Bioware has announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic, a science-fiction MMORPG, will have a free-to-play option added to it this fall. The game will also be going on sale for $14.99 (one month subscription included) in August of this year.

If you already have the game and have been paying to play you will receive a sum of “cartel coins” to spend in the game as a thank you for your loyalty to the game. The coins may be bought later on for real-world money. Matthew Bromberg, Bioware Austin general manager, states that the free-to-play availability will allow for the release of more content for the game itself.

He says, about the game:

“Every six weeks or so, we’re going to provide a warzone, a flashpoint, an event, an operation, that sort of thing. The basic idea is that free-to-play players will pay for those content updates with cartel coins. Subscribers will get those updates free as part of their subscription. Our goal was to bring as many players as we can into the core experience to enjoy the game, and then to provide experiences on top of that for people to upgrade to. We’re really excited about putting our best foot forward. We’ve really been looking at this since the first day we launched. It really, for us, became a question of ‘when.’ The market for MMOs is a free-to-play market, and so it’s something we’ve been thinking about for a long time. ”

Certain content in the game will not be available to free-to-play players, so there is incentive to keep your subscription is you already have one. A list of what will be available and what will not for either free accounts or subscriptions has been released. Other than this, nothing else about the game will be changing, other than larger servers and other technical aspects. For more information, check this out.

[SOURCE]