For an established company like EA, SWTOR F2P sure is making a lot of mistakes. The latest being the limitation placed on F2P that is encouraging ninja looters.
I created a F2P account to experience additional stories (they really need to allow us to buy more character slots). On a mission in Tython, I saw 3 mobs guarding a chest and went for it. While I was fighting the mobs, right next to the chest, someone came in and ninja looted the chest.
Let’s put aside for a second that F2P invites a lot of noobs who do not understand the basic etiquette of MMOs. Normally, when something like this happen, I would do the following:
- First I would whisper the person to let them know that it’s against the MMO etiquette to ninja-loot. If they apologize, I let it go.
- If they don’t respond or do not show remorse, I would then broadcast it to the /general channel, warning people that this particular player is a ninja looter. This often shame the player to at least leave the area for a while.
Now, SWTOR has this brilliant idea that F2P accounts cannot /w someone that’s not a friend. So step 1 above is out. Then it further restrict that F2P accounts can only chat in /general every so often (don’t know the exact duration, but it was pretty long). Since I had answered a question in /general not too long ago, I wasn’t able to warning folks about this person. So I sat there, mad as hell, and had no outlet. Worse yet, I had to watch the same player doing this to many other players, and could do nothing.
Seriously, EA/Bioware, the thing about F2P is to rope people in to try the game, like it so much that they start spending money on it, either via subscription or micro-payments. Being ninja-looted and can’t do anything about it because of these arbitrary restrictions is just stupid.