Ooh, a new promotion centering around the Legacy 1.2 update? Grovel, BioWare, GROVEL AT OUR FEET. Let’s see how you did:
Shut up! Just shut up, BioWare. You had me at free tauntaun… you had me at free tauntaun.
/sniff
Hey, good idea, especially for the rage-quitters who put their money where their mouth is and expected you to deliver on these promises. A full week of free game time, nobody can complain about that.
AND THIRTY DAYS OF FREE GAMETIME FOR ALL! WOW! HOLY CRUD! That’s… awesome… it’s…
…just for level 50s?
I mean…
Seriously?
Ooh, so close, BioWare. So very very close. And then you just put your foot right into it.
It’s hard to complain about a month of free gametime, especially if you’re on the “have” side of this equation, but as was quickly pointed out to me (if my common sense had failed me as BioWare’s obviously did) that plenty of Day One players don’t have a 50. Whether it be alts, crafting, or what have you, you can’t just assume that all of your loyal players will be 50 by now. It’s not good form. And it smacks of, as a friend put it, sucking up to endgamers while making lower-level players feel like crap.
The forum rage should be good on this. I’ll head over there now.
Bio Break 
I’ve got two level 50s; you won’t see me complaining about “only receiving one month”. ❤ I'm more excited about the UI editor anyway; what's $15?
Count me among the angry dispossessed. I’m having plenty of fun in the lower echelons with my alts, only to get slapped in the face by a company that just doesn’t seem to get it.
Seems like a rookie mistake. Silly BioWare.
I am… stunned. It’s just…
Okay… theoretically, and only just so…. Level 50 players build more community than non-level 50 players. Yet, casuals IMHO are more likely to have parking lot accounts. So yes, people that have dedicated more time, might be more valuable, but I don’t think you want to so bluntly publicize that other players are worth less.
On one hand a lot of people with 50’s are happy at a free month, and some might have been on the fence and about to unsub. On the other hand a lot of people without 50s might be a little bitter. On teh internets bitterness >>> happiness. Good luck, BioWare.
My main is at 49 right now, so I’m probably the target audience for Syp’s rage.
Yet for some reason I’m not. Would it have been nice to have? Sure. But I think it aims to promote the Legacy features.solidly to a segment of the population which Syp isn’t in. People who are sitting at 50 and haven’t rolled alts, or were twiddling thumbs because they needed more endgame content or refused to play unless they could log their exact DPS.
I do find the two points to be ironically contradictory. If anything, I’d think people would be more upset at the free week. I mean really, why are ragequitting whiners getting free playtime, when the loyal who’ve stuck with the game since teh beginning aren’t? I could see being fine with both (which I am) or objecting to both, but I’m not sure how you justify being upset at one grant of free time, but OK with another grant of free time.
@Buhallin The difference is that the week of free time is an obvious marketing ploy. I get it. The “reward for being 50” is a slap in the face to those *loyal* players, myself included, who have just been told they are less valuable because they don’t happen to have a max level character.
I kind of think it’s not aimed at Loyal Players as much as those who reached level 50 and stopped playing. The first paid renewal for those with 3 month subscriptions comes up next week, and those who had maxed out a character and were done will have an incentive to actually stick around. I could be entirely wrong on that, though. It’s just the situation I’m in.
It looks like desperation to me.
Name any other AAA MMO that has ever given a free month to current players only four months after launch. Four months is what counts as loyalty now? I don’t think so.
I think the month for 50s is just as obviously a marketing ploy, Rowan. One of the more common complaints you hear from people is that the game changes dramatically once you hit 50, that the 1-49 “semi-solo” game is great with their story and all, but once you hit 50 it disappears and things suck. Does it really seem farfetched to think that it’s aimed at keeping those players around for more than a week so that 1.2 sinks in and has an opportunity to retain some of them? That they might hope that people might roll an alt to try some of the Legacy options, when they might not otherwise because they’ve only got a week left on their sub so why bother? Couldn’t possibly be targeted at that.
Of course, everyone will see what they want to see in this. Those who hate SWTOR will see desperation and panic. Those who want to believe that Bioware doesn’t care about anyone but the endgame players – despite the sub-50 game being hailed as one of the best ever – will think it’s a slap in the face. I’m really starting to think there’s really nothing an MMO company does that is either good or bad – the entire MMO genre has turned into nothing but one big Rorschach test for the entire community. It’s one of the things that makes that community so damn annoying.
Giving level 50 characters who might otherwise quit over the end-game (or lack thereof) a free month allows Bioware to keep their subscription numbers inflated for the next quarterly financial report.
Maybe our chosen gaming genre has peaked with WoW in terms of popularity. I’m hoping GW2 or some sandbox eventually catches on to make a new peak though.
@Buhallin and Hexxis: It may be a marketing ploy to keep bored level-50s around for another month. But unless the patch is f-ing spectacular, those bored 50s won’t stay around past the free month anyway. And investors paying attention to quarterly reports care about *paid* subs, not extra-month freeloaders, they’ll see through the ploy. So instead BioWare pisses off a whole lot of people they claim to have cared about enough to prepare all this vaunted story for.
@Bhagpuss: Blizzard gave us around a free month of play near launch in World of Warcraft, due to launch issues that crippled the game for a lot of their playerbase for weeks on end. But, WoW, who the hell has ever heard of that?
To that my previous comment I’ll add, two things:
1. Calling it a “loyalty reward” and denying it to everyone that has been playing since launch and doesn’t have a 50 is assinine imo.
2. It’s analogous to the launch of WoW at least in that stuff that should have been in the game right at launch (e.g., the ability to alter your UI) is just now getting patched in. As oppossed to UI tweaks, what was missing in launch WoW for a lot of players (including me for a few days) was the ability to play the game, but I will still call them analogues 😉
So let me see if I got this right: a game that promotes the leveling experience and encourages you to take it slowly and even make more alts instead of rushing to the endgame… puts up a reward available only to the players that got to max level faster. Nice..
Since SWTOR launched, I lost all the respect I had for Bioware. Not only is the game old and boring, but some of their recent decisions are plain idiotic. They are clearly still stuck in single-player developing mode and don’t understand most of the subtle differences that come from working on a MMO. The state of PvP in SW:TOR (especially open-world pvp) is probably the biggest proof for this.
Curse my altaholism! I’ve been playing since beta, and I’ve got 3 character over 30, the highest of which is 43. I could have gotten at least one to 50 if I had known 😦
You won’t catch me raging though; if they want to encourage endgamers by giving away free subscription time that’s their decision. Very disappointing, yes, but not rageworthy.
Doesn’t all of this seem extremely desperate?
This is a brand new MMO and there are all these promotions for free time and free weekends, etc?
@Muckbeast I have a glimmer of optimism, thinking that they are realizing that a sub is the wrong business model for their game… but it’s only just a glimmer.