TexRob

@Once known as Shadsy Some people opened my eyes to PETA not long ago. I never cared one way or another, but it's pretty f'd up. Go do some research is all I will say. PETA does not care about animals. PETA cares about making money based off of people's love for animals. They are not a charity, they are a company, and a really shady one at that.

I played Aion A LOT, had a decked out sin with full abyss gear, and I can absolutely see TOR hurting Aion pretty bad. Aion is so fubared for melees without extendables. SWTOR seems to be great for melees, no out of range garbage, and every class has abilities to level the playing field like ability to break CC/snares once every 2 mins so even if you go up against a class that is a hard class for your class to fight, at least every 2 mins you have a way to counter.

PVP in TOR is a lot of fun.

@arkweld I am trying to remain strong. I am a HUGE ES fan, but I am wrapping up Deus Ex and playing some Fallen Earth / DAOC until 12/15ish when SWTOR opens up. I need to upgrade my video card before BF3 or Skyrim, and the wife aint having that until at least next month. So, I hope to pick up Skyrim and BF3 on the cheap sometime early next year, and Diablo3 day one. Then there is Syndicate too which I am looking forward to.

Sucks because it's like the summer with movies, there has been a dead spell for games that ended with BF3 coming out. It's becoming more and more the situation each year.

@Plastic I think you ignore the negative affects mostly in your article. I have seen F2P done well, Fallen Earth always come to mind for a good example (but it might not be successful, time will tell). I think EVE is a game that could potentially be great F2P, because it's already kind of taken on it's own life in that respect. People play for free by buying PLEX from people who buy them with RL money, it's like a reverse model.

There are so many challenges, some that can only be offset, like how do you keep people from ruining the economy with throw away accounts? Also people tend to care less about playing by the rules and not cheating, and being upstanding members of the community, if the game is free I've seen. In something like EQ, even though it's much easier to level up these days, you still vest a lot of time and energy into a char, and your reputation is important. Enter in F2P and that is cheapened somewhat.

Then there is support, has ANYONE played a F2P with good in game support? It hardly exists with pay games anymore, nevermind a F2P. I think you pay for a game and you get a premium experience for the most part.

Lastly, like was said in the article, the F2P explosion has made it to where games just-won't-die. There are way too many IMHO. I appreciate having choices, but all of these throw away MMOs really flood the market with crap.

@remeran It's a "maybe" kind of answer. It just depends. Like say one piece of gear has +10str and looks like a burlap bag, and one has +9str but makes you look like you've got plate armor on, well, I'm probably going to go with the awesome looking armor.

Stats are great, but they are not everything to me.

@Gibbeynator Wow, if you don't get this reference, you are missing out. Both horribly wrong and horribly funny, and horribly old school. You sir have taken the title for best post ever.

SWOTL was the first pirated game I played, downloaded from a dial up BBS many many years ago.

Ringle Rells! (couldn't resist(

To me it's a game design problem.

It looks like SWTOR is trying to get around the craft mule by having your companions do crafting, great idea. Don't limit storage space (have tons of it) so you don't force people to make mules.

What I think is really forward thinking is that you could say have one race of a character, and that character could actually level up multiple classes within the same character. To switch from say a warrior to a priest, you would have to say do something in town to switch roles and then a different set of gear and spells, skills, etc all take over. That way you have one character that is actually multiple. This doesn't solve the problem of people having alts so they can form one man groups, which I don't think will ever go away. Companions in SWTOR is definitely a nod to that, and hopefully it will help some. I've boxed in many games, and frankly, I HATE IT. It is not fun, it becomes too much, I'd much rather focus 100% on one char than playing two or more at a lesser level. It's mentally taxing, and even worse in some games.

@CarmineSaved It doesn't even matter what people end up playing. People will buy both, maybe not me, or you, but the masses. CoD and BF series have become the new Madden. They are the lemming games. I am not saying they are not good games, but they are the games that non-gamers play. Most of us have an opinion, most of "those" people just buy both and never think twice about it.

@Nucleon Depends on what iconic means really. If it's most memorable, Kelthin, hands down. If it is the city to end all cities, the city that is always "home" it's probably Stormwind. WoW was always centered around the two main capitals, and I think Stormwind was much more memorable than the Horde's variant.

I dunno how it is in APB, but the F2P model for Fallen Earth seems really good. You can not buy anything that gives you anything but cosmetic gear, or speeds up advancement. I have to agree with them regarding the misuse of F2P. Things like EQ2 are more like free to try, because of all the restrictions and level caps. Fallen Earth at least, seems to be free of these trappings. You can truly play it and never pay a time and not be missing anything.