Eh, no, again, you are wrong. Earnings releases are a mixed bag of (1) financial statements and operating results as of the statement date (here 12/31), (2) operating metrics, which are often stated currently and are not tied to the statement date and (3) forward looking statements. The statements about active subscriptions and sales are stated in the release itself as being "in a little over one month", which means that they absolutely cannot be as of 12/31/12. Therefore this falls under the category (2) type of statement, which is consistent with the word "active". I think you understand much less about how to read earnings releases than you think. Have you ever written or edited one with your license on the line? I have.

Uh, no. Again, the forward looking statements are their expected future earnings, characterized as "expectations". The statements about "active" are current statements, not forward looking statements under the 34 Act.

Eh, no. 2 million sales. 1.7 million active subs. That last number is (1) people who are in first free month (who bought the game later) and (2) people who are in first paying month now. Both are active subscriptions.

I doubt that the 1.7 is people in the first paying month -- it's likely a mix of people in the first paying month and people who bought the game later and are in their free month but have not canceled and so their subs are "active".

Gotta love the spin. Now an implied 85% retention rate is low, and is a problem for the game. L O L.

They're counting active subs as of now -- which means it's a mix of people who are in their free month (bought the game after 1/1) and people who are in their first paid month -- not necessarily retention amount.

No. When the CEO or CFO speaks at the earnings call and uses words like "current" or "active" he doesn't mean as of 12/31. It means as of now. The financial statements released are as of 12/31 and do not reflect these revenues, but when they're talking about "current" they mean as of now, not 12/31. The same holds true for unit sales, which are as of a little over a month since release -- i.e., as of around now.

Because a lot of the people who bought the game are MMO fans who bought it because it's the new AAA MMO. Not because of BioWare, story, or Star Wars. I straddle both worlds -- MMO fan and BioWare fan -- but I know that many people who bought and played did not.

Exactly. It's just good business.

"Look no further. I'm your Sith." "Murder and mayhem await." "There will be no survivors". All terribly overused.

Keep your social and political campaigns out of video games. Thank you.

More WoWisms. It's TOR, not "ToR". It isn't "The old Republic".

I think that WoW's forums are up after patch day .... -----> that way. I'm not an uncritical fanboi, but I don't like all the WoW comparisons. If you like WoW, go play it.

Correct. It is not reasonable to expect anything else in the short-medium term. It has warped the entire landscape.

This needs to be put in the broader context, though. Since that time, the ways and means of socializing on the internet have been revolutionized. Facebook, Twitter and so on replaced virtual worlds -- people prefer to socialize online with people they know offline, if possible. That's why Second Life, the ultimate "socialization" based virtual world, slowly died --> it turned out that most people don't care to socialize online with people who are real life strangers. There is a niche for that (still exists --> see EVE), but it's not the mass market. The mass market socializes in one medium and pwns mobs/players in another. And prefers to group in a game either in a totally turnkey random way (where there is no socialization with strangers expected) or with guildmates who they "know" -- in many cases in real life. The social aspects of the internet in general have impacted how people play MMOs, as MMOs moved out of their niche market to the mass market (which prefers to socialize on the internet in the mass market way).

I agree. There needs to be a game created like that, like EVE for high-end PvEers. I love EVE. In my opinion, the best MMO ever made, really.

Etcetera, I think.

Oh those games will be made, but not by a AAA front-line Broadway/Hollywood developer/publisher like Activision or EA. Indie developers will make such games, but they won't have AAA bling. The issue is that MMO gamers are getting jaded, and want the AAA bling MMOs to actually be new and innovative or challenging -- all of which goes against making a mass market game, and the AAA is always going to be aimed at the mass market now that Acti-Blizz have shown that MMOs *can* be mass market. The "recursion to the mean" for MMOs is 200-300k, perhaps 500k for a very popular one. WoW is an outlier. We, the players, all know this. But the gaming business community is going to keep trying to siphon WoW's market, because it's so big and lucrative. We're only going to see creative/innovative/challenging MMOs from indie developers, and we're going to have to hold our noses at the lack of bling. AAA games are all going to be chasing WoW's market, in one way or another, as long as it is there to be chased. Futile, yes, but don't tell that to the salmon attempting to spawn.

Are you trying to bank across factions?

Oh I've seen quite a few discussions on mine -- almost all in prime time or on weekends.

I would, but that would give me light side points -- I'm playing dark side. Sorry.

You're basically lawful evil rather than chaotic evil. Think of it that way. It doesn't apply in every decision, but broadly that's the difference.

It just would have been a different design. SWG had large planets like that, but mostly empty. It's a different design.

This is my view, too. It was to be expected that this is what they did, really. As a developer, you lead with your strengths. What is BioWare's main strength as a developer? Story-based, companion-based gaming. Whether KOTOR or Mass Effect or Dragon Age or Jade Empire or even their older games, this is the strength. Some of their games feature more interesting "pure gameplay" than others, but that has never been their strong suit ("oh, gee, BioWare's games have such amazingly innovative gameplay" -- how often do you hear that?). So, in designing this game, they led with their strength. The issue they face, however, is that this strength was developed in the context of single player RPG (using the term roughly --- probably more accurate to call them something like "interactive adventures" the way Bio does them), which is a game type that brings a whole different set of expectations than an MMORPG. Bio approached this with its SP RPG strength, and has run headlong into the average MMO player/fan, who has a set of expectations about his/her gaming experience in an MMO that really doesn't value "story" all that much other than as a more (or less) pleasant distraction while leveling. Thus for a lot of the MMO fans portion of who were attracted to the game, focusing on story in making an MMO seems like designing a game around the character sheet menu -- it seems like a disastrous waste of time and money. This part of the community doesn't want a "story based MMO" any more than it wants a "character sheet centric MMO" -- it appreciates a better told story, but isn't willing to dedicate too many "appreciation points" towards that element, which is relatively minor in importance in their MMO enjoyment, as compared with standard MMO elements and how well these are implemented. It's this part of the purchasers of the game (the MMO fans who bought it primarily because it's a new MMO) who are the most scathing in their criticism of the game, generally, I think. And it was easy to see this coming, because Bio's strength as a developer doesn't play into something that is very much valued by this side of the playerbase. As you say, there is another side of the playerbase, too -- a mixture of BioWare fans and Star Wars fans. This group seems to like the game more, but of course has its criticisms as well (e.g., quite a few of the SW fans wanted this game to be more like a sandbox like SWG). But it isn't generally as outright caustic and bitterly disappointed as the MMO fan side of the playerbase is. That's because Bio's strength plays more to the interests of this side of the playerbase than otherwise. It's very hard to please both, especially as one aspect -- the one that Bio has focused its design on as its pre-existing strength -- is "new" (in its presentation and implementation) in MMOs and not valued much by existing MMO players. It is hard to imagine how this can really be changed, however. In my own opinion, BioWare's games are made quality because of the story-telling and not in spite of it. Some of their games had more interesting gameplay than others, but gameplay, per se, is generally not the draw, and if the games didn't have the story telling they did, they would be decidedly average games, in my opinion. I doubt that BioWare can shift focus away from placing a huge emphasis on cinematic storytelling and really have a pleasing product, because the rest of the product will likely be average. It must improve nevertheless from where it is now in terms of bugs and fixes and features and content -- that's obvious. But I think if they moved away from story as focus, they're stepping into areas where they are not areas of strength for the developer. Perhaps this was an inherent problem in having BioWare, given its strengths, develop an MMO, which has a persistent world that people are supposed to play for months, long after a story is played through -- but that gets to the overall design philosophy question of whether it makes sense at all to create a "story based MMO". That decision was already made, really. I don't think it will be unmade.

Who cares if it's realistic or not? The entire MMO concept is "unrealistic" and requires a ton of suspension of disbelief all the time. Essentially, this is an argument about one preferred playstyle versus another. Their design accommodates both -- which, as you say in your OP, you don't like because you feel like your playstyle is getting the short end of the stick. I don't like to group when leveling, and so I am very much against forcing grouping during leveling -- you disagree because you like grouping during leveling, and you aren't getting enough groups because people aren't forced to group with you. Sorry about that, but I don't want to be forced to group to accommodate your playstyle.