Star Wars: The Old Republic: To Play or Not to Play?

I am hardly the gamer that I used to be.  I am an old school Nintendo gamer (NES, SNES, Gameboy, N64, GC) I made a brief foray into modern gaming with the Xbox360 and occasional PC game action, I enjoyed KOTOR II a lot.

To be honest, there was a corresponding drop in my gamer skill as we added more joysticks to controllers and left the side scrolling action behind.

Even when I as a much more serious gamer, I never really got in to the RPGs, they never held any appeal for me. I certainly haven't gotten into that  acronym monstrosity of a genre that is MMORPGs.

The problem is, I am a bit of a huge Star Wars dork. EA/Bioware has me intrigued by SWTOR and the TOR era surrounding the game, especially the dark anti-hero Darth Malgus.

I have two major concerns when it comes to the game, the cost and the time involved in playing a MMORPG. 

Cost:

Amazon currently has two pre-order versions of the game up, the Collector's Edition for $160 and the standard game for $60.  If that was the sum total of the cost of playing the game, then I could justify the investment.

Unfortunatley not only do you have to buy the game, but you have to subscribe to the game as well. 

Subscription details from Starwars.com:

Star Wars: The Old Republic is available for pre-order now at participating retailers* while supplies last. All players who pre-order will receive a redemption code that will unlock Early Game Access**, granting them access to the game before December 20, 2011. Pre-order quantities are limited and Early Game Access will only be available to those who pre-order the game and redeem their code before the game's official release. Included with the purchase of every copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic is 30 days of access to the game, after which players can continue to play through subscribing*** at either $14.99 per month, $41.97 for 3 months ($13.99 per month), or $77.94 for six months ($12.99 per month).  

So basically you are looking at over $200 for one year of game play?  That seems pretty high. 


Time:

 One recent survey of gamers;

The survey found that the average time spent playing a game online was nearly 23 hours/week.

I don't know about you, but I am not sure I have 10-15 hours a week for gaming let alone 23 hours.  Of course even if I did have the free time, my wife would probably throw the PC out the window  if I spent anywhere near that much time playing.

The worse case scenario for me would be to try the game and really like it, only to find that I didn't have any time to play.  

In the end, as cool as The Old Republic time period is shaping up to be, I am afraid I am going to most likely have to sit this one out.

Hopefully there is enough tie-in materials for the game that I don't loose to much of The Old Republic storyline.   

I can't wait to here what everyone thinks of the game when it is released.  Head over to SWTOR.com to check it out.

SOURCES: Starwars.com and PsycheCentral.com