Well, this was all but inevitable.
MMOs are a hard genre to parlay into a success. Yes, World of Warcraft sucks about $150 million or so out of nerd wallets every month, but even MMOs that did what WoW does, only better, have tanked. And now Star Wars: The Old Republic is entering that end-stage of MMO life, free-to-play.
Technically there will still be a subscription: it’s just the game will be free-to-play up to level 50, so most people will not being getting a subscription or buying whatever it is that you can buy once you hit the level cap and want to keep going. The good news is that BioWare is going to be aggressively updating the game.
The sad thing is that when we reviewed it, we found the Old Republic to be surprisingly amenable to things like “playing it by yourself” and “not having to join a goddamn guild”. It’s too bad it’s facing what’s generally the last stage before the plug gets pulled: Hopefully free-to-play will save it.
image courtesy BioWare