EA rolls out free-to-play mode for The Old Republic

After a long struggle to avoid it, sinking MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic has introduced a free-to-play option.

Electronic Art’s flop of an MMORPG began as a paid subscription game much like World of Warcraft, but has been fighting to hold on to customers.

The game started off relatively strong with 1.7 million paid subscribers in the first two months, but quickly went downhill from there. By May they’d lost 400,000, and by the end of July it had fallen to under a million, which prompted EA’s promise of a free-to-play mode.

While EA has never actually said what the game cost to develop, many analysts have projected it to be the most expensive game ever developed, putting totals costs in the $150 to $200 million range. This investment has certainly not been paying it’s dividends, and EA is desperate at this point to bring potential subscribers back to the game.

The new free-to-play mode, introduced on Thursday, allows players to play freely until level 50, with a few other restrictions. Loyalists can still subscribe for $14,99 a month, which will remove the level cap and any other limitations, giving them access to all $200 million of the game’s content.

As with almost all free-to-play models, there is the option to use real money to purchase in-game content. With the update EA also rolled out a virtual currency system to take advantage of this, and hopefully get their investors some of that money back.