Yeah, this game sure is losing people...

[Lord_of_Mu]

Furthermore Activision/Blizzard doesn't always turn a profit. Imo the way we judge winners and losers in MMOs nowadays is sort've strange. A game doesn't need to have millions of subscribers to turn a profit, and in the case of Blizzard, even having millions of subscribers doesn't necessarily mean a profit. 200,000-300,000 is usually enough for an MMO to make money and continue a healthy amount of development. Blizzard on the other hand has millions of subscribers and is now pushing out content slower than most of its competitors.

 

They use the money they make on WoW to fund other projects like Starcraft and Diablo. Even so, their ability to deliver content is pretty damn slow considering how buggy, broken, lame, rehashed and dumb down it tends to be.

[Invictos]

I'm not speaking in terms of market treds or demographics from the sellers point of view but the human condition that exists here. My contention is that this game launched at the time of wow would have achieved substantially more patronage. In short, the player base has changed dramatically, and in a very short time. If i were to blame the proprietor I would contend that they were looking at the wrong cause and therefor the incorrect solution. Programers and financiers tend to make that mistake quite a bit.

 

Beautifully well said.

 

I feel like a broken record, but it's worth mentioning that even though 7-8 years seems like a very short time, it's an absolutely huge length of time relative to the lifespan of the MMO industry. Think of where (Western) culture was, even 7-8 years ago, relative to today. We simply cannot extrapolate any firm ideas about the MMO marketplace based on the market's history. For all intents and purposes, there is no history. All anyone can do is look at trends in the general marketplace and try to anticipate potentially vast changes in consumer demand.

[opriv]

Seeing as the peak of subs was 1.7 million, that kinda disproves your post, no?

 

I started prelaunch with a guild of 35 people. At least 15 of them never logged in for the first time. I knew half of them and their computers would not run the heavy game. The others, I have no idea...

[Yogol]

My experiences tell me that they launched with the standard set of features for an MMORPG

 

Euh... the game launched with no group finder. That's as standard as standard gets in a MMO witht he classic tank / healer / DPS setup.

 

Up until today, I think that the extreme poor grouping mechanism is the main cause for this game downfall. You need a tank and healer for each 2 DPS and the player base isn't like that. There is no cross-server grouping. There is no cross-planet grouping. The current group finder is extremely buggy to get your comms and changes your role at random. If I were the boss, my first mission to fix this game: fix grouping.

 

But instead they decided that the first mission would be: go f2p and take as much money from players from the shop as they can.

 

I can only assume that they did market studies that show that f2p players don't like to group, else all those f2p players will quit for the exact same reason as most people.

[SNCommand]

I think it's funny how being the "winner" or not in the MMO market decides if a game is bad or not, I guess the "winners" of the game industry is Farmville, Call of Duty and Madden and the rest is crap since they pull in the most cash

[Javaans]

Euh... the game launched with no group finder. That's as standard as standard gets in a MMO witht he classic tank / healer / DPS setup.

 

Up until today, I think that the extreme poor grouping mechanism is the main cause for this game downfall. You need a tank and healer for each 2 DPS and the player base isn't like that. There is no cross-server grouping. There is no cross-planet grouping. The current group finder is extremely buggy to get your comms and changes your role at random. If I were the boss, my first mission to fix this game: fix grouping.

 

But instead they decided that the first mission would be: go f2p and take as much money from players from the shop as they can.

 

I can only assume that they did market studies that show that f2p players don't like to group, else all those f2p players will quit for the exact same reason as most people.

 

 

I would also know what they doing there with a many employees, why everything takes so long ?

[Steele_dk]

People have different standards and expectations. It is a purely logical response to unsub if one's expectations and standards are not met. It is not logical to believe that everyone else's standards should match your own, and thus judge them as irrational when they do not conform to the behavior pattern your standards would dictate.

 

My logical reason to unsub was that ive cleared the story and content on 3 different chars. There is nothing more for me to do so i don't want to pay just to stand in fleet.

 

My emotional reason to unsub was all my m8s left the game months ago and i have lost the fun with the game now and with its developers (Ilum fix 2013??)

 

Which reason weighs the most? Id say properly the emotional one because if i still liked the game i would properly make a 4th char, or a 5th etc. but too many bad design choices and rollercoasting "feel" makes me feel like this "ride" is now over. I guess i just liked the theme too much of the rollercoaster that i took a few more runs.

 

And to the guy that said its ppl own fault for not adapting to the game problems when fx ghost town servers started appearing, then i say no its really not. Another bioware design choice that ended horribly, this one related to server numbers/capacity etc. and you cant expect ppl just to start over because of a mistake not made by them.

 

Personally myself i didnt leave because of gw2, the theme doesnt interested me, starwars did, and i properly wont come back because the emotional reasons will still be the same, and they simply just weigh heavier than the logical reasons.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Steele_dk

[LordArtemis]

Same thing happened in Rift. Their total subs were smaller (peaked at ~600K) but the % decline in players over 9 months was ~65%. And most people tout Rift as the way an MMO should be in the modern era (great launch, fast bug fixes, frequent patch and content updates, etc. etc.) and it still bled out 2 out of 3 subscribers within 9 months before stabilizing.

 

It's the new normal for MMOs I'm afraid. The player base is much more transient, and hops from MMO to MMO.

 

I only disagree in the way that the top 5 losers in the last 5 years all had major problems, flaws and were considered incomplete at launch, Rift included. One can speculate that losses are the norm, or one could look at the industry overall and see 5 underperformers suffering steep losses for not meeting customer expectations in the last 5 years. Losing more than half of your playerbase in less than a year is likely NOT the norm.

 

I find the reasoning behind the idea that this type of loss is a normal modern market trend to be self serving and suspect...at the very least HIGHLY speculative, though I would not be able to rule it out naturally, nor claim it didn't have at least SOME kind of effect.

 

Attrition does seem to effect almost all games in the industry shortly after launch. Average is 1/5 to 1/6 of the population within a year. The losses here FAR exceeded that standard.

[RakeWorm]

I'm a new player, and every time I go to a new planet there are people there. Even on weekdays. People are looking for groups for heroics, etc. Maybe there was some golden age that I wasn't a part of where things were packed with multitudes of people strolling about, but there seems to be people around whenever I log on to level my little toon some more.

 

I've found groups for heroics on every planet I've been to, and I don't think I've ever waited 15 minutes for a flashpoint group. (Though full disclosure, I am a healer. That tends to help in most MMOs.)

 

I don't PvP though, so I have had little experience with that.

[narcsissism]

HI all

 

I joined this game at the start on rakata mind prison server and the fleet was down 2 about 30 people max when ocieana serveres went up i trasfered to there pvp server and currentley it is as bad there maybey even worse and biowhere has told me since it is a desternashen server you can not transfere out of that server even thougth they know the server is almost dead .

 

I work night shift 1 week afternoon the next and day the next on rotashen and i dont know about your serveres but this sunday just been i had the monday of so i decieded to do an all nighter on swtor and from 12 midnight to 10am not 1 warzone pop and not one group finder fleet was stedy at between 8 to 12 people and when i did dailys on belsavis,illium and corillea i was the only person there with the exception of belsavis that had 1 outher person there.

 

So in short a night wasted biut i know not to make the same mistake again i gess i just wait it out and see if it picks up or god forbid the dev team actually merge all 3 ocieana serveres as then they might actually have 1 with a population for some reson biowhere likes people to stay on dead serveres not sure why it can only lead to people unsubing but since i actually do like this game and in my opinion no outher games currentley worth going too i will stick it out and hope that things actually improve but since it has currentley been like this on my server for the last 6 weeks wont hold my breath all i can say is great game poor managment of resources as fas as to many serveres no where near enougth playeres to filll them.

[LordArtemis]

I guess the question can be asked...how could the game have suffered such losses with such a great storyline? If you say the storyline isnt that great....thats ok to say since your entitled to that viewpoint, but I have seen very little to demonstrate this is a common problem or viewpoint.

 

You could say they ran out of things to do. This seems to be both a common complaint and a logical one.

 

You could say its natural for a game to lose over half its population in less than 9 months after loss. That viewpoint seems ludicrous to me.

 

I would tend to think its the second contention.

[soldenal]

I only disagree in the way that the top 5 losers in the last 5 years all had major problems, flaws and were considered incomplete at launch, Rift included. One can speculate that losses are the norm, or one could look at the industry overall and see 5 underperformers suffering steep losses for not meeting customer expectations in the last 5 years. Losing more than half of your playerbase in less than a year is likely NOT the norm.

 

I find the reasoning behind the idea that this type of loss is a normal modern market trend to be self serving and suspect...at the very least HIGHLY speculative, though I would not be able to rule it out naturally, nor claim it didn't have at least SOME kind of effect.

 

Attrition does seem to effect almost all games in the industry shortly after launch. Average is 1/5 to 1/6 of the population within a year. The losses here FAR exceeded that standard.

 

Rift is not losing money at all. In large part due to not having to pay huge IP licensing loyalty to other party like SWTOR.

 

RIFT has been out for 1 year and half and haven't gone F2P except for free up to level 20 industry standard approach. That proves they are doing just fine with the sub model. They have their first expansion Storm Legion coming very soon, which will boost they sub number back up quite a lot.

 

They survived because they are fast to adapt, pumping out content fast month after month. Just an example, in light of GW2 launch, Rift rolled out Conquest which is a three faction huge war zone similar to GW2 WvWvW. It is not as good as GW2 WvWvW but it help to retain their player base. Also they are going to normalize PvP gear in small scale PvP in light of GW2 sPvP being without a gear grind.

 

What have SWTOR done to mitigate impact from GW2? Not much of anything except a short world event. Not even announcing anything exciting coming.

[Metalmac]

Every week I see less and less people playing. The game is croaking slowly....

[OsarionRDM]

Late to the party though I may be, OP, you are beyond deluding yourself if you honestly believe this game has not lost a massively significant portion of it's population. No reasonable person could argue anything to the contrary. It's an objectively measurable fact.

[MarcSh]

I just unsubbed myself. Not because I don't like the game or because enough people are playing... This last patch destroyed my framerate, and it was tolerable before, just not now.

[Bigronx]

When Canderous Ordo isn't going thru stability issues we normally have 100+ on both fleets all the time

+1 in living server.

 

when i stopped playing about a month ago this server had 240ish on each fleet as well as another instance going.................saying there isnt pop stability issues is laughable if this is the current pop on fleet now.

[Exsuna]

The only number you need to look at is the server list to see all the ones now locked compared to what is available.

Can see the PR spam probably in Feb-March 2013 time frame "To further enhance your gameplay experience we'll be merging servers once more."

Haters will always hate, but I think the reports of SWTOR's demise were greatly exaggerated.

[Metalmac]

I am playing all hours of the day and the population is headed in a downward slant.

 

Every week less and less are online at Fleet or Black Hole or Ilum or Belsavis. This game is slowly dying.

[Wayshuba]

I'm not speaking in terms of market treds or demographics from the sellers point of view but the human condition that exists here. My contention is that this game launched at the time of wow would have achieved substantially more patronage. In short, the player base has changed dramatically, and in a very short time. If i were to blame the proprietor I would contend that they were looking at the wrong cause and therefor the incorrect solution. Programers and financiers tend to make that mistake quite a bit.

 

I believe you are correct in the market change, but not regarding BioWare's ability to react to it. Plain and simple, it is obvious to see they went into this with blinders on and they are paying the price for it significantly.

 

Let me explain:

 

SWTOR was started in October 2006. It shows in their carbon copy of WoW at the time. That was their obvious design direction - WoW is successful so let's copy it, add the Star Wars IP and story and we'll have a hit. Unfortunately, that was stupid to begin with and they were too arrogant to open their eyes.

 

Guild Wars 2 was started in May 2007 (eight months after SWTOR). Now, I'm not saying GW2 got everything right, but ArenaNet, as a company, recognized the changing trends then. So they didn't change suddenly, they were changing back then.

 

Secondly, all you have to do is go back and watch the lead designers videos to understand the difference. BioWare was sheltered quite a bit from producing single player desktop games. They had their vision, stuck with it, and people either bought it or didn't. In BioWare's case, they had been successful with this formula. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the same way in the MMO world. The themes (fantasy, science-fantasy and sci-fi) may be similar, but the audience and expectations are different.

 

ArenaNet, on the other hand, only did MMOs, and it shows. They understood and LISTENED to the market base, compared to BioWare who sat on their high horse (and still continue to do so) and thought they knew better. Even given how this game has tanked so fast, and become the biggest failure in MMO history, they still continue to stick their head in the sand and carry that same attitude and not address the true symptom of the problem. Here is a clue for them, though they will never read it or take it to heart - it isn't the business model that is the problem, it is the incessant fixation with vertical rail design you have in the game. How many players and times do they have to hear it before it gets through their thick skulls I don't know.

 

Some will argue that the game if fine, all 300k-400k left of the 2.4M sold. That means this is now a niche product and it was not only not intended to be that way, it was supposed to contend for the top spot in MMO land.

 

I for one do not blame EA at all. They financed it, yes, but BioWare alone had all the cards for design and direction, which they started long before EA acquired them. Quite simply, EA was looking at a game in development for longer than most MMOs, with a budget far beyond any other MMO, and a development team almost three times the size of any other MMO, and finally laid down the law and said to get the product out. Unfortunately, BioWare was and still is plagued with project leads THAT DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR CUSTOMER BASE AT ALL. And that is why this game will continue to degrade. An Op here, flashpoint there and space mission once in a while is not going to change that. Adding Pazzak, sabacc, pod racing, et al. would have started the turn around, but in MMO lanc, a real fact is that once players leave and move on, they don't come back.

[Yogol]

BioWare was sheltered quite a bit from producing single player desktop games. They had their vision, stuck with it, and people either bought it or didn't. In BioWare's case, they had been successful with this formula. Unfortunately, it doesn't work the same way in the MMO world.

 

<nods in agreement>

 

Lucas Arts made a mistake when they gave the Star Wars brand to a company with zero experience in MMOs. Everything that is good about this game, is from single player features (story, voices, companions up to a point,...). Everything that is bad abaout this game, is from multiple player features (PvP balance, end-game content, GTN, tank/hrealer/DPS balance,...).

 

MMOs are different then single player games. In MMOs, you have to listen to your player base. Which is not easy, I admit, but if you don't do it... well... you can see in this game what happens.

 

I mean... they don't even go to Celebration... how out-of-touch can you be ?!?

Edited September 7, 2012 by Yogol

[LordArtemis]

<nods in agreement>

 

Lucas Arts made a mistake when they gave the Star Wars brand to a company with zero experience in MMOs. Everything that is good about this game, is from single player features (story, voices, companions up to a point,...). Everything that is bad abaout this game, is from multiple player features (PvP balance, end-game content, GTN, tank/hrealer/DPS balance,...).

 

MMOs are different then single player games. In MMOs, you have to listen to your player base. Which is not easy, I admit, but if you don't do it... well... you can see in this game what happens.

 

I mean... they don't even go to Celebration... how out-of-touch can you be ?!?

 

Im personally not sure if its a mistake yet....

 

They have one year. One year to stop being stubborn and silly and start adding customization, minigames and repeatable "sandboxy" content instead of themepark endgame content people will burn through in a month. They have already wasted 9 months on drivel, its time for them to open their eyes and realize they are running out of time.

 

Because after a year, on average, an MMO has a rep that sticks no matter what they do from that point forward.

 

So it might not be a mistake IF they can see their entire design intent is flawed and needs rethinking....fast.

[Skyzen]

I have never seen the population so low for what seems to be the busiest server. It's kind of sad. It's taking a long time to get a hardmode flahspoint to pop.

[simplius]

difficulty slider? hell no L2P noob

 

that was the answer i got back 2 months after launch

 

and this is realitys answer to u now

 

no fun=no money

 

im so pissed right now that i hope u enjoy the long dive into the deep, a long with a potentially great game

 

no BW didnt kill the game YOU did that, yelling for new end game content right after launch

 

forcing them to constantly tweak gameplay for PVP

 

draining recources from core gameplay (bug issues, server load issues,gameplay issues)

[EJedi]

Stephen Hawking is still functional too, but he's on life support.