Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Free to Play?
Lead designer admits the team behind the MMO are exploring the possibility of free play.
Its not a gigantic surprise to hear from any MMO other than World of Warcraft but Star Wars: The Old Republics lead designer Emmanuel Lusinchi admits theyve explored the possibility of a free-toplay model for Biowares gargantuan online adventure. The news follows a hefty 25% subscriber drop-off for the game since February this year. The game now has an active user base of around 1.3 million players; a lions share of the non-WoW MMO market, but nothing in comparison to Blizzards reported 10.2 million subscriber base. However, it seems to be more the growing quality of free-to-play games, rather than Old Republic failing to be the WoW-killer theyd hoped, which has caused Bioware to consider dropping their subscriptions. "If it was just free-to-play games and they weren't very good it wouldn't even be a question but there are definitely good games out there and good games coming out, so of course all of this competition impacts your plan with what you want to do, Lusinchi explains. With big titles such as Tribes: Ascend, Age of Empires Online and now even Crytek going free-to-play, will this be the new big model of 2013? If so, it's likely to cast big waves across the entire market as developers seek other potential revenue opportunities. You can read our full review of Star Wars: The Old Republic here, and follow all of our coverage of the game on its dedicated hub-page here.