Star Wars: The Old Republic expanding free time offer

Looking increasingly desperate, or perhaps considerate, EA has expanded its offer of 30 days free game time for Star Wars: The Old Republic so players needn't have necessarily hit level 50 to get it.

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Looking increasingly desperate, or perhaps considerate, BioWare has expanded its offer of 30 days free game time for Star Wars: The Old Republic players. Initially only offered to those with a character that's hit the level cap of 50, the free time will now be given to those who've hit level 6 in SWTOR's new Legacy system.

The Legacy system tracks levels across all of a player's characters. In a forum thread, BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk gave these examples of players who'd get their free 30 days:

A pair of characters Level 45 and 42

A trio of characters of Levels 45, 32 and 32

A bunch of characters Levels 35, 33, 31, 29 and 20

A single 50th level character that has enjoyed the endgame for a brief time

The deadline has also been extended, so you'll have until April 22 at 9am Pacific to reach Legacy level 6 if you want fancy some freebies.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    April 16, 2012 8:45 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Star Wars: The Old Republic expanding free time offer.

    Looking increasingly desperate, or perhaps considerate, EA has expanded its offer of 30 days free game time for Star Wars: The Old Republic so players needn't have necessarily hit level 50 to get it.

    • reply
      April 16, 2012 8:53 AM

      [deleted]

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      April 16, 2012 8:55 AM

      They backed the start date out past the date my sub ticks.

      Instead of getting May for free and then unsubbing, I'd have to pay for May and then get June for free..

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      April 16, 2012 9:03 AM

      I'm still not sure who they're trying to target with this promotion... rewarding based on level/play time seems like the wrong approach. Like you'll just piss off people who're long time subscribers but don't meet the requirements, and people like me who played the first month then quit don't qualify so we don't really care. They should learn from the way WoW does its "please come back, here's a little crack" promotions.

      Meh.

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        April 16, 2012 9:31 AM

        As someone who is yet to try the game I certainly don't get it!

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        April 16, 2012 9:49 AM

        Well, since they have the data, they know exactly who they're trying to target. The most ppl for the least cost.

        Possibly including the free PR from word-of-mouth about the ridiculousness of it.

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        April 16, 2012 9:52 AM

        They delayed 1.2 by a month and then cut a some of the bigger features (ranked warzones being a big one) out at the last minute.

        The game's lacking (stable) endgame content and people are leaving because of it. The next month of subs start to pop late this week for people who started at or near release, so there's a decent shot it was intended to give high level players who have probably stopped playing a free month to try out the new content (and possibly give them sufficient time to get the rest of 1.2 out the door).

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          April 16, 2012 9:56 AM

          I see. I didn't know about 1.2 being delayed since I haven't followed the game at all after my first month ran out. Does 1.2 make the game less boring? I stopped playing because it was so damn boring.

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            April 16, 2012 10:03 AM

            Who knows.

            1.2 adds a new 4-boss operation, flashpoint, warzone, and legacy perks. They also did their first major rebalance.

            We're going to give the ops a shot tonight. The flashpoint was obnoxious (first boss is really stupid), and the legacy stuff seems kind of lol, tbh.

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              April 16, 2012 10:25 AM

              They do need to work on getting more content for that end game. I get the impression that they had these grand plans to expand out the story content (and though major story DLC/expansions) would be their primary account retention device despite warnings to the contrary with MMO gamers. They were talking about having new acts out before the game launched.

              Then they release the game and discover that MMO gamers can finish the end game within a week, less for ranged characters, and that once they get through the story, they get bored with a lack of an expansive end game and quit. So they have to scrap all their content plans and try to restart production to get end-game content out instead of more story content.

              I wonder if that's what is going on right now.

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                April 16, 2012 10:57 AM

                Not completely.

                There were a couple different problems. One big one was the endgame content was buggy as shit, and you ended up fighting the bugs more than the actual content, and each patch would introduce more problems without even fixing the things they claimed to fix.

                Another was a complete lack of gear progression -- the gear you got from hm fp's was the same you got from storymode operations, which (stat-wise) is about 1-2% less than the stuff you got from hm/nm. There was never a real reason to farm content because you already had much of the gear.

                As server populations declined, there was no cross-server functionality to ensure people could still run the content. This results in less and less to do, which causes more people to stop playing and eventually unsub.

                We're four months post-release at this point. You didn't have to poopsock anything to be done by now.

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              April 16, 2012 11:22 AM

              [deleted]

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        April 16, 2012 10:06 AM

        My guess? To promote active-player happiness and loyalty.

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        April 16, 2012 10:47 AM

        This update was about adding legecy features and this update to the reward system is rewarding people that have a high legecy level not just one high level character.

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      April 16, 2012 10:28 AM

      srsly? ok I'll patch 'er up and see what the scoop is. didn't hit 50 on either character, but I bought the damn launch product and played my 30 days worth, it will be good to see if they've addressed some MAJOR concerns.

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        April 16, 2012 11:06 AM

        There were issues but I can't think of any "MAJOR" concerns that existed in the launch product (other than, perhaps, some performance / CTD issues I personally never had to deal with).

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      April 16, 2012 11:34 AM

      Ouch.


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      April 16, 2012 11:41 AM

      [deleted]

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      April 16, 2012 11:46 AM

      It's kind of sad to see them like this. I really enjoyed the game in it's early stages, but once I hit 50 there wasn't much to do. I've cut out raiding, so that wasn't an issue, but no cross server pvp and illium constantly being empty so you can't do your weeklys...that was just crap.

      I'm surprised they didn't take the better parts of all the other mmo's and put it into theirs.

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      April 16, 2012 2:48 PM

      Still no trial available? I heard good stuff about 1.2 and our guild is thinking about branching out.

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        April 16, 2012 2:56 PM

        I think I can give out some number of 7-day guest passes that you can use as a free trial if you want it. I'd have to check on that when I get home.

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      April 23, 2012 11:11 PM

      I never could quite put my finger on what was lacking in the game... but somehow after level 15 or so I just started... feeling "meh" as I contemplated launching the game. Fairly good graphics for an MMO. Fairly good character animation and movement. Fairly good story line during the character main quests... but I guess maybe just too much "this game feels like every MMO I've ever played".

      And maybe that's where the problem lies. Too much feels like "Hey I've already done this a billion times" even when I had never done it yet in The Old Republic.

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