Depending on what side of the fence you sit, this is either good news or bad news. Following the recent server merges (which caused some huge controversy when large servers were merged with even bigger servers), and the news of a free to play (up to level 15) trail, it looks like The Old Republic is definitely headed in the direction of going free to play for good:

“We’re going to be in the business from a long term standpoint so absolutely we’re going to embrace free access, free trial, ultimately some day we can move in and embrace that model. It’s all a matter of timing and thinking things through. We have a great business right now and we’re not looking to make any abrupt changes.

So it won’t happen immediately, but it looks like EA is definitely going to start steering the game in the direction of the free to play model. This comes after BioWare said back in December that the game wouldn’t be going Free to Play:

“The free-to-play people can’t invest to the level we can invest, and can’t create something of the size and scale of something we can create,” he said. The idea that free-to-play will take over all other MMO business models, he said is, “from a business perspective, ridiculous.”

I guess things change after you launch a game lacking in end game content and begin to bleed subscribers, huh?