Subs down 25%

[Hellmet]

You call Diablo 3 a fad? haha

[BJWyler]

Oh boy, trying to catch up from the other thread, before I even tackle this one – darn that need for sleep.

Really? Still with this?? How is being above the typical MMO curve, subs on target, and "very profitable" considered "sinking" in the real world we live in??

 

I can't believe how people will just remain pessimistic directly in the face of factual reality. It's perplexing to me, it really is. I'm not even asking you to be optimistic here! Just realistic! Wow....

Obviously, those who want to doom and gloom are going to ignore the facts as presented. That’s the most interesting thing about the gaming community in general – facts be damned, only our personal feelings and the validation of said feelings is what matters. That is the result of the Epeen mentality, be t in game or on forums. “All evidence to the contrary be damned, my feelings are more important and if you don’t feel the same way, then you are a l00zer.”

 

I like this game. It needs improvements, certainly, but what it offers now is more than enough to keep me playing and anticipating some really good content in the future. I certainly would like to see subs continue to grow, but that is as unrealistic as the thought that this would be the WoW killer (same for GW2). The financials prove the game is successful at this point in time. I suspect, that we will still be playing a year from now and still having a great time.

 

For me if they just did these two things in would make me happy:

 

1- Give me and all my guildies server transfer to a heavy populated server, (on average we all have at least 2 level 50 toons) we are not willing reroll and start over, with Legacy why would we...

 

2- In-game customer service horrible... fire who ever is in charge seriously fire them or overhaul, or just look at WoW, or RIFT's in-game customer service to see how it should be done, because SWTOR's is offensively poor...

 

Those two things if addressed in next couple weeks will keep, me..

Putting arbitrary deadlines on content is wrong, and pretty asinine. It is better to release content that is polished and as free from bugs as possible, rather then just implement and listen to all the QQing when things don’t work properly. Just ask anyone who thinks the entire game was released too early.

 

 

that would be about the worst thing to be honest

 

server merges would be better then server transfers with a high population server obsessed community

No – Transfers are the way to go, especially with the complication of the Legacy system. Obviously there will be controls on where players can transfer to. If you think they are going to allow transfers to The Fatman, you are mistaken. They added servers at launch specifically to remove ques, therefore the transfers are going to be done in such a way that Standard pop servers will be the permitted desinations.

 

 

This has seriously made me worry for this game. I really wanted it to do well, but it seems like it really is going to crash and burn like the previous Star Wars MMO after all

If you call having a dedicated and steady subscriber base for 10 years with the potential to keep going even longer if the decision wasn’t made to pull the plug by SOE a crash and burn, well then, baby, bring it on – I will most certainly have the best decade of my gaming life in SWTOR if that be the case.

 

 

Except this isn't March 1, 2011, when Rift released. Rift has since successfully aped many, if not all, of the major features of WoW.

 

So there's WoW, the MMO "king" in terms of subs, that stole most of its best parts from other MMOs and then added a few things in on its own, and there's Rift, which is now a very strong contender in terms of form and function but relegated to a small playerbase due to a weak launch that it will never recover from, and there's TOR.

 

They all cost the same 14.99$ a month right now and right now TOR is the inferior product of the three.

 

That's the problem. TOR was pushed out the door before the game even worked on a technical level, let alone quality of content and play experience issues being hammered out. That's something you just don't recover from. I think, as of 1.2, TOR is a really solid, fun game, but multitudes of potential subscribers will never experience it because they were burned by a craptastic, pay-to-beta Christmas-rush launch.

Uhmm, did you even read what you wrote. You just proved the point you were trying to disprove. Rift launched in far worse shape than SWTOR and rebounded a year later. Therefore, there is no reason not to think that SWTOR will be a much better game a year from now and surpass Rift quality and content-wise.

 

 

I remember when Walton and Ohlen were talking in one interview and one of them tried to be humble saying something like, "we don't want to kill WoW, we just want to compete" I was cheering them on hoping they would not be so meek and crush Blizzard.

 

That was during TBC when it didnt seem like anything would touch WoW and a lot of us hoped that Blizzard would finally get to eat a little humble pie.

And there in the bolded part is the problem. Again, as shown with the hype for so many other games, it’s the players themselves building the game up beyond what reality and the devs stated. They said they wanted to compete with WoW, not blow it out of the water – that’s what you built up in your own mind. You do not need 10 million subs to compete with WoW, you simply need to make a game that people will enjoy enough to play and provide longevity for. IMO, BW has done that with SWTOR, I believe that once the subs level out, we will see this game hanging around the million mark for some time to come. That would be success no matter how you look at it in today’s market.

 

 

Nope , needs 1m + for a profit that 'is nothing to write home about'

Incorrect. It has already been stated that they only need 500K subs to maintain the game. They are current 2.5 times above that number right now. I suspect the game will level off at 1 million subs by the end of the year.

 

BJ

[davebushe]

What I find most worrying is that all those 400k - every single one of them - left after April 23th.

 

Otherwise it would mean that Bioware (in specific Daniel Erickson) outright lied to us about the numbers and that's just not possible... right...right?

 

BioWare claim that subscriber numbers haven’t dropped, but concurrent users at peak times have. This, Erickson says, is the reason why players are noticing a lot of ‘light’ server populations – and also why mergers are on the cards, but not a priority. According to Erickson, they’re doing “anything and everything” to bring that concurrent users number up. “Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server.”

 

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/23/bioware-doing-anything-and-everything-to-keep-players-logging-in-to-swtor/

[Shockazilla]

1.3 million subs for an MMORPG is ALOT.........Back in 2003 DAoC was #1 with 300,000 subs-x

 

That's like civil war dollars to today's dollars. WoW still has 10+ million.

[JeramieCrowe]

That's like civil war dollars to today's dollars. WoW still has 10+ million.

 

And recently lost 1.7 million subs. But the sky isn't falling over there, either.

[Celticprince]

1)Realism would help here. WoW have way more active accounts than TOR

 

2)I really doubt that so many players took six months subs. I also doubt that all players that want to go ''Lets oogle underage girls in Victoria Secret lingeryOnline are currently subbed. If you dislike TOR so deeply, why would you keep subs until the arrival of ''More Creepy Furry than that episode of American Dad with Stan's colleague masquerading as a CARS mascot to do Roger the Alien'' Online

 

If you hate the game and your server is dead, then why not cancel the sub ? It's not like there is a dearth of good PC games at the moment, to keep you intersted until you finally get your copy of ''You are likely to eventually meet Chris Hansen'' Online

 

I mean, more seriously, that we can hope that most of the ''shedding'' of players is done. As I mentionned back in december, a lot of players ''that were leaving WoW in droves'' were players that were bound to be sorely disapointed in TOR....

 

1)Guys that find that ''Heroic Whatever End Boss It Is'' was way too easy, as as many as 2% of accounts can down it

 

2)''World PVP'' lovers (that is, people that love to gank players 40 levels lower than them)

 

(Yes, I'm not even trying TERA because of this issue. I have absolutely nothing against battling dragons with a well-endowed demon-girl wearing ''barely there'' armor, but when she looks at least 18)

 

tera... its korrean.. what else would you expect from it? its not even an rpg, its just another hack and slash like diablo or devil may cry, with a monthly subscription and more players onscreen at one time. it will burn out pretty fast like gw 2 .

[Sanxxx]

BJWyler

 

Incorrect. It has already been stated that they only need 500K subs to maintain the game. They are current 2.5 times above that number right now. I suspect the game will level off at 1 million subs by the end of the year.

 

BJ

 

My post was correct as stated, quote below;

 

John Riccitiello - Electronic Arts Inc. - CEO

That was me that made the comment a number of different times. What I basically said is 0.5 million subs, we could break even at the margin. 1 million subs would be meaningfully profitable, but nothing to write home about. It certainly would not make us feel good about the investments to date.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Sanxxx

[Celticprince]

You call Diablo 3 a fad? haha

 

its MoPs class lvl system and talwent trees with a diablo skin. diablo 2's expansion was the best in the series.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Celticprince

[Angedechu]

Why everyone keep bringing Diablo (an excellent game BTW) ?

 

In june, I'm going to gorge myself by playing CIV 5 Gods and Kings. So what ?

[Hellmet]

You can argue whatever heck you want, if a game drops subs this fast it aint a bloody good sign. mkay? Edited May 8, 2012 by Hellmet

[Evangelist]

No – Transfers are the way to go, especially with the complication of the Legacy system. Obviously there will be controls on where players can transfer to. If you think they are going to allow transfers to The Fatman, you are mistaken. They added servers at launch specifically to remove ques, therefore the transfers are going to be done in such a way that Standard pop servers will be the permitted desinations.

 

I absolutely disagree. There need to be both server merges and transfers. There need to be server merges because people have multiple characters at 50, why because of something BioWare did (diluting the server poupluation too mcuh during the first month) should they have to pay to move all of the characters they have put time into? Additionally many people don't really care what the name of the server they play on is, they care about rule set (PVE, PVE, etc), time zone, and population. Merges address the need for this and keep players guilds and alts all on the same server. Additionally if everyone transfers off a server why keep it open and running? That just costs BioWare money.

 

They need to merge servers until they hit the minimum of Standard level of population during peak hours. If people want to transfer at thet point then more power to them. There aren't enough Full/Heavy servers to use transfers to low population servers solve the issue.

 

Additionally, mergers in regard to Legacy are much more simple. You don't have to deal with someone's only post chapter 1 character moving to another server. All characters get moved lock, stock, and both smoking barrels to the new server. If that Legacy name already exists with an active account (note I said active) then the person that got moved has to change their legacy name, if not they keep it and the inactive player has to change it if they resub. That is fair.

[ComeAndSee]

It feels strange, but my server has grown. Yeah, I would honestly say 25-50% of my friends list doesn't log on anymore, but I constantly walk into war zones and see new people everyday I've never heard or seen before.

[Sanxxx]

What I find most worrying is that all those 400k - every single one of them - left after April 23th.

 

Otherwise it would mean that Bioware (in specific Daniel Erickson) outright lied to us about the numbers and that's just not possible... right...right?

 

BioWare claim that subscriber numbers haven’t dropped, but concurrent users at peak times have. This, Erickson says, is the reason why players are noticing a lot of ‘light’ server populations – and also why mergers are on the cards, but not a priority. According to Erickson, they’re doing “anything and everything” to bring that concurrent users number up. “Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server.”

 

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/23/bioware-doing-anything-and-everything-to-keep-players-logging-in-to-swtor/

 

A lot of people kept referring to this and the 1.7m number so of course it's possible that they lost 50-60k subs every day till the 30th after which they will have increased.

[sambeta]

That's like civil war dollars to today's dollars. WoW still has 10+ million.

 

Battlestar Galactica online (F2P yes I know) has 9.3 million players and that's only been around a year. If this game establishes itself properly and the devs respond to what the players are asking it will no doubt thrive. This is all in the hands of the Bioware and the way they handle things and resolve issues and most importantly, how they communicate with their community.

[xpactor]

-25% when d3 launches next wk

-25% when gw2 launches

-25% when mop launches

and a few -% when other mmorpgs launches later this year like secretworld etc lol.

[Ratito]

DARK DAYS ARE COMMING TO EAmpire....

 

 

-25% when d3 launches next wk

-25% when gw2 launches

-25% when mop launches

and a few -% when other mmorpgs launches later this year like secretworld etc lol.

np.. when the server transfer coming out them just will need ONE SERVER

Edited May 8, 2012 by Ratito

[Holinyx]

since all i do is mostly solo PvE content, people leaving the game has almost no impact on me. BRING ON THE YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION BUTTON !!!!!!!!!!!!

[xpactor]

oh i forgot to add another -% when their free legacy month is up lol

[Celticprince]

-25% when d3 launches next wk

-25% when gw2 launches

-25% when mop launches

and a few -% when other mmorpgs launches later this year like secretworld etc lol.

 

+25 percent subs when people get bored with d3

+25 percent when people get bored with gw2

+50% when people give up on the crap that is mop.

[AnoriOlko]

-25% when d3 launches next wk

-25% when gw2 launches

-25% when mop launches

and a few -% when other mmorpgs launches later this year like secretworld etc lol.

 

aye. Hope they realize how much players they will loose in that time; and how many will decide to just let their sub end.

[JustTray]

Has anyone mentioned that 1.3 million subs includes people who got a free month, aka EVERYONE?

 

Lets see what the number looks like next month. My guess is close to half of 1.3 million.

[ohpleasework]

I think they will obviously gain like one million subs by next quarter.

[Littlegem]

I fail to see the relevance in the immense amount of posts written by some on the subject of EA share prices or subscriber losses. I can only assume that it is one of three things. You are an EA shareholder, its great to say "i told you so" or people are concerned that the game might get axed.

 

Personally I cant see a license that is this important, that occupies a significant chunk of a commercial sector that is only set to grow, getting axed anytime soon.

 

No doubt initial marketing/ sales forecasts were way off. However all it hopefully should do is give the decision makers some pause for thought. The initial estimates were perhaps arrogant and based on understanding WoW domination of this market sector. The reasons for which I doubt even Blizzard fully understand.

 

The fact remains that as a community that care about what happens, maybe we should spend less time on creating lists of things we believe to be better in other games and/or shouting on as many threads as possible about how everyone sucks.... and perhaps devote more time to giving constructive feedback on how we would like to see things develop with SW now.

 

There will always be a large chunk of players that will hop, skip and jump to the "next best thing". There is little point in even factoring them into any financial projections for a game of this type. Its an impossible task to keep them happy, so ignore them quite frankly.

What is needed in my view is for a developer to have the long term discipline to stick to their guns and develop a game that has longevity in its play style. If anything make things harder, longer, tougher to achieve. re-establish guilds and a community spirit as the only way to get "some" individual tasks done.

Something easy to achieve is worth very little and by default becomes easily disposable in nature. Eg:/ There is no real personal sense of pride or achievement in having full "xyZ" gear if it took you 4 PU groups and 4 days to achieve.

 

Somewhere on here is a thread asking what the future should look like.

Well, accepting bug free and a proper number of people per server etc.. etc... in my view the game needs developing in such a way that it attracts and then keeps those players willing to invest time and effort long term on it. I am not a software developer so I have no idea how practical creating enough for a causal/ transient base and enough for a long term teamwork based populace would be. However atm it seems to me that StWTOR has yet to really find its "own" niche.

Its playing the same game everyone else is... namely slice into WoW market share.

 

There is more than enough subscribers available to fund continued development on a game that returns to some of the early roots of MMORPG's. eg:/ Slower but more involving levelling experience, More teamwork, less charity loot, more ops/ group preparation etc.... But combined with the more modern (and great) functions of things like X server group finders, warzones, server driven events, UI customization etc....

I also happen to believe there is a open space right now for a game of that type to do very well long term.

and there is no bigger global franchise than Star Wars really.

 

I for one will be one of the 1million or 1.3million or 250,000 subs or whatever it ends up being....I enjoy this game and I see it "should" have a bright future.

Edited May 8, 2012 by Littlegem
Commars

[Blackardin]

oh i forgot to add another -% when their free legacy month is up lol

 

Again, you knuckleheads that are cheering do understand that the entire genre is on the line if this game goes down, right? That if market yield does not turn around for this genre the market will die? ....or do you know as much about investment theory as you do finance?

[MasterKayote]

Its sad they lost so many players but at the same time its doing way better than all other MMO's that have come out in the last 8 years or so, just by being able to stay above 1 million.

 

Plus these figures dont count what we got after 1.2 came out plus all the new region releases. I mean, Asia(!!!!!) and the 38 new countries! I suspect the numbers are MUCH higher than that now with the original NA/EU being 1.5m or so.