The end of the arguement. Is SWTOR in decline? Can it be saved?

[Socialist]

Nasdaq is bound to have a report on EA's last year, so you can know how much actually went in this game.

 

 

Anyway, I believe the worse thing in this game as of now is the lack of a group maker, cross server preferably. It is quite a pain in the arse to do flashpoints right now, because, frankly, nobody enjoys 20+ minutes of fleet spam trying to get a bunch of droogs together to do a FP.

[Socialist]

By the way, that is merely stock speculation.

 

Don't mind it, it is aimed for the inexperienced investor to fall ()

 

Nobody bashes Airbus/Boeing/Embraer for having initial losses on a new airplane project, because everybody knows that such an investment is long term (around 15 years in that specific case).

 

Besides, big corporations always build a structure that is ahead of the current demand and aiming at the long term demand (say, 5 years), so when the demand rises as expected they have everything set up and don't lose ground to other corporations. Indeed it is a risk, considering demand rises might not go as thought, but a worthy e rewarding risk. So short term wise, losses are expected.

 

Same for a MMO. You just don't gather a bunch of game addicts willing to spend their dough in their addiction in seconds. It takes time and effort.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Socialist

[iheartnyc]

By the way, that is merely stock speculation.

 

 

I wouldn't call it that. I would call it potential "stock manipulation", which by the way is a federal crime.

 

"Section 9 of the Securities Exchange Act prohibits the use or employment of any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance or contravention of such rules and regulation as the SEC may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors."

 

However, serious investors would never believe the rumors floating around on a discussion board. They study trading activity and public filings to detect any potential patterns. Mom and pop investors who would be swayed by such discussion board rumors, don't trade in any meaningful cumulative volume to make a difference anyway.

[Socialist]

I wouldn't call it that. I would call it potential "stock manipulation", which by the way is a federal crime.

 

And that would be naive.

 

You are either in the game or out of it. You'll have one hell of a time trying to prove it and will gain absolutely nothing (in fact you'll lose).

 

 

But indeed, subtle is the line between manipulation and speculation.

[JerokTalram]

I am not going to deny that a good number of subs have left the game but you also have to remember when games are first release people play more often. I know my play time has decreased since launch and probably almost every other subs has too because when it first came out it was the shiny new toy and we played it more than we should have. SWTOR did open up too many servers and hopefully with transfers and possibly mergers, they sort out a core of well populated servers for people to play on.

 

Articles the OP linked to are all rumor and no fact. Is EA going to lay people off, probably. But they probably hired extra staff for the launches of SWTOR and BF3 so even 1000 layoffs could easily be accounted for in a large company like EA.

[killmaimburn]

I really don't see the game dying, however the game does not have features that I want. Was really excited about 1.2, 1.2 addressed alot of things. thought all was well and groovy until.... tank on fleet "Tank LFG HM's" And I get no response for 2 hours. Game needs a LFG tool. So I just unsubbed. I don't want to pvp with my tank, I don't want to run dailies. I'm not going to sit infront of my screen looking stupidly at fleet LFG. So when the implement that I'm gonna resub cause I really like this game. But my ADHD makes it near impossible for me to do mindless repetitive things. SWTOR won't die anytime soon. It'll get better and better... but I don't think anyone's attention span is long enough to play a mmo like this for months on end. I can see EVE players doing that because you're always trying to get a bigger ship, coordinate a trade deal or amass a fortune or something. SWTOR is too limited for that. But meh. Apples and oranges.

[iheartnyc]

And that would be naive.

 

You are either in the game or out of it. You'll have one hell of a time trying to prove it and will gain absolutely nothing (in fact you'll lose).

 

 

These things typically happen over the phone or next to the Halal stand at Broad St. So yes, in that case it would be hard to prove. But once you put something in an email or post online then you're a fool.

 

And no, I would not lose. Private citizens have no standing to enforce SEC regulations - that is the job of the SEC and DOJ.

[Socialist]

These things typically happen over the phone or next to the Halal stand at Broad St. So yes, in that case it would be hard to prove. But once you put something in an email or post online then you're a fool.

 

And no, I would not lose. Private citizens have no standing to enforce SEC regulations - that is the job of the SEC and DOJ.

 

I am not talking about tangible losses.

 

but anyway, let's not deviate from the subject.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Socialist

[DarthVindictus]

By the way, that is merely stock speculation.

 

Don't mind it, it is aimed for the inexperienced investor to fall ()

 

Nobody bashes Airbus/Boeing/Embraer for having initial losses on a new airplane project, because everybody knows that such an investment is long term (around 15 years in that specific case).

 

Besides, big corporations always build a structure that is ahead of the current demand and aiming at the long term demand (say, 5 years), so when the demand rises as expected they have everything set up and don't lose ground to other corporations. Indeed it is a risk, considering demand rises might not go as thought, but a worthy e rewarding risk. So short term wise, losses are expected.

 

Same for a MMO. You just don't gather a bunch of game addicts willing to spend their dough in their addiction in seconds. It takes time and effort.

 

The game industry is a LITTLE bit different. MMO's are a longer term investment sure, but most games there's an initial rush, and after so many weeks, sales fall off, there may be some resurgence in popularity after an expansion, or sequel, or it gets some awards and has a "Game of the year" edition or something, but as far as investors are concerned, games get released and within 10 weeks you've gotten the bulk of your revenue from it.

 

MMO's have long term investment potential, yes, but to make it happen, you've got to have large subscriber bases and bring in new subscribers and stop bleeding old ones.

 

Nothing done thus far has worked on a large enough scale.

[DarthVindictus]

I wouldn't call it that. I would call it potential "stock manipulation", which by the way is a federal crime.

 

"Section 9 of the Securities Exchange Act prohibits the use or employment of any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance or contravention of such rules and regulation as the SEC may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors."

 

However, serious investors would never believe the rumors floating around on a discussion board. They study trading activity and public filings to detect any potential patterns. Mom and pop investors who would be swayed by such discussion board rumors, don't trade in any meaningful cumulative volume to make a difference anyway.

 

Not entirely. News articles about EA being voted worst company in America reached investors and there was a sell off and EA lost about 2.5% of their total worth in a day. You're talking about an economy based on confidence. Yes, earnings statements and financial calls are the most important, but even simple news reports can shake things up unintentionally.

[jasonshort]

Also, GW2, Terra - Also dying.

 

FFS guys, Age of Conan still has enough people to play and enjoy, as does Planetside 1...This game is going nowhere and will just get better and better.

 

 

I agree dude. This game is awesome. Give it some time. Eventually they'll have a server merge. With the amount of servers that they have, there is no way at all to fill them. And the reason the servers went form saying full to saying light is because they raised the pop cap. FFS read the forums!

[Socialist]

The game industry is a LITTLE bit different. MMO's are a longer term investment sure, but most games there's an initial rush, and after so many weeks, sales fall off, there may be some resurgence in popularity after an expansion, or sequel, or it gets some awards and has a "Game of the year" edition or something, but as far as investors are concerned, games get released and within 10 weeks you've gotten the bulk of your revenue from it.

 

MMO's have long term investment potential, yes, but to make it happen, you've got to have large subscriber bases and bring in new subscribers and stop bleeding old ones.

 

Nothing done thus far has worked on a large enough scale.

 

Thanks for the insight.

 

I am a bit amateur when it comes to gaming industry. Never thought such a big project as SWTOR is expected to get the bulk of its revenue in merely 10 weeks.

[Enkenon]

Just saw this on CVG.

 

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/343845/ea-poor-battlefield-3-old-republic-performance-result-in-layoffs/

 

"and Star Wars: The Old Republic, which received similar treatment and has supposedly already seen subscription numbers decline, are big contributing factors to the cuts."

 

http://startupgrind.com/2012/04/exclusive-electronic-arts-set-to-lay-off-500-employees/

This one is a bit more in depth.

 

http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-02-02/markets/31029084_1_ea-shares-earnings-report-unit-sales

This seems to be more focused on the stock from EA and seems to lean both ways.

 

It seems EA have had a poor financial year due to BF3 and SWTOR.

 

I have found this on several other sites, it seems to be reliable.

 

I don't want to start a flame war or an "I told you so" thread. Instead, I was wondering what people would like to see to maybe improve the player base.

I am one of the people that is on the fence, I have around 90 days or so left on my sub but am, as of yet, not convinced to renew it.

Following the new "world event" (which I though was good mostly) maybe this is the way forward?

So lets hear it, what would it take (for those that aren't sure or maybe have already cancelled) to bring you back?

For those that are already commited, what more things would you like improved or added?

 

Lets try and keep it on track and pleasant ok?

 

Ok, weigh in.

 

 

Look at this ugly site and you have all the answers you need.

The guys are clueless.

And they tend to do more wrong than right.

[Socialist]

Not entirely. News articles about EA being voted worst company in America reached investors and there was a sell off and EA lost about 2.5% of their total worth in a day. You're talking about an economy based on confidence. Yes, earnings statements and financial calls are the most important, but even simple news reports can shake things up unintentionally.

 

EA has been asking for it since a long while.

 

 

While I do not understand much on the gaming industry, people ranting on EA is a extremely common sight. And gamers can be quite adamant in using their 'customer power'.

[WLpride]

All mmos decline. Few die.

 

That's interesting though, but some MMO SHOULD die, yes to make room for modern ones to have more success.

 

WAR IMO should have been Mythics exclusive undertaking, but it kept UO and DAOC both competitors to it's own line of products. There is no way anyone can maintain that many similar large projects and keep interest. Just bad business sense IMO.

 

Any MMO has to be updated regularly, WAR has gone 2+ years without decent expansions now. It's a pretty big tragedy, BW seem to be way smarter in that respect though. There is no real 'second guessing' going on here that I can see. Every problem seems to be getting intelligently handled. The game is still super young at 1.2.

[iheartnyc]

but as far as investors are concerned, games get released and within 10 weeks you've gotten the bulk of your revenue from it.

 

 

Wrong. Wrong. WRONG. VERY WRONG. So so SO VERY WRONG. Just stop.

 

Signed,

 

-Advisor to investors

[iheartnyc]

Not entirely. News articles about EA being voted worst company in America reached investors and there was a sell off and EA lost about 2.5% of their total worth in a day. You're talking about an economy based on confidence. Yes, earnings statements and financial calls are the most important, but even simple news reports can shake things up unintentionally.

 

On that "2.5 loss" day, what was the general trend in the market, and in the sector? Correlating individual events to stock price is a fool's task, given that a company's stock price is theoretically the sum of the valuation of ALL publicly available information at any given time. You know, the guys who do this for a living, who are assigned to cover a particular stock with 4 Bloomberg monitors getting multiple news flashes a second and studying filings and reports and research reports based on interviews with management and investors and talking to your brokers and sales team re any unusual spikes in trading volume or new entrants to the stock over and over and over and over again...you know...stuff that people actually get paid a whole lot of money to do.

 

And yet here are, simplying that entire process into "one news article and stock price drops 2.5% lol!!!!" The whole point is, you want to have a valuation set PRIOR to earnings statements/financial calls based on your research - that is the value-added. The earnings/calls should only "confirm" or "beat" your estimates so everyone can profit.

 

Some stupid news article about "worst company to work for", NOBODY cares. In fact, the entire buy-side probably already knew about that the moment the first draft went to print and that news was already priced in by the time the 2.5% drop happened.

Edited April 18, 2012 by iheartnyc

[Suicidalducky]

Talking about stocks..maybe EA is a good buy since its at one of lowest price points =P..its like when the stock market crashed. I'm sure they will rebound..they can't go any lower..like bank of america...can they? Edited April 18, 2012 by Suicidalducky

[Saltydogg]

Simply this.

 

I can laugh myself to sleep with all these forum trolls stating the game is dying.

 

Simply put this game is nowhere near dying, it has a very healthy population, they just need to consolidate it, Every Friday night in the EU you will have standard replace the light status on 50% of those 'light' servers, meaning a minimum of 350 people are playing on that server.

 

Dying, lol go try Warhammer Online and get back to me.

 

Try Warhammer Online he says! LOL LOL LOL. You do know that alot of the devs that worked on that project are working on TOR right? I gave it a shot thinking that they couldnt **** up twice but I was wrong. Look at all the empty servers. This is a new game and it has server populations that are dropping on a daily basis. Hell on my server 49 people in fleet is a busy night. After the first 3 months people who were subbed that long quit. After 6 months people who were subbed that long quit. How much longer are you going to hold onto your faith that things will be fixed? I can tell you that this game will end up just like Warhammer. A big failed mess. Hey thats what you get when you put in a patch that people didnt want. This is what you get when you have your testers ignored. Warhammer would of worked but the devs did the same thing. I love the fact that i have a valor ranked 70 Commando that is now gimped in both heals and dps. I dont play this game every day so I only have one set of gear, I say gimped dps because how much damage are you going to put out wearing full BM Medics gear. Just *********** stupid

[caronome]

A point that a BW person made recently. Play time matters.

 

(Example with made up numbers:) Say that everyone played 40 hours per week in December and now there is an identical number of customers playing 10 hours per week.

 

Same subscriber count so BW sees the same revenue and slightly lower cost since fewer people are logged in. Yet all these market surveyors will see 25% of the number of simul users even though revenue has stayed the same and profits have increased slightly.

 

Pay per hour games like WoW in China are one thing. And I am sure that BW wants everyone to play more. But the health of a subscription business in the short run is driven by subscribers not log ins.

[ChaosLenny]

Try Warhammer Online he says! LOL LOL LOL. You do know that alot of the devs that worked on that project are working on TOR right? I gave it a shot thinking that they couldnt **** up twice but I was wrong. Look at all the empty servers. This is a new game and it has server populations that are dropping on a daily basis. Hell on my server 49 people in fleet is a busy night. After the first 3 months people who were subbed that long quit. After 6 months people who were subbed that long quit. How much longer are you going to hold onto your faith that things will be fixed? I can tell you that this game will end up just like Warhammer. A big failed mess. Hey thats what you get when you put in a patch that people didnt want. This is what you get when you have your testers ignored. Warhammer would of worked but the devs did the same thing. I love the fact that i have a valor ranked 70 Commando that is now gimped in both heals and dps. I dont play this game every day so I only have one set of gear, I say gimped dps because how much damage are you going to put out wearing full BM Medics gear. Just *********** stupid

 

Well said sir...I use to have a Sorcerer now I have a pvp punching bag & and a pve shield generator. They need to play test or otherwise you get Ilum and 1.2. This game is awesome for leveling a toon but then it gets real dry, real quick. I stopped PVE months ago same set of boring dailies and same overly long trash filled instances. Now with the healing gimp, pvp is bleh...I like the term fun rather than bleh in my games personally:)

 

EA is ruining Bioware. I'm sorry Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and TOR are just not what I expect from Bioware. Bioware should have merged with Bethesda to make the greatest RPGs the world has ever seen:)

 

I don't hate this game, I actually dig it. I played for a good four/five months lot longer than some other games I've tried. I personally expected more though and the patch well the patch killed it for me. I think Sith Pureblood Jedi and Rocketboots are freaking stupid. The legacy/family tree, really? A family tree of people who's only relationship and impact to each other is how they are connected to each other on a tab in my codex..what is the point? I'm not big into alts especially in a newer game and that's all I see 1.2 for is alt making. That and my healing gimp well it's not worth the fifteen bucks. I'm not hating on the game like I said I played for sometime, it just could be better. My point with all of this is I don't think Bioware is really taking the time to play test, and I wish they would:(

[Draconerus]

I canceled as well. Doesn't help that ME3 was a failure as well.

[TonyIommi]

Everyone mocks EVE on these boards but with a few hundred thousand subs they turn over many millions a year in revenue. The problem we have is how we're measuring success. Everyone since the great WOW multi million sub thing has said it must be this good or its a failure. Well, no, it just won't make as much money.

 

SWTOR is a bit unique in that it spent more than just about any game to try and do it and so theyr'e in a bigger hole than most MMOs for making up their losses on production. But fact is that the game will run with probably at least a million subs for a few years AT LEAST. Eventually the production costs will be made up for and they'll turn a profit. MMOs are long term investments.

 

Will it shatter the WOW level? I doubt it. Honestly I'm not sure any MMO will ever. Just cause one did it doesn't mean the rest will have to. There's a set market share generally for MMO players and there's a lot more competition now than ever before. Old MMOs are still running, ones frmo 5 years ago, 2 years ago, new ones now, F2P ones and sub ones.

 

There's just so much product out there that that one great big product isn't likely to show up again or not for a while. WOW will decline, the multitude of new MMOs will pick up all its old members, and you'll have probably dozens of healthy MMOs with hundreds of thousands of subs or something.

 

WOW was a monopoly, they don't happen very often. SWTOR was trying to be the next WOW, it didn't really do it. oh well, now they have too many servers for too few people. They'll probably merge some or try and drive up subs or give transfers. Eventually it'll even out and we'll have a healthy average player base. You know this will make money it just won't be that monolithic major game that everyone assumed it should be or tried to be.

 

No either ors, just qualifications to the original plan and impression of the game. Not a WOW killer but not dead. Maybe thats too grey for you either or people.

 

 

It was NEVER trying to be the next wow. Again google John Reticelo swtor sub and you'll see from his statements that from even before the game came repeating the success of warcraft was never their aim. At 1 million subs their game is something to write home about. About 500,000 it's still profitable.

Edited April 18, 2012 by TonyIommi

[Sathid]

Interesting reads.

 

Something stands out to me, however.

 

The article suggests that unit sales of the Old Republic has reached 3 million but suffers from "declining subscribers." Does this mean that the subscriptions increased to (using arbitrary numbers here) 2.5 million but has gone down to 2.2 million? Or does it mean that, despite selling an additional million units, they have lost subscribers?

 

I don't think it's the latter at all. I don't think ANY MMO can go up a million units and decrease in total subscribers in a short period of time.

 

So does this mean that subscribers have ballooned and we're over 2 million with the "declining subscriptions?"

 

Interesting.

 

Im assuming they are talking projections and that SWTOR should be gaining subs every month after launch and is instead either only gaining alittle or stagnant due to people unsubbing and others subbing,CFO's love to see growth and the numbers people only like charts that go up,aside from costs lol.

[DonDuke]

BF3 is amazing! On the PC at least.

 

LMAO... amazingly buggy, hacked and impossible to play....