Star Wars: The Old Republic Going Free To Play On November 15th
I’m not going to lie, when it came to Star Wars: The Old Republic I bought into the hype a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, it is a fun, beautiful game with a good story, but at the end of the day I felt like it was lacking something, and I never quite got hooked on the game enough to pay a monthly subscription. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who felt the same way, as it was announced a few months ago that BioWare was going to make TOR into a free to play game.
That date will be November 15th. If you choose to play for free you’ll be able to play all of the story missions up to level 50 without having to pay a cent, but there are going to be restrictions. For example, you’ll be earning experience at a slower rate, and if you want to perform more than 3 space missions in a week you’ll have to purchase a weekly pass to lift the restriction. However, if you’ve ever had paid a monthly subscription fee you’ll be given Preferred status, and you’ll find that many of the restrictions have been greatly reduced or even removed altogether. You can also get Preferred Status if you spend $4.99 or more in their web store.
If you maintain a subscription, however, everything will be unlocked, and you won’t have any of those restrictions that the F2P players have. If you were ever a paying subscriber at one point, you’ll get access to some complimentary Cartel Coins that can be used to purchase things like vehicles and pets, as well as special, fully moddable equipment. There is a catch, however: if you want to access your Cartel Coins, you have to have an active subscription. While I don’t know if I’ll end up ever paying any more money to BioWare to play TOR, I might have to check it out when it finally becomes F2P!
