Shack PSA: The Old Republic free trial now has no time limit

Star Wars: The Old Republic has launched its 1.3.2 patch, which now allows players to play the game to level 15 free with no time limit.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic has been fighting a dwindling player base since it launched in December, but BioWare continues to build loyalty to the game, now allowing new players to play to level 15 free with no time limit starting today.

As part of today's 1.3.2 patch, BioWare announced that it is letting players experience the opening adventures for all eight classes and origin world, fight against other players in PvP and play through one Flashpoint. The game has had numerous free weekends, but as the company begins to explore a free-to-play model, it is trying to bring in and retain as many new players as possible. It has been estimated that some servers have fewer than 350 players online at any one time.

If you haven't tried the game yet, now seems to be the best time, especially with the recent launch of the 1.3 Allies update, and the promise of a whole new world to explore sometime later this year.

Contributing Editor
From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 10, 2012 9:00 AM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Shack PSA: The Old Republic free trial now has no time limit.

    Star Wars: The Old Republic has launched its 1.3.2 patch, which now allows players to play the game to level 15 free with no time limit.

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      July 10, 2012 11:20 AM

      poor SWTOR

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      July 10, 2012 11:39 AM

      Why don't they market this as a demo instead of skirting around the free to play jargon for the last month? Makes no sense.

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        July 10, 2012 1:58 PM

        Nothing these idiots have done makes sense so why should this?

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      July 10, 2012 11:47 AM

      [deleted]

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        July 10, 2012 2:02 PM

        age of conan wisely went after a european/russian audience when north american gamers jumped ship the first month after release

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        July 10, 2012 2:10 PM

        WAR is still running so even if they get down to a handful of servers I imagine it will keep running, updates will probably be few and far between in that case though.

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        July 10, 2012 3:11 PM

        Star Wars Galaxies was only shut down when TOR was released, I'm pretty sure it will survive if that could.

    • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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      July 10, 2012 12:48 PM

      Patching now, waiting to see if i can login with my inactive account.

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        July 10, 2012 12:50 PM

        it allowed you to patch, that's a good sign. IIRC the client wouldn't even download patches without a sub

        • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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          July 10, 2012 2:04 PM

          Yep got in, i deleted a char thinking i could make a legacy char, then see it tell me i need to delete 5 chars before i can make a char.

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            July 10, 2012 3:32 PM

            well I have an authenticator, I wrote down the backup code before putting on a new ROM, and that doesn't help in setting the authenticator back up. awesome. customer service time.

            • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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              July 10, 2012 3:53 PM

              Oh? Hmm yeah i checked mine twice and it was the same numbers so i was hoping it'd work later.

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      July 10, 2012 2:17 PM

      Whoever wrote this article has a done an extremely poor job. This information is mostly all wrong and extremely misleading. The game is no where near the point of free to play or heading in that direction nor has anyone from Bioware said more than fleeting comments that "it is a possiblity". Well yea, that is always a possibility for a game in the future if things go sour. The game right now just combined all their massive amounts of release servers into a compilation of heavily populated servers with more than the mentioned 350 people online at any given time just in Fleet(the games main area, and that is just one Faction side so multiply that by two). So yea with over 120 US servers, not counting EU and others, there are still some with small populations because they have been vacated by players being offered Free Character Transfers onto larger population servers.

      I personally transferred my entire 120+ member raiding guild. My character transfers were seemless and took less than 30 seconds each. The customer service was absolutely excellent and transferred our guild bank and we had everything back up and working in no time at all. If anything, the game is thriving more than ever with the release of unlimited Free to Play up to level 15 and with the much higher population servers, the PVP and Group Finder queues are near instant even at the latest of hours in the early morning time on weekdays.

      You guys definitely need to do a little more research next time before writing such a misleading article.

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        July 10, 2012 3:27 PM

        It's thriving more than ever with the release of unlimited F2P to L15 ... this morning.

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        July 10, 2012 3:59 PM

        Someone sounds bitter.

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        July 10, 2012 7:58 PM

        Did we read the same article?

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        July 10, 2012 8:04 PM

        ^^ Emmanuel Lusinchi ^^

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        July 11, 2012 5:12 AM

        Oh please! This game is FAR from "thriving" no matter how much you try to say otherwise. And yes, it WILL go F2P and none of your BS talking is going to change that. And lol to your "120+" raiding guild, your lucky to have 120+ people on most servers and that's after transfers. And if you really had enough people to raid with, what exactly is there that is worth raiding? Oh that's right, NOTHING! The only thing misleading here is rabid fan-boys like yourself trying to justify your reasons for continuing to pay to play this turd of a game.

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      July 10, 2012 2:20 PM

      Took them long enough! I wanted to play from day one, but, hey, why bother paying when it will be free eventually.

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        July 10, 2012 3:00 PM

        You know what other MMO has free trials up to level *20?* World of Warcraft. They also gave away free copies of Diablo 3 if you subbed for a year. It's only a matter of time before it's F2P!

        Remember hearing about Age of Conan bleeding subs? It took that game *3 years* to go F2P according to comments and its population was never as high as TOR's. Aion also took 2.5-3 years, never as popular as TOR, went down to like 4-5 servers before going F2P. Warhammer Online shed subs, is published by EA, and still isn't F2P.

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          July 10, 2012 3:15 PM

          TOR's development costs are probably much higher than Aion, AoC, or Warhammer, so when it didn't take off to a level to rival WoW, I think the internal push for a F2P mode got a lot bigger.

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          July 10, 2012 8:20 PM

          You can't seriously be comparing WoW's action to TOR's. TOR didn't even last six months before having to go F2P. It also probably cost a lot more to make, to say nothing of how it has to compete against a whole lot more F2P games, including WoW.

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      July 10, 2012 2:28 PM

      I have steered clear of MMOs but I have always wanted to try this one. Sounds like now is the best chance.

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      July 10, 2012 6:54 PM

      Just a sign of the times, possibly? People are worn out on MMOs, I suspect, and are starting to realize that they won't more game from their games. The generic leveling grind of MMOs mixed with the built-in time-sinks meant to keep gamers only slowly getting anywhere in the game have started to wear thin and (imho) for good reason.

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        July 10, 2012 6:55 PM

        That should say "people are starting to realize that they WANT more game from their games."

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        July 10, 2012 7:17 PM

        [deleted]

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          July 10, 2012 8:23 PM

          This has always confused me as well. Not a single MMO I've ever played has combat that feels *right* like WoW's does...and given how much time you spend in an MMO killing things, it's probably one of the most important aspects of the game.

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          July 10, 2012 8:30 PM

          this right here is still the reason I can't break away and play any other MMO. I really wanted to like Secret World but the floaty feeling is there just like every other MMO except WoW...I don't know why that cannot be conquered.

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        July 10, 2012 9:03 PM

        Back to fucking great single player games please guys! We've been waiting here this whole time. Let's start with an X-Wing remake first.

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      July 10, 2012 7:07 PM

      No real LFG out the box BOOM FAILED. That was the main reason i quit and a few buddy's along with me. No one wants to spam LFG i want to go quest and have a que pop then be instantly teleported to the instance. Then when i am finished i want to pop back out the same place i went in.
      It's not really fucking hard to add things into the games MMO players have become used to or expect when playing a MMO. We can all blame WOW for making everything so god dam covenant

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        July 10, 2012 7:14 PM

        I quit because bottom line it's a WoW clone with voiced NPC's. Big whoop. There just wasn't enough innovation.

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      July 10, 2012 8:06 PM

      I don't know about anyone else, but I purchased the game, played during the free month that was included...and am currently getting a "You don't have a subscription" notice when I try to start the game. So, I'm not sure how to access the up to level 15 stuff.

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        July 10, 2012 8:09 PM

        Yeah, looks like it's only open to new players, and seemingly only through invites sent by active subscribers.

      • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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        July 10, 2012 8:33 PM

        I logged in no problem. Says my account isn't active either when i looked at it on the page. I did delete a char only to see i can't make another. Was wanting to make one with the legacy stuff.

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          July 10, 2012 8:35 PM

          Weird. It won't even let me click play. I updated to current patch, but the "PLAY" button is gray and I can't click it.

          • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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            July 10, 2012 9:12 PM

            Hmm, i did just notice it says returning players can play for 7 days at no charge.

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      July 11, 2012 2:55 AM

      yup started my slooooooooooooooow download

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      July 11, 2012 1:50 PM

      I'm still waiting for a OSX version, F2P or not...

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