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Star Wars: The Old Republic goes free to play

In it-had-to-happen news, Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a free-to-play option from 15 November.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
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Nic Healey

In it-had-to-happen news, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:TOR) will have a free-to-play option from 15 November.

(Credit: EA/Bioware)

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) that adhere to subscription models are having a rough time of it lately (unless you're World of Warcraft, of course), so the writing was on the wall for poor old SW:TOR, with only the timing left to be announced.

EA has announced that from 15 November, the SW:TOR free-to-play option will go live. The free version of the game will let gamers play through all of the class storylines up to level 50 for free, and introduces a new Cartel Market for purchasing additional features.

According to the EA website, Cartel coins will allow players to "acquire must-have pets, vehicles, XP boosts and more from the new Cartel Market".

Anyone who's currently a paying subscriber will get all of the complimentary Cartel coins that are currently listed on the Cartel Coin Ledger page, plus a one-time grant of 250 complimentary Cartel coins.

Also, former subscribers who reactivate their subscription by 20 December will be granted complimentary Cartel coins for their prior paid months up to 15 November.

You get can more info about Cartel coins, the marketplace and the free-to-play game over at the official SW:TOR website.