Changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s F2P Restrictions

Posted on Oct 26, 2012

Having to take a title designed as a subscription game from the start and morph it into a free-to-play game cannot be easy. Nothing can be shoehorned or half-assed. You don’t want to alienate customers – new, old or current – yet you can’t have the game be too open or two velvet roped. BioWare

Rumor: BioWare Employee Blames Fans for SWTOR Failure; Confirms F2P & SWG Shutdown to Remove Competition

Posted on Jul 24, 2012

As posted on GamerTechTV, an anonymous  Bioware Austin employee has lashed out against Star Wars fans blaming them for the failure of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The employee also confirms that SWTOR is being converted to free-to-play and confirms that Star Wars Galaxies was shut-down for no other reason then to remove it as a competitor for SWTOR. The

LoreHound Crier: Week 7/13 At a Glance

Posted on Jul 13, 2012

It’s been a busy week! The Secret World continues to keep me entertained, as can no doubt be seen in all the blurbs I put up about it. Next week I’ll be putting up the second and final section of my review, as well as starting a weekly TSW-related article. I’ve flopped around on it

Star Wars: The Old Republic ‘Going to embrace free’ Model

Posted on Jun 18, 2012

After a rather poor cover-up by Electronic Arts/BioWare, the original GamesTM story breaking the news of a F2P Star Wars: The Old Republic has been confirmed from the highest ranks of Electronic Arts. EA Labels president Frank Gibeau clarified the company’s intentions as a long term standpoint. Meaning the company will make whatever changes necessary to keep

Star Wars: The Old Republic Investigating F2P Transition; Or Is it?!

Posted on Jun 15, 2012

With BioWare and Electronic Arts reassuring players and analysts that Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing fine – both in terms of content and growth – the company has shown quite the opposite. Actions like free time, server mergers and layoffs generally point to disgruntled players and underpopulated servers. Clearly, the companies have taken actions to

E3 2012: EA Unveils New Content for SWTOR

Posted on Jun 04, 2012

The E3 EA conference presentation is still going on, but Star Wars: The Old Republic fans already got the info they’ve been looking for. EA announced information about the next major content update which includes the following: New Planet Makeb: Story revoles around the Hutt Cartel New end-game Operation: Terror from Beyond New playable race: Cathar

SWTOR Mega-Servers just more Spin?

Posted on May 24, 2012

In an interview with PC Gamer, Lead Game Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic Daniel Erickson, replied to a question about the group finder and whether or not it will support cross-server searching at launch. Daniel replied stating, “They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively

Bioware Restructures SWTOR Development Team

Posted on May 22, 2012

BioWare announced today, via the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, that they are restructuring the development team and laying off workers. The post was made by BioWare co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka who had the following to day about the restructuring.  Sadly, we are bidding farewell to some talented, passionate and exceptionally hard-working people who helped make SWTOR a reality. We

EA Responds to Declining SWTOR Subscription Numbers

Posted on May 08, 2012

The first stage of grief is denial, which seems to be where EA is headed after it released its financial report yesterday revealing that subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic dropped 23.5% from its peak last quarter. Active subscribers dropped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million, to which President of EA Labels, Frank

SWTOR Server Mergers Possibly on the Horizon

Posted on Apr 24, 2012

In an interview with Gamasutra, BioWare lead writer Daniel Erickson tried to put on a positive spin to the recent report that subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic have been declining. Daniel stated that “subscriptions are not dropping“, yet in the same interview stated that “the number of concurrent users at peak times has declined. Those