Brad Shepard said:
It starts, Im calling it now, It will go F2P within a year.
DeMorquist said:
Thats not a good sign kids... If you watch ANY MMO you will see when FREE WEEKEND! it usually means youre taking on a large amount of water....
Free trials are a standard mechanism to draw subscribers in. I've had them to Eve Online and WoW, neither of which have gone Free to Play. What they do have is engaging gameplay and a fanatical fanbase.
And City of Heroes has only recently gone F2P even though they've been going crazy with the free trials for years (and quite possibly only because all other NCSoft MMO's are F2P).
An important point to note is that Eve and CoH came out before WoW became the defining force in MMO's.
Now Old Republic (TOR is a publisher) is in a different situation. I haven't played it so I can't say anything about the gameplay but it seems to me that while there is a potential fanatical fanbase in Star Wars fans, they are not guaranteed, as witnessed by Star Trek Online and LOTRO going F2P.
I don't quite understand LOTRO going F2P myself. I don't play MMO's any more but was my favourite MMO - as grindy as WoW but superior most other respects, IMHO, and it seemed to have a good community on the US servers. Perhaps they expected too much, these days it seems every MMO is a failure if it doesn't kill WoW.
And that's what will cause Old Republic to go F2P, not the quality of the game, but not achieving the ridiculous goals EA has set for it.