"Okay, this time, don't pull until I say so. Got it?"

BioWare had long promised that SWTOR would justify its subscription plan... but the reality was that simple bugs took months to fix and genuinely fresh content was disturbingly rare.

Someone put StarFox in my Star Wars!

"Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

Before the free server migration, this was what SWTOR looked like most of the time.

"The trend for free-to-play doesn't supplant great top quality premium games that support a subscription." Muzyka added that SWTOR isn't really suited for a free-to-play model, though.

That thing will kill Boba Fett 4,000 years (roughly) from now.

Giant beasts are no match for an electric jolt from a droid.

I wonder how my hero is doing these days...

As many of you know by now, yesterday BioWare announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic would add a free-to-play option to its beleaguered MMORPG following news that subscriptions had dropped below the million mark. At this point, the news doesn't have the sting it once might have. Even I, who maintained hope that SWTOR's situation would improve (despite some decidedly pessimistic early concerns ) found myself unwilling to continue playing after the second patch in April as there simply wasn't enough to keep me interested. For the most part, I was playing the same game I'd reviewed earlier in the year. By the time the third content update rolled around in late June, I didn't even have the client installed on my personal computer.To me, then, the failure of Star Wars: The Old Republic's subscription model springs less from the clear shift toward free-to-play payment structures over the last couple of years than BioWare's failure to provide the frequent updates it promised throughout the MMO's development. BioWare had long promised that SWTOR would justify its subscription plan with such updates, but the reality was that simple bugs that could have been written off as launch-day stumbles took months to fix and genuinely fresh content was disturbingly rare. A group finder probably could have kept the MMORPG from sinking early on, but by the time BioWare implemented one half a year later, few people were around to care. When a comparatively small studio like Trion Worlds can whip out meaty updates almost monthly but BioWare can't get more than one significant content update out over the course of seven months, there's going to be trouble. Established veterans like World of Warcraft can get away with such content droughts (such as the one WoW is experiencing right now), but in these days, sluggish updates spell death for even the most well-intentioned projects.Still, looking back over the history of SWTOR's development, it's clear that BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk were constantly confronted with the question of making Star Wars: The Old Republic a free-to-play game, even when the outlook wasn't anywhere near as grim. Competitors and colleagues warned that BioWare wouldn't be able to sustain the subscription model almost from the beginning, and outbursts from disgruntled former employees added further cause to worry.Below, I've charted a timeline of some of the "official" responses over the past couple of years, which reveals an unwavering insistence that SWTOR would provide enough updates to justify their subscription plan. I've left out the many fan-based predictions that SWTOR would end up being free-to-play as they would make this article much longer than it already is. As the final months dragged on, Muzyka and Zeschuk became increasingly removed from the discussion, and, for the most part, the promised updates never came.Referencing Warhammer Online, Muzyka and Zeschuk relate how including a limited free-to-play model has succeeded in bringing more players to the MMORPG. In Muzyka's words, "We've tried some free-to-play models for some of the earlier levels, and I think that's actually drawing people back in. We have new content planned and all kinds of cool expansions for it." (Source: UGO In an interview with VideoGamer.com, Zeschuk acknowledges that a free-to-pay payment plan will likely be the dominant MMORPG payment plan of the future, but doubts that it'll ever completely eclipse subscription plans. Importantly, he hints at possible frequent updates in the form of "long-term benefits. "You can't offer a subscription on something that's exactly the same as a free to play game. The expectation is that for subscription it will be deeper and have other longer-term benefits that perhaps wouldn't be as significant in a free-to-play game. Or maybe the free-to-play game will offer the exact same thing, but it's going to cost you the exact same thing anyway [via micro-transactions] - the price is the price is the price, no matter how much you dress it up." (Source: VideoGamer.com In one of the first major signs of trouble, a blogger claiming to be an former employee claims that SWTOR cost more than $300 million to create (which is later refuted by EA ). His blog receives widespread attention at the time, partly because of his claim that "[The] Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too." (Source: EA Louse Not long after the uproar created by EA Louse's blog, Bigpoint CEO Heiko Hubertz warned attendees at the London Games Conference that Star Wars: The Old Republic will never be profitable. "If you look at Star Wars from EA and BioWare, they estimated a development budget of over $100m," he said. "This is an online game for many million of subscribers, so the publisher does not understand that a subscription model is not the future. With micro-transactions maybe I see the game having a chance but I don't think that EA or BioWare will ever be profitable with this game." (Source: MCV Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey informs Gamasutra that investors are worried about the success of SWTOR. "We believe many investors are betting against SWTOR achieving market success, provided the company's and industry's track record at releasing successful new MMOs." His reasons include "a suspected subscription pricing model versus a market that is quickly transitioning to free to play, generally modest previews of the game and elevated development expense and suspected aggressive royalty to LucasArts." (Source: Gamasutra In a widely circulated editorial, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley expresses doubts that MMORPGs can continue to survive with a traditional subscription model. In it, he claims that SWTOR is "going to be the last large scale MMO to use the traditional subscription business model. Why do I think that? Simply put, the world is moving on from this model and over time people aren't going to accept this method. I'm sure I'm going to hear a lot about this statement. But I am positive I'm right." (Source: GamesIndustry.biz When asked if subscription-based MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (which had recently reported subscriber losses) are threatened by the free-to-play model, Zeschuk responded "The trend for free-to-play doesn't supplant great top quality premium games that support a subscription." Muzyka added that SWTOR isn't really suited for a free-to-play model, though. "We do believe in the play for free model too, like Wrath of Heroes we've announced, and that's awesome fun, it's really cool. And that's an example of a really fun accessible 15 minute, pick up and play fast game. That fits a classic model of the play for free experience. And The Old Republic is on the other end of the spectrum, equally high quality but in a very different way. We believe in both business models, and we're doing social games as well, so we have a pretty diverse portfolio for Bioware now as a label, and obviously within EA as a larger company too." Zeschuk also speaks of updating the game's content after release to suit the players: "Like Ray said it's ultimately driven by [the players], finding what they like the most. We may have plans right now but after we've launched for a few months we might go "whoah, we never expected that this would be so popular, we'll make more of these and less of these." (Source: GamesIndustry.biz Greg Zeschuk defends BioWare's subscription plan in an interview with Kotaku on the date of SWTOR's official release, stating that "Free-to-play works best when a game is built that way from the ground up." When asked if BioWare would ever consider following in the footsteps of DC Universe Online, Zeschuk replies: "We're not saying never ever, but we certainly have no plans like that in the foreseeable future. We're going to support the game to make it better and better as it goes on. It's going to be worth showing up for." Zeschuk's idea of support for their " premium projects" revolves around content updates: "We're launching with 19 huge worlds, and hours and hours of story and content to explore. And we're going to be adding to that for months to come."(Source: Kotaku A little over a week after Star Wars: The Old Republic's official release, Muzyka and Zeschuk defend SWTOR's subscription model in an interview with Joystiq. Zeschuk again defends the subscription model with hints of content that only a studio like BioWare can provide: "I'm not saying it's better or worse. It just doesn't supplant the other things. 'Cause we can do some things no one else can. The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create." Still, Muzyka hints that BioWare isn't averse to using a free-to-play model elsewhere: "We have some other stuff we haven't announced yet coming from our play-for-free team that I'm really excited about. It's gonna bring back some IP that people have a lot of fond memories around." (Source: Joystiq Following the release of Patch 1.1, Game Director James Ohlen discusses the extent to which the shift to free-to-play models in MMORPGs affected the development of SWTOR: "It didn't really impact us. We felt, and we still feel, that there is a place for subscription-based games and if you're going to build a subscription-based game it's got to be huge in scope. People have to feel that it's worth paying a subscription fee every month, so the scope of the game has to be much bigger than the free-to-play games. The quality, the polish has to be very, very high, and then you need to have a plan to continue to deliver free content on a regular basis. If you do those things, I think you can succeed as a subscription-based game. Obviously, there can only be a few subscription-based games. There is a limited MMO audience and not a ton of that audience is playing more than one MMO, but I still think there's room for more than just one really successful online game. I think Star Wars: The Old Republic can coexist with World of Warcraft and other successful games like Rift. You can have multiple MMOs with a subscription being successful as long as those games fulfill the requirements of high quality, good polish, lots of content, and continuing to do high value updates on a regular basis." (Scource: IGN.com BioWare releases its first "Weekend Pass Free Trial" for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which allows players without subscriptions to experience all the content up to level 15. On the heels of its release, BioWare announces another free trial on the following weekend. "The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone who took part. However, we also understand that not everyone has had the opportunity to play the game. To that end, we are excited to announce that individuals who did not take part in the first Weekend Pass Free Trial will have another opportunity to live out their very own Star Wars saga, for free, with the second Star Wars: The Old Republic Weekend Pass Free Trial!" (Source: SWTOR.com BioWare releases Patch 1.2, which brings UI customization, guild banks, the full implementation of the long-promised "Legacy" system, a new flashpoint, a new operation, a new warzone, and a host of other updates. You can read my editorial on the patch here . (Source: SWTOR.com Following the release of Patch 1.2, BioWare announces that Star Wars: The Old Republic has lost 400,000 subscribers in the three months since their last update. (Source: IGN.com Zeschuk and Muzyka announce layoffs for the SWTOR development team while avoiding details. Regardless, the announcement ends on a high note: "We still have a very substantial development team working on supporting and growing the game, and we feel we are in a strong position, with your continued involvement and feedback, to continue to build Star Wars: The Old Republic as one of the most compelling and successful online experiences in the world today." Again, they promise updates: "There are many strong initiatives planned for cool new content and new features that we're excited to tell you about in the upcoming weeks and months." (Source: SWTOR.com Bioware announces the upcoming release of Ultima Forever, a free to play, cross-platform, action RPG set in Ultima IV universe. (Source: GameSpy.com SWTOR Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi acknowledges to GamesTM that SWTOR could be free-to-play before the year is out. The original post read: "The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well. Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can't tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on." It was later amended to read that Luscinchi had actually said "We are looking at everything but I can't tell you in much detail. This decision is a little bit above my pay grade." (Source: GamesTM Over at GameTechTV, a supposed former BioWare employee by the name of "Jenny" opens up about the upcoming shift to free to play. "If you haven't noticed the interviews we had given sometime back had been removed. Mainly, the interviews that gave it "away" that we are looking at adding F2P model. We are indeed adding free to play to the game. [sic]" (Source: GamerTechTV Jeff Hickman, executive producer of SWTOR, releases a statement confirming the upcoming shift to free-to-play. "Since launch, our team has spent a lot of time trying to find new ways to be able to bring the Star Wars: The Old Republic experience to as many potential players as possible. We quickly became aware that our subscription only model was a major barrier for a lot people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe. In fact, many players who have left the game said they would happily come back if they could play without the commitment of a monthly fee. We feel that flexibility and choice in playing our game is important for all current and future players. For that reason, we began the exploration of expanding the game to include a Free-to-Play option." (Source: SWTOR.com : The best thing about SWTOR's move to a free-to-play model is that everyone can experience the story aspects without having to pay that monthly fee. It's like we can all finally enjoy Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4, & 5 in its own special way.