Subs down 25%

[Esquire]

Yes they have a horrible retention rate for a reason. Look at yesterdays patch, it was completely untested. There is no way that a 100% instant bug, got past a competent internal testing. Either the testers are incompetent, or the managers pushed a badly bugged patch that really didn't fix anything I can find in game. I still have all the sound and latency issues that came in game with 1.2, their patch triage is badly broken to say the least.

 

They dropped from 2.4 million to 1.3 million in less than 6 months. You can not call that a ringing success. What's worse for Bioware is that does not take into account the rage quits over the mishandled release of 1.2. I will be blown away if there are not steep declines over the next two reporting periods if Bioware does not change fast. Given the situation they need to merge servers, and prepare for SWTOR to have 500000-700000 subscribers by December 2012.

 

That prediction is based on the six month subscribers such as Roqu, who have already abandoned SWTOR, but have open subs that have not run out keeping them on the books. Just how many three month and six month subscriptions are in this status right now we can only speculate. EA has not released this information to their investors, but they will over the next two quarters as they are forced to admit it as they are taken off the books. Do not be surprised if they add one more free month between now and the end of the third quarter to stretch out the losses over three quarters instead of taking them all in two.

 

Lucas Arts chose badly when they picked Bioware. This team was simply not ready to operate a released subscription based MMORPG. They need to talk to Smedly from SWG to tell them not to be like him, sadly they are repeating too many of the mistakes he made and now admits to. Seriously MMO companies need badly to start hiring MMORPG historians to help them not repeat the same mistakes every other failure of an MMO has made.

 

BW may be a little bit more "SOE-ed" than you expect. After the NGE, BW hired a boat-load of the NGE devs for this game who "cut their development teeth", so to speak" on the CU and NGE since they were about 6 months apart. Dallas Dickerson and some of the other "leads" were there as well. In fact, BW got so many of these people it opened a studio in Austin TX, same place as SOE's dev teams, rather than import all these up to WA state.

 

Most of the problems that I can see with TOR that are causing these retention problems come from developer mindset. TOR seems to be the ultimate NGE of sorts (WoW copy), which pretty much maimed SWG. Anything that was left was killed off via Lorin Jameison, who changed SWG yet again with C6CD thru GU-Whatever. Another NGE of sorts, this time only in about a years time instead of 1 massive patch.

 

Now, they also got some very good talent from SOE as well, such as Adept-strain. This guy coded the appearance tab for SWG completly on his "off-time" just due to the fact that players wanted it and development had no time and resouces to apply to it. The appearance tab was greatly appreaciated and was done , in fact, very well with VERY few problems when it came.

 

Either these "older SOE" guys need to see the "error of their ways", a personel change, and/or some new blood and way of thinking needs to happen to give BW even a fighting chance, IMHO.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Esquire

[Hajizan]

Yes they have a horrible retention rate for a reason. Look at yesterdays patch, it was completely untested. There is no way that a 100% instant bug, got past a competent internal testing. Either the testers are incompetent, or the managers pushed a badly bugged patch that really didn't fix anything I can find in game. I still have all the sound and latency issues that came in game with 1.2, their patch triage is badly broken to say the least.

 

They dropped from 2.4 million to 1.3 million in less than 6 months. You can not call that a ringing success. What's worse for Bioware is that does not take into account the rage quits over the mishandled release of 1.2. I will be blown away if there are not steep declines over the next two reporting periods if Bioware does not change fast. Given the situation they need to merge servers, and prepare for SWTOR to have 500000-700000 subscribers by December 2012.

 

That prediction is based on the six month subscribers such as Roqu, who have already abandoned SWTOR, but have open subs that have not run out keeping them on the books. Just how many three month and six month subscriptions are in this status right now we can only speculate. EA has not released this information to their investors, but they will over the next two quarters as they are forced to admit it as they are taken off the books. Do not be surprised if they add one more free month between now and the end of the third quarter to stretch out the losses over three quarters instead of taking them all in two.

 

Lucas Arts chose badly when they picked Bioware. This team was simply not ready to operate a released subscription based MMORPG. They need to talk to Smedly from SWG to tell them not to be like him, sadly they are repeating too many of the mistakes he made and now admits to. Seriously MMO companies need badly to start hiring MMORPG historians to help them not repeat the same mistakes every other failure of an MMO has made.

 

I wonder how many people, who at release thought this game had great potential and bought a 6 month sub? I know I was a idiot and subscribed 6 months to a buggy pos single-player game.

 

There are better P2P and even F2P MMOs out that are better than swtor in its current state, I know no reason to pay a sub for an inferior single player game let alone a MMO.

[Vlacke]

Subs will rise again undoubtedly with the addition of new content and features and inclusion of LFG tool and free transfers.

Good news is that SWTOR developer team is strengthened in numbers and quality, they transferred DA3 developers to help with this game so we will get faster made content and faster fixing of bugs and other issues.

[mothermonterr]

Subs will rise again undoubtedly with the addition of new content and features and inclusion of LFG tool and free transfers.

/QUOTE]

 

1.2 advertised added content and features, and as a result lost 25% of subs.l0l:rak_03:

[Dokar]

Subs will rise again undoubtedly with the addition of new content and features and inclusion of LFG tool and free transfers.

Good news is that SWTOR developer team is strengthened in numbers and quality, they transferred DA3 developers to help with this game so we will get faster made content and faster fixing of bugs and other issues.

 

With the exception of WOW name another game that has recovered in that way?

 

There has been no confirmation from anyone at EA or Bioware that DA3 staff has infact been moved.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Dokar
spelling

[Darkulous]

Subs will rise again undoubtedly with the addition of new content and features and inclusion of LFG tool and free transfers.

Good news is that SWTOR developer team is strengthened in numbers and quality, they transferred DA3 developers to help with this game so we will get faster made content and faster fixing of bugs and other issues.

 

Maybe some people will come back but after waiting for 2 hours with a same server LFD, they'll leave again. And the players that stuck around for a X-LFD will leave too because a same server LFD doesn't work.

[Vlacke]

1.2 advertised added content and features, and as a result lost 25% of subs.l0l:rak_03:

 

Things don't always go according to plan especially with an MMO game of this magnitude, there are ups and downs, problems can always show up and subscription numbers fluctuation is perfectly normal, anyone with half a brain should be aware of that fact, seriously.

[Vlacke]

With the exception of WOW name another game that has recovered in that way?

 

There has been no confirmation from anyone at EA or Bioware that DA3 staff has infact been moved.

 

Would you expect a big announcement and a red carpet ceremony?

http://www.develop-online.net/news/40736/Pachter-Dragon-Age-3-devs-loaned-to-SWTOR

[rakuenCallisto]

Things don't always go according to plan especially with an MMO game of this magnitude, there are ups and downs, problems can always show up and subscription numbers fluctuation is perfectly normal, anyone with half a brain should be aware of that fact, seriously.

 

And anyone with a quarter of a brain could impliment simple MMO features into a $200+ million dollar game over the span of 5+ years.

 

Then again, we're working with EA.

[Dokar]

Would you expect a big announcement and a red carpet ceremony?

http://www.develop-online.net/news/40736/Pachter-Dragon-Age-3-devs-loaned-to-SWTOR

 

Where does that quote anyone who works at EA or Bioware?

[Slurmez]

I wonder how many people, who at release thought this game had great potential and bought a 6 month sub? I know I was a idiot and subscribed 6 months to a buggy pos single-player game.

 

There are better P2P and even F2P MMOs out that are better than swtor in its current state, I know no reason to pay a sub for an inferior single player game let alone a MMO.

 

I bought a lifetime membership to Champions Online, that turned out to be another console game masqueraring as a MMO, once bitten twice shy.

[Vlacke]

And anyone with a quarter of a brain could impliment simple MMO features into a $200+ million dollar game over the span of 5+ years.

 

Then again, we're working with EA.

Really?Why don't you offer your unsurpassed programming skills to Bioware and sort all those "simple" things out, i am sure they will be thrilled to have someone on the team who can achieve all that with a quarter of his brain.

 

Not a single MMO has ever launched with all the wanted features, instead they were gradually added with patches and expansions.

[Rudrash]

...and EA blame casual players for theirs fail

 

they should to know most loyal players here are casual players & peoples with real life

without us,casual players, EA should be happy if keep 100k players in end of this year

 

...I ask public apologize or we casual players should leave this game

[sensiblepoast]

I don't think so, personally. My free month hasn't even taken effect yet.

 

Mine has.

[ApotheosisLanyx]

Jeez.. I cannot believe people still blindly support Bioware and swtor in general.

 

I wanted very badly for this game to be good, but not so much that I would lie to myself and honestly believe it heh

 

edit: Later though guys, was just checking in this morning (to see some bs about matrix cubes disappearing.. jesus -_-) to say bye, and this is it. Peace

Edited May 9, 2012 by ApotheosisLanyx

[jarjarloves]

Jeez.. I cannot believe people still blindly support Bioware and swtor in general.

 

I wanted very badly for this game to be good, but not so much that I would lie to myself and honestly believe it heh

 

What about the peoople who are acttualy enjoying it?

[Drakkip]

What I don't get when it comes to the back and forth about posts about server populations and light vs standard vs heavy, is that people believe 100 on the fleet is a lot of people. Back when I played EQ our guild would nightly field 70-80 people to raid. We weren't even the biggest guild on the server.

 

I don't know what the mechanics are that is limiting their server size, but if anything can be reviewed it is that the servers should have been many factors larger in population cap than they currently are. If the benchmark doesn't even compete with 10 year old content, I just don't know what to say.

 

My server feels so dead that this game seems more like an ORPG

[Kimyrielle]

...and EA blame casual players for theirs fail

 

they should to know most loyal players here are casual players & peoples with real life

without us,casual players, EA should be happy if keep 100k players in end of this year

 

...I ask public apologize or we casual players should leave this game

 

^ This.

 

I have to say their "it's only casual players leaving, nothing to worry about" line hurt me a lot more than the actual decline of the playerbase or the dead servers we're seeing as a result of that. It made me feel unwanted and insignificant. For I am a casual player.

 

Seriously, is Bioware -really- surprised to see casual players leaving in great numbers, if they do basically nothing to keep them interested in the post L50 game? They are adding raids...raids... more raids... and soon we will even get more raids! Guys, it's a chicken/egg problem. If you don't cater your game's life-cycle expanding content (read: the endgame) to casuals, it's quite logical that they will leave earlier than anyone else. And they are not called 'casual' because they are MMO vagabonds who never stay long in any MMO (although that might be the resulting habit they develop). And not because they spend less hours in the game than a hardcore player (that's a common misconception about the term 'casual' player), but because of their non-hardcore attitude towards gaming. The irony is that that there are a -lot- more casual players around than the sort of hardcore gamers who'd enjoy sinking entire nights into a frustratingly hard raid and enjoy getting wiped all the time while doing it. From a business perspective, it would make a lot of sense keeping the casual players around - they pay the same $15/mo a hardcore player does, after all.

But for some reason MMO makers just don't do that - more or less chasing off their largest customer segment by acting as if they wouldn't be there at all. It's one of the things I don't quite understand about that industry's business model. They still run it like in the days of EQ when MMOs were played by hardcore gamers only.

 

Personally, my gaming attitude is somewhere in-between hardcore and casual (I love a good challenge to a certain degree, but I dislike frustratingly hard content that makes even a good team wipe with regularity, and the bureaucratic overhead connected to activities like raiding in particular) - and even I find it hard to log on to my L50s and -do- something PvE in the game with them that actually interests me (I play a bit of PvP and I RP, and that's it). Everything PvE at endgame is a clear second-rate activity to raiding. I could endlessly giggle about how Bioware seemingly thought something as insignificant as the legacy system would be able to keep casual players interested in the game - like that 29 minute cooldown of a skill instead of 30 minutes? Yeah right, that's really going to change -everything-!!!

 

As a result, I keep wandering from MMO to MMO, too. I think I have played five different MMOs in the past two years alone, the newest one being TERA which I bought last week to escape SWTOR's entirely dead servers in the PST mornings/early afternoons (which is when I play games).

 

I want to find a digital home to stay in, really badly - but with modern MMOs focusing more and more on exactly that content that isn't for me (the time to reach max level seems to get shorter for each new game coming out), my average stay in a MMO seems to become shorter, not longer. I love TOR. I really do. I want to stay, and for the time being, I will keep my sub. But I also realize that there are only that many more alts I can roll and take to L50 before I will run out of things to do in that game, if they keep their endgame focus on ops like they seem to intend to do. I have three L50s and another is getting close. The game has 8 classes. Go figure...

[Frostvein]

Really?Why don't you offer your unsurpassed programming skills to Bioware and sort all those "simple" things out, i am sure they will be thrilled to have someone on the team who can achieve all that with a quarter of his brain.

 

Not a single MMO has ever launched with all the wanted features, instead they were gradually added with patches and expansions.

 

This is the worst argument ever.

 

I don't have to be a car designer to know that an Aztek was a terrible idea, just like I don't have to be an MMO designer to know MMOs. This isn't 1999, MMOs and the internet are no longer new, and releasing broken, buggy games just because "Thats how its always been done" is the worst excuse in the history of ever.

 

The genre should be improving, what we are seeing is two steps forward, one step back.

 

VO's are great. That doesn't mean we don't need features that have been standard (combat log) and that are becoming the de facto standard (LFG)

 

Stop being an apologist and demand more for your money.

[jarjarloves]

What I don't get when it comes to the back and forth about posts about server populations and light vs standard vs heavy, is that people believe 100 on the fleet is a lot of people. Back when I played EQ our guild would nightly field 70-80 people to raid. We weren't even the biggest guild on the server.

 

I don't know what the mechanics are that is limiting their server size, but if anything can be reviewed it is that the servers should have been many factors larger in population cap than they currently are. If the benchmark doesn't even compete with 10 year old content, I just don't know what to say.

 

My server feels so dead that this game seems more like an ORPG

 

Well prime time in WoW a medium server only has about 50 people total in all the cities

[BJWyler]

...and EA blame casual players for theirs fail

 

they should to know most loyal players here are casual players & peoples with real life

without us,casual players, EA should be happy if keep 100k players in end of this year

 

...I ask public apologize or we casual players should leave this game

 

The use of casual players in that term is different than what we normally think of casual players. No apology needed because they weren't talking about us in that sense.

 

Jeez.. I cannot believe people still blindly support Bioware and swtor in general.

 

I wanted very badly for this game to be good, but not so much that I would lie to myself and honestly believe it heh

 

Nothing blind about it. I support BW because they have a track record of making games I really enjoy, including this one. Just because you, and many others out there, didn't get what you wanted doesn't mean that the rest of us didn't either. I am still throughly enjoying this game, and will keep my subscription for as long as I am. I'm sorry it turns out not to be your cup of tea, but I am one of those players who remains "engaged" in the game. Quite frankly, I don't care how many subs the game has as long as I am enjoying it. I certainly want it to succeed and enjoy a long life, but if the servers shut down next month or next year, then at least I still have gotten my money's worth out of it - I'll still be disappointed that it's gone, but then I'll just go back to playing GW1 and DA:O until the next one comes along.

 

This is the worst argument ever.

 

I don't have to be a car designer to know that an Aztek was a terrible idea, just like I don't have to be an MMO designer to know MMOs. This isn't 1999, MMOs and the internet are no longer new, and releasing broken, buggy games just because "Thats how its always been done" is the worst excuse in the history of ever.

 

The genre should be improving, what we are seeing is two steps forward, one step back.

 

VO's are great. That doesn't mean we don't need features that have been standard (combat log) and that are becoming the de facto standard (LFG)

 

Stop being an apologist and demand more for your money.

Well then, perhaps you are not the best one suited to comment on how to make a car (Edsel, anyone?). I don't think anyone will argue the point that it sucks that the industry as a whole cannot release "the perfect bug-less" game, but again, that's a problem with the industry and not with BW or SWTOR alone. Truth of the matter is, unless you are a coder and work with projects of this kind of magnitude, you have no idea how hard or easy it is to get that "perfect, bug-less" game. I'm inclined to think it's one of those unreachable goals since even the most innovative people in the industry (the indie devs) haven't figured that one out either. To pin the ills of an industry on a genre, developer, or game is pretty asinine IMO.

 

BJ

Edited May 9, 2012 by BJWyler

[Irilith]

Well prime time in WoW a medium server only has about 50 people total in all the cities

 

Let me guess. Exactly 49 players in all the cities?

[ApotheosisLanyx]

What I don't get when it comes to the back and forth about posts about server populations and light vs standard vs heavy, is that people believe 100 on the fleet is a lot of people. Back when I played EQ our guild would nightly field 70-80 people to raid. We weren't even the biggest guild on the server.

 

I don't know what the mechanics are that is limiting their server size, but if anything can be reviewed it is that the servers should have been many factors larger in population cap than they currently are. If the benchmark doesn't even compete with 10 year old content, I just don't know what to say.

 

My server feels so dead that this game seems more like an ORPG

 

ok sorry one more post this is SO *********** true. 150 people on the fleet ISNT **** in the first place.. They made WAAAAAAAAAY too many servers god this is what I've been saying from the start and I think it was one of the biggest factors in this game's failure. ok see ya sorry

[Muskaan]

Let me guess. Exactly 49 players in all the cities?

 

/who returns a max of 50 players at a time.

[jarjarloves]

Let me guess. Exactly 49 players in all the cities?

 

No it was 21 in stormwind 11 in irinforge 9 in darnassus 5 in gilhins and 4 in the blue guys place