It didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought for a previous subscriber which speaks a lot about how bad the whole announcement was. Any artifact gear you had equipped is still equipped (it'll say authorized by previous subscription), and any character you've above the 2 limit is still there. You can still play them all (I was able to login with all of them). You just can't create any new ones, so if you had the foresight to create 8 characters while you had an active sub you can pretty much play almost the whole game. It's not like the endgame has anything worth paying for. In fact I'd recommend just subbing for one month and create 8 or 12 or whatever the maximum number of character is and then you get the whole meaningful part of the game (the story stuff) for $15, which is a pretty good deal. With 12 characters you probably can cover enough tradeskills anyway (12*2 = 24 crew skills), and while not being able to equip Artifact gear sort of sucks, you don't really need them for the story mode stuff and given your inability to actually do PvP there's relatively little incentive to twink your gear (the biggest motivation to twink gear is to bulldoze people in the 10-49 bracket). The stuff you unlock while subbed like cargo bay/inventory slot also stays unlock, so make sure you use your credits immeidately during your 1 month of sub time to unlock as much inventory space/cargo space as you possibly can. Your 500 CC for sub happens to be enough to buy either 2 more hotkey bars or 1 crew skill and that should round out your options pretty well. You'd be utterly incapable of doing anything beyond soloing but it's not like this game has anything worth playing beyond solo, and the overly restrictive limitation on PvP/FP/Operation combined with the fact that most of this stuff sucks means you'd never have to worry about it.
In some sense this F2P reminds me of EQ2 in that it's an epic fail both because of how restrictive is and how unrestrictive it is if you know all the loopholes. $15 for the whole 1-49 game is a surprisingly good deal. I'd argue it's too cheap. Yes technically you could either create 4 F2P accounts but you'd have to be a glutton for punishment to play the game with one hotkey bar (F2P only gets 1, preferred gets 2) and basically incapable of getting any gear better than quest greens, as some of the hard story battles will definitely chew you up if all you're wearing is green gear.
Here's how I'd recommend playing this game:
Download game
Sub for 1 month
Create the maximum number of characters possible, 1 for every archtype in the game and use the extras for whatever class looks interesting (i.e. if you want to be a Marauder and a Juggernaut, make 2 Sith Warriors).
Focus on earning money with whatever character you happen to play, unlocking as much stuff you can reasonably do so. I'd definitely buy inventory slots first because playing this game with 30 inventory slot is asking for pain. If you see anything interesting to unlock on Legacy use credits there too.
Use your 500 cartel coins either for 2 hotkey bars, the 3rd crew skill, or whatever looks interesting.
Now you cannot mail credits without a sub so before your sub runs out, you should try to distribute your money between all the characters that are expected to use them. In fact your low level character probably should have the most money if they're going to be just a crew skill shop, and remember that you can mail crafting ingredients including the obligatory money sink items to your alts. Basically you should have the character who can make money have the gathering skills and the characters who can't make money have the manufacturing skills (because all manufacturing components can be mailed), though with the artifact gear restriction it really doesn't take much money to do tradeskill since it takes 5 combines on average to learn how to make a blue.
Note that if for whatever reason you decided to buy an artifact equipment authorization, this really messes up your ability to allocate money because trying to make artifact level gear uses up a ton of credit and yet you cannot mail credits to yourself, so I don't recommend doing this. You really have no need for artifact gear given you're unlikely to be doing Operations, and PvP sucks not to mention you'll just get bulldozed by guys in Elite War Hero gear no matter what.
That said a key problem remains that if they simply locked all your characters above the limit of 2 you'd be screwed, though given the slow pace of everything in SWTOR I suspect it'll take a few months before any dev realizes this loophole and then a few more months before they put in a fix. There's definitely a risk here though.
In some sense this F2P reminds me of EQ2 in that it's an epic fail both because of how restrictive is and how unrestrictive it is if you know all the loopholes. $15 for the whole 1-49 game is a surprisingly good deal. I'd argue it's too cheap. Yes technically you could either create 4 F2P accounts but you'd have to be a glutton for punishment to play the game with one hotkey bar (F2P only gets 1, preferred gets 2) and basically incapable of getting any gear better than quest greens, as some of the hard story battles will definitely chew you up if all you're wearing is green gear.
Here's how I'd recommend playing this game:
Download game
Sub for 1 month
Create the maximum number of characters possible, 1 for every archtype in the game and use the extras for whatever class looks interesting (i.e. if you want to be a Marauder and a Juggernaut, make 2 Sith Warriors).
Focus on earning money with whatever character you happen to play, unlocking as much stuff you can reasonably do so. I'd definitely buy inventory slots first because playing this game with 30 inventory slot is asking for pain. If you see anything interesting to unlock on Legacy use credits there too.
Use your 500 cartel coins either for 2 hotkey bars, the 3rd crew skill, or whatever looks interesting.
Now you cannot mail credits without a sub so before your sub runs out, you should try to distribute your money between all the characters that are expected to use them. In fact your low level character probably should have the most money if they're going to be just a crew skill shop, and remember that you can mail crafting ingredients including the obligatory money sink items to your alts. Basically you should have the character who can make money have the gathering skills and the characters who can't make money have the manufacturing skills (because all manufacturing components can be mailed), though with the artifact gear restriction it really doesn't take much money to do tradeskill since it takes 5 combines on average to learn how to make a blue.
Note that if for whatever reason you decided to buy an artifact equipment authorization, this really messes up your ability to allocate money because trying to make artifact level gear uses up a ton of credit and yet you cannot mail credits to yourself, so I don't recommend doing this. You really have no need for artifact gear given you're unlikely to be doing Operations, and PvP sucks not to mention you'll just get bulldozed by guys in Elite War Hero gear no matter what.
That said a key problem remains that if they simply locked all your characters above the limit of 2 you'd be screwed, though given the slow pace of everything in SWTOR I suspect it'll take a few months before any dev realizes this loophole and then a few more months before they put in a fix. There's definitely a risk here though.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't think F2P should be free (they should entice you to spend some money) but the things they monetized are so petty and desperate, it's just gonna turn people off. XP and Valor is also lower on F2P. XP...fine, but for valor, if you actually pay MORE to unlock WZs every week, you'll still gain with significant penalties.
