VelJharig
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Posts posted by VelJharig
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Just going to point out that Knyght's evidence on this issue has been vindicated by the devs. See the PTS patch notes for 1.1.4 here, under Alderaan warzone:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=307048
There was a bug that caused the East turret to fire twice when captured by the Imperials under some circumstances.
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It is 1700000 at the end of 2011. Not a single account was out of the 30 days coming with the game at that point. About 300000 people had cancelled their subscription though.
That's when the fiscal quarter for EA ended.
Go read my post one page back... you are lying. I have quotes from the actual company reps during the conference call, with source links. Financial statements are through the end of 2011. Subscription numbers and sell through units are from the date of the conference call, and they make that very clear in multiple statements. 1.7M current subscribers as of Feb. 1st, counting only people on paid plans and in their initial 30 day trial that haven't "opted out" by cancelling.
They also talk about their Q4 spending for the next 2 months... are you going to claim that those figures are only through the end of 2011 too?
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Considering those numbers were taken with in the first 10 days of launch i dont see how those numbers are any where close to being accurate. I guarantee you that almost half of those subscribers are gone. Its under 1mill subs right now. 3 months from now? if they dont get thier act together? almost dead. Its another warhammer in the making its just hemoraging a bit slower.
Couldn't even read 3 pages into this thread, eh? Or are you just hoping that other people didn't? (I'm getting tired of reposting this....)
If you attended the conference call, or read any of the many reports or transcripts from the call, you know that your estimates are a bald-faced lie. The financials are as of EA's Q3. The numbers reported about sales and subscriptions were current as of the day of the report (Feb 1, or as near to that date as they could gather numbers) and the projected budgets were about Q4 spending (since Dec. 31, including the last 30 days and the next 60). All of those things are routinely covered as part of informing investors about a publicly traded company's earnings.
In case you are actually ignorant, rather than maliciously lying in hopes that people don't check on your facts, here are some of the key points from the subscription numbers:
"To date, we have sold through more than 2 million units. Our sell through success to date is not as apparent to the public because nearly 40% of the December sell through went through Origin, which is not recorded by third party data services. This was achieved with a level of Q3 marketing well below that of a AAA holiday quarter launch."
--Eric Brown
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably."
--Frank Gibeau
From the Q&A:
Q: When we will start to see the effect of the 1.7 million subscribers? What’s the impact of on-going R&D for providing the new content?
A: It's still very early. It is hard to extrapolate where those 1.7 million subscribers lead or mean, but it’s a great start. We have huge plans. Lots of end-game content and even expansion packs. It will involve R&D post launch and we took care of some of it pre-launch. It’s a little early to identify what those all will specifically be and what our goals will be. as mentioned, we will be increasing marketing support.
Q: Are these 1.7 subscribers paying?
A: Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point.
******
Even if you try to ignore the "to date", "since December", and "currently" terms, it's pretty clear that they are talking about subscriptions numbers from the day of the call, or from a few days prior, if "most of the 1.7m are paying at this point." None of them would be paying as of Dec. 31st, as everyone would still be in their trial period. There are other financial articles that quote John Riccitiello as saying that the numbers were 1.7M subscribers and growing (though I haven't been able to find the original interview or comment where he said that, so I'll say that's unverified for now).
If you're really that desperate to try to prove that the game is going to fail - I'd suggest following the rest of your peers and starting to argue that the numbers are about to tank for any of XYZ reasons. Insisting that the numbers are old, rather than "current" or "to date" at the point of the conference call is only demonstrating ignorance, obstinacy, or an inability to read and comprehend English properly.
Quotes are from the EA prepared comments, available here:
Q&A from the conference call are transcribed by Darth Hater (who attended the session live, to transcribe it for us). They did all the work to pull together the relevant points... I'm just quoting them to stop the rampant nonsense claims by desperate naysayers.
Darth Hater's summary (with more details) is available here:
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
There's also a transcription of the Q&A available here:
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It just makes me laugh that all the fanboys want to talk about is this 'magical 1.7 million subscribers' number.
Regardless of how many people post that their entire guilds no longer play, how their servers are becoming ghost towns, how there is nobody to PvP against at endgame... the list goes on and on... we are seeing these complaints from a lot of people.
fanboy's response... there are 1.7 million active subscriptions, durrr! 85% retention rate! durrrr!!!!
All you have to do is login to see the proof. Stop believing falsified numbers. Stop throwing the 1.7 million subs number around like it's some fact that couldn't possibly be manufactured by playing around with numbers and how they are reported. there is no way anyone with even half a brain could believe that there are 1.7 million people playing this game when they login.
At one time I was like all you fanboys. I was this way with FFXIV. I didn't want to believe the forums. I LOVE FF! it was a game I looked forward to like no other and would defend till my last breath... then one day it just hit me that ya... this game really is horrible and everyone saying that it was, was actually correct. All you fanboys will come to realize this soon enough. Stop believing the propagando coming from EA and log in and see it with your own eyes.
You need to do some math, and consider average login times. The loads that you're seeing on the servers are perfectly consistent with a 1.7M active subscriber base.
Working with averages here (we know there will be fluctuations higher and lower for peak and off-peak hours)... We know from the SEC filing a couple of days ago that there are an average of 1M accounts logging in daily, for a period of approximately 4 hours. So... a bit over half the current subscribers log in each day, for 1/6th of the day. A random sampling over a long enough period of time should therefore show an average of 166,667 players online at any given time. Now take and divide that online user count by the number of servers. What's your population number across both factions? If it's 215 servers, then your average online server population is 775 (going up for peak hours, and dropping for off-peak). Now divide that number of players by 19 zones. 40 players per zone, average. If it doubles during peak hours, that's 80 players per zone, average.
If you want to argue that they should merge servers to bring up that average online population number, fine... but you're only indicating that you can't do math by claiming that 1.7M, with 1M unique account logins daily for 4 hours, isn't possible with current server populations.
Source for population numbers:
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably."
--Frank Gibeau
Quote is from the EA prepared comments, available here:
http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...112_1251pm.pdf
There's also a transcription of the Q&A available here:
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As for the "numbers" that have come out, everyone should know that the Q3 release from EA counted those numbers as of DECEMBER 31st, 2011. This is what that means:
#1. This was when there was a free month.
#2. The good looking math is likely NOT so good looking now, a month and some change down the road from when that was reported.
CLIFFS: We'll have to see when they release another financial statement. My guess: It isn't going to be pretty and EAs stock is going to fall. Hard.
Oh for... you people just don't give up, do you?
If you attended the conference call, or read any of the reports or transcripts from the call, you know that is a bald-faced lie. The financials are as of EA's Q3. The numbers reported about sales and subscriptions were current as of the day of the report (Feb 1, or as near to that date as they could gather numbers) and the projected budgets were about Q4 spending (since Dec. 31, including the last 30 days and the next 60). All of those things are routinely covered as part of informing investors about a publicly traded company's earnings.
In case you are actually ignorant, rather than maliciously lying in hopes that people don't check on your facts, here are some of the key points from "those numbers":
"To date, we have sold through more than 2 million units. Our sell through success to date is not as apparent to the public because nearly 40% of the December sell through went through Origin, which is not recorded by third party data services. This was achieved with a level of Q3 marketing well below that of a AAA holiday quarter launch."
--Eric Brown
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably."
--Frank Gibeau
From the Q&A:
Q: When we will start to see the effect of the 1.7 million subscribers? What’s the impact of on-going R&D for providing the new content?
A: It's still very early. It is hard to extrapolate where those 1.7 million subscribers lead or mean, but it’s a great start. We have huge plans. Lots of end-game content and even expansion packs. It will involve R&D post launch and we took care of some of it pre-launch. It’s a little early to identify what those all will specifically be and what our goals will be. as mentioned, we will be increasing marketing support.
Q: Are these 1.7 subscribers paying?
A: Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point.
******
Even if you try to ignore the "to date", "since December", and "currently" terms, it's pretty clear that they are talking about subscriptions numbers from the day of the call, or from a few days prior, if "most of the 1.7m are paying at this point." None of them would be paying as of Dec. 31st, as everyone would still be in their trial period. There are other financial articles that quote John Riccitiello as saying that the numbers were 1.7M subscribers and growing (though I haven't been able to find the original interview or comment where he said that, so I'll say that's unverified for now).
If you're really that desperate to try to prove that the game is going to fail - I'd suggest following the rest of your peers and starting to argue that the numbers are about to tank for any of XYZ reasons. Insisting that the numbers are old, rather than "current" or "to date" at the point of the conference call is only demonstrating ignorance, obstinacy, or an inability to read and comprehend English properly.
Quotes are from the EA prepared comments, available here:
Q&A from the conference call are transcribed by Darth Hater (who attended the session live, to transcribe it for us). They did all the work to pull together the relevant points... I'm just quoting them to stop the rampant nonsense claims by desperate naysayers.
Darth Hater's summary (with more details) is available here:
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
There's also a transcription of the Q&A available here:
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i dont know how to respond to you. you have no concept of financial Qrtr's. 11 days after offical launch they had 1.7 million people playing. Id like to see the bill paying subs . we wont know that until the end of this Qrtr.There is nothing in there about having 1 million people log in a day and play 4 concurrent hours each .
*shakes head*
Might as well start addressing the blatant lies early in this version of the thread...
Reposting this info for some people who apparently can't read, and don't know how to use original sources (or have an agenda). Actual quotes that are relevant here... the data is actually quite clear:
"To date, we have sold through more than 2 million units. Our sell through success to date is not as apparent to the public because nearly 40% of the December sell through went through Origin, which is not recorded by third party data services. This was achieved with a level of Q3 marketing well below that of a AAA holiday quarter launch."
--Eric Brown
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably."
--Frank Gibeau
From the Q&A:
Q: When we will start to see the effect of the 1.7 million subscribers? What’s the impact of on-going R&D for providing the new content?
A: It's still very early. It is hard to extrapolate where those 1.7 million subscribers lead or mean, but it’s a great start. We have huge plans. Lots of end-game content and even expansion packs. It will involve R&D post launch and we took care of some of it pre-launch. It’s a little early to identify what those all will specifically be and what our goals will be. as mentioned, we will be increasing marketing support.
Q: Are these 1.7 subscribers paying?
A: Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point.
******
It's pretty clear that they are talking about subscriptions numbers from the day of the call, or from a few days prior, if "most of the 1.7m are paying at this point."
Quotes are from the EA prepared comments, available here:
Q&A from the conference call are transcribed by Darth Hater (who attended the session live, to transcribe it for us). They did all the work to pull together the relevant points... I'm just quoting them to stop the rampant nonsense claims by desperate naysayers.
Darth Hater's summary (with more details) is available here:
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
There's also a transcription of the Q&A available here:
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i dont know how to respond to you. you have no concept of financial Qrtr's. 11 days after offical launch they had 1.7 million people playing. Id like to see the bill paying subs . we wont know that until the end of this Qrtr.
*sigh*
Reposting this for some people who apparently can't read, and don't know how to use original sources (or have an agenda)...
Actual quotes that are relevant here... the data is actually quite clear:
"To date, we have sold through more than 2 million units. Our sell through success to date is not as apparent to the public because nearly 40% of the December sell through went through Origin, which is not recorded by third party data services. This was achieved with a level of Q3 marketing well below that of a AAA holiday quarter launch."
--Eric Brown
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably."
--Frank Gibeau
From the Q&A:
Q: When we will start to see the effect of the 1.7 million subscribers? What’s the impact of on-going R&D for providing the new content?
A: It's still very early. It is hard to extrapolate where those 1.7 million subscribers lead or mean, but it’s a great start. We have huge plans. Lots of end-game content and even expansion packs. It will involve R&D post launch and we took care of some of it pre-launch. It’s a little early to identify what those all will specifically be and what our goals will be. as mentioned, we will be increasing marketing support.
Q: Are these 1.7 subscribers paying?
A: Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point.
******
It's pretty clear that they are talking about subscriptions numbers from the day of the call, or from a few days prior, if "most of the 1.7m are paying at this point."
Quotes are from the EA prepared comments, available here:
Q&A from the conference call are transcribed by Darth Hater (who attended the session live, to transcribe it for us). They did all the work to pull together the relevant points... I'm just quoting them to stop the rampant nonsense claims by desperate naysayers.
Darth Hater's summary (with more details) is available here:
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
There's also a transcription of the Q&A available here:
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That is rather odd, actually. I remember from a previous investors meeting from some time last year where he said pretty much the same thing as this call. In fact, I remember thinking to myself that it was almost an exact word-for-word of what he said. I'll see if I can find that particular call.
Of course, it could be just my memory playing tricks. The mind tends to do funny things once we guys hit "that certain age."
My guess would be that it's simply that they changed the budget (i.e - went over their previous budget estimate), between last February when that quote was reported, and this last earnings call. It's not that they lied then... but the truth changed between those two points.
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For the record, my assertion of a 51% retention rate was way off.
He did explicitly state that 2M units were sold; while he didn't say how many active subscriptions there were, he also said explicitly that 1.7M of the 2M units sold have been activated.
No... he said explicitly that 2M units were sold to date, and he also said explicitly that there were currently 1.7M active subscriptions. The difference between the 2M and 1.7M was described as:
"As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."That means that more than 1.7M have activated accounts (because some of those have opted out after activating their accounts), but less than 2M have activated accounts because some sold units haven't started playing the game yet.
Active subscriptions for the 1.7M figure were defined as:
"Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point."There are two groups not in "active subscribers": 1) purchasers that "opted out" and are no longer in their trial period, nor do they have an active subscription; 2) purchasers that haven't activated their retail sale yet. Those are all considered "the rest" of the sales between 2M and the 1.7M active subscribers.
More complete quotes available in my earlier post on this page:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2421449#post2421449
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Actual quotes that are relevant here... the data is actually quite clear:
To date, we have sold through more than 2 million units. Our sell through success to date is not as apparent to the public because nearly 40% of the December sell through went through Origin, which is not recorded by third party data services. This was achieved with a level of Q3 marketing well below that of a AAA holiday quarter launch.
--Eric Brown
Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.
This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day.
I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering.
In summary: we nailed the launch. Adoption and daily usage among core MMO users are trending very favorably.
--Frank Gibeau
From the Q&A:
Q: When we will start to see the effect of the 1.7 million subscribers? What’s the impact of on-going R&D for providing the new content?
A: It's still very early. It is hard to extrapolate where those 1.7 million subscribers lead or mean, but it’s a great start. We have huge plans. Lots of end-game content and even expansion packs. It will involve R&D post launch and we took care of some of it pre-launch. It’s a little early to identify what those all will specifically be and what our goals will be. as mentioned, we will be increasing marketing support.
Q: Are these 1.7 subscribers paying?
A: Active subscribers means anyone paying or in their trial period. Most of those 1.7m are paying at this point.
******
It's pretty clear that they are talking about numbers today, or from a few days ago, if most of the 1.7m are "paying at this point."
Quotes are from the EA prepared comments, available here:
Q&A from the conference call are transcribed by Darth Hater. They did all the work to pull together the relevant points... I'm just quoting them to stop the rampant nonsense claims by desperate naysayers.
Darth Hater's summary (with more details) is available here:
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
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There are a few threads about this already, but I'll agree with the sentiment. Put out a security app for WP7 please.
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+1 here also. Please create a WP7 authenticator for TOR.
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+1 here. Please create a WP7 authenticator.
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Congratulations guys, seems the one number was enough of a hint!
I have the feeling artifice crafters will be seeing increased business in the next little while.
It was great fun to watch this thread and the various investigations on Reddit over the course of the day. While the forums can sometimes be a bit of a inhospitable place, threads like this are really a beacon of light that show what this community can achieve when engaged and entertained.
You guys/gals are an amazing community and we're honored to have you with us.
Btw, please let us know if you enjoy these kind of exploration driven activities (or hate them). We intend to run this game for a long time and knowing what you guys like or dislike helps us better gauging the kind of content we should plan for
Congrats again!
-- Georg
Georg,
I think this sort of exploration content is one of the best parts of any MMO, especially when you get a bunch of people in the community working together to solve some mystery hidden in the world. I'd vote for adding a ton of content like this.
Those of us that like the Consular/Inquisitor storyline and lore will be all over that kind of content. I'd love to see that sort of exploration progression made into a complete endgame system if there's an interesting way to build complex scenarios (similar to what Earth and Beyond had way back in the day, for those that remember it).
--VelJharig
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3rd expansion?
I'm sorry sir but it's gonna be a miracle if there's even 1 expansion by the way things are looking.
They didn't even make enough money out of preorders to cover up costs and free month is over "soon". Once it is how many do you think will keep subbing after seeing this isn't really an MMO.
Preorder numbers already speak for themselves. It's not even the 2-3 mil they initially had, it's more like 1 mil if even.Umm... apparently you missed the top announcement on the web page... the most recent one from the 22nd... the one where they already have over 1 million registered customers two days before Christmas, and that it's the fastest growing MMO in history currently:
http://www.swtor.com/news/press-release/20111223
That means there are far more pre-order box sales than 1 million, because a bunch of players on the pre-order list haven't registered accounts yet, unless you really think that absolutely no one is getting SWTOR as a Christmas present (hint: there are 2 people in that category just within my family this Christmas...). Trying to claim that the game is hurting right now based on pre-order numbers is only showing that you have some serious reading comprehension issues...
1.2 New armor models!
in General Discussion
Posted
I disagree that it is useful as a gameplay requirement to have high level armor look very exclusive (except for your enemies, perhaps). I would always choose the aesthetics look in the scenario you present here, for roleplay reasons... and I would argue that making that choice is also a better gameplay mechanic. Strategically, you don't want to give away your advantages by giving the enemy information about your capabilities. I would far rather look like I'm dressed in plain, unassuming robes for PvP than to give away that I'm walking around with the "uber chestpiece of flashy pwnage" which increases my crit by 25%. It's also far more consistent lore-wise for Force users.
If I can create some doubt about my capabilities, that gives me some protection (because a reasonable opponent will approach more cautiously), and it allows me to keep an ace-up-the-sleeve, so to speak. I'd actually like to hide levels entirely to opposing faction... because you generally can't make the assessment of how good someone is by glancing at them from a distance - you have to watch them for a bit. I think it would make PvP far more interesting if you couldn't see someone's effective rank (level or gear) if they decide to disguise it.