Bioware begging SWTOR players to come back.

Bioware is planning a major update for the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), with the 1.3 patch and is asking gamers who have left the game to consider rejoining.

Electronic Arts (EA) seems to be desperate regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic, the giant MMO on which EA has spent almost $500 million during development and marketing. The game launch went smoothly as SWTOR shipped almost 2 million units, making it the largest MMO launch ever but eventually ran out of steam 6 months in when gamers started to leave due to lack of regular bug fixing updates and Bioware’s decision to delete all the complaints threads on the games’ online forums.

It seems that EA has not given up on the Intellectual Property and are still desperately trying to make it work. The second largest publisher announced on the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) stage that the game will be going free to play up till level 15 soon and claimed that now is the best time for new players to join.

Bioware is also offering referral rewards to existing players who convince their friends to join SWTOR. Gamers who successfully refer a friend will be awarded a vehicle in the game. Apart from this Bioware has also made an announcement that existing players that have left can login and play for free for a week to see the improvements and additions that the new patch brings to the game.

There are rumours afloat the internet that EA is muddling up the player statistics figures in order to hide the MMO’s true user base that is still left. Officially EA is claiming that the game is doing great and there is no other reason behind the publishers’ recent generosity. However, this announcement clearly means that the MMO is in pretty bad shape as no subscription based MMO which is doing so well and has a sizable in-game population would go free to play so quickly.

Whether or not this tactic will work remains to be seen, but in case it doesn’t EA might have to make the title fully free to play in order to retain the small user base that they have left.

bron: http://blogs.bettor.com