Has SWTOR "broken even" yet?

[Viera]

SWTOR is the new number one lets see what we have...

 

Missing systems that are in every other MMO on the planet.

 

World PvP is broken.

 

Raids are broken.

 

Lack of end game content outside grinding up alts.

 

The game isn't anywhere near done yet, those games you listed? AO and AoC are not doing all that bad as F2P games. WoW is still on top. SWG is remembered as one of the greatest MMO's made up til the CU/NGE. And Aion hasn't done all that bad for it's self.

 

Annnd you are implying the following:

 

1) That your opinion is universal fact.

2) That bugs are some how worse than the game literally being inaccessible for days at time

3) That SWG is remembered as 'the greatest mmo' by more than just a collective of die-hard fans who enjoyed SWG.

[MGriffith]

SWTOR is the new number one lets see what we have...

 

Missing systems that are in every other MMO on the planet.

 

World PvP is broken.

 

Raids are broken.

 

Lack of end game content outside grinding up alts.

 

The game isn't anywhere near done yet, those games you listed? AO and AoC are not doing all that bad as F2P games. WoW is still on top. SWG is remembered as one of the greatest MMO's made up til the CU/NGE. And Aion hasn't done all that bad for it's self.

 

Most of what you say is opinion presented as fact.

I can't say that I personally am missing any of these features that keeps getting complained about. I won't particularly care if they are added, nor will I complain if they are left out (mind, they are being added withing a month's time. So your argument is that they were not added right away).

PvP is not my cup of tea so I can not comment in detail about it. I have the impression that broken is a strong word for its state, but it certainly is being replaced by Bioware so I guess they agree at least in part with you.

No idea what you are refering to with raids are broken. I believe there was one operation that had a step that could become incompletable, which has since been fixed?

The lack of endgame is a result of your personal preference to how a game should be played. You basically exclude almost everything that you could be doing and then complain that what is left does not fill your time? You are entitled to feel whatever you want, but that does not make your opinion universally valid. And to be honest, I do not even understand what, to you, constitutes an 'end game' activity. Other than that apparently it is not any of the many things you could be doing.

 

Just about all games actually do better as free to play. This is because people (and players in particular) are poor at impulse control and tend to easily spend small amounts of money very often but balk at the thought of long term commitment/subscriptions.

The problem with the mechanism is that there is no initial revenue that offsets a huge investment. A succesful free to play game is either an existing game that gets reworked into the new system (LoTRO, CoH, EQ and many more) or a game that is made quickly and cheaply (the floods of cheap online games with the Zynga games at the lowest end, and the korean grindfests at the highest).

 

Also, the list was about games that had a disastrous launch, to the point where they were effectively unplayable. Compared to that SW:TOR had certain non-essential features missing. No frequent server crashes, no constant client crashes. No content that was said to be in game but turned out to have been absent for years.

Every new game launches with enough content to keep the 80 or so percent of the players happy that will go through the game at a moderate to slow pace, and some content for the ones who burn through it. The developers expect to loose a significant percentage of the early players simply because it is impossible to create content quickly enough to keep them occupied. The type of player who comes here to complain that they spacebarred their way to the conversations, skipped non class quests so they could have the first level 50 and now find there is nothing to do at that level.

 

It is obvious that for some reason you are disappointed by this game. It is equally obvious this is not the game you hoped it would be. What is baffling me is what you (as in the generic you who come here to vent their frustration, not the you I am replying to) hope to achieve? By all objective measures this game launched smoothly, has relatively little flaws and the flaws that are identified are resolved or being worked on to be resolved quickly.

If you want to developers to admit that there are missing features and flaws with the game, then take one look at the release notes for patch 1.2 and you can see that you got that.

If you want confirmation that the game is as bad as you personally feel it is the, sorry, you are not going to get that. The statistics just disagree with you.

Which really leaves, as far as I can understand, that you feel cheated out of your expectations for this game and want the whole world to know how you feel. I am afraid that is what facebook is for, to tell the whole world of your likes and dislikes.

 

On the other hand, constructive ideas of what went wrong and what could be done to fix them are always most welcome and interesting to read.

 

 

*steps off her soap box and chops the bothersome thing into kindling*

[Eroex]

SWTOR is the new number one lets see what we have...

 

Missing systems that are in every other MMO on the planet.

 

They are adding them, just like almost every other game did after launch...

 

World PvP is broken.

 

Ilum isnt world PVP. Its more of a huge perpetual battle field. Actual world PVP is fine.

 

Raids are broken.

 

No they arent, they have been cleared many times. Sure it has a few bugs but they were able to be worked around, and the harder ones to work around were fixed.

 

Lack of end game content outside grinding up alts.

You must be playing a different game than I am. Multiple hardmode flash points, Warzones, and 10 operations bosses. WoW had 11 at the begining.

 

The game isn't anywhere near done yet, those games you listed? AO and AoC are not doing all that bad as F2P games. WoW is still on top. SWG is remembered as one of the greatest MMO's made up til the CU/NGE. And Aion hasn't done all that bad for it's self.

 

 

You care comparing how they are now to this game.

 

I said launch. AT LAUNCH none of these games were F2P and were in terrible shape.

 

 

The conclusion is; you are clueless.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Eroex

[fungihoujo]

except that GAMESTOP GOT A HUGE CUT OF THE ORIGINAL 60 DOLLARS.

 

Bioware MIGHT see 20-30 bucks from store box sales.

 

Digital downloads cost them less and thus net them more profit, but there is still the transaction costs (~5$) as well as the overhead (more then likely negligible, but still existent)

 

Gamestop gets very little from store box sales- from new sales in general. Gamestop makes most of its profits off of two things- used games sales, and gaming guarantees.

[kaboro]

Im sure it not only "broke even" but made a big profit, because the game we are playing could not have cost more than a few millions.

200 millions? 190 millions must have gone directly in the pockets of Dallas Dickinson and Richard Vogel.

No way the game we are playing now cost 200 mil.

SWTOR as we see it now cost maybe 10 mil....maybe.

It offers less than obscure games offered 10 years ago.

Now if players put enough pressure on them, maybe Dallas Dickinson and Richard Vogel will put a few of the 190mil they pocketed into actual game development?

[Asavar]

Please don't tell community members to leave it is rude and making people unconformable or encouraging someone to leave is sometime BW DOES NOT WANT US TO DO

 

Maybe they should, because some of these people really need to leave.

 

 

Im sure it not only "broke even" but made a big profit, because the game we are playing could not have cost more than a few millions.

200 millions? 190 millions must have gone directly in the pockets of Dallas Dickinson and Richard Vogel.

No way the game we are playing now cost 200 mil.

SWTOR as we see it now cost maybe 10 mil....maybe.

It offers less than obscure games offered 10 years ago.

Now if players put enough pressure on them, maybe Dallas Dickinson and Richard Vogel will put a few of the 190mil they pocketed into actual game development?

 

 

Go back to WoW.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Asavar

[kaboro]

Maybe they should, because some of these people really need to leave.

 

 

 

 

 

Go back to WoW.

 

This kind of attitude made many an mmo extinct.

I would go back to wow....problem is i never played wow more than a month so im at a loss here, dunno what to do.

I think wow is one of the worst mmos ever made, hate to see swtor going the same way.

Edited March 18, 2012 by kaboro

[kaboro]

Gamestop gets very little from store box sales- from new sales in general. Gamestop makes most of its profits off of two things- used games sales, and gaming guarantees.

 

Maybe that was true at some point in time, i doubt it is true now though.

[wifeaggro]

So how close do you think SWTOR is to breaking even on the 200mil they invested into the game prior to launch?

 

 

After paying staff, hardware maintiance, electric bills ECT. Do you think they are any where close to breaking even yet?

 

they made their money back in sales 2 mill x60 and about another 400 k at 150 bucks for collectors box

[Synystar]

No and yes, the speed that they are loosing subs is rapid at this moment; and with 1.2 they are making it so we all don't have to leave our ships, only to train and gather gear.

Ive seen guilds with 500+ mmo players cancel there subs, i've been forced to join other guilds who are following suit; mark my words, by mid September next year they will be down to their 500k mark, as this game has no real Umph to keep a player playing.

This is coming from someone who experienced many mmos' i've been around the group since opening of EQ.

This is just like the NGE of swg, where the subs dropped drastically due to the fact of simplicity. The only reason it worked for wow was because it brought a "kid" feel to it; Where most star wars fans are much more older, and want to make their own legacy... not follow 8.

With the open date of diablo 3, subs will drop here

With GW2 around the corner, subs again will drop here.

To make a star wars game have the feel of star wars, it almost HAS to be open-sandbox, if not it will just feel like another console game. I loved the richness this game has, don't get me wrong. But its just missing the ball with one-click crafting, Illum being really brutal, and the WZ grind being very intolerable. I couldn't care much for a pet system. Just don't feel a game where you stand in the station, i like to explore and have the feeling of seeing something new, not having boundaries or invisible walls get in my way. Really lacks the ability to be an individual, with its cookie-cutter specs and such, a good reason as to why i didn't enjoy wow as others' had.

but yeah, sick of looking for new groups of players, only to have them leave and either wait again for a new MMO or play something else. For me i'm going to wait, who knows maybe bio-ware has HUGE plans for this game yet and 2 years down the road it might be viable.

-Oh, and yeah i'm playing currently, writing this while standing in the station. as i don't feel like leveling a third 50 in the same zones with the same quests. 50 marauder, and a 50 commando. My sub ends in the middle of april, then i will decide if i want to stay or not, but with diablo coming out, i highly doubt i will stay.

[wifeaggro]

No and yes, the speed that they are loosing subs is rapid at this moment; and with 1.2 they are making it so we all don't have to leave our ships, only to train and gather gear.

Ive seen guilds with 500+ mmo players cancel there subs, i've been forced to join other guilds who are following suit; mark my words, by mid September next year they will be down to their 500k mark, as this game has no real Umph to keep a player playing.

This is coming from someone who experienced many mmos' i've been around the group since opening of EQ.

This is just like the NGE of swg, where the subs dropped drastically due to the fact of simplicity. The only reason it worked for wow was because it brought a "kid" feel to it; Where most star wars fans are much more older, and want to make their own legacy... not follow 8.

With the open date of diablo 3, subs will drop here

With GW2 around the corner, subs again will drop here.

To make a star wars game have the feel of star wars, it almost HAS to be open-sandbox, if not it will just feel like another console game. I loved the richness this game has, don't get me wrong. But its just missing the ball with one-click crafting, Illum being really brutal, and the WZ grind being very intolerable. I couldn't care much for a pet system. Just don't feel a game where you stand in the station, i like to explore and have the feeling of seeing something new, not having boundaries or invisible walls get in my way. Really lacks the ability to be an individual, with its cookie-cutter specs and such, a good reason as to why i didn't enjoy wow as others' had.

but yeah, sick of looking for new groups of players, only to have them leave and either wait again for a new MMO or play something else. For me i'm going to wait, who knows maybe bio-ware has HUGE plans for this game yet and 2 years down the road it might be viable.

-Oh, and yeah i'm playing currently, writing this while standing in the station. as i don't feel like leveling a third 50 in the same zones with the same quests. 50 marauder, and a 50 commando. My sub ends in the middle of april, then i will decide if i want to stay or not, but with diablo coming out, i highly doubt i will stay.

 

youll win no fans here though you are correct.By summer this will be antoher MMO floating at 400 to 500 k subs. . They missed the demographic and made a single player lobby game with online features. it loses its flavor faster then a piece of 10 cent bubble gum.

[Synystar]

youll win no fans here though you are correct.By summer this will be antoher MMO floating at 400 to 500 k subs. . They missed the demographic and made a single player lobby game with online features. it loses its flavor faster then a piece of 10 cent bubble gum.

 

i like that analogy, I'm trying my best to keep positive about it as bioware is a great gaming company, i just have a feeling that LA (smed) might have gotten his head into this one thinking it was still a good idea. But yeah not interested in the player lobby at all.

[Kalfear]

apparently it only needs to 500k subs to just maintain it each year, its on 2mil subs atm so its not dying any time soon

 

Just for clarity!

 

When they say 800,000 (not 500,000) to break even each year they mean 500kx12 months at average subscription rate (beleive the average around $13.00/month)

 

Not 500k for 1 month of paid subscriptions.

 

800,000 x 12 x $13 = 124,800,000 x box sales for those 800,000 (roughly $200,000,000.00).

 

Right now they have (again roughly as you have to know profit margin of boxes and then of digital, ect. So lets rough guess at the old standard of $20.00 profit for each box after all costs and what not taken away)

 

$20.00x 2,000,000 + (1,700,000x$13.00) = 62,100,000 currently (as 12 months hasnt gone by and we dont have real numbers for the 2nd month sub rate after free month, we only have the 1700000 they released to investors just prior to the first reup date)

 

So just to play devils advocate,

 

$62,100,000 < $124,8000,000

 

Fact is we dont know if they made their money back yet.

 

2 million box sales in the first month should be veiwed a success but what was box sales after that? What are the REAL sub numbers after the 2nd month ran out?

 

Has TOR broken even yet? Doubtful as the break even will be planned for 12-24 month s after release, not 1-2 months after release.

 

Will TOR break even? Im fairly sure it will.

 

Will EA investors be happy with TOR rate of return? Yeah I dont think so. 6 weeks ago on my server prome time was heavy load, 100+ in every zone. Today on Alderaan, 8 pm local server time, Saturday night, 14 players. I can honestly say I have not seen a single location (planet, fleet, what ever) with more then 26 players in it at any time in the last 3 weeks. This game was sold on having millions for over 12 months period. not just 2 million for 4 weeks max.

 

Glad im not a investor!

 

And btw, Im having a blast playing game as a Massively Single Player RPG. I truely doubt this game ever manages now to hit it big with the subscriber base because its not a real MMORPG. Its just some people playing a single player game at once.

 

PS: And no, GW2 is not going to do things better and yada yada yada. GW2 will start off with a smaller North American base (as its always been a European base game) then TOR and loss most of its North American subs in the first month as well becaus eGW2 is not the answer to anything.

 

The game that gets it right and takes the MMORPG genre by storm presently isnt in production (or at least common knowledge to the masses). The genre is stagnant and stale and needs some big thinkers who will do their homework and understand the genre to bring it back to prominence.

[navycrow]

Omg WoW launch oyu want to talk about bad... man i wanted to cry hey look at me i just finally hit lvl 5 bam world server is down.. relog server is down for 3 days straight..

 

Aion QUEEEEEE and more QUEEEEEEEEEE and more QUEEEEEEEEE.

 

swtor wait 3 days bam was in no probs at all

[Cygann]

The whole point of an analogy is to draw a comparison. "These two things are alike in the same way."

 

I can totally agree on the fact that my analogy was bad picked if you think how I wanted to say that those two things are alike. But I did not.

 

I really think you are smart enough to see that I was not intending to compare theft to bugs, but you just choose to make you reply over that instead of over real message that many games that are failed half products do not justify the next game to be one and take your money for it.

 

Also, the fact that so many rather jumped on that line instead of commenting the real point of the post that followed also tells a lot to any smart person...

 

You people simply should not be happy to pay for bad product no matter how badly you would like to have it. And even if you are content with what you got, be tolerant enough to listen and understand the problems others have with it. That is the foundation of mature discussion.

 

To so blindly defend the game against any and all critique will eventually only hurt yourself. Because anyone that is not happy will eventually leave, and those that stay will be left with bad product and to few people to play and socialize with.

 

That leads to another narrow minded comment all over these forums where fanbois respond to any complaint with - go and quit. Be careful what you wish for since any MMO (or MP game in general) is only as good as it's community regardless how good or bad game itself is.

[Runeshard]

youll win no fans here though you are correct.By summer this will be antoher MMO floating at 400 to 500 k subs. . They missed the demographic and made a single player lobby game with online features. it loses its flavor faster then a piece of 10 cent bubble gum.

 

We'll have to wait and see. The most recent numbers say that the subs number is 1.7 million (as of last of Feb) and those do not include the Australian/Asian servers. Considering that certain people have been claiming that this game will only have 500-700k subscribers for months now I'm going to remain sceptical to any such doom and gloom predictions which have no actual evidence to back it up.

Edited March 21, 2012 by Runeshard