoying the game for what I hope will be a long time to come. I believe with all my hearth that the Bioware, Austin crew stood by their product to the best of their abilities and tried providing us with the best game possible. I hope they will be able to get out of this hole and break the chains that bound them. Even if that does not happen I am proud and happy to have been a part of this amazing journey that waiting for and launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic has been.

  
Weird sequence of events led me to have my main SWTOR character on a PvE server called Dune Bantha. I initially started playing Republic with my wife on a server some of my SWTOR Life buddies played on, but my wife soon quit due to annoyances in the game she couldn’t pass over and I needed an Empire character to discover some things for our SWTOR Spy Database. That is how Zarmelesh, a demented Twi’lek Sith Assassin came to life – a female character with a randomly assigned name and no ambition whatsoever.
  
Dune Bantha was chosen because it had low population at the time and I didn’t want to wait for queues nor did I want to have my game investigations hampered by random PvP (so PvE server was chosen). I was power leveling my assassin, with exception of class quests which had such great cutscenes and story that I just couldn’t speed past those. Two unexpected things happened. I started loving my demented assassin and some of its companions (Khem FTW). I also started playing loads of PvP warzones. So much that I mostly level through PvP from level 30 to level 49. I was rank 49 in PvP and I had to level to 50 to be able to get to PvP rank 50 – meaning – my PvP rank leveling curve was ahead of my actual experience leveling curve.
  
The consequence of so much PvP was that I’ve started seeing the same faces in PvP and getting familiar with their play styles. We soon started sending each other /wave-s and /hug-s as on Imperial Fleet hallways. The thing about pre-50 PvP is that there are a lot of people that play it just a few times and those that play it all the time. Soon we had a team of regulars that you knew the tactics and were tough to play against. By that time though there was already a big decline in active players and we started seeing less and less PvP matches pop. Nevertheless, I remember this one Sith Warrior called Narfle – he was my PvP God at the time. He was unbeatable and I always wondered how did he manage to survive everything, score regularly and be first on the score board. Cheers Narfle – it was always a pleasure losing to you ;).
  
Reaching level 50 changed the game for me because PvP suddenly became a different game. There were people with PvP gear and knowledge of tactics. Very few noobs existed or were so humiliated that they either practiced to become better or left never to return to PvP. Server population became even smaller and we had perhaps 40-50 players both republic and imperial side that regularly played PvP. I started seeing always the same faces. It was a lot of fun because we all played PvP for hours with the same people and we really bonded – may it be through rivalry or camaraderie – but we kind of bonded. I always knew that if I played with fat and bald bounty hunter Egg or sorcerer Zyntharia or Sith Warrior Morgoth in the group I would win because they were so good at what they did. There were republic players that we knew we would lose against because they were so good (Syth , Kitven, Gilgamesh, Valery, thejedi, Emi (which is Zyntharia’s rep character)). I started learning from these greats and started getting some better PvP gear and sooner rather than later I was getting to be one of the veterans as well. I specced into tanking PvP build and started showing up in the top of the score board more often than not. Tanking build also made it possible to do PvE.
  
PvE was not so good for a very long time. The first three months I barely ever found a group for a HM flashpoint. The server was low pop as it is and people started leaving very soon, which made things even more difficult. I was in a zerg guild that had 15 members online out of 500 all the time (and none of them were level 50). In a surprising turn of events I got an invite one night form a Danish guild. They needed an off-tank to help them in their EV raid. I was ecstatic. I think some of their members knew me from PvP or I was the only tank online. Whatever the case I was soon experiencing my first raid content in SWTOR and not just watched it on livestreams. Things went really well and I even got some gear. Thanks to the Danish Invasion I had my first SOA kill and raiding PvE experience in SWTOR 3+ months after the game launched. We raided several more times in the next month and it is the most fun I had in SWTOR beside some great PvP matches. I would like to take this opportunity to thank P’nes, Aeonkazza, Rion, Rambo, Glikus, Greken, Taball and the rest of the gang for taking me in and putting up with my complete lack of knowledge of Danish language and lack of any tanking skills. You guys made SWTOR a memorable experience.
  
For a few weeks now it has been very hard to get a raid going. Some people got fed up with Bioware’s inability to react to problems. Others left as soon as Diablo 3 launched. Some still persist and try and get a raid going every now and then with the help of two other crippled guilds. It is still fun hanging out with these guys and playing together, but the occasions have become seldom. Zyntharia is still kicking ass in PvP. I enjoy it whenever it happens. Unfortunately it can be hours now before a match pops. Besides, there are so few of us playing now that as soon as one side loses they never reapply for PvP and we go into a waiting mode for an hour.
  
I wanted to tell you my story of the server Dune Bantha and the people I enjoyed playing this game with. I wasn’t planning on it. I always thought I would be a raiding and healing smuggler on the Juyo server. Instead, I became a demented PvP Assassin in a Danish guild. Now that many have left I feel that I need to put this story in writing. I want all of you that stumbled upon this blog entry to know that from January to April 2012 there was this game Star Wars: The Old Republic that we all thought is awesome and that there was this server Dune Bantha on which I found people that gave me hours and days of gaming heaven.
  
P.S. I would like to thank and mention the following players I kept playing with/against in PvP that made me come back to warzones day after day: Drix, Diogo, Valarius, Reddas, Jaqen, Dose, Drix, Tasia (I still hate you 😛 ), Treyus, Bleach, Firezone, Calvin Hobbes, Rbk

Tags: Danish Invasion, Dune Bantha, Zyntharia

What was only a rumor yesterday was confirmed today, Stephen Reid was one of those affected by the layoffs at BioWare. He confirmed this morning via Twitter and Facebook that he was let go from the company, a sad state of affairs for anyone who looked to him as one of their primary sources for SWTOR info. Here is the rundown straight from the man himself, via his Twitter account-

Today my life’s next chapter starts. Lost track of how many chapters so far… but time to turn the page.

I was one of those affected by layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. I got to build an amazing team while I was there, and miss them already.

I’m also going to miss #SWTOR and the community we created. Sure, I know some of you hated me, but hey, I still worked hard for you.

I’ll be Twitter-quiet for a bit, but I’ll be back soon-ish. Doing something, somewhere, and talking about it here. I hope we keep talking.

Last but not least: I was quiet for the last couple of weeks because I was full-on devoted to #SWTOR character transfer. It’s still coming!

Now I’ve got to go, because you don’t want to see a grown man cry on Twitter. Also, I don’t know the emoticon for it.

Don’t lose faith. They’re still devoted to making a great game.

It’s a wide-open space right now. Big, full of possibilities, and scary as hell. Thanks for everything guys.

Good luck with whatever you have planned in the future Stephen, and May the Force be with you.

Tags: bioware, layoffs, stephen reid