Adventures in activation:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=16434
Okay, so apparently SWTOR is now free to play up to level 15. Now, I’ve tried to play this game before, an ordeal that wasted a lot of my time and did not result in me playing the game, mostly due to the complete ineptitude of the policy makers.
But I’m willing to give it another go. I already have an account created. I already have the client downloaded. It should be fairly painless this time around.
I fire up the client and it has to update itself. Well, the launcher updates itself, then it updates the game. This takes almost an hour of downloading. No big deal. That’s how it is with MMO’s.
Then I get to the login screen, I log in, and…
Hm. I have to activate an existing account to use the free trial? Why? Why not just let me in? Fine, whatever. Let’s go to my account page…
I don’t see anything here about a free trial. I click the links, read the pages. How does this work? There’s nothing in the top menu. Or the side menu. Or on this page. Fine, let’s ask Google. Google takes me here…
Looks pretty straightforward. I click the big obvious button and…
It begins downloading the client. The client I already have installed and is currently sitting at the login screen, waiting for permission to login. Gah!
Note the first paragraph, where it seems to say that all I need to log in is a client. As an added bonus, that qualifying asterisk for the Free* Trial isn’t actually qualified anywhere on this page.
Hm. Let’s try the “My SWTOR” at the top of the page. I’d expect that to go back to the useless account page, but let’s see…
Ah! Join Now! Let’s do it!
Nope. It takes me back to the previous page in a circle of idiocy. So these two pages both promise to start the trial, but they just uselessly link to each other without any sort of trial-starting.
But on the previous page I see a link to the FAQ. Let’s give it a look.
I think we’re done here. Thanks for playing Bioware. You’ve been a total waste of time.