EA and BioWare first announced the SWTOR free-to-play option was first this summer, with months of speculation leading up to the inevitable news about Game Update 1.5.
That wasn’t always the case. Right after SWTOR launched on Dec. 20, 2011, the game had quickly amassed one million paying subscribers. That made it the fastest growing MMO ever.While it seemed like it could take on titans like World of WarCraft with those numbers and swtor credits sale had enough Game Update patches to keep content fresh, F2P has become the business model of choice for new MMO games.This is on top of the fact that Star Wars: The Old Republic is estimated to be the most expensive ever developed, with a budget speculated to be between $150 million and $200 million.