I know exactly what they're doing, and I'm sure that's the point of it, to draw players into to subscribing or to spend incredulous amounts buying the features that they want separately. But at the end of the day, players whom either can't afford or simply don't want to pay, can still experience a lot of good gameplay. That they let you play free at all is something I'm pretty thankful for. I'm really interested in the game, but can't afford to keep up a subscription right now. I'd be paying for it, if I could. Other MMOs simply toss you to the side when you're out of money. "Sorry, can't afford to pay each month? We're going to have to make your account inactive." whilst I'm sure it probably wasn't done out of the kindness of Bioware's heart, I'm happy to take what I can get. I don't really view the the multitude of missing features as a huge loss, since it hasn't really impacted my ability to play through the story so far.