Can SWTOR be Saved ?

[Mallorik]

Its more the implication that any number other than 1.3m is a viable estimate.

 

Wow i cant believe i have to say this.

 

When facts implicate something , what does that tell you?

[SneiK]

"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"

 

Why do you think that 1.3 million subscribers = 1.3 million concurrent users.

 

It doesn't.

 

WoW tends to hang around 250k concurrent users (in NA). Do you think it only has 250k subs?

 

'subscriber numbers haven’t dropped, but concurrent users at peak times have', That's a load of crap. Well yeah, someone that got 3-6month sub but quit long before it ended is still counted as 'subscriber'. Let's put it this way. The active amount of players has dropped. BAD.

[Azumio]

So, if you bought a 3 month sub at Launch (December) it wouldn't run out until April 25th

 

December 25 - January 25 (Free Month for buying game everyone gets)

January 26 - February 25 (1 Month)

February 26 - March 25th (2 Months)

March 26th - April 25th (3 Months)

 

This means that those who bought the 3 or 6 month subs at Launch, still had game-time on their accounts when the Free month was given out (In early April) no matter when they unsubbed.

 

So really, only the Month to Month subscribers had to resub to get the free month.

[jarjarloves]

You're right.

 

I guess the 1.2 million active subscribers that aren't logged in have better things to do right now, than log-on to SWTOR Sunday night Prime Time.

 

Effortless.

 

yeah it's called Diablo 3. i know its why i barely logged on. But given a week of D3 i will be back to SWTOR.

[Kreedlore]

Doubt it can be truely saved. Far to many things that needed to be in at launch and just were not there. Games to out dated , major issues of functioning basic options and interactive ui functions that needed to be in at launch and were not. Fixed far to late in the release to make a difference. PVP is a total joke, there should be full territorial fighting over planets across the galaxy .Each planet should be a bloody massive fight to have control over and retain.

 

Any game fixes will be far to late to retain the subscription numbers, to little to late. To bad really had such high hopes of the hype. Game should have been at least on par with the competition in game design and function for release .

[Talarchy]

There are a few milestones I'd like to point out that help drive our fiscal '12. We exceeded our $1 billion goal for overall digital revenue, delivering a plan-beating total of $1.2 billion in digital revenue. Star Wars: The Old Republic was the most successful subscription MMO launch in history and is now firmly established as the #2 MMO in the West. The service is extremely strong on the operations level.

 

hue hue hue

 

"extremely strong on the operations level"

 

Is the operations level run by monkeys smoking cigarettes, smashing keys with wild abandon?

[LeonBraun]

The best thing now would be to focus on delivering substantial, non-grindy and somewhat dynamic content that can provide long term playability for the gamers.

 

There needs to be something added that will bring back people for long term group content that will keep people engaged for at least the duration of a patch cycle.

 

If they can come up with a way that fits for them that delivers on this, then they have their solution to bringing back players.

 

On a side note, I have many ideas myself for solutions to this dilemma, and if they wish to hear what those are, they can contact me directly.

[pilotjosh]

The game is doing great.

 

 

If you guys think bioware or EA is worried about this game you are insane. They know they will make money and for them this is a product and they are running a business. Even if this game goes free to play they will continue to make a profit which for them is a success.

 

your joking right ? you think they will make money with free to play , it has been said by bioware they figured they needed AT MINIMUM 500k paying subscribers to keep this game in the black, going free to play would NOT make them money, and trust me Bioware and EA ARE WORRIED about the massive subscribtion loss they are taking right now not even at the 6 month mark of the game, its business bro, and paying subscribers is all a board of investors cares about, you tell a board room of people who invtested millions into this game "free to play" you would get laughed out of the room,

Edited May 21, 2012 by pilotjosh

[cyberfreaq]

They are professionals, many of whom have been in the industry for years.

 

Any solution you come up with they have most likely already thought of and either are being worked on or have decided against.

 

These "industry professionals" you're talking about have made this mess of a game, so I don't know if I trust their judgement that much

[PinoyC]

Those that state that the pops haven't dropped off, you must either have low expectations or are on one of the few healthy servers. When I checked earlier on Sunday afternoon, out of all the NA servers, 4 were normal...with the rest being light (not 30 days ago there were 3-4 times that number of normal/highs...which isn't all that impressive either). I literally spend 1-2 hrs waiting when I log on for a PVP pop and even then it's with 1/2 a team.

 

What should've (or should now happen) is set a target number for the servers and only open 3-4 of each type of server until that population reaches 75-80% of the target. At this point open 1-2 more of that type of server and repeat so that the populations are consolidated. Maybe even blocking new accounts in the servers meeting the % range described to facilitate loading the newer servers. This would also help the obscenely long load times for very heavy servers (only read about that problem on these forums).

 

To those that recommend re-rolling to another server...there are those of us with significant time & effort in our current characters...I have no desire to run more then the 7 that I personally have. Especially w/o the benefit of the assets gained from my previous efforts (materials, crated items, credits, etc). Also, the 1st couple times through each side of the non-class quests was ok...any more then that is just asinine.

 

To those that state that the game is new and the devs need time implement features/fix bugs...that's primarily incorrect IMO. There are examples of successful MMOs out there...certain things like guild banks, transfers, LFG systems...all are essentially required for any degree of user contentment. Many of these features should've been available at launch. It's not like they didn't have a beta process to check this stuff and work on the bugs. What we should really be on now is sustainment mode where they're ONLY working bugs and addtn'l content (to the effect of more story for each class (be that in expansion form or not), more FP & OPs, more PVP options/maps, etc).

 

It doesn't help that they add or "fix" features (some that I don't recall having many complaints on...eg GTN in 1.2) we get non-functioning or now broken features...we have a beta built into the PTS to check these things don't they...???...(although I hear that it's not up to snuff considering the limited amount of transplanted toons from live servers)

 

I like this game...it's my 1st MMO like it (coming from EVE & Planetside) but it seems as though it's far too late for many things that should've come to us on launch and the prolonged delay in corrective actions. The only reason I check in now is b/c I paid through Aug...and if if things don't get fixed soon...

 

-PC

[sittingpretty]

Give it 2 months...

Then give us 2 months free for all the queue time and maintenance downtime that was wasted really people should wait longer for things that they have been warned about for months the only good thing i get out of this is reading the forums while i sit in a queue that will never pop but hey ill give it 2 months to pop why not?

[metalgearyoda]

your joking right ? you think they will make money with free to play , it has been said by bioware they figured they needed AT MINIMUM 500k paying subscribers to keep this game in the black, going free to play would NOT make them money, and trust me Bioware and EA ARE WORRIED about the massive subscribtion loss they are taking right now not even at the 6 month mark of the game, its business bro, and paying subscribers is all a board of investors cares about, you tell a board room of people who invtested millions into this game "free to play" you would get laughed out of the room,

 

Over the past seven or so years, gaming companies in Korea, and more recently, China, have built gaming empires by letting people play for free and selling them anything from virtual weapons to fashionable boots. San Francisco-based Pearl Research estimates that as much as 75% of the $1.7 billion Chinese gaming market is built on virtual item sales.

[Angel-Sanctuary]

Can SWTOR be Saved ?

 

No... Its Dead ! Deal with it !

[DarthMaulUK]

And yet it's amazing how many of my guild members have gone to play D3 then come back and said well, that was fun, we'll make it a night a week like we do BF3, but it's not exactly an MMO, is it? And the people that will enjoy GW2 are not exactly the people who would be the market in the long run for SWTOR to begin with. I, personally, wouldn't touch GW2 with a ten foot pole. But hey, speak for us all, do. I know a lot of people who have no intention of playing GW2, simply because we don't like cutthroat PVP. Strangely, there's a lot of us out there who find it stressful rather than enjoyable to be constantly battling other players rather than the game itself. We're hardly a lost demographic.

 

.

I didnt include Diablo 3 because that has only just been released but yes, that is also another reason

[Okidusk]

Giving BW a year to correct the issues. WoW took a good year to get things worked out and it ended up being....well...THE mmo (and still is).

 

What I'm looking for after a year (no particular order):

1. Ready check tool ("We don't have a ready check?" Nope...and you still don't)

2. LFG tool

3. Fix the GTN interface

4. Fix the economy. Includes worthwhile crafting.

5. Server merges (then transfers)

6. Fix the current bugs!

 

Once that is figured out I'd love them to take the step into space missions. This would include a group of 4 in an instance and maybe even some space operations. I truely feel that dedicating time to expanding the space portion of the game would raise the bar and save the game.

[Kourage]

It can only be saved by cutting the number of servers in half, or less.

[Feyen]

Yea SWTOR can be saved as i se it if i se all those servers and there are alot off server i se only populasion light maybe some standart they yust need to put some servers thogeter the peaple that are still playing are mostly peaple wo realy like the game put those peaple thogeter ok less servers but servers wil be ful again and there will be les complaining...well thats wat i think i still like the game love the storry aspect

[terzappi]

Hope so, but i don't think.

[Baptes]

From what I've gathered about the upcoming LFG "tool", its nothing more than a slightly automated version of what we already have. As in you flag (now with role dps, tank, heals), system searches for others who flagged, makes a group out of you aaaaannnnnd its done.

 

....

 

Yep, that's gonna help immensely there guys! Especially gonna be useful on say TCP WHEN I WAS THE ONLY PERSON IN FLEET ON PRIME TIME!!!!!!!!

 

No one in their right minds will be taking the "free transfers" (when they come) because this is how it will go down. They will offer free transfers off The Fatman (and anything else that goes "Heavy") to dying servers, maybe a few fish will bite but most will see that transferring to a dying server from a living server might be a bad idea. And the server will continue to die while BW can say "Hey! We did everything we could!". That's the way it worked in WoW and considering just how much of WoW they (tried and failed for the most part) copied, is the likeliest form free transfers will take. Not saying WoW is a better game (I don't play and haven't for six months and I was gone from it three months after Cata launched until some "friends" wanted me to raid with them, then they promptly quit. jerks), but even they with their old arsed game has the tech to transfer peeps automatically (for which they charge an absurd fee). To launch SWTOR without having that tech in place after seeing that every MMO has server fluctuations and that most company's either have transfers in place at launch or very shortly after shows a total lack of foresight and immense arrogance on BW/EAs part.

 

I swear they put something in people's water when they say they're going to be game devs. They never learn from other game devs mistakes, won't admit to their own mistakes, and act like condescending elitist jerks when asked W.T.F. was going through their heads when they did something so obviously bad that they lose subs over it.

[JeramieCrowe]

Of course it can be "saved", if it really needs it. The number of the recently lost subs are not even 0.2% of the MMO genre. But BioWare has their work cut out for them to start increasing subs again.

[islander]

Baptes: I honestly believe the devs are the problem. Well, the coders portion of them.

Honestly, at this point I've come to realize the reality - it's third rate coders managing what was supposed to be a first rate MMO.

 

There's a reason Xalek's shield defense bonuses took until 1.2.4 to be fixed.

There's a reason these geniuses couldn't rebuild a UI worth .02 until 1.2. T

There's a reason they can't make chat bubbles work.

There's a reason Ilum dailies were broken - for months.

There's a reason it took them the better part of 8 months to allow match to chest again.

There's a reason they can't figure out how to automatically transfer characters, and they can't just auto-create level 50's on the PTS.

 

These coders stink. Bottom line.

 

Now that I've been involved with this game for about 9-10 months now, it's all clear now. This game is dying because the coders/engine combination is a failure. The lack of proper testing is a second important cause, but ultimately this coder group is completely incapable of doing anything in a timely manner.

Edited May 21, 2012 by islander

[TheAincient]

Baptes: I honestly believe the devs are the problem. Well, the coders portion of them.

Honestly, at this point I've come to realize the reality - it's third rate coders managing what was supposed to be a first rate MMO.

 

There's a reason Xalek's shield defense bonuses took until 1.2.4 to be fixed.

There's a reason these geniuses couldn't rebuild a UI worth .02 until 1.2. T

There's a reason they can't make chat bubbles work.

There's a reason Ilum dailies were broken - for months.

There's a reason it took them the better part of 8 months to allow match to chest again.

There's a reason they can't figure out how to automatically transfer characters, and they can't just auto-create level 50's on the PTS.

 

These coders stink. Bottom line.

 

Now that I've been involved with this game for about 9-10 months now, it's all clear now. This game is dying because the coders/engine combination is a failure. The lack of proper testing is a second important cause, but ultimately this coder group is completely incapable of doing anything in a timely manner.

 

In the defense of the coders, this is one of the few MMOs which had relatively few problems at launch.

I suspect it's not the coders that are the problems it's the decision makers that assign the priorities, otoh it might be a combination of the two.

[Raeln]

Baptes: I honestly believe the devs are the problem. Well, the coders portion of them.

Honestly, at this point I've come to realize the reality - it's third rate coders managing what was supposed to be a first rate MMO.

 

There's a reason Xalek's shield defense bonuses took until 1.2.4 to be fixed.

There's a reason these geniuses couldn't rebuild a UI worth .02 until 1.2. T

There's a reason they can't make chat bubbles work.

There's a reason Ilum dailies were broken - for months.

There's a reason it took them the better part of 8 months to allow match to chest again.

There's a reason they can't figure out how to automatically transfer characters, and they can't just auto-create level 50's on the PTS.

 

These coders stink. Bottom line.

 

Now that I've been involved with this game for about 9-10 months now, it's all clear now. This game is dying because the coders/engine combination is a failure. The lack of proper testing is a second important cause, but ultimately this coder group is completely incapable of doing anything in a timely manner.

 

You have no way to know if the coders are purely at fault or not. They may be understaffed. If you have ever been in the position to manage people, you'll know that finding quality employees is an extremely difficult thing to accomplish these days. Far too many people want a paycheck without exerting effort to obtain it.

 

Another thing to consider is how management classifies work order. You complain that chat bubbles aren't in the game. If management deems chat bubbles as a low priority, the coders will not be allowed to work on them until the higher priority list items are resolved first.

 

You seem quick to toss the coders under the bus and it may be that they are the most unqualified bunch of geeks ever; however, it may also have something to do with the leadership that tells those coders what to do and when they do it.

 

Considering the number of character flags involved with the heavy story-based model TOR uses, simply making a level 50 character that is not broken in some way may not be as easy as you think.

 

Have you considered that some of those other things, like chat bubbles, may be an marketing item they are keeping on the back burner as a future content patch incentive?

[JeramieCrowe]

You have no way to know if the coders are purely at fault or not. They may be understaffed. If you have ever been in the position to manage people, you'll know that finding quality employees is an extremely difficult thing to accomplish these days. Far too many people want a paycheck without exerting effort to obtain it.

 

Another thing to consider is how management classifies work order. You complain that chat bubbles aren't in the game. If management deems chat bubbles as a low priority, the coders will not be allowed to work on them until the higher priority list items are resolved first.

 

You seem quick to toss the coders under the bus and it may be that they are the most unqualified bunch of geeks ever; however, it may also have something to do with the leadership that tells those coders what to do and when they do it.

 

Considering the number of character flags involved with the heavy story-based model TOR uses, simply making a level 50 character that is not broken in some way may not be as easy as you think.

 

Have you considered that some of those other things, like chat bubbles, may be an marketing item they are keeping on the back burner as a future content patch incentive?

 

Not only that but another thing he's failing to consider is that most of his bullet list is no different than any other MMO. I can't think of another MMO that launched with customizable UI. Not even Rift did.

 

Also, he's failing to consider that with millions of lines of code, it's impossible for human beings not to write new code that just might break something. So, if it does, it's actually QA's fault, not the coders'. That's what we ran into here with the server transfer software that was ready since beta: a Legacy element, most likely one of the "last-minute additions" they spoke about in the podcast, broke the transfer/shut-down software they were going to implement a month ago.

[Darkulous]

In the defense of the coders, this is one of the few MMOs which had relatively few problems at launch.

I suspect it's not the coders that are the problems it's the decision makers that assign the priorities, otoh it might be a combination of the two.

 

I agree that the decision makers are to blame. Even before release they always took a neutral stance on every controversial MMO feature. Combat logs, addons, X-server Tech, Dual-spec, Transfers, etc etc. It was always "maybe" or "everything is on the table." They are petrified of losing any Subs due to the implementation of any of these features so they sit on their hands hoping the IP will take care of them. That's one thing I respect Blizzard for. They chose a path and went for it and they never look back with their decisions.