But listen to why people are leaving. "No endgame" when a matter of fact there is end game, it's just mediocre endgame compared to what is in other games that focus on gameplay rather than drama filled dialogue. "Fail PVP" Again. People are leaving because it's a mediocre MMO.

Uh, no, see the servers, are the cheapest part of MMO monthly expenditures now. They may not have been at the start of the genre, but they are now. New content? Admittingly free new content comes slower in a game that does not have a subscription cost, normally limited to balancing, bug fixes, and things that were already in development but didn't make it for launch What happens in a game that has no subscription fee or item mall business model (say Guild Wars before Eye of the North when they decided to work on GW2 rather than continuing to make expansions for GW)? They make new content, but focus it all in expansions. Now you might say, AHA! See! My subscription money goes to making FREE content in between expansions! Meanwhile you pay for expansions! But see.. subscription MMO's still have paid expansions. So they get you twice. They push out a piece of content here or there in between, while still focusing most of their development on content for the next paid expansion. Not to mention, do you really think that what we've gotten in 4 months since release constitutes enough to be a full priced game? because that's how much you paid. (well, barring the free months they give out) What I mean by brainwashing is that you've been led to believe that the subscriptions are necessary for servers to stay up. They're not. First Person Shooters, games on battle.net like starcraft, or diablo, or Guild Wars, none of them have subscriptions, the servers for them stay up for years and years after the game is not even on the shelves anymore in many cases. It was only recently that like, Capcom started pulling the plug on games for the Gamecube and PS2 and xbox that they decided no longer to support. The servers are a miniscule part of their operating cost. What subscriptions do, is allow developers to essentially kick off their shoes and lighten their workload. If it wasn't for a subscription, they'd have to be hard at work back developing, either a new game, or an exapnsion, or DLC, with subscriptions they can wait on that for awhile, doing smaller amounts of work for free content patches (a lot of it having been in development before launch) Though I think a lot of people truly still believe subscriptions are necessary. Look at Bobby Kotick now trying to push for subscription rates on FPS's.... MATCHMAKING based FPS's at that. Call of Duty Elite. If he has his way, gamers will start thinking FPS's need to have a subscription too.

WoW is from a different era of MMO's, it's the last of that era really. Older MMO's started small, and people gradually came on board after hearing about the game from their friends, seeing videos, etc. It took years for their populations to peak. Since WoW got so big however, MMO's don't do that anymore. Now they're anticipated and people preorder them like crazy expecting the next big thing. They peak IMMEDIATELY after launch, and then the population goes down. They never surpass launch population, until they make the business move to F2P/Freemium. Then their population spikes, and gradually goes back down and settles at a higher plateau than when the game was subscription only. Freemium is a good model, it does bring in more subscribers. Anyway, SWTOR is following the same population patterns as WAR, AoC, LotRO, and Rift.. There's no reason to believe the population will ever steadily climb upward.

You're paying a monthly subscription, for a single player game. That's all kinds of wrong. Hell, subscriptions themselves are an outdated business model. We've been BRAINWASHED over 10 years to accept them as necessary, but they haven't been necessary for years. When the genre first started out? Maybe it was necessary to keep things going. Now? The overwhelming majority of the subscription money goes into pockets, not keeping the servers up.

It wasn't the launch of TOR that was the failure, it was a bit afterwards, first, the game wasn't really ready yet, it still felt like a beta, right? Second, because of how popular it was at launch, they had to expand servers.. unfortunately.. the third point happened and the game was going to go downhill. Third. Bioware focused too much on story, not enough on game substance. The content in the game is very mediocre, the combat, the classes (it's all holy trinity, there's no depth, there's no other roles, a game like Lord of the Rings Online has other roles like entire classes devoted to in combat buffs (Captain), or debuffs (Burglar and Loremaster), or even CC (though Burglar and Loremaster double in that role). Here, every class has 1 buff, and debuffs are very limited in scope, and almost every class has limited CC. The result is you only have 3 class roles. Tank, Heal, DPS. YAWN.), WoW had some similar depth (though I think not as much), the PVP being built on a PVP stat that makes you inherently better at PVP, reducing it to a grind that people try to abuse and shortcut, rather than PVP'ing because it's fun. The crafting system is obnoxious because of the time needed to craft each item, and the limits as to how much you can craft at a time, and the crew missions system also taking more time. It's not fun. So there you wreck 3 forms of End Game play, Mediocre Boring PVE instances, Terrible PVP, and an obnoxious crafting system . What's left but to roll alts for more story? Except another failure on Bioware's part... the story is 90% the same for every class. You make 1 republic character, 1 Imperial character, and every character after those shares the same quest stories, it ends up being spacebarred through by I'll wager a majority of the population. In the end devoting so much of the game's budget and resources into story was a bad idea. Because while yes, it makes for a good experience the first time through, after that.. you take away that 4th pillar.. and you're left with a Tripod that's more wobbly than most the other MMO's out there, you can't sit on that stool paying $15 a month, you fall over. So what happened after launch was people left the game after the first month, and now after 3 months, more are leaving. They've leveled a character or two, seen the story, and there's nothing compelling to keep them going. Story only lasts until 50 or the first time you do each instance. After that, you have to rely on SUBSTANCE. Mechanics, gameplay, call it what you will but this game doesn't have it. The game had a terrific launch, 2 million people! That has never happened for an MMO before. But the game itself was a bad foundation to build upon. That is why people are leaving. That is why this game is not the success story people hoped it would be.

at this point in how MMO's perform in the market, I don't think there is a "turn around" for subscription numbers. They can slow down the rate at which they lose subscribers and eventually come to an equilibrium of new subscribers to lost old subscribers, but I don't think they'll be able to just steadily bring in new subscribers faster than old ones leave. Hasn't happened for any MMO post World of Warcraft. Trends have changed, old MMO's steadily gained subscribers and didn't peak in population for years. New MMO's are anticipated and peak immediately after launch, and go down after that. Expansion will bring some interest back temporarily but again it'll be a peak followed by decline. Changing business model to Freemium will cause another peak and decline, though most that have done this have found their subscription numbers were higher than they were prior to going "F2P"

Less development dollars will still result in the death of the game sooner rather than later.

ESO is not going to play like an Elder Scrolls game. It's going to be a GW2 clone, on the Hero Engine (same Engine as TOR that lags if you have more than 10 people on screen) It's even going to retcon Elder Scrolls lore.

I think D3 and GW2 will impact player activity more than subscriptions.

That's an optimistic release date for GW2. I mean, I love the design of the game and what they have out is pretty polished, but there's still a long ways to go as far as content, and testing content. I anticipate the release date of December 22nd, 2012. Yes 1 day after the end of the world, and yet stil fitting inthe promised 2012 release. Seattle Developers are *very* loose about their development schedules and release dates. It's called Valve time but it could be as easily called Seattle Time as Anet does it too.

profitable in the sense that it's making profit on its operating costs, not recouping its development cost.

Potentially, if they can make a strong enough case that they can make the game grow. However I think they'll be fighting in an uphill battle here because of the trend that SWTOR is currently fitting in to, which is, a spike of activity shortly after launch followed by declining subscriptions, without ever growing. I think getting a quality expansion, fully voiced and such with new lines is a stretch right now, expansions may be few and far between. HOWEVER they may make a better arguement if they can provide their analysts data on how other MMOs have performed after changing their business model from subscription to F2P + Cash Shop/Freemium (allowing the option of a subscription in lieu of a la carte), which is generally, they spiked in how much money they made, and then plateaued out again, however that plateau (of subscriptions actually) is higher than what it was before going Freemium. So, I predict a move to F2P/Freemium business model coming with an expansion, either this first expansion, or the second. They MAY be able to smudge their way into funding for a paid expansion staying subscription at first, but if that doesn't cause STEADY GROWTH, there's no way they'll continue to fund new content without a change to the business model. Personally I think they'll go F2P with the launch of the first expansion. It's what makes financial sense given the market.

Recouping the sunk costs however, DOES factor in to when an actual expansion may or may not be developed, and may limit the scope of funding for future content. They may not shut down the servers as long as it's still making profit on its operating costs, but they won't fund future endeavors on its behalf either.

because server populations aside from a chosen few are low, patches are going in the wrong direction, and subscriptions are still bleeding.

I'd wager it cost EA a pretty penny in marketing. It also cost them a pretty penny in acquiring Bioware to begin with.

I wouldn't call cancelling a subscription on a sinking MMO to be a "crazy thing"

just a quick look on google, so not the most definitive source I know, I just saw process monitor screenshots of it. and I don't have those screenshots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(content_delivery)

*sigh* I *really* prefer playing any game that involves shooting with ANYTHING other than thumbsticks to aim. It was a pain to migrate my ME2 save files over as well. In the end, not worth it, as the ending completely butchered the game, in fact, butchered the entire series. It was the last Bioware game I had any expectations for. Frankly, I was so disappointed with that game that it was one of the underlying causes that made me stop playing this game.

seen screenshots of it browsing through someone's tax filing program. You want to tell me that's cool?

Doesn't matter where you buy ME3, all copies require origin on the computer installed in order to install the game, so that EA can mine your harddrive for as much data as possible.

Bioware isn't innocent in all of this, they're just as bad as EA now. Bioware cared a lot more about their fans in 2003 than they do in 2012, I can tell you that. When Bioware announced origin exclusivity for ME3, PC fans outraged, Bioware reacted with an attitude of "go ahead, don't buy our game, you won't be missed, we're a household name now, we're gonna get the call of duty audience, we don't need you anymore, you'll be replaced" That's when my respect for Bioware completely evaporated.

The cancelling of Ranked WZ's was a huge facepalm... I wasn't even really looking forward to that because i think PVP in this game is a joke (PVP stat that makes you better at PVP inherently = automatically makes PVP a joke).. but I know it means a lot to other people and was something they were looking forward to. For them to pull it like that and it's still not out.... that's bait and switch. You don't just let that slide.

Yup, I've been tracking GW2 since 2007, not a lot of info out before 2009 though, I knew what to expect and looked for it, and got a few pleasant surprises along the way. It's been a week, and it feels like it's been much longer Anyway.. about TOR.. my hype for it died down as the years went on I stopped looking at TOR information because each bit of it was more and more disappointing from the game I wanted it to be.. but I got offered to do beta and my reaction was "This isn't as bad as I thought it'd be" That's it. I'd lowered the bar enough that what it was had become acceptable.

Personally, I found it pretty damn close to that Excalibur. A little stiff on the writing/voice acting, some difficulty feels artificially inflated (one shotting champions, personal story quests could be especially difficult if you're doing one that involves friendly NPC's that are with you, and you wipe, the NPC's will still be dead with enemies standing on their corpses, good luck ressing them, and the combat is tuned assuming they're with you helping), could use some balance between melee and ranged to encourage switching back and forth (vs staying ranged all the time because of less risk and still being useful) , such as melee being able to dodge more frequently (currently dodge is spouted as a panacea but you can only dodge twice on a full endurance bar, that goes a lot further on ranged classes).. but loved the questing system, loved the combat system, love the crafting, spvp, and wvw, and as a whole, can't enjoy any other games right now because it was so good. it met my expectations (keeping in mind that it is a beta) and exceeded them in some small ways. Optimization, Balance, and release the rest of the content basically... but the design is spot on.

AtlanTES Online is going to disappoint a lot of people.. first off, not being anything like the Elder Scrolls gameplay, secondly it retcons their own timelines and lore. Third it's a GW2 clone that is coming out after GW2 will be established, and last, it's on the freakin' Hero Engine. The absolute worst part about this game, is the shoddy quality of its engine. Some people might say "Oh Bioware got an alpha version this isn't the real potential of the hero engine!" But Zenimax licensed the Hero Engine back in 2007 too. That means they have an engine that was just as unfinished as what Bioware got. I'll wait and see, I mean at least it's copying a good game.. the features are nice.. but I'm hesitant to be excited for it because of the retcons, Engine, and the fact that while I love Bethesda to death.. their games are SWARMED in Bugs. Hell in the single player games the bugs are almost charming sometimes.. but that's not going to fly for an MMO. Not to mention, the best part of Bethesda games isn't going to be there.... mods.