From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

[dirtyklingon]

i claim to work for a company that almost tanked the entire us economy, which somehow makes me look smart and knowing even though it invalidates my claims even if the originating claim were true which it obviously isn't and i'm 16 and taking economics at school right now so i know a few words like "investor".

 

i also don't understand that mmo's are incredibly profitable with just 100k regular subs as long as costs are within reasonable margins even allowing for continued development of the product.

 

 

i'm going to demonstrate a marked ignorance of the subject matter while pretending to be an expert, while using the claim of being an employeee of a company that is widely held as a joke in the field of my alleged expertise as credibility builder.

 

 

i'm also an alien fighting astronaut that is in league sith spiderman and superman and fights crime with teh starjammers on planet necron.

[Ankido]

I find it most lol that people are claiming WoW's huge success on being "awesome game" instead of sucking people like fire sucks moths because of the Brand.

 

If WoW wasn't Warcraft it would have never picked off, no matter how "smooth and responsive" the combat system was. "Hey look generic MMO, albeit nice looking cartoonish graphics, with elves, dwarves, humans and orcs. Awesum! AND I get to kill 10 animals as my first quest"

 

"hey look I killed something and this bonus mission popped up saying I have to kill 30 things. Hmmm should I do it or suffer the lack of experience I get to move on to the next planet? Oh wait, is this a heroic? Does this mean I do a dungeon? Oh wait, I just died numerous times and I'm being told to ignore it. Why? Why is this in the game if I have to ignore? Oh shucks, maybe I should ignore it."

 

Be real man!!!

[Kauhu]

He's stating his opinion. If you lived in the US, you would know what freedom of speech is. Apparently, you and the rest of the defenders are probably not from the US and don't understand the peoples rights and opinions.

 

Captain America comment strikes again. What makes you think US is the only place with freedom of speech? Did you assume the rest of us are from North Korea?

 

And I mean, there's zero censorship in US too.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Kauhu

[Razhah]

i claim to work for a company that almost tanked the entire us economy, which somehow makes me look smart and knowing even though it invalidates my claims even if the originating claim were true which it obviously isn't and i'm 16 and taking economics at school right now so i know a few words like "investor".

 

i also don't understand that mmo's are incredibly profitable with just 100k regular subs as long as costs are within reasonable margins even allowing for continued development of the product.

 

 

i'm going to demonstrate a marked ignorance of the subject matter while pretending to be an expert, while using the claim of being an employeee of a company that is widely held as a joke in the field of my alleged expertise as credibility builder.

 

 

i'm also an alien fighting astronaut that is in league sith spiderman and superman and fights crime with teh starjammers on planet necron.

 

 

I think I worked with you in Nevada.

[Elgarr]

I find it most lol that people are claiming WoW's huge success on being "awesome game" instead of sucking people like fire sucks moths because of the Brand.

 

If WoW wasn't Warcraft it would have never picked off, no matter how "smooth and responsive" the combat system was. "Hey look generic MMO, albeit nice looking cartoonish graphics, with elves, dwarves, humans and orcs. Awesum! AND I get to kill 10 animals as my first quest"

 

 

One small flaw with this statement (I hope you see it also)

 

Wow had about 250k players at its launch, also coming off the back of the Warcraft IP is nothing like coming off the back of the starwars IP and having sold nearly 2 million copies of the game 7 years later.

 

 

Sorry, but sometimes common sense prevails, when all else fails.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Elgarr

[Andryah]

Well, I helped stage the moon landings in Nevada so i know bovine ***** when I see it. If the OP was such a successful, dedicated, hard working analyst that people flock to for investment advice he would have had considerably less time to play the game than he apparently has.

 

He'd also want a very large and unreasonable fee for said information too. Real Goldman analysts give nothing to anyone for free.

 

Even when you see them "apparently" offering "free insights" in the financial press, all they are really doing is influencing the market in an indirect, yet deiiberate manner, to move in a direction desired by Goldman.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Andryah

[Boundd]

He's stating his opinion. If you lived in the US, you would know what freedom of speech is. Apparently, you and the rest of the defenders are probably not from the US and don't understand the peoples rights and opinions.

 

So. Just because you have free speech.. An 'opinion' can still be garbage. You do know that an opinion can be wrong, right?

[Ankido]

BTW, if they got things right we wouldn't have to be going through server down times. It's about to hit the fan later tonight until tomorrow morning so they fix a problem that could have been fixed in beta. Now do you understand the OP?

 

Of all the down times we're going to get in the next two months, he's absolutely right for shutting them down and re-doing what needs to be done.

[VoXPCS]

Smartest most accurate post made to date. Period. Too all that disagree, you're simply not aware of the REAL WORLD around you. Either because you're too young (and ignorant) or because you believe in something that just doesn't make one bit of sense.

 

 

With that being said. This post has been screenshotted and saved. OP Please send me a PM with an available email address.

 

Large corporations will begin to see you can 't just 'MAKE AN MMO" and toss it out the front door. There needs to be consquences for their utter lack of concern for the bigger picture.

 

Paying for this game CONDONES Bioware/EA's behavior. Period.

 

I would bet 3.5 million dollars that if everyone stopped logging in for one week. They would shut the game down. Fix it, I mean finish it. and Release it again.

 

..That will NEVER happen.

[Kauhu]

One small flaw with this statement (I hope you see it also)

 

Wow had about 250k players at its launch, also coming off the back of Warcraft IP is nothing like coming off the back of the starwars IP and having sold nearly 2 million copies of the game 7 years later.

 

 

Sorry, bit sometimes common sense prevails, whe all else fails.

 

Sure SW IP is bigger. It's obvious. There's one small flaw with your statement though

 

Compare MMO market in 2004 and 2012. 250k was tons of subs that time at launch. I'm pretty sure WarCraft was also quite huge brand at that time. Guess how many of those 250k were WC fans?

 

Sorry, bit sometimes common sense prevails, whe all else fails

Edited January 6, 2012 by Kauhu

[Ankido]

So. Just because you have free speech.. An 'opinion' can still be garbage. You do know that an opinion can be wrong, right?

 

You do know it's an opinion right? You sir make no sense or understand the concept of freedom of speech nor do you understand what an opinion is.

[LogicalPremise]

Smartest most accurate post made to date. Period. Too all that disagree, you're simply not aware of the REAL WORLD around you. Either because you're too young (and ignorant) or because you believe in something that just doesn't make one bit of sense.

 

 

With that being said. This post has been screenshotted and saved. OP Please send me a PM with an available email address.

 

Large corporations will begin to see you can 't just 'MAKE AN MMO" and toss it out the front door. There needs to be consquences for their utter lack of concern for the bigger picture.

 

Paying for this game CONDONES Bioware/EA's behavior. Period.

 

I would bet 3.5 million dollars that if everyone stopped logging in for one week. They would shut the game down. Fix it, I mean finish it. and Release it again.

 

..That will NEVER happen.

 

Funny I get paid to do the same thing he did, dissected his post point by point, and disagree.

 

Large corporations will continue to do what large corporations do. If you think that will change, you clearly are not aware of the real world.

 

If you would bet money that they would shut down a game generating profits to re-do it, since you are clearly more intelligent than everyone else on the forums, kindly point to any instance in financial history where this has been done.

 

Oh wait, every MMO relaunch has been either a re-tool to F2P or having the entire thing torn apart after the bankrupted assets have been bought out by a third party.

 

Plz. Learn2Troll.

[Improv-]

He's stating his opinion. If you lived in the US, you would know what freedom of speech is. Apparently, you and the rest of the defenders are probably not from the US and don't understand the peoples rights and opinions.

 

Oh yes because the US is superior to the rest of the world and everyone else lives in a third world Country with no rights. /rolls eyes

 

Easy to see why this Country is going down the tubes when half its population thinks like you.

[LogicalPremise]

He's stating his opinion. If you lived in the US, you would know what freedom of speech is. Apparently, you and the rest of the defenders are probably not from the US and don't understand the peoples rights and opinions.

 

No, he's not stating his opinion. He's stating a bunch of semi-related points strung together in a framework that suggest he is making a professional statement of the viability of the game.

 

Whenever you make a point that begins with where someone lives, you end up making yourself look like a provincial. Having been born in the US and traveled the world, there is a reason most Europeans see Americans as self-absorbed boors, not the least of which is this staggering hubris in implying that every single idea of governance now employed in America didn't originate in Western Europe, Rome, classical Greece, or Scandinavia.

[Razhah]

Funny I get paid to do the same thing he did, dissected his post point by point, and disagree.

 

Large corporations will continue to do what large corporations do. If you think that will change, you clearly are not aware of the real world.

 

If you would bet money that they would shut down a game generating profits to re-do it, since you are clearly more intelligent than everyone else on the forums, kindly point to any instance in financial history where this has been done.

 

Oh wait, every MMO relaunch has been either a re-tool to F2P or having the entire thing torn apart after the bankrupted assets have been bought out by a third party.

 

Plz. Learn2Troll.

 

I was gonna call shenanigans on him as well but at least you are more qualified than me. I called BS with the 3.5 million bit. Everyone knows a Wall Street type wouldnt gamble with their OWN money anyway.

[Abriael]

If he worked for Goldman he would have signed a contract he can't represent or do this kind of things in forums.......

 

This too.

[Andryah]

Funny I get paid to do the same thing he did, dissected his post point by point, and disagree.

 

Large corporations will continue to do what large corporations do. If you think that will change, you clearly are not aware of the real world.

 

If you would bet money that they would shut down a game generating profits to re-do it, since you are clearly more intelligent than everyone else on the forums, kindly point to any instance in financial history where this has been done.

 

Oh wait, every MMO relaunch has been either a re-tool to F2P or having the entire thing torn apart after the bankrupted assets have been bought out by a third party.

 

Plz. Learn2Troll.

 

I /approve of this post.

[SpringDrive]

Hi OP,

 

It would be one thing if you had just posted your opinions as opinions and left it at that.

 

But by claiming to represent Goldman Sachs and attempting to pass off your trolling as professional investment advice (the title of your smear thread is "From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR") in a way that could affect stock prices, you are crossing the line from discussing your opinion into potentially breaking the law.

 

If you were an analyst and a lawyer, you would know this.

 

Bye OP.

[Kashaan]

You do know it's an opinion right? You sir make no sense or understand the concept of freedom of speech nor do you understand what an opinion is.

 

 

1) Freedom of speech has no bearing on this conversation whatsoever. In fact, it doesn't even exist on these forums.

 

2) An opinion can be factually and objectively wrong, which applies to the OP's.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Kashaan

[Elgarr]

Sure SW IP is bigger. It's obvious. There's one small flaw with your statement though

 

Compare MMO market in 2004 and 2012. 250k was tons of subs that time at launch

 

Sorry, bit sometimes common sense prevails, whe all else fails

 

Not compared to the amount who played or even knew about mmo's it wasn't.

 

EQ was already a huge game, so that's where your debate breaks down, like I said, Wow=2004, Swtor=2011, the latter has huge publicly after the amount of films released etc

 

Look at it another way, in 2004 starwars was 10x bigger than wow then, heck I willing to say 100x even 10000 times bigger IP wise, bit wow still managed to pull off something that no on else has to date.

 

It's almost like playing a footbal team of pros vs a team of unknowns, then expecting the unknowns to win.

 

In the movies it might happen, but this is the real world, funny though, the unknown from 7 years ago has trounced the huge name of today.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Elgarr

[Boozed]

OP took Corporate Finance 101 and Marketing 101 last semester and thinks he knows a thing or two

[vekkth]

please fanboys stop trolling this guy.

 

whether or not he is an analyst/broker/pimp is irrelevant

 

his post is relevant and thoughtful, if you have an argument refute a specific point he made about the game! Not the man's career.

 

after you stutter for a moment consider this, maybe you cannot argue with any of his points so you are instead trying to insult his credibility since you can't win. My 3 year old daughter does this- me "honey stop running in the house", her "you're not the boss of me!", she knows that she cannot argue running through the house is wrong, so instead she resorts to object my ultimatum by disrespecting my credibility/authority.

 

It's sad that dealing with this community is much like tending to my young child.

 

no its not and it was proven numerous of times. He calls analysis what is not analysis but is his guess/speculation.

[Elgarr]

An opinion can be factually and objectively wrong, which applies to the OP's.

 

Opinions are like butt holes, everyone has one!

 

The Internet just enables people to make out theirs is better looking than the rest

[wifeaggro]

Greetings,

 

Before I start …

 

1) I am level 50 (Jedi Knight / Sentinel)

 

2) I have PvP'd to Valor rank 38

 

3) I have my professions maxed, all datacrons found and most quests in game completed

 

With that said …

 

We all know this game has many bugs and many things that feel / seem unpolished and unfinished. Conversely, what seems unfinished to one person might seem perfectly fine to another (Hardcore vs Casual perspective as one example of contrast.)

 

My post is about the universal functionality that causes most Western market MMO's to fail. I make a great salary predicting this, as most games are initially supported by VC funds, PE funds and other sources of investment, all of which I consult and broker.

 

I have a great track record dating back to World of Warcraft (for successful bets,) predicted the demise of Vanguard, Aion, FF14 and Warhammer. (For advising not to invest.) Some of the reasons were, of course, Western gamers “dislike” grinds and Eastern specific functionality inherent in Korean and Japanese titles attempting to monetize Western markets. That which is commonplace in the East is moderately tolerable in the West, but ultimately rejected, when it comes to certain aspects of the gaming culture.

 

That aside …

 

As an investor, I look at 3 metrics (in MMO's and MOBA genre titles.)

 

1: Audience

 

2: Market Share

 

3: Long term sustainability (after initial growth.)

 

Audience: When you lease an automobile, you either return to the dealer 12-36 months later to buy or lease again (or go elsewhere,) this is called "lease loyalty" and is often identified with the Brand, salesperson or financial constraint. The connotations of the first two are positive in nature, the second, neutral and not applicable to this discussion. Companies such as Blizzard (for example) are successful because they "know how to talk to the people." They have an audience and cater to that audience.

 

What Bioware failed to do was capitalize on there audience and relied on Brand recognition (which is questionable.) This was countered by the negative association of the Electronic Arts brand and clustered by the involvement of Lucas Arts. (a too many Chiefs and not enough Indians syndrome.)

 

So what was left in this wake were Star Wars fans, KOTOR fans, and people curious to start a new game (MMO) from the on start. Unfortunately, most of these "New" players have played Polished MMO's, and have come from other titles to give this one a chance.

 

Like the test drive, if you have the money, you need to be sold from the start. (And most have the money to purchase multiple games and pay the subscription for the one they ultimately settle on.) The salesperson, the test drive ... it all needs to make that first impression, or for the most part, people will return to what they know and like, and reject the new endeavor for reasons such as those found all over the SWTOR forums and this post.

 

We were sold on Star Wars, but the test drive (and lets be honest) is lackluster at best. The audience has spoken on the Forums – about things we dislike and want changed immediately. (Would you settle on a car that had a bad test drive if you could afford something better?) Bioware runs into two problems here

 

1: Engineer talent (are they talented and efficient enough to overhaul and change what’s needed to be changed?)

 

2: Budget (Are enough funds committed to make the changes happen, or are they hedging there losses and preparing for the worst case scenario already?)

 

I suspect it is a bit of both, I advised all my clients to divest of anything to do with EA and Bioware for this vary reason. They needed to attract more talent from the star, BETA test at least another 5-6 months. They should have overstaffed to deal with forum moderation, customer service and bug stomping, among other issues.

 

These issues, listed above, are only the tip of the iceberg; there are some major flaws in this game that are causing droves of customers to leave.

 

Some of them, but not limited to …

 

Combat: In both PVP and PVE, the non fluid ability delay is game breaking in design. It’s workable albeit annoying and needs to be changed. The game will not be successful long term in its current state. The lack of auto attack is one thing, but the ability delay is too much to swallow.

 

Grind: At 50, HM's, PVP ect all become long grinds ... this will cause some to stop playing or eventually lose interest, not due to the grind, but thru faction imbalance, class imbalance and gear disparity in warzones that get boring fairly quickly. (The same maps can be fun if the issues states are resolved, which all link to root and main caused, such as slow combat.) This issue is further compounded by non 50’s facing 50’s in WZ’s.

 

Lack of Community: No server forums, sharding and lag in non-sharded areas ... well, this is a problem … a very huge problem. Community is a huge part of any MMO, the excuse of (“we cannot moderate separate server forums” and “we don’t want to build community on the forums,” is a load of BS, and as an investor question the companies availably of resources, fund and confidence in product.)

 

Lack of Customer support and service: Auto Droid ticket response after 3-4 days is unacceptable. Not being able to speak to a GM, a human being or call into the call center is very problematic, and brings for the concerns of the previous item.

 

Ambiguity: What abilities do, lack of metrics and logs to analyze what occurs in game, no visibility on the future outside secretive of the cuff comments made by some developers ... sorry, learn to talk to the people please, the current state in this respect again, is not acceptable in today’s MMO market.

 

Questions?

 

How do we get white and purple crystal fragments? Are they in game? Do we need to reverse engineer for them? Questions like these should have answers, even if the answer is "sorry, they are not implemented in game yet."

 

End game Ops bugged, Heroic FP's (some encounters) overturned for 2 weeks now - this is unacceptable, sorry. These are the initial OPS, not newly implemented expansions or patches. No excuse.

 

I could go on about the negative niche and non universal things, but that becomes somewhat ideological in essence. The point here is that, this game has potential that is being squandered daily, and people are responding by leaving the game. Most will not return, and this is proven by 10 years of MMO's failing and the habitual patterns of the market / MMO audience, which is about 24-28 million world over.

 

On a personal note; I am willing to give the game a chance, I am staying to see / hope they make these changes and improvements.

 

On a professional note: The damage has already been done, and the chance to monetize on this game / company is long gone.

 

I think Bioware knows this, and it wouldn’t be justified by a company / business to allocate funds to a project that doesn’t have long term growth and sustainability.

 

WOW grew to 11 million. It started at much less. Aion started with 3.5 million, shrunk to under 350k. SWTOR 4-5 million, and is shrinking daily. This shift alone is problematic and often spells doom and gloom for an MMO title. (Just something else to also keep in mind.)

 

The number of subs that are required to sustain this title and the number of subs required to allocate funds for further development is unknown. I assume they will make a profit, but at the cost of quality in customer service and support, delaying game changes and fixes and also delays in other areas.

 

This wasn't as "bad" a launch as many other titles that have been released, but they didn’t get it right either. There are plenty of other options for current customers and even more on the horizon. I hope other companions look at what happened with this game and learn from the errors. Bioware needs to stick to games they do reasonably well, such as Dragon Age. This game would have been better if they consulted with Aion's engine / combat team and hired some folks from Blizzard or other like companies. The current talent pool and experience level of key people it seems is lacking, and the management team pushed the game in a direction that many dislike.

 

If Bioware decides to make another MMO, I hope they base it off ME or DA. If they think they can save the game, then they need to allocate the funds, take the game off line for 1-2 months and relaunch it. Otherwise, we all need to learn to enjoy mediocrity and a game that might have been.

 

Good day and see you all later.

 

Sinius

I said the same crap 2 years ago with about a paragraph and with far less intelligence. I knew the feature set and game design would almost be a kin to NwN minus a toolset.i knew they had severe misconceptions about the mmo population. I like the game but i dont rhink it has longevity the skimped on key features and went way to deep in the theme park focus.with that said i dont believe a f u c k ing word you wrote. Though you certainly have impecible writing skills

[Elgarr]

Oh and one thing as sure as eggs are eggs, the op has got the attention of a lot of people considering how many pages this post is up to.

 

So from that perspective my hats off to you, I just wish you would re-word your post so it didnt read so arrogant