?? not sure what your point is. I dont set EA's financial calander. FY2013 runs from April 2012 - March 2013. So the report today that covers April 2012- June 2012 would be Q1 2013.

The PDF you are quoting is the Q4 2012 report released in May. The Q1 2013 report that is coming out today wont be released until around 5pm EST as others have already said.

Not sure if you realize but the report you quoted is from May 7th. So it makes sense for them to report the subscription numbers for the end of April. At 5pm EST today there will be a new quarterly report released that will likely contain more current numbers.

The facts the poster put forth and linked to do exactly what he says they are meant to do EA as a whole is doing very well, and those facts back that up. However, nothing in that report other than the line stating SWTOR is the #2 subscription based game, relates directly to SWTOR or how it is doing on its own. Here are some facts relating directly to SWTOR.... Fact: Bioware has had layoffs directly affecting the SWTOR team (source, a Bioware poster on these very forums) Fact: SWTOR is merging servers from over 200 to under 30 (source, Bioware poster on these very forums) Fact: SWTOR went from 1.7 million to 1.3 million subscribers (source, EA Q4 2012 report) Fact: SWTOR is not among the top 5 profit generators for EA as a whole (source, EA Q4 2012 report) I will also add another fact. Fact: I have no idea how profitable or not profitable SWTOR is. I don't mean to be a "hater" but to try and use EA's overall finacial success as a measure for how well SWTOR is doing seems a bit off to me. The actual information we have available directly relating to SWTOR would lead one to the conclusion it is not doing well, but that could be completely false. All of us will learn more tomorrow when EA has their Q1 2013 report.

That is a very good point.

Agree 100% Just because the sub number is large doesn't mean they are turning a larger profit from it. But on that same thought, just as we dont know how much profit Blizzard makes from Chinese subs, other than less than what they make fro NA/EU subs, we can't know how much profit Bioware will make from a SWTOR sub to say its greater or worse. I would assume if jumping through the hoops and all doesnt turn a decent profit for being in China Warcraft wouldn't be doing it. If i was in that position, and that was the case I would release a statement something to the effect of (all the following is made up) While we have dropped in subs from 10 million to 4 million, those 6 million are from Chinese accounts that only brought in pennies on the dollar. While our numbers look to have dropped 60% we only lost about 5% of actual subscription income, and will have a lower overhead meaning greater profits moving forward. (end the made up stuff). I'm not trying to turn this into an argument with you specifically, or a debate of Warcraft vs SWTOR, so hopefully you arent taking it that way. Just trying to bring some facts and reasonable speculation into a financial thread.

I agree that people thinking the game would have 10 million subs from day 1 are a little crazy, and I also agree without China the numbers for Warcraft would never have gotten as high as they did, but you can't blame a company for expanding into other territories and counting those numbers as they are legally allowed to count them. Thats like saying of course McDonalds has more customers than my personal burger shack, but they have stores in other places that I dont so they shouldnt count! (not the greatest example, but you get the idea). Also point of fact to those saying SWTOR is going through the normal curve of MMO's post launch here is a link to a history of Warcraft http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/128323/Seven_Years_Of_World_Of_Warcraft.php that shows Warcraft not only didn't have a dramatic drop off of subs early in its life, but instead around the 6 month mark (where SWTOR is now) was at 2 million subs and growing without China, and had 5 million after the first year. I know it has no real impact of SWTOR and its future prospects, but I always laugh when people say SWTOR is on the same curve as Warcraft, and Warcraft had no subs prior to China or BC.

Just did some common sense math. 2.4 million box sales @$60 = 144 million, 1.7 subs @$15 for 3 months (very high esitmate) 76.5 million, 1.3 subs @$15 for 3 months (again very high estimate) 58.5 million. so adding those together, you get $279 million. If they actually got 100% of the box sales, and the sub income was as high as those estimates, and the cost to run the game/develop new content since release was 0 that would be a great number. Sadly non of that is true, so while its very possible they have turned a small profit, a 200 million investment to make only a few million in profit isnt much of a win.

investor.ea.com look at the q4 2012 report, it's in there somewhere. that is also where tomorrows numbers will be posted. I would find the exact quote for you, but sadly I am at work and that site is blocked. Why this one isn't I have yet to figure out, but I'm not complaining, lol.

In the last report when they gave the number of 1.3 million subscribers, they also reported 2.4 million game sales. Now I will agree that sales =/= subscriptions, but to think 700k people bought the game and never installed/ activated their account (to go with the highest reported number of 1.7) seems a little unlikely.

Bioware actually responded to this previously. I don't have the exact quote, but what it boiled down to was the forum does not make you relog everytime you visit, so it stores your credentials and access for a while. So even after your gametime expires it may be a week or two before the forums want you to relog and recheck your status, so for that time you will still be able to post.

So out of curiosity i did a little math....... the game started early access on dec 13, so that was 7 months and 4 days ago, that is roughly 219 days (i didnt count them so it could be a few more or less) at 8 hours a day every day since launch you would be 73 days of played time. and there are people here with more played time. I dont know if i should be impressed or scared, lol.

That is fine. The only reason for the variable algebra in the first place was to show that I wasn't just making numbers up from one source that the method would in fact work no matter what the numbers were. What you wrote is exactly what I was doing.

You are correct in saying that; however, you are not disagreeing with Paige. If that was the case your on topic disagreement would be over the validity of the numbers, or how the numbers were calculated, or how the surveys are completed. As it stands now all you are doing is calling people flat out liars and that is antagonism. This is again correct; however, when you posted your initial disagreement Paige responded with several links and sources to her post history for you to provide a basis for your argument. Since all you can find in those are posts stating she is doing the exact opposite of what you are claiming, you choose instead to respond that you needed no proof, that your opinion was the correct one, and that she along with many others in this thread are liars. Your earlier claim that these types of threads would not exist if the population was very healthy is true. That does not mean that every thread created about population is written by "doomsayers". As has been stated before the original threads were created when there was a documented drop in population and people were complaining about not having anyone to play with. A fine member of the community took her own personal time to come up with a system to let those interested know which servers were the most populated so they could choose to reroll. The point of those threads was not to say the game is dying get out now, it was to say hey there are people here if you want to play with them. People became interested in the numbers, and how they were calculated, so she updated on a regular basis. Now that the server mergers have happened and she had a following it didn't make sense to just stop posting the numbers, although if posts like yours continue she might since you are trying to twist her work into something it is not. If you want to take the numbers as doomsaying that is your opinion and you can have it, that also means I can have my opinion that you yourself are a doomsayer. That is the only reason I can think of that you would come into an otherwise positive thread (that talks about rising logons, and higher server caps, and growing populations) and try to spin everything into a negative.

I agree with you that the old definiton of server is probably long gone, but it still makes sense to me (my opinion as I do not work in large scale computer infrastructure) that they would allocate their resources equally. I may be misinterpretting what you were trying to say, but it seems to me if they could monitor and shift resources so easily that no servers would ever read as "full" since when one got close to the initial limit they could just pull resources from a currently light server to increase its capacity. If this was the case you would think their goal would be to keep all servers at a "standard" level when possible simply by moving the available resources. Now I would agree with you that the new destination servers having the same resources as the origin servers seems very unlikely. I'm sure moving some of those resources is where the new higher caps on destination servers are coming from, but again I would like to think they have done this evenly. If you are not going to do it evenly why have any other status besides open or full?