Nov 9, 2010 20:01 GMT  ·  By

Greg Zeschuk, who is one of the co founders of developer BioWare and the current Group Creative Officer, has said that the free to play model is becoming more interesting for MMO developers while also suggesting that the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic will rely on subscriptions when it launches.

Speaking to Videogamer.com the developer talked about Korea as a model of how things might look in a few years but said, “even there it's not fully dominant. Even while there's a lot of free-to-play games there, there are still subscription MMOs in Korea. It's one of the elements, it could even become the dominant one at some point, but at the same time it doesn't preclude other opportunities.”

But he believes that the choice between free to play and subscription based needs to be made very early during the development process, allowing the game creators to actually create the experience to suit the business model.

He stated, “The expectation is that for a subscription it will be deeper and have other longer-term benefits that perhaps would be as significant in a free-to-play game. Or maybe the free-to-play game will offer the exact same thing, but it's going to cost you the exact same thing anyway.”

His comments suggest that Star Wars: The Old Republic is too far along in the development process to actually get the mechanism needed for microtransactions.

Electronic Arts has not talked about the pricing model for the game but rumors are saying that the publisher has invested more than 100 million dollars in The Old Republic until now, a sum of money that can only be recuperated if a subscription model is used and a lot of gamers are attracted to the new Star Wars MMO.

The Old Republic does not currently have a launch date but the information coming out of BioWare suggests that it might be out before the end of 2011.