Star Wars The Old Republic Will Ask F2P Players To Pay To Hide Headgear

This week, there's been an announcement of pricing options for the various cash shop items (Cartel) and microtransactions that are going to be offered with the Free-2-Play re-release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I was reading and then came upon this gem:

"Packs of the premium "Cartel Coins" start at $5 for 450, according to a phone meeting with Senior Producer Blaine Christine earlier this week, and increase in price up to $40 for the best deal. Want an extra quickslot bar? That'll be 250 coins for one character or 540 for the whole account. Want to access the guild bank, or your own ship's cargo hold? That'll be 600 and 425 coins, respectively. Further restrictions for free-to-play characters extend to chat and the ability to hide your headgear, and you can't even wear artifact gear unless you plunk out 1,200 cartel coins.

Emphasis mine. Ok... what. the. fuck. PAYING to hide headgear ? It's an option on the interface ! It's already there ! I can understand when they ask for money to pay for devs time building content or making appearance gear, these things take time and they need to pay their employees, but this ? Seriously ? You will not have the option to hide your headgear unless you pay ? Like, it'll be grayed out ?

I can totally see how they came up with this. I mean, it's EA. Some senior exec or something, someone who never played games in their lives, went to the database dude and said "Yo, what's the most selected option on the interface ?" and the DB manager probably answered the truth while saying "Uhh.. you don't wanna do this" and the exec said "Shut up, we run things around here".

Well... this probably single-handedly killed my interest in trying it out again. I had some thoughts about coming back with the F2P option, to check things out and maybe resub because the game was good in my opinion. I quit because like most people, I had finished my character's story and didn't feel like paying a sub to do it all over again on alts, since the zones are all the same.

I know, previous subscribers have some kind of "Preferred" status or something, and we probably won't have to pay to hide our headgear. I HOPE SO. But, this kind of dirty monetization still stops me from wanting to support them. And we all know how "free" these F2P games are. If I don't pay anything, I won't be enjoying my time much.

We'll see what happens but so far, I don't have high hopes for the F2P future of SWTOR.

BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk announce retirement

I am going to start my first post with a bang. Bioware founders and public figures Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk leaving the company.

I am SO tired of this current trend in the industry, great gaming legends like Bioware selling their soul to the devil (here EA) for money. Guys, before you tell me, I know all about the fact companies need to make money and their employees need a roof and food on the table. I know the stock market makes it so they need to do more money than the last year or they end up with shareholders dropping them, starting a failcascade few can recover from. I know this.

But was Bioware really that much in need of funding ? For SWTOR, no doubt they needed some, as it currently stands, if I'm not mistaken, as the most expensive game ever made. The usual number going around the Internet is between 150 and 200 million dollars. I am not one to talk out of my ass so I don't know exactly if the EA merger was done because they needed funding for SWTOR or if it was for another reason completely. Wikipedia says the EA/Bioware merger was announced on October 11, 2007, while SWTOR itself was announced on October 21, 2008, although BioWare had first mentioned an unspecified new collaboration with LucasArts in October the previous year. So October 2007. Same month the merger happened. Interesting.

Games nowadays are massive productions and cost tons of money to make, I know and understand that. But is it really worth it to sell yourselves to a publisher like EA when we end up with today's news ? Mr Muzyka and Mr Zeschuk were legends of the industry, two guys I personally put in the same group as the Miyamoto, Sakaguchi, Inafune, Kojima, Wright and Meier of this world. And now, they're gone.

I believe this picture tells it all. It is awfully accurate today.