Where does our $15 a month go to?

[iRouven]

It's too bad I payed for something that was broken and am in too much denial to admit it cause the wheels are so shiny. Did you buy a used piece of crap or a brand new 2012 model?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I understand thus far:

 

You really love your car and you are quite fond of it. However it is just a piece of junk and you realize it's only a regular car and not an all terrain.

 

My honest opinion in this analogy - maybe ride the bike a few times, then try it again?

 

My model was brand new and I love it. Yes, it doesn't accelerate to 100km/h in 6 seconds and the trunk could be a bit larger (although I can fold the seats down). But the mileage is really good for me.

[NoktemAeternus]

why is it so hard for people to understand its so the people can keep their jobs, you know...they dont have families or anything like that

 

edit: typo

Edited April 9, 2012 by NoktemAeternus

[Kozzmozz]

HAHA all the posts saying none of your business are so dumb.

 

Its our business becasue its our money. The 15 dollars a month is profit. A game is a game whether its a sequel to another one or not. The game has already paid for itself to EA.

 

A cash grab is a cash grab is a cash grab.

 

go back to school and learn something about money & economy.

[Dkzero]

The $15 a month is going towards advertising.

 

It SHOULD be going towards getting 1.2 out the door and server mergers and or character transfers.

 

 

This game is going to ruin Bioware's reputation forever.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

The $15 a month is going towards advertising.

 

It SHOULD be going towards getting 1.2 out the door and server mergers and or character transfers.

 

 

This game is going to ruin Bioware's reputation forever.

 

Really? It was my understanding that it would be Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

[bennyhana]

Correct me if I'm wrong, this is what I understand thus far:

 

You really love your car and you are quite fond of it. However it is just a piece of junk and you realize it's only a regular car and not an all terrain.

 

My honest opinion in this analogy - maybe ride the bike a few times, then try it again?

 

My model was brand new and I love it. Yes, it doesn't accelerate to 100km/h in 6 seconds and the trunk could be a bit larger (although I can fold the seats down). But the mileage is really good for me.

 

I rewrote original to make more sense.

[Faelcyn]

Heh heh there is an easy way to find out actually. Legally, if you own even one share of a company, you are a part owner and can ask to see the books. The company may scoff and refuse, but if you insist they have no choice but to make you sign some confidentiality agreement but then show it to you. Or you can sue them and win easily and they'll then have even more eyes on it.

 

Now I've never bothered doing this, because I don't really care. But if you really, really need to know, just buy shares and then ask their investor relations. I don't know if you can ask investor relations before buying shares, that is something I always wondered. Whenever I ask investor relations without owning stocks they never answer me.

 

First off, if you ever want to know anything about a public company, you should visit the EDGAR site on SEC.gov. This allows you to look at every single public filing including securities registration, press releases, and all periodic filings including 10-K's and 10-Q's which contain the shareholder reports and audited financials in the 10-K's case.

 

As far as EA is concerned, you can't look at a consolidated financial statement and magically understand what they are spending money on in terms of TOR, it's not possible. ToR is created by Bioware, a subsidiary of EA which funds and ultimately publishes this content.

 

The game itself has a very high fixed cost structure, and deferred revenue only complicates EA's profitability projections. If you better want to see the story of EA's war on Activision/Blizzard, look at their cash expenditures between the years of 2007 and 2011. Again, however, their references to SWTOR only come along with BF3 and Fifa. It's not really possible to segment cost structure without actually seeing the books of the separate business division.

 

As far as what you get from the game? I subbed for 6 months pre-launch. Sure it was a 75 dollar gamble, but if you are like me, and have been following this game's release for years before launch, you know what Bioware has put into it. Therefore, I can say, I get into this game what I put into it. I started a guild with friends, and gathered good players, and we raid and have a great time. I pay $15 (less a month because of 6 month sub) because I know that I'll get into it what I put into it. If you are thinking entirely monetarily about your decision to play, then what fun is it for you?

 

Anyway, here's the link to the SEC website I was talking about. Look at EA if you want. It's pretty standard stuff.

EDGAR FILINGS

[Celebrus]

The premise that "this is stuff that should have been fixed before the game released" is a moot point. Any time you build a large, expansive game, bugs tend to happen. Compared to the bugs that were in Skyrim at launch the bugs present in SW:TOR are much less frequent and not nearly as game breaking. However, those issues are being addressed.

 

It is impossible to find every bug in a game this massive. Even with extensive testing a millions of people playing the game, new bugs which have likely been in the game since launch, are still being discovered.

 

I'm sure this is one of the "Don't compare this game to WoW" crowd coming in and glossing over an issue by comparing the game TO A SINGLE PLAYER GAME, which, in my experience as a release purchaser, had no major bugs along the main quest line, certainly no GAME BREAKING bugs.

 

As for the bolded, they are creating more bugs from patch to patch than they are fixing. They aren't simply uncovering problems that they were lazy and left behind, no, they are going the extra step of actually causing more problems than they fix.

 

ITT: People that took an IT course and are suddenly networking, development, and marketing prodigies. As well as abunch of whiny people that can't swing 15 bucks per month.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Celebrus

[demmomannn]

Its like a good pair of shoes or a nice coat...... your paying for the names stitched into em

[joneb]

Its like a good pair of shoes or a nice coat...... your paying for the names stitched into em

 

In my case only if they are drastically reduced in price.

 

This game may cost a lot but maybe if initial costs and salaries werent so high and executive / director greed wasnt so great subscriptions could be probably half the price. But when people are dying because they cant afford to eat or drink this is not such a crisis.

 

This is a world of inequality based on some greedy nasty, selfish, ignorant and often evil people who want so much money they can burn it to keep themselves warm until thy die of old age whilst millions upon millions more die before they hit puberty because they cant even afford basic food or clean water. This is a crisis.

 

At least players can vote with their feet and I can see that coming sooner than later in this game until it takes a subscription / f2p with cash shop model to make it span out a bit more.

[Gangrel]

I'm really not trying to flame here, just really curious; anyway I'll condense my earlier query:

 

Why - and how - can Guild Wars 2 go without a subscription fee?

 

Designing the game so that *AT LAUNCH* it will be "profitable" just on box sales alone <--- this one is probably the most influential decision, as it affected practically all of their follow on decisions as well.

 

It also has a MT shop as well (NON EXCLUSIVE - skill unlocks, extra storage, facial/sex/name changes)

 

It was also designed to be as low data traffic usage as possible (which explains why you can still play it on a dial up connection if you choose to), this help keep bandwidth/server costs to a minimum.

 

The huge amounts of instancing as well probably helps a lot as well with their server requirements.

 

HOWEVER: All expansions for GW you had to pay for (and they were typically £40 each at launch). You didnt need the original (Eye of the North excluded) as they were also "stand alone" titles... so that helped rake in the cash from the player base.

 

I will have to look back into their financials (well NCsoft's at least to see how they are doing "financially", but from what i can remember, Guild Wars actually brought in LESS money than City of Heroes over the 2011 year)

 

From what i can gather, their design choices were made so that they could "run for free" as long as people kept on buying the game.

 

Side note: From what i remember in a interview with an NCsoft bod a few years ago, the Blizzard guys who formed Arena.net were working on WoW, and actually wanted to make WoW F2P (or B2P at least)... Blizzard said no, and so this was their 2 finger salute to them...

Edited April 9, 2012 by Gangrel

[Darth_Moonshadow]

 

Side note: From what i remember in a interview with an NCsoft bod a few years ago, the Blizzard guys who formed Arena.net were working on WoW, and actually wanted to make WoW F2P (or B2P at least)... Blizzard said no, and so this was their 2 finger salute to them...

 

Those guys are Dane Cook fans?

 

Ugh. /Unsubscribed

[demmomannn]

In my case only if they are drastically reduced in price.

 

This game may cost a lot but maybe if initial costs and salaries werent so high and executive / director greed wasnt so great subscriptions could be probably half the price. But when people are dying because they cant afford to eat or drink this is not such a crisis.

 

This is a world of inequality based on some greedy nasty, selfish, ignorant and often evil people who want so much money they can burn it to keep themselves warm until thy die of old age whilst millions upon millions more die before they hit puberty because they cant even afford basic food or clean water. This is a crisis.

 

At least players can vote with their feet and I can see that coming sooner than later in this game until it takes a subscription / f2p with cash shop model to make it span out a bit more.

 

I've stopped playing games that have gone f2p. I refuse to dump any more cash into a game for every single cool or useful item in game that could just as easily be obtained through what was once my subscription. I also find the customer support and good patches go right out the window once they go f2p. Let this game grow and learn how to walk before people try and make it run full tilt. Like any good game, this has the graphics and story nailed down, now just with a little player insight and careful planning, the cool patches can be lined up and knocked down

[RabidPopcorn]

Designing the game so that *AT LAUNCH* it will be "profitable" just on box sales alone <--- this one is probably the most influential decision, as it affected practically all of their follow on decisions as well.

 

It also has a MT shop as well (NON EXCLUSIVE - skill unlocks, extra storage, facial/sex/name changes)

 

It was also designed to be as low data traffic usage as possible (which explains why you can still play it on a dial up connection if you choose to), this help keep bandwidth/server costs to a minimum.

 

The huge amounts of instancing as well probably helps a lot as well with their server requirements.

 

HOWEVER: All expansions for GW you had to pay for (and they were typically £40 each at launch). You didnt need the original (Eye of the North excluded) as they were also "stand alone" titles... so that helped rake in the cash from the player base.

 

I will have to look back into their financials (well NCsoft's at least to see how they are doing "financially", but from what i can remember, Guild Wars actually brought in LESS money than City of Heroes over the 2011 year)

 

From what i can gather, their design choices were made so that they could "run for free" as long as people kept on buying the game.

 

Side note: From what i remember in a interview with an NCsoft bod a few years ago, the Blizzard guys who formed Arena.net were working on WoW, and actually wanted to make WoW F2P (or B2P at least)... Blizzard said no, and so this was their 2 finger salute to them...

 

Yay, someone who replied, thanks.

 

Btw, I was asking about GW2, not GW1 (I've played some GW1, yet to try GW2); anyway, the reason why I'm asking about GW2 is because GW2 seems like it's actually going to be like a real MMO in that it will be a massive, persistent-world experience, i.e. it won't be instanced to death like GW1.

 

Players have to pay for Guild Wars expansions, at the same time players also have to pay for WoW expansions; but players don't have to pay a subscription fee for Guild Wars.

 

And it really wouldn't matter for the players whether the company made a huge or tiny profit, at least to the extent that the game is still being maintained and continually updated.

[Lt_Latency]

To the investors who want a return on their 150+ million investment

[Gangrel]

Yay, someone who replied, thanks.

 

Btw, I was asking about GW2, not GW1 (I've played some GW1, yet to try GW2); anyway, the reason why I'm asking about GW2 is because GW2 seems like it's actually going to be like a real MMO in that it will be a massive, persistent-world experience, i.e. it won't be instanced to death like GW1.

 

Players have to pay for Guild Wars expansions, at the same time players also have to pay for WoW expansions; but players don't have to pay a subscription fee for Guild Wars.

 

And it really wouldn't matter for the players whether the company made a huge or tiny profit, at least to the extent that the game is still being maintained and continually updated.

 

I am assuming that they are still going to be following some of the same design choices.

 

And to be honest, with *limited* potential for future MT stuff in the shop (especially if they keep it along the same lines as what was already in the GW store ie cosmetic/no ingame advantage) then the same design rules would apply.

 

Basically, as long as they keep their operating costs down to a minimum (still no word if there would be official forums... GW itself has none), similar to how they did GW, then they would be relying on the box price to keep themselves afloat.

 

If i could ever get a sit down talk with one of their community peeps i might be able to squeeze out more, but keeping the number of forum staff down *DOES* help quite a bit on monthly costs.

 

I do also believe that *currently* their support staff is actually non existant, and instead NCsoft supply it instead (which is pretty standard for NCsoft published titles to a greater or lesser degree... you will have some specialist GM's for a title, but you will also find some that cover all games).

 

*edit* you are correct in that players *generally* speaking don't mind how much of a profit gets made, the amount of profit that *does* get made can make a difference later on, especially if maintenance costs go up for whatever reason (ie needing more support staff on hand for a big hit).

 

To be honest, i would expect GW2 to sell really well, as in stunningly well. BUT I can guarantee that we would see a population drop of "regular logins" after the 1st 30 days, if not the 1st fortnight, and for it to continue to steadily drop in the long term.

 

This is based on my previous experience with MMO's (I can only name a couple that have bucked this trend in the long term... World of Warcraft and Eve Online).

Edited April 10, 2012 by Gangrel

[NogFizzbin]

It goes for hamster food - lots and lots of hamster food - oh and hot pockets.

[SWTOR-GR]

Let me start by saying I love this game and I don't have a problem affording the subscription fees, but what am I paying $15 a month for?

 

......

 

Or is our monthly fee just simply to fill their wallets?(not knocking a company that's out to make money)

.....

 

 

No the 15 $ are for more things like new content ( did you see any new content except kaon ? ) , to fix the bugs ( 3 months later and we are facing the same bugs in warzones and operations / flashpoints ) to be a mmo that deserve a monthly fee ( oups the game is stil in single /full instanced player mode ) .

Edited April 10, 2012 by SWTOR-GR

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

Developer Ferraris and India

[SWTOR-GR]

Developer Ferraris and India

 

and cigars from cuba

Edited April 10, 2012 by SWTOR-GR

[RabidPopcorn]

I am assuming that they are still going to be following some of the same design choices.

 

And to be honest, with *limited* potential for future MT stuff in the shop (especially if they keep it along the same lines as what was already in the GW store ie cosmetic/no ingame advantage) then the same design rules would apply.

 

Basically, as long as they keep their operating costs down to a minimum (still no word if there would be official forums... GW itself has none), similar to how they did GW, then they would be relying on the box price to keep themselves afloat.

 

If i could ever get a sit down talk with one of their community peeps i might be able to squeeze out more, but keeping the number of forum staff down *DOES* help quite a bit on monthly costs.

 

I do also believe that *currently* their support staff is actually non existant, and instead NCsoft supply it instead (which is pretty standard for NCsoft published titles to a greater or lesser degree... you will have some specialist GM's for a title, but you will also find some that cover all games).

 

*edit* you are correct in that players *generally* speaking don't mind how much of a profit gets made, the amount of profit that *does* get made can make a difference later on, especially if maintenance costs go up for whatever reason (ie needing more support staff on hand for a big hit).

 

To be honest, i would expect GW2 to sell really well, as in stunningly well. BUT I can guarantee that we would see a population drop of "regular logins" after the 1st 30 days, if not the 1st fortnight, and for it to continue to steadily drop in the long term.

 

This is based on my previous experience with MMO's (I can only name a couple that have bucked this trend in the long term... World of Warcraft and Eve Online).

 

On microtransactions: I'm happy to allow microtransactions as long as they don't involve any in-game advantage (such as in combat), and in exchange not have to pay a monthly subscription. Even WoW has such things in the form of mounts and non-combat pets from the Blizzard Store.

 

On customer service: Yea it would suck when you need customer service only to realise that it's non-existent (like bugs in raids etc.); but it really depends on how much a player would want to pay for customer service. With a monthly subscription everyone contributes to the customer service fee but it doesn't necessarily mean that all of us ever uses it.

 

[before I go on to talk about profits, my understanding is that it is implied in the term 'profits' that expenses have been accounted for - i.e. expenses include salaries, server maintenance, and even R&D costs (can also be capitalised but that's another story). It's probable that most of these costs (expenses) are variable after the initial fixed costs threshold - that they have a minimum cost and then increase with the number of subscribers, e.g. server maintenance - but not all of them necessarily would be, such as R&D. Anyway the point is, if we really believe that the bulk of our subscription costs are paying for these expenses then intuitively we would compare the number of subscribers and the profit at each period; if our belief has any truth in it then we would expect expenses to increase linearly with the number of subscribers (yes it could even be decreasing due to savings from economies of scale, but that's one assumption I'll take); but if we discovered that after a certain point expenses no longer increase much but profits increase by a lot then it would imply that they don't really reinvest all the additional subscription money they get into the game - i.e. they'll only spend up to $x per period on the game, any amount above $x goes out of the game. Anyway this is just my rudimentary understanding of it and it depends on many assumptions but it helps support my model on this]

 

On profits: The premise in your statement is that when companies make profits they would reinvest it in the game for further development, so more profits would tend to generate more development; but whether that is really the case has been part of the discussion in this thread. After all, this isn't a non-profit game so it is expected - and their right - to siphon off profits to satisfy shareholders or fulfil other strategic goals. In any case, the minimum we deserve from a game is sufficient maintenance and bug-fixing for the game to be playable - this is regardless of whether we pay a subscription or not.

 

In short, if we can have a game that's objectively as good as SWTOR just that we'd have to sacrifice customer service (and allow cosmetic-improvements from microtransactions) but in return we won't have to pay a monthly subscription fee, I'd support it.

[DiabloDoom]

Maybe back in the eq days.. (ie. early 90s)

 

Since when was EverQuest early 90's? Didn't even have the web then.

[Sabster]

I love these threads. They make me laugh.

 

No the 15 $ are for more things like new content

No it's not.

 

The 15 dollars is a fee to play the game - that's it. What they do with it from there, is Bioware's business. It can go in their pockets, it can go to developers, it can be used to buy a paper airplane that'll fly to the moon. You get no say in what they do with it.

[Fox_McCloud]

What a load of bull***!! some people don't know when to stop.

 

And then GW2 fans wonder why people laugh at them.

 

I am not sure if you are being serious or not...

 

GW2 does indeed have epic 500vs500vs500 combat.

 

In fact the upper limit could be more then that, but they said it would be at least that many. It is one server vs another server vs another server in a three way 2 week long massive battle.

 

If you are not aware of this, then you need to look up GW2 and then become a fan like anyone with a brain has already done.

[EnufThree]

Let me start by saying I love this game and I don't have a problem affording the subscription fees, but what am I paying $15 a month for?

 

Now I pulled up FY 12 financial reports for EA (since they have to post that stuff for share holders) but I gotta say I don't really know exactly how to find my answers if any one is willing to inform me. It can be found at

http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=618768

Or if I am even looking in the right place.

 

-server costs- is it justifiable in 2012 to pay a subscription fee to support and maintain the servers it runs on nowadays? Maybe back in the eq days.. (ie. early 90s)

 

-patches and content updates- are we paying for the bug fixes, balancing tweaks, and maintenance?(obviously maintenance is required after a game release) Stuff that should honestly have been fixed or taken care of before the game was released. In any other genre games tend to get updates all the time that I'm not paying for.

 

-new content- this is a little more tricky.. (almost every game that comes out with new content usually costs)I'm patiently waitin for 1.2 but how often do you think they will be coming out with new content after? Every 3 months or so?(So We're paying $45 for 1 wz and 1 new fp?) on top of possible expansion packs that we're going to most likely pay $50+ for?

 

 

Or is our monthly fee just simply to fill their wallets?(not knocking a company that's out to make money)

Also I know most f2p mmo's are garbage with cash shops but how is charging a monthly fee what makes a "good game".

Now like I said above I am a little unfamiliar with reading the FY12 reports so I could be totally wrong and it could cost that much to maintain the game, but I highly doubt it.

And lastly they just charging a monthly fee because we're willing to pay it?

 

Sorry for the grammatical errors and the sporadicness of this post.(did it on my iPhone at work..)

 

Where does it go? Well I'm sure a good chunk of it goes to the people who made this game possible.

 

And well.... Yeah, it is meant to fill their wallets. That's the point. We play a fun game and they make money off of our fun. This isn't a new system.