SWTOR's in your MMO stealing your subs

[Lethality]

Interesting article from Gamebreaker TV Apparently Blizzard is admitting that TOR is the reason (or one of them) that they have lost so many subs. They do give some pretty level headed reasons behind it; anyway it's worth a watch.

 

Hehe, I wouldn't think it's much of concern.

[kevlarto]

wow is getting old to what I suspect is most people outside of it's fans, they will be there until they pull the plug all games have thier fanbois, nothing wrong with that, heck Ashrons Call, is still going, and it's not f2p, so it must be making money and I am sure it's made up of AC fans.

 

Wow was losing subs for 4 straight quaters before TOR even came out, there stock was downgraded, can't be number one for ever, it had a good run and it is still a money maker just not as much, and I am sure it will go free to play unless, the Blizz people don't want to compete against it's new mmo..

[Sindorin]

I am a bit concerned about this as well, particularly as I was never much of a Star Wars fan to begin with. Star Wars has a lot of "rules" associated with it; the longer I play the more I realize just how restricted BW is regarding it's storytelling and such.

 

Lucasarts has already confirmed that BW has essentially, a free hand. They can do whatever they want, and Lucasartsonly steps in to prevent some of the more "risque" elements from going too far. There's a news article somewhere about that. Your fears and his point is invalid.

[Isaiahsdad]

I'm very excited for MoP. BLizz is adding some pretty cool things. I like this game as well. There is just something about this game I cannot put my finger on, something is wrong. I sent a free 7 day to a buddy of mine who never played mmo's his qoute was " I would really love the pvp in Swtor if i was 10 "

[alderdale]

been thinking of going back there myself

 

YOu can but you will leave again for the same reasons, the game is unfortunately still pretty boring to play. Though some people like Ember Isle I thought it was just awful, nothing at all new same textures and mobs on an island doing the same things they did before, Ember Isle was what finaly did it for me.

[ConradLionhart]

I am one of those players, though I quit back in June 2011.

[ConradLionhart]

wow is getting old to what I suspect is most people outside of it's fans, they will be there until they pull the plug all games have thier fanbois, nothing wrong with that, heck Ashrons Call, is still going, and it's not f2p, so it must be making money and I am sure it's made up of AC fans.

 

Wow was losing subs for 4 straight quaters before TOR even came out, there stock was downgraded, can't be number one for ever, it had a good run and it is still a money maker just not as much, and I am sure it will go free to play unless, the Blizz people don't want to compete against it's new mmo..

 

To add more fuel to the fire, they recently also laid off a lot of employees.

[Cournel]

because they KNOW BioWare aren't crappy developers

 

Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 begged to differ.

[Cerion]

I think Blizzard is fooling themselves there.

 

They are losing subs because they release content patches at a snails pace and refuse to address problem specs.

 

I'm sure some people left WoW for ToR. I'm sure many others just left.

 

 

Yeah. Leaving for SWTOR is only a symptom of WoW's problem. If Blizzard doesn't see that, then they're lost. I always wondered why WoW fans put up with the paltry content updates that WoW provided. I mean, cripesake, WoW brings in the equivalent of a blockbuster movie in revenues every freaking month. If I were running a movie studio with that kind of revenue stream, I'd have a movie coming out every month.

 

But no. Blizzard is hoarding their cash...players were bound to catch on sooner or later.

[ConradLionhart]

Yeah. Leaving for SWTOR is only a symptom of WoW's problem. If Blizzard doesn't see that, then they're lost. I always wondered why WoW fans put up with the paltry content updates that WoW provided. I mean, cripesake, WoW brings in the equivalent of a blockbuster movie in revenues every freaking month. If I were running a movie studio with that kind of revenue stream, I'd have a movie coming out every month.

 

But no. Blizzard is hoarding their cash...players were bound to catch on sooner or later.

 

Some of them are addicted to WoW and cannot quit. They are caught in the race to have the best gear possible. Loot is a very powerful carrot that keeps people playing.

 

They must meet that quota of .... 1200 Valor Points or something, can't remember the exact number. So they must do heroics! If they don't, they will miss out on those few Valor Points before it resets and be behind everyone else.

 

I cannot see how doing heroics hundreds of times to be fun. It is not fun. They do it just for the gear.

 

But the formula works. Look at Diablo. There is more clicking than you can count, killing the same monsters over and over again. But people do it for power.

[wehttambassist]

I think Blizzard is fooling themselves there.

 

They are losing subs because they release content patches at a snails pace and refuse to address problem specs.

 

I'm sure some people left WoW for ToR. I'm sure many others just left.

 

I'm also guessing that people left WoW for ToR hoping for increased content rates.

 

Are they going to get it? I don't know. This current pace seems a bit slow, but I think they're doing okay. I'm not bored yet, anyway.

[Rouge]

Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 begged to differ.

 

Metacritic rating for ME3 is 91 and DA2's is 82 and with ME3 ME series is being raised to the pantheon of popular culture in mainstream press and genre media alike. Personally, I think ME's lack something that KOTOR1 had and that's SW. That's why I'm playing three hours of SWTOR per day and haven't bought ME3.

[NoxiousAlby]

Interesting article from Gamebreaker TV Apparently Blizzard is admitting that TOR is the reason (or one of them) that they have lost so many subs. They do give some pretty level headed reasons behind it; anyway it's worth a watch.

As a 7 year Wow veteran I imagine it would be better for Blizz to come out and blame Swtor for stealing their subs. The plain cold hard truth is they farked up, they listened to the hardcore minority and went from a population high in Wotlk to Cataclysm with rehashed dungeons and the raid or die mentality for character gear progression...that is why they lost subs.

[EnsignSorrow]

Like has been said before. TOR did bring a lot of players that are new to MMOs. I noticed that in-game. It's good for the whole MMO community, because it's simply not as fun when everyone is a veteran.

[Jederix]

I think Blizzard is fooling themselves there.

 

They are losing subs because they release content patches at a snails pace and refuse to address problem specs.

 

I'm sure some people left WoW for ToR. I'm sure many others just left.

 

Most likely this. They are just looking to place blame everywhere except on themselves for lost subs.

 

I'm sure ToR was one of many reasons they lost subs, but it isn't the only one by any means.

[Jederix]

You mean like SWTOR?

 

This game will lose subs when GW2 and MoP both release. Anyone that things otherwise is fooling themselves. My guild from here is already planning on playing GW2.

 

GW2 might take some because it's free and a subset of the gaming community think it will be the 2nd coming of MMOs (it will be mediocre at best, don't kid yourself).

 

It won't affect this game as much as you think. And free to play soon? Not happening either.

[Jederix]

This isn't a word.

 

Regardless mean 'without regard'. Your made up word means re, re twice basically. lol

 

I agree. Sadly, however, it is now in the dictionary as a legitimate word because enough ignorant sods used it.

 

Thus is the state of the English language. Irregardless is a double negative, but it gets to be a word now because people don't know proper English.

 

Ok, grammar rant over (for now )

[Jederix]

Yeah. Leaving for SWTOR is only a symptom of WoW's problem. If Blizzard doesn't see that, then they're lost. I always wondered why WoW fans put up with the paltry content updates that WoW provided. I mean, cripesake, WoW brings in the equivalent of a blockbuster movie in revenues every freaking month. If I were running a movie studio with that kind of revenue stream, I'd have a movie coming out every month.

 

But no. Blizzard is hoarding their cash...players were bound to catch on sooner or later.

 

Developing things and making sure they work correctly takes time more than money. Things can only be developed so fast.

 

I don't see development time as an issue; you cannot keep content available for those of you who choose to chew it up so quickly. It just is not possible for any game, even the Mighty WoW.

[Painstorm]

Of course SWTOR is "stealing" subscribers from other games incl. WoW.

New games will always do that.

However, every single WoW player I know that started playing SWTOR, have now come back to WoW again.

They are either already unsubscribed to SWTOR or waiting for their 3-month subscription to run out.

[Evangolis]

The new farmville.

 

I love playing this game but it will be f2p soon.

 

Sad, but true.

 

The only sad thing here is in your misguided thinking you feel you speak the truth.

[Ebbikenezer]

This is nothing new. Whenever a new MMO releases, WoW always loses subs. Happened when AoC released, happened again during Warhammer release.

 

Everyone flocks to the new and shiny. Then the new MMO tanks and people flock back. SWTOR hasn't tanked yet. People are still looking forward to the 1.2 patch. When SWTOR tanks people will go back.

 

No MMO can kill WoW.

 

Wow will kill itself. It's already dying a slow and painful death on it's own. And Blizzard is very well aware of it.

 

I think this year (2012) will be different for Blizzard. There are a few (big) MMOs to contend with (SWTOR, TERA, GW2) as well as fighting their own release, Diablo 3 (which stinks, in the beta anyways, as far as I'm concerned, it's D2 with better graphics and some real money).

 

I played WoW hardcore from end of Vanilla/Launch of TBC until clearing all difficulties in Dragon Soul and I have to say: Nail was hit on the head with the content at a snail's pace statement. They have never learned, and I don't think they will. People are consuming content faster and faster, and every expansion they ALWAYS promise content will come out faster at Press Conference/Beta talks, but they NEVER follow through on that. They are promising it again this time around, but based on 6 years of experience before I quit: Don't hold your breath.

 

I do agree: WoW will kill itself. But other MMOs with more frequent content will help it along.

 

I also don't think SWTOR will "tank" so to speak. I'm sure there will be a small dip, then a much bigger one for GW2 and then people will come back as GW2 doesn't cost $ for sub as well as not offering raids (as we know them) or a lot of other things conventional MMOs have.

 

The other games you mentioned didn't tank because WoW was better, not necessarily. MMOs tank because they don't have enough content or because people get out of their "WoW safe zone" and can't be bothered to keep trying to learn new ways to accomplish things.

[asbalana]

We all have our take.

 

IMO WOW lost a ton of subs because Cata is a big fail and early on many subscribers were alienated by it. Blizzards initial reaction was to insult their customers and belittle complaints. That is until the sub numbers started to drop like a rock. I think that perhaps like me, many who are playing swtor unsubbed from WOW before the swtor launch and rather than play WOW just waited for a new game to come into being.

 

Over and over and over again, on the WOW forum I saw the comment "Nothing will kill WOW except for WOW". I think that is what has happened. I do not believe the large sub drop in WOW is a result of Rift or Swtor but rather the fail that the game has become for many players. WOW (thanks to Ghostcrawler) became raid or die and most players are not raiders. Even those players who are raiders can only grind the raids for so long. Cata aimed the game entirely at the end game and then defined that as raiding. Average players were told that they were bads and should l2p. The game devolved into a repetive grind for gear and little else.

 

I don't know if swtor will make the same mistakes, but customers leave when they are not happy with a product for the most part.

 

As far as people leaving to wait for MOP, I call bull. I remember the reaction at Blizzcon when MOP was announced (GC was booed) and as a result of the announcement the large hit of unsubbing that followed. If I like and am enjoy playing a game, why in the world would I unsub and wait for an expansion rather than play through to it?

[Darth_Bond]

blizzard still like 100X richer than BW, = blizzard has nothing to worry about from the loud mouth Mr T

[Avenox]

[

Leveling experience and journey > endgame.

 

False.

 

Me and many more like me are doing it solely for the end game.

 

I die inside every time I have to waste time on leveling.

[Frostvein]

I think this year (2012) will be different for Blizzard. There are a few (big) MMOs to contend with (SWTOR, TERA, GW2) as well as fighting their own release, Diablo 3 (which stinks, in the beta anyways, as far as I'm concerned, it's D2 with better graphics and some real money).

 

I played WoW hardcore from end of Vanilla/Launch of TBC until clearing all difficulties in Dragon Soul and I have to say: Nail was hit on the head with the content at a snail's pace statement. They have never learned, and I don't think they will. People are consuming content faster and faster, and every expansion they ALWAYS promise content will come out faster at Press Conference/Beta talks, but they NEVER follow through on that. They are promising it again this time around, but based on 6 years of experience before I quit: Don't hold your breath.

 

I do agree: WoW will kill itself. But other MMOs with more frequent content will help it along.

 

I also don't think SWTOR will "tank" so to speak. I'm sure there will be a small dip, then a much bigger one for GW2 and then people will come back as GW2 doesn't cost $ for sub as well as not offering raids (as we know them) or a lot of other things conventional MMOs have.

 

The other games you mentioned didn't tank because WoW was better, not necessarily. MMOs tank because they don't have enough content or because people get out of their "WoW safe zone" and can't be bothered to keep trying to learn new ways to accomplish things.

 

 

Agreed.

 

You had 3 raids released in 2 years with Wrath, and another 3 (4? I don't even remember) single encounter bosses. Counting lolNaxxlol, you had close to or over 50 baddies - and that was really in a years time, since ICC was out for the better part of a year. a YEAR.

 

In Cata, you had 2 raids released in 2 years. Freaking two, and the boss count total was what, 13? 15? Combined with the original 3 half sized raids that's less then 30.

 

Aside from not investing the necessary resources and pulling their best people off, I think they hamstrung themselves by going to a 3 raid tier model in addition to the 10/25 man split. That means 1 boss has to be configured 5 different ways (25 man LFR, 10/25 man normal, 10/25 man heroic)

 

WoW dies not because other MMO's are doing it better, WoW dies because it stopped doing what made it so great to begin with.

 

From a hardcore raider PoV, this games endgame is far inferior to WoW's endgame. I just got tired of their BS about "class balance is hard 7 years into the game, which is why BM's been broken for 3 and a half years now" (and I wasn't even a Hunter) and their snails pace content patches.

 

300+ wipes on HRag using a spec I hate because they told me point blank (yes, told me specifically on their forums) that they refused to make numbers adjustments in tier was more then enough to seal that games fate for me. The problem I have now is that there isn't a game who has the type of raiding model I am interested in.