From a Goldman Analyst Perspective on SWTOR

[demoncrat]

What was the point of spending 100 million if you're going to essentially go back to SWG subscriber levels?

 

What are they going to do? NGE the delayed combat system?

[Darkmagicxk]

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.

 

-Because it is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO BE BOTH A FAN BOY AND A CRITIC.

 

Where do these people spawn from? Is there anyway to fly my sith inquis there to lightning them for the rest of the month?

[daddymoofle]

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?

 

^ Everyone's been thinking it, but this Wookie said it.

[italky]

I guess you love losing money, then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is absolutely true. I am cringing for the smooth and perfect combat of WoW after playing SW:TOR. I renewed my WoW sub yesterday. =)

 

Congrats. Cya later. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[Abriael]

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

 

You forgot to point out the part in which he claims that this game has 4-5 millions subs. Lemme help.

 

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.)

 

To this the only answer is "BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA"

 

Any analyst with a grain of grey matter in his skull would never, ever, ever go ahead and allege such a science-fiction like number. It's so out of the world that it's still honestly makes me giggle.

 

We all wish this game could have 4-5 million subs. I'm pretty sure a few people at Bioware would give a couple fingers for that. Unfortunately that kind of figure isn't on the menu now, and it's very, very debatable that it'll be on the menu even in the far future.

 

If the game went over 2 millions, we'd know, with plenty fanfare as toppings.

[blikkONE]

Oh man... Goldman analyst on SWTOR. Wow. Whats next.

[Blackwater]

And of course someone rates this post with one star

[CyberdeckVIII]

If this person were really a professional analyst they would know the difference between there and their, very and vary. One of my clients is a small family investment firm and even the receptionist is required to write better than that.

[Frostythefett]

I guess you love losing money, then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is absolutely true. I am cringing for the smooth and perfect combat of WoW after playing SW:TOR. I renewed my WoW sub yesterday. =)

 

I am in the same boat my man. Very upset with the end results of this. Still hanging in there though. Really am tempted to renew my sub but another part of me wants this game to get it's act together.

[darth-mortimus]

There is no serious rebuttal because he is right. I also dont care about his background, but I am also a commerce professional and two things are clear

 

1) that this game failed at launch;

2) people who leave MMOs typically dont give them a second try.

 

SWTOR was released unfinished and essencially still in Beta. Instead of creating new endgame content which is badly needed, Bioware will now have to spend 6 months fixing the bugs and implementing basic features such a dungeon finder. I think at this point Bioware is aware that this game will not do well in the long term and I dont think they will invest the money that is needed to make this game acceptable.

 

Biggest mistakes in my opinion:

 

1) No serious PvP

2) Broken Endgame PvE content

3) A gameworld that feels empty even on full servers

4) No tool to help with group creation at all

5) Lack of basic game features (beyond the voice acting SWTOR is just skin and bones)

6) Terrible customer service

7) Game is basically still in Beta

 

so the 1.5 million at launch=EPIC FAIL. what bubble world do you live in cause i wanna come play in it.

[mcburly]

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?

 

Thats what i was thinking, im on unemployment and a stay at home dad right now and only level 45 and i got in the first day of head start

 

Sorry but Im not buying this guy. Seems to me like some "know-it-all" that went to a lot of work to make an elaborate DOOM post.

 

nice attempt though. best ive seen so far......but the games gonna be fine. successful even.

[iResist]

This is why Goldman Sachs would have went bankrupt without taxpayer intervention.............

 

 

Can't believe no one has brought that up yet.

[Abriael]

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.

 

My, you sure know the market. I'll have you know that FFXIV is developed and published by Square Enix. It has nothing to do with SOE. And Square Enix before FFXIV (with FFXI) actually had a very positive track record in the MMORPG market.

 

You seem to be doing your very best to discredit your "professional" mask even further. What will come next?

 

but after all you did already say that this game has (or had) 4-5 millions subscribers. I dare you to do worse than that

Edited January 6, 2012 by Abriael

[DameonLG]

if you were a investor would you invest in this game?

 

Definitely.

[TheHeadCapper]

I am not about to be specific and analyze data on the forum.

 

The post was ideological in nature, and broad, not specific and not a dissertation on data points.

 

Everyone with a college degree has had "introductory economics"

 

Everyone with an MBA has expounded upon this.

 

Everyone involved in qualitative and quantitative modeling (such as the guys at Blackstone for example.) have advanced degrees often in fields of Advanced science and math. Great, awesome .. most people on the forum will not know many of the terms and abbreviations or understand basic modeling ...

 

So why do it?

 

Put your egos aside, your insults as well.

 

Read the post for what I clearly stated it was and my responses. If you want to troll, feel free ...but you just sound like uniformed morons that want to be some thing they aren't, and I feel the brunt of your frustration in your nasty overaggressive posts.

 

That is fine, if you need to vent, and pick me as your scapegoat, as long as you don't beat your wives or your pet :-)

 

There is no ego. I showed you the basics of analytics and what you need to make even a basic analysis. YYou didn't follow any of it, this is a troll or you are very bad at your job. YOu didn't even explain or respond what the processes where for getting the scientific data needed for an analysis. You don't even explain it at a basic level nevermind a more advanced one.

 

If you can't back up an analysis with objective data and then get mad about it, do you really expect people to put stock in your FAUX analysis?

 

I'll go with troll since you said your an analyst but your profile says different.

Edited January 6, 2012 by TheHeadCapper

[kottonmouth]

The moment you said take the game offline for 2months I knew you are not a goldman sachs analyst, or you are and prove how terrible the firm is?! worst suggestion ever and is a guarantee to kill a product 100% of the time unlike keeping it online with less than 100% failure rate.

 

I do believe if they do not improve costumer support soon this game will fail. It is more important than any bugs currently ingame or lack/missing features.

 

This. It was well written but I have my MBA and I doubt he works for Goldman Sachs and he definitely has no clue what this game needs. If BW keeps the patches coming it will be competitive, if they bolster customer service it will be competitive; if they fail to do either so will their product. I'm of the opinion OP is one of a myriad of proffesional trolls employed to damage faith in this game, they are usually easy to spot. Even if I'm wrong and the OP is just a WoW fan with impressive writing skills (a species as rare as big foot), you people need to realize WoW is dying aswell. It's popular in gold farming China and with pathetic North Americans with less than stellar social/professional lives. Keep your grubby hands off my casual MMO, go play with your stupid Pandas and green midgets. I'm so tired of Blizzard cult trying to bully BW into copying WoW.

[ilovepeanuts]

Definitely.

 

So you didn't learn when Madoff ran off with your two dollars

[Dianoia]

Let me tell you something about Goldman:

 

In May, 2008, Goldman boldly predicted the price of oil would skyrocket to $200/barrel. It peaked at $147 and then crashed.

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/goldman-sachs-raises-possibility-of-200-a-barrel-oil

 

If you look at Goldman's predictions (BRIC, bank earnings in 2010, "buy" on Lehman until it dropped to $5/share, etc.), they're ridiculous.

 

Goldman has absolutely no clue what is going to happen in the market, with virtually any product. It's such a large company, it's deemed TBTF (Too Big To Fail), so it's able to get low interest loans for short terms. It then takes that money and throws it all around the stock market at high-risk investments, turning a profit.

 

Someone who truly worked for Goldman would know this, unless they hide the truth from you (hard to believe), making you feel like you actually have control/foresight on uncontrollables.

 

So, would Goldman invest in this game? Absolutely. It's high risk, with a potential large return. If it fails, they'd /shrug, and walk away with their other billions of dollars from other high-risk investments.

[Swampfot]

It doesn't really matter if he is a real analyst or not. He's making a good point as to why this game isn't worth investing in. Unlike most of you I actually read the whole post and most of what he wrote is spot on to what I felt when I quit 3-4 days ago.

 

The game isn't bad. It is quite alright. I especially liked the quests and not having to spend so much time to find the quest objectives, green doors etc if fine with me. I know some of you think that is bad, but from my point of view it was good.

 

However, the game doesn't feel like a next generation MMO to me. It feel like WoW with a facelift... but the doctor was a drunken sod with no skill. Sure, it looks better graphically than WoW, but the feel of the game isn't up to par with WoW. There is important stuff missing that should be in a new MMO and some things I wouldn't want to play without, like server forums in my case.

 

There were lots of bugs when WoW came out as well, but back then the "audience" didn't have great expectations, the game was ground breaking after all. Nowadays instead of putting up with it, I and probably lots of others, will quit instead. It is not worth my time to play a game that doesn't meet my expectations. Sure, some things can't be helped, but there are too many little things that annoy me like crazy with this game.

 

I sure hope you will like it better than I did. I gave it a chance atleast, leveled a commando to level 50 before I quit.

[Palanor]

Assume

 

and

 

Do this for Aion and review at the 6 months and 1 year marks.

 

Ok I did and the Aion website traffic was never above .04% which is half of where SWTOR is today.

 

Please post some of your data to back up your talk. As my grandpappy says you talk the talk but can you walk the walk?

[Abriael]

This. It was well written but I have my MBA and I doubt he works for Goldman Sachs and he definitely has no clue what this game needs.

 

Not to mention the fact that anyone that has any remote experience in this industry (or any industry really) would never say that this game has or ever had 4-5 million subscribers.

[corbanite]

To post this on a public forum is very unprofessional. Why is he telling a bunch of players this.

 

Now this one I can see being paid by blizzard..

 

Self fulfilling prophecy comes to mind. This guy if he is who he says he telling people not to invest and not just his clients but everyone.

 

If I was bioware given this guys supposed position I would see if maybe there was a case for suing him on grounds of sponsorship loss, he is not just advising his clients to not invest he is advising everyone not to invest.

 

unprofessional and sloppy

Edited January 6, 2012 by corbanite

[SlickDevlan]

So we get another post from "I am soooooooooooooooo qualified to talk about this game because (insert important sounding job/education here)" followed up by a ton of "I'm pretty sure this game is bad because, based on all the evidence I do not have access to, it is bad". Brilliant!

[TheHeadCapper]

To post this on a public forum is very unprofessional. Why is he telling a bunch of players this.

 

Now this one I can see being played by blizzard..

 

Self fulfilling prophecy comes to mind. This guy if he is who he says he telling people not to invest and not just his clients but everyone.

 

If I was bioware given this guys supposed position I would see if maybe there was a case for suing him on grounds of sponsorship loss, he is not just advising his clients to not invest he is advising everyone not to invest.

 

unprofessional and sloppy

 

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

[LogicalPremise]

If this person were really a professional analyst they would know the difference between there and their, very and vary. One of my clients is a small family investment firm and even the receptionist is required to write better than that.

 

Nah. I personally am astounded I can type coherently at all, my secretary cleans up everything I usually write.

 

They don't let those guys touch copy that actually hits the streets, and when stuff breaks most of them are going so fast it sounds like a 4th grader wrote it.