Subs down 25%

[Dezzi]

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.

 

I still haven't seen any reason to believe that they're using the word differently than everyone else does. They make no qualifications before or after their use of the word. They said:

Through the end of the quarter, approximately 2.4 million units have sold through. In our last call we indicated that we had 1.7 million active subscribers, and as of the end of April we now have 1.3 million, with a substantial portion of the decrease due to casual and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base, driving up the overall percentage of paying subscribers.

 

All they say is that casuals and trials make up a substantial portion of the numbers lost. They don't say "... portion of the decrease due to casual players--which we define as sunshine gamers--and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base."

 

It's a huge stretch to assume they're just using the word differently.

[ApotheosisLanyx]

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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

 

Ah yeah, I think we just get different things out of the game. I NEED a very high population for end-game raiding competition as well as pvp competition. Low pops just don't do it for me. But yeah I don't mean to call you blind or whatever I just get so frustrated cause I DID have a ton of fun playing this game at first but it just sharply dropped for me. But yeah if you enjoy it hell yeah more power to you

[Irilith]

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

 

That's why i asked. Jarjarloves seems to don't know that, because his numbers are horribly wrong.

[Tiaa]

The Dragon Age 3 team is coming to help guys. No need to worry anymore.

 

The DA3 team will raise subscriptions by 50% next year in an alternate dimesion where broken themepark games have become a new religion.

 

Trust me.

 

I mean, you trust Bioware so why not some random person on the forum?

[Haeso]

That's why i asked. Jarjarloves seems to don't know that, because his numbers are horribly wrong.

 

It's 100. Also you can search by class/level to check actual totals.

[BJWyler]

I still haven't seen any reason to believe that they're using the word differently than everyone else does. They make no qualifications before or after their use of the word. They said:

 

 

All they say is that casuals and trials make up a substantial portion of the numbers lost. They don't say "... portion of the decrease due to casual players--which we define as sunshine gamers--and trial players cycling out of the subscriber base."

 

It's a huge stretch to assume they're just using the word differently.

 

Not really - I saw a post somewhere with a link to an article that explained what they consider casual as opposed to what gamers consider casual (and even gamers argue over the definition so it's not really a stretch), but unfortunately I have no idea where it would be at this point. It's the same thing when one of them mentioned the release of two "expansion packs" this year. We think of that term as retail paid-for content releases, but what he was really referring to were the 1.3 and 1.4 content updates that are slated for the game this year.

 

After all, casual players (as we think of the term) are the bread and butter of the gaming industry, so no dev or publisher will want to alienate them (too much).

 

BJ

[Frostvein]

To pin the ills of an industry on a genre, developer, or game is pretty asinine IMO.

 

So is giving them a pass.

 

The genre is only going to get better when people stop buying, paying and apologizing for games that come out missing a ton of features on sub par engines. Perhaps then other developers will take note and actually make sure that these type of mistakes don't happen again.

 

This game (from an MMO perspective) is just not very good. I'm glad you like it, because it means whatever ridiculous amount of money they spent on this game wasn't totally wasted. But please, stop telling people that they are wrong, or impatient, or have unreasonable expectations for complaining about a game that looks like it walked out of 2008.

[Kimyrielle]

After all, casual players (as we think of the term) are the bread and butter of the gaming industry, so no dev or publisher will want to alienate them (too much).

 

BJ

 

You should think so, but that simple truth didn't seem to have reached the MMO industry yet, otherwise I couldn't explain why they still make endgames as if casual players didn't exist as a group, leaving them with nothing worthwhile to do after finishing the main storyline.

[Dezzi]

Not really - I saw a post somewhere with a link to an article that explained what they consider casual as opposed to what gamers consider casual (and even gamers argue over the definition so it's not really a stretch), but unfortunately I have no idea where it would be at this point. It's the same thing when one of them mentioned the release of two "expansion packs" this year. We think of that term as retail paid-for content releases, but what he was really referring to were the 1.3 and 1.4 content updates that are slated for the game this year.

 

After all, casual players (as we think of the term) are the bread and butter of the gaming industry, so no dev or publisher will want to alienate them (too much).

 

BJ

 

Their use of "expansions" could also be explained as smoke and mirrors--something we know they're good at. "Expansions" sounds infinitely better and more attention-getting than "patches." This conference call had "sweep it under the rug as quickly as possible" written all over it.

[Holden_Dissent]

When you have upwards of 10 million subscribers, you can afford to lose a good chunk. When you have a smaller subscriber base, that same 25% becomes much more noticeable.

 

Let us also not forget that SWTOR has lost closer to 900,000 subscribers because the game sold close to 2.2 million boxes. Granted, a portion of those did not get past their 30 day trial, but if BioWare/EA wants to count "casual and trial" accounts, then I get to too.

 

Fun Fact about WoW subs:

 

US AND EU are the only customers who pay their $15 a month subscriber fees.

 

Not only do the other 8m people in the world not pay sub fees, but their accounts never expire, essentially becoming an active account forever until the end of time.

[rakuenCallisto]

While you're at it - Try to have him mention TERA.

 

A huge amount of people haven't even heard of it, and it's WORLDS better than swtor.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Trineda
removed quote

[Jett-Rinn]

You should think so, but that simple truth didn't seem to have reached the MMO industry yet, otherwise I couldn't explain why they still make endgames as if casual players didn't exist as a group, leaving them with nothing worthwhile to do after finishing the main storyline.

 

This is very true......Biowares biggest mistake was trying to woo the hardcore progression raider, the guild summit basically did nothing but piss off that demographic even more, meanwhile casuals feel like they are at least ignored at worst getting the finger where end game is concerned.

[jarjarloves]

That's why i asked. Jarjarloves seems to don't know that, because his numbers are horribly wrong.

No I never got 49 in one result. I also thout it was weird till I ran around and verified it. It was the Teranas server

[Holden_Dissent]

So you're saying that people should just be allowed to rip on a company, their parent company, and their game continuously, mindlessly, and most of the time baselessly continuously in their own forum moderated by people who get paid by the same company and/or parent company? Edited May 9, 2012 by Trineda
removed quote

[jarjarloves]

Fun Fact about WoW subs:

 

US AND EU are the only customers who pay their $15 a month subscriber fees.

 

Not only do the other 8m people in the world not pay sub fees, but their accounts never expire, essentially becoming an active account forever until the end of time.

 

Exactly and the actual us and european subs at wows peak was around 4-5 million. Now it is significantly less

[mothermonterr]

what are baseless complains? can you name one baseless complain that has been mentioned in forum:rak_02:

[Irilith]

No I never got 49 in one result. I also thout it was weird till I ran around and verified it. It was the Teranas server

 

Teranas - EU (medium)

 

322 players in Stormwind right now. Please don't throw wrong numbers around.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Irilith

[jarjarloves]

Teranas - EU (medium)

 

322 player in Stormwind right now. Please don't throw wrong numbers around.

 

Not europe the us server maybe I spelled it wrong. Its named after arthis father. This was orime time last night

[BJWyler]

Ah yeah, I think we just get different things out of the game. I NEED a very high population for end-game raiding competition as well as pvp competition. Low pops just don't do it for me. But yeah I don't mean to call you blind or whatever I just get so frustrated cause I DID have a ton of fun playing this game at first but it just sharply dropped for me. But yeah if you enjoy it hell yeah more power to you

 

No apology needed, I understand the frustration - I play on the PTS and a Light server as two of my main servers, so yeah, there are those times (like yesterday) where I was wishing for someone to group with in order to take down a side boss on one of my class quests. But this type of thing was argued about back and forth in GW1 for years, and still is to some extent. Some people need to have that group feeling, while others are OK with soloable content. I am a mixture of both - I am grateful that the design of the game allows for the ability to pretty much solo while leveling (one of the reasons I was attracted to it), but since my years in GW1, have also enjoyed the MM part of MMOs, so yeah, there is no need to apologize for frustration. However, I look at it this way (excuse my long-windedness):

 

I have gotten into the habit of researching a game I am interested in before buying it, because I want to my sure my money is well spent - hence I did not buy Stronghold 3 even though I loved the original games (never had time to really play SH2 yet - maybe one day when I retire). The fact that it required Steam, plus the absolutely disasterous buggy launch (see Frostvein, I don't give everyone a pass) I decided the drawbacks were more than I was willing to deal with. Same thing with SWTOR, except that what was going into the game convinced me that it has potential to keep me as entertained as GW1 did (and still does). However, I was also leary of getting burned the way I did with STO's launch in which the game was nearly unplayable for me for the first couple of months (and hence, I never really got into it). If BW had not upped the max on servers and added additional servers to accommodate the initial launch rush, I think I would have been tainted by the STO experience when encountering server ques, and potential poor performance and just said the heck with the game. Fortunately, because BW did what they did, my launch experience was one of the best ones ever, and thus I am still here enjoying the game.

 

Unfortunately, that decision has now impacted the gameplay of many because we are spread so thin, and those players who did not do their due diligence in researching the game are now miffed and leaving because they expected a different game and features than what was actually being built into the game, so we have dead servers. I don't fault BW for this particular situation because I think they made the right decision, but I do fault them for not having the Transfer tool ready to go sooner - especially since they knew they would be doing a phased roll-out to other regions and the early adopters of those regions would want to move to local servers when they opened up. So yeah, I think their timing could have been better with the transfers, but I am patient person by nature, so can wait out the time needed for them to get the tool up and running smoothly in order to move to a better populated server.

 

 

The Dragon Age 3 team is coming to help guys. No need to worry anymore.

 

The DA3 team will raise subscriptions by 50% next year in an alternate dimesion where broken themepark games have become a new religion.

 

Trust me.

 

I mean, you trust Bioware so why not some random person on the forum?

 

Let me re-copy this from my other post since you must have missed it:

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.

 

So yeah, trusting BW over the myriad of people who are prone to asinine and hyperbolic outburts - no contest there.

 

You should think so, but that simple truth didn't seem to have reached the MMO industry yet, otherwise I couldn't explain why they still make endgames as if casual players didn't exist as a group, leaving them with nothing worthwhile to do after finishing the main storyline.

 

I think that's the nature of the genre itself. An MMO is never "complete" as we think of the term, and the problem comes from how to keep players who prefer many different types of things entertained in their game while the next batch of content is ready for release.

 

Some people want sandbox features - but that leaves out the whole slew of people who detest sandbox - still no endgame for them.

Some people want hardcore raids for epeen items - but that leaves out the casual and sandbox player

Some people want nothing but PvP - but that leaves out the PvEer.

 

Unfortunately, a game can only offer so much within the time and budget constraints it has. SWTOR's design direction was such that PvP and End Game were secondary features to the class quests and overarching story line. In all reality, for a game like this - there is no end game, the ongoing story is the neverending end game. Problem is, a lot of people completed the first part of the story before the next part is ready and the current end game (Raid type missions) don't suit everyone.

 

BJ

Edited May 9, 2012 by BJWyler

[Alkiii]

While you're at it - Try to have him mention TERA.

 

A huge amount of people haven't even heard of it, and it's WORLDS better than swtor.

 

I'm a gamer and of course I picked up Tera Online. Why? Because that's what gamers do.

 

I went in blind and had full intentions of leaving before my first free 30 days as I just knew it was going to suck.

 

Turns out, the game is absolutely amazing. It takes some getting used to, but ya ... it's a keeper.

 

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE SWTOR. However, after playing another MMO, the Hero Engine's flaws (along with how Bioware is using this Engine) became quite apparent. SWTOR had soooo much potential. It really did. Now, they're doing too little, too late and the Hero Engine only makes it worse.

 

Sorry gang, as much as I wanted to remain vigilant and back this game, I can't anymore. Tera is just that much more fun to play.

[rakuenCallisto]

I'm a gamer and of course I picked up Tera Online. Why? Because that's what gamers do.

 

I went in blind and had full intentions of leaving before my first free 30 days as I just knew it was going to suck.

 

Turns out, the game is absolutely amazing. It takes some getting used to, but ya ... it's a keeper.

 

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE SWTOR. However, after playing another MMO, the Hero Engine's flaws (along with how Bioware is using this Engine) became quite apparent. SWTOR had soooo much potential. It really did. Now, they're doing too little, too late and the Hero Engine only makes it worse.

 

Sorry gang, as much as I wanted to remain vigilant and back this game, I can't anymore. Tera is just that much more fun to play.

 

thisthisthisthisthisthis.

 

a thousand times this.

 

EXACTLY how I feel.

[Tickdoff-Tank]

While you're at it - Try to have him mention TERA.

 

A huge amount of people haven't even heard of it, and it's WORLDS better than swtor.

 

TERA is complete garbage. If you prefer it, please go play it, but for the majority of people with a pulse I would expect them to use it as bird-cage liner before an MMO, at least that way you could get SOME use out of it.

[Drakkip]

The car comparison going back and forth makes me laugh a little. To be clear, if all the cars nowadays are have been "upgraded" with USB ports and/or IPOD jacks so you can use your MP3 player in your car saying that the latest car released not having one is ok because 10 years ago they didn't have them either is silly.

 

It's about what is CURRENT. Comparing what is has with what is current is valid. Having it release with what was current 5 or 10 years ago is silly at best. If you want to compete with the current market, you actually have to be IN the current market.

 

This is about whoever is the senior project manager in charge. Whatever priorities he has set out, and rescources he has or has not assigned to complete the tasks. There is nothing magical about proper management of any project. Completing tasks is about prioritzing and then assigning rescources to meet deadlines. Whoever is in charge needs to man/woman up and be honest. Having a long term schedule with realistic time frames isn't that difficult to do, but it takes character to stand up and be truthful when making claims to both your client and your boss. The worst part in this whole thing has been the complete mismanagemnt of people's expectations.

[BJWyler]

TERA is complete garbage. If you prefer it, please go play it, but for the majority of people with a pulse I would expect them to use it as bird-cage liner before an MMO, at least that way you could get SOME use out of it.

 

thisthisthisthisthisthis.

 

a thousand times this.

 

EXACTLY how I feel.

 

(Sorry, I couldn't resist - I actually have no interest in TERA so couldn't tell you anything about the game, but it let me get a bit of tension out).

 

what are baseless complains? can you name one baseless complain that has been mentioned in forum:rak_02:

 

That there is no end game. There are dailies and raids - more at launch than many other MMOs and nearly as much as WoW has in the course of 8 years. Just because you don't like the end game doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because the end game can't be better, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

What I am waiting for is anyone who complains about the lack of end game to suggest what end game content they would like to have, because the current end game is MMO SOP for the most part (the Almighty GW2 is going this route from all indications).

 

The car comparison going back and forth makes me laugh a little. To be clear, if all the cars nowadays are have been "upgraded" with USB ports and/or IPOD jacks so you can use your MP3 player in your car saying that the latest car released not having one is ok because 10 years ago they didn't have them either is silly.

 

I didn't get any of those things when I bought my car last year - don't want them and don't need them. The good ole CD player still works for me.

 

BJ

Edited May 9, 2012 by BJWyler

[rakuenCallisto]

TERA is complete garbage. If you prefer it, please go play it, but for the majority of people with a pulse I would expect them to use it as bird-cage liner before an MMO, at least that way you could get SOME use out of it.

 

... what?

 

Yea it's obvious you haven't even played the game.

 

It literally has everything this game should have, and more. The only difference is voice acting/dialogue.

Edited May 9, 2012 by rakuenCallisto