Star Wars: The Old Republic Free-To-Play Limitations Detailed

We've known for a while now that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be going free-to-play, but at first, neither BioWare nor Electronics Arts wanted to get into details when it came to restrictions for free players. Today, we might be finding out why the companies kept these details a secret for so long. BioWare has listed the free-to-play limitations on the SWTOR official site, and as it turns out, players who don't want to pay anything to play are going to have a lot of restrictions to deal with.

In fact, the only thing that free players will have full access to is story content, meaning that they'll be able to level their character from 1-50 and experience class stories in their entirety. Aside from that, though, you're going to have use Cartel Coins or subscribe in order to get the full Star Wars: The Old Republic experience. For instance, free players will only be able to participate in three Warzones, Flashpoints, and Space Missions each per week, and they'll be locked out of Operations entirely. In order to do more than what's allowed, players will need to purchase weekly passes.

Character creation will also be limited for free players, as will the number of inventory slots. Free players won't have access to the cargo hold until they shell out the Cartel Coins needed to unlock it, and even then, the space in the cargo hold with be limited until players pay more Cartel Coins to expand it. Fast travel cooldown will be longer for free players, and they'll only have one available Crew Skill slot, with the option to buy more slots with Cartel Coins.

While all of that is sure to make players at least mildly upset, BioWare has put in place one restriction that might make their anger boil over: free players won't be able to equip most purple items. Sadly, if you want to equip some of the best items in the game, it looks like you'll have to pony up for a subscription or purchase a license from the Cartel Shop. Whereas once we thought that going free-to-play would be a great idea for Star Wars: The Old Republic, after seeing all of these restrictions BioWare and Electronic Arts are placing on free players, we're not so sure that's the case anymore. What do you think?