EA announced in a press release yesterday that Bioware’s MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will be adding a Free-to-Play feature later this fall. The new option will grant players access to all of the story content for all eight classes, and will also let players level a character all the way up to level 50. New content and features, however, will be restricted, and will only be attainable by paying a monthly subscription fee of $14.99, or by using the new in-game currency feature, “Cartel Coins”, to make purchases. Previous subscribers, as well as current subscribers will also be receiving some benefits. Some of these benefits include 150 “Cartel Coins” for each paid month before July 31st. You can read more about these new benefits on the games official website. Furthermore, to kick start this new Free-to-Play feature, EA announced that starting in August, the title will go on sale for $14.99 with a free one month subscription.
EA declares that “choice” is the main reason as to why their offering this new Free-to-Play feature, and that it really should come as no surprise that they made this move after Bioware recently revealed that they were “looking at free-to-play.” After revealing that subscriptions have fallen just under a million, it appears that EA and Bioware are making the right move by offering this new feature. Will this net more subscriptions? Will you be playing? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to stay tuned to NGN for all the latest in gaming news.
