From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

[WelbyWars]

didn't people like you cause the housing crysis?

 

Crysis game had housing!?!?

 

Omg,..I missed that sandbox FPS!!!!

 

 

 

Kidding!

[Bodypull]

didn't people like you cause the housing crysis?

 

Yes and No :-)

[Mormack]

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, his post is full of opinion and misinformation. He doesn't know about how WoW actually became successful because endgame in Vanilla and BC WoW were huge Grindfests and he claims all grinds = bad. He "Hopes that BW puts in features and bug fixes that people are asking for" without actually reading blogs and Dev posts. They are working on these things. He's just a troll trying to get people riled up and it worked.

[kilosoldier]

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.

 

So goes the back and forth.

 

If someone does not agree with a critic, they are fanboys, if they have a critique, they are trolls.

 

You're a hypocrite.

[Vialator]

YUP to the OP- I agree- and the fanbois will be on here in the droves telling you to get lost etc etc- and when the game tanks they will be left scratching their heads like the fools they are for bashing posts like this and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

[WelbyWars]

Yes and No :-)

 

Ok,..I take back my response post earlier,...

 

I do Hate you!

 

 

 

[Daeborn]

Amen!

 

Didn't you state you were done posting? Dang, another falsehood.

[BitterPill]

Thats the problem with Public Companies that shareholders ***** about the bottom line.. They dont care about the quality..

 

 

Why do you think they release right before the year ended....

 

 

Just look at wow once it was bought out.. Money over everything else...

Edited January 6, 2012 by BitterPill

[Daeborn]

YUP to the OP- I agree- and the fanbois will be on here in the droves telling you to get lost etc etc- and when the game tanks they will be left scratching their heads like the fools they are for bashing posts like this and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

 

Of course you agree, that's really the only reason for the OP to have posted his uneducated opinion in the guise of someone he isn't.

[Nrrrdking]

A Goldman-Sachs analyst should know the difference between "their", "there" and "they're".

[Ketic]

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.

 

I'm all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt. We all have no idea if you really who you say you are, if you're actually any good at it, or if you're lying through your teeth. But this statement alone makes me firmly believe that you are not who you say or you are just horribly bad at it.

 

Take the game off line? That would be a disaster they would never ever recover from. It is completely ridiculous to propose that this is the best solution.

 

You were close in part of your post and I'm quite sure this is what they're doing. Get the bugs smashed and fixed as soon as humanly possible. I mean everyone working 12+ hours a day and work this stuff out. The combat system performance must be fixed. FP's and Op's have to be fixed. No one will grind for gear if some of it doesn't even drop loot.

 

A good show of fixes and improvements will save the game, show good faith, and keep the subs coming in.

 

Edit: He's apparently from Goldman Sachs...I missed that part.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Ketic

[Mormack]

YUP to the OP- I agree- and the fanbois will be on here in the droves telling you to get lost etc etc- and when the game tanks they will be left scratching their heads like the fools they are for bashing posts like this and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

 

That would be true if BW wasn't doing anything with their game, kinda like Perpetual did

 

But we've gotten 2 going on 3 bug fix patches this week alone and we're getting the first big content update sometime in the coming month according to the Blogs. Does no one read those things? I mean I know they aren't flamebait like "Wow, Dungeons are hard" but still, They're valuable information about what to expect.

[KippTabor]

Your analogy doesn't work for this thread. His points can and have been discredited. Indeed I've seen retorts to 95% of what he said like 4,000 times today.

 

Yeah, but it's much easier to claim that no one discredited him (especially if you have an agenda), despite evidence to the contrary, not to mention the OP's complete lack of data necessary to arrive the conclusions which he did.

[Boundd]

YUP to the OP- I agree- and the fanbois will be on here in the droves telling you to get lost etc etc- and when the game tanks they will be left scratching their heads like the fools they are for bashing posts like this and NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

 

Why does people listening to you effect you? Do you need attention that much?

[ilovepeanuts]

Funniest part is as a goldman slave he roled a jedi

 

On a more serious note unlike the title the post itself was a good read and only time will tell if it holds, for me personally I enjoy the game but I am still not sure if it can keep me interested in the long run.

Edited January 6, 2012 by ilovepeanuts

[LogicalPremise]

Since no one has dissected your post, I will.

 

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

 

Very good. Did you enjoy that? Or did you force grind it? I, myself , started in Early Access, and am only level 36. I already suspect you are a person who is more used to a faster paced MMO and are not engaged in the story, and most likely , dismiss it as dressing.

 

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.)

 

We all know every MMO has many bugs and things at launch that aren't right. STO was a nightmare , Champions Online was a trainwreck, City of Heroes not much better. RIFT went smooth enough in places but in others was also shambolic. However, your counterpoint is also taken. One man's gamebreaker is another's minor irritant.

 

What you dismiss (which already makes me question your analytical ability) is the number of people playing that are *not* hardcore. This game is not going to please most of the hardcore. I surmise, based on the choices BW has made, that they were only aiming at the hardcore to buy some initial boxes. They are fully aware most of the hardcore will leave.

 

They're gunning for the casuals. And your analysis is presaged on the concept that the hardcore is what supports an MMO, based on WoW, when the truth is the only reason that has held true until today is no one has marketed a casual MMO. STO was perhaps the first.

 

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.

 

Most MMO's are supported by VC? I'm suprised no one else called you out on this. Most MMO's are brought to market by established companies with money flows sufficient to support the hardware. Only the most insane VC would put enough cash on the table to support the kind of burn rate an MMO goes through in the first year of ops since there is NO chance whatsoever that you'll recover in 4 to 10 months. That kind of burn rate and sheer cash flow, with no guarantees, is not the sort of thing most venture capitalists want to touch.

 

If you're speaking about the more amusing rise of these F2P abominations, yeah, some of them are backed by VC groups along with some very sketchy funds and input money from a couple of "drop some dollars and buy it out later" sources. But those are NOT AAA MMO's.

 

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.

 

Calling the demise of Warhammer was about as hard as predicting the sun would rise. And again with Aion and Final Fantasy -- every single gaming rag said for months that the grinds were psychotic. This is nothing new and should be considered a baseline for any kind of industry perspective at all.

 

What you haven't told is us your basis. Are you long range or profit? Do you suggest focus on diversification across a product range or focus on quick returns? This is so vague.

 

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.)

 

These are very good metrics. To the unfamilar they probably sound obvious, but too many analysts focus on rate of return and potential growth rates, which often start off rosy and tank.

 

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.

 

This is a... somewhat naive position to take, but not surprising. I bet you're a young buck, having made a couple of sharp calls, and think you got the market pegged.

 

The problem with applying this sort of pathed loyalty to MMO's is that response is not static but flowing. The car market represents a capital investment. A game does not. There are certainly people who won't touch EA because it is almost as bad as Activision, and there are certain people who back Blizzard because of their quality.

 

But my total outlay to try the game is $60. EA has dissapointed me before, and surprised and pleased me before as well.

 

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.)

 

Bioware took every opportunity to capitalze on the audience if you don't look at them in terms of "Stars Wars nerds" and instead as "people sick of WoW". If you shift your viewpoint, you see that instead of fumbling, BW made assertive choices in design as far back as a year ago that were not optimal for retaining the WoW demographic but instead designed to appeal to the new market.

 

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.

 

No, there you just missed. From what I'm seeing on the forums, there are a LOT of new people who have come from polished MMO's and are sick of the issues they bring with the polish, or haven't ever played one. And this is the target grouping.

 

 

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

 

Comparing a capital purchase to a game is very , very poor selection. A meal at a restaurant would be more apt.

 

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?)

 

These are factors that are hard to pin concrete numbers on. The best you can come up with are shaded values that represent potential factors. Ultimately, EA and Bioware both are going to have to reallocate factors from ME3 and DA2 and other projects to TOR, or will end up missing out. I agree. But we don't -- and there is no way to know NOW, when too much is still in the hands of the core team -- how much they are willing to do so.

 

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.

 

Then you advised your clients poorly. You should have advised them to buy into Gamestop and Desura. Software houses are never, ever a good investment.

 

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.

 

It doesn't bother everyone. Is it an issue -- of course! It can be fixed, and probably will be, but I suspect the Hero engine does not , ah, tweak well. Unfortunately, bad response times are not unknown in other games who have overcome them if the rest of the offering is strong enough.

 

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.

 

The 50's issue is already handled or will be soon. I suspect 3 more WZ in the next few months.

 

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.)

 

This is dead on and there is really no good reason to do this. Bioware is dropping the ball here. You can't even search the forums so they are not even a resource to learn the game.

 

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.

 

Blizzard built itself on CS. Bioware / EA has never , ever had good CS. They have been successful thus far. Again, they're going after the part of the market which is more likely to put up with bugs. However, this is not a good sign, I agree.

 

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.

 

Meh. I've seen this in every MMO in the past couple of years. I think the core problem is that the AAA MMO's end up being analyzed to death an a dearth of sites and guides is promulgated until everything is known, and when new one comes out, that process takes time.

 

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.

 

This is the second area you stumbled. WoW was pretty much MADE by people coming back and giving it a second try after the disaster that was it's launch. STO is coming back, AO has had a literal renaissance of resubs. There is a very common wisdom that if an MMO is bad at launch, check back in six months and try it out.

 

What you are referring to is the MELTDOWNS, where the game is literally so bad that it collapses. That isn't going to happen here, and if you judge this based on I quit posts, you haven't seen anything yet. STO had so many they were literally every post on the forums for the first 3 pages. This is rather tame by comparison.

 

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

 

Oh, my goodness. There is no more chance to pull money out of this? Are you kidding me? Slap in LFG , two WZ, fix the graphics a bit and offer 30-days free to resubbers and bam, 350k to 500k resubs right there.

 

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.)

 

Like STO. And LOTRO. And Champions. And RIFT. And Lineage. And .. oh wait.

 

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.

 

I suspect they are not spending a lot on CS now, actually. Their money is in server costs and paying programmers. Sustainance is simple enough, EA is sitting on enough cash to make this work and knows that if they can ride the storm this is the ONLY MMO that will ever have a chance to challenge WoW.

 

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.

 

I would suggest that such moves are completely against the style of Bioware. The choice of the engine they used implies to me they have some reason for it. And honestly, whether they got it right or not at launch will literally not matter in 5 months.

 

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.

 

Oddly enough, this is the part people bash most, but makes the most sense. If you are doing a straight market-share / cash flow analysis, then shutting down and restarting makes sense on paper.

 

But what you end up doing is trying to re-engage the userbase you lost at the cost of the userbase you HAVE. BW will never do that as long as the game can turn a profit because it requires them to eat months of red ink.

 

I do not think he is a fake. I think he is a lower-level support investment analyst who gives specialized advice, probably not too long out of college, who's had one or two nice calls and recently got a promotion. He feels a bit ... out of it though, as if his actual market is something more like banking investment.

[gibsnium]

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.

 

I was about to post the exact same thing O.o The collective reasoning abilities of mmo forums is way to low to even be able to comprehend the OP's post, yet alone argue it.

[daddymoofle]

yes my grammar is not the best, I am not spell checking as I go.

 

If you feel the need to point this out .. you need to stop reading forums and go teach a class or farm your Valor rank in game :-)

 

No, to be taken seriously as a professional you need to be able to communicate professionally. You failed to do that by either using Internet Explorer or not noticing a squiggly little red line. I just hope you know how to use it in Word when you type up actual analytic reports (if you actually are an analyst).

 

You don't go anywhere and present yourself as a professional, and then not take the time to communicate like one. Using the already abject name of Goldman Sachs as your employer didn't help, either.

[Kashaan]

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.

 

 

No actually, he makes quite a few assumptions, and uses a lot of subjective (and even false ) information to attempt to make an objective claim. He tried to support his post with an Argument from Authority (claims he's an "investor"), which is by definition a logical fallacy.

 

Read his post closely, and you'll realize he's just another WoW fan that's trying to pretty-up a doomsday post.

[Ankido]

For those of us who played games like World of Warcraft from the very start knew it would be a rough ride at launch. Honestly, I never expected a game to feel like an old 2004 title. I'm sorry, if I was leading the team for TOR, I would do everything I can in my power to counter attack the greatest MMORPG of all time. You can't start small and say "we're adding new content as we go along". I'm sorry, I waited many years for this game and I didn't expect another Sims 3 where it was just graphic updates and nothing more. I wanted a title with the bells and whistles. HOLY COW!!! It's 2012, technology and minds are far greater than what they used to be in 2004. You have to upgrade computer parts every 3-6 months because every month something new and better is coming out.

 

I will agree with the OP no matter what you say. So what he doesn't work for what he claims that's not the point. The fact he nailed every point and issue that is going on with TOR makes his post valid. Nobody is hating on a game YOU DON'T OWN or PROFIT ON. You can't make me choose what I want to play or how I feel. If you can't counter the OP with professional criticism, then you belong on the Disney forums. Haven't you guys learned how to debate in 8th grade? My bad, you guys might still be in grammar school.

[trinta]

FF14 is a strange occurrence in the industry .. but SOE has many issue with MMOs and console titles, particularity the FF series they need to resolve.

 

Do you typically mix your companies in your professional analyses, too? SOE isn't involved with FF.

[ViceGat]

How with your busy professional analyst schedule, did you have time to accomplish so much in the game, when the game isn't even a month old?

[Xxon]

didn't people like you cause the housing crysis?

 

Not really....if he claims he is an analyst for goldman sachs is wasnt really 'people like him' it was more the ceos/chairmen/presidents of the big investment banks who were in control and giving out toxic mortgages to their customers then betting against them to fail. An analyst probably didnt have much say in it although they might have known what was going on most analysts are near the bottom of the totem pole.

 

Either way how does that relate to anything....

Edited January 6, 2012 by Xxon

[Zmidponk]

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.

 

You want to know why people don't refute his 'points'? To put it as you did:

 

HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY MAKE ANY SOLID ONES

 

OK, that's a slight exaggeration - he does does have one or two valid points, such as the ability delay bug and the bugged flashpoints, which Bioware are working on. For the rest, all he's done is take some opinions based on assumptions and some numbers pulled out of arse, as far as I can see, dress it up in some word salad, and prefaced it with various reasons as to why he's so awesome and therefore correct.

[clocknane]

This game launched well, but the problem is, its a crap game overall. WoW's launch was terrible but it was worth sticking around because it was a good game.

 

I disagree completely with your response. I find SWTOR have had a great launch and be a good game. Wow had a rocky launch but HAS GOOD points about it. It is a good game, but has drastically gone downhill since Wrath exp. The content is just not the same in Wow as it used to be. Swtor has only been out for 2-3 weeks. It will take time for bugs to be fixed (which they have started on) so you cannot expect it to be as polished as wow. I played wow from beta all the way up to SWTOR's release and I can say it DID NOT start out as a "good game." Just my 2 cents.