Why was this latest merge necessary?

[Yogol]

Until that is addressed, F2P is going to do nothing for this game except show people how poorly it was designed. It is just like the server merges, they did nothing to address the reason people are quitting, and even after healthy populations, they fell off again.

 

This is so true They can put us all on eon single server, if they don't give us stuff to do, people will quit, plain and simple. With f2p, there will be alot of new & returning players, but they need to fix their problems, mainly for more casual players.

 

Edit: But apparently it was only the PVPers who left.

 

People from all types of servers left earlier, but the last weeks, mainly PvPers left, yes (there are about 1 in 3 less logins on PvP servers compared to 3 weeks ago).

[Darvus]

It wasn't just that, he quoted the exit survey wrong. It was 40% said the subscription fee is why they are leaving. Bioware misinterpreted the metrics, slanted it to say that people want F2P and that will bring the masses back when in reality it was people waiting to give them $15 a month to play this awesome game they were hyping the hell out of, only to find out it was an exact WoW copy with linear leveling and nothing to do once you hit 50, except go through the same linear experience (holy cow that is a hell of a sentence).

 

Until that is addressed, F2P is going to do nothing for this game except show people how poorly it was designed. It is just like the server merges, they did nothing to address the reason people are quitting, and even after healthy populations, they fell off again. The fact that people are expecting these "megaservers" to have a different result without any other changes is just insane.

 

Edit: But apparently it was only the PVPers who left.

 

I have to agree. They have not fixed the issues that made people leave, to begin with. This has been an issue since beta, where this game's Dev Team seems unwilling to actually take any negative feedback (constructive or otherwise). Now, they expect to sustain the game on a micro-transaction store, without any idea, how this community will support it. This too is being done without regard to the issues that are causing this game to bleed subscriptions.

[Jarlgon]

it was done to maximise the profit. less servers, roughly the same number of subs, less work for server maintenance = more profit.

[Darvus]

it was done to maximise the profit. less servers, roughly the same number of subs, less work for server maintenance = more profit.

 

LOL what profit? By their own projections, they needed to maintain around 500K subs for quite a while to break even. Considering the development costs, and the drop in subs, there will likely not be profit for quite some time. The last quarterly financial review indicated they were "under-performing."

[Kyriosgundam]

No they merged some of the "Destination" servers too..like Canderous Ordo and The Fatman...they are now merged with other "Final" destination servers.

 

Which I feel was not needed I did the free character transfer from the Zakkeg Beast server to Doorga's Pleasure Barge and now I am being moved to another server less than 2 months after I had already Chosen to move on my own. Then not finding out until yesterday that my destination server (Which already has a very high population) is being merged with other very high population servers into an extremely high population server and without my consent. I can understand why they would do it, however I think it was WAY TO SOON to pull something like this. They should have waited until AFTER they had the results of the F2P before doing another round of server mergers. Plus I have no desire to change my character names again especially since everyone in my guild is so used to calling me by the name currently used my my main character, and since I had to change 4 of the names less than 2 months ago. I also found out by looking at the "transfer matrix" as they called it that some servers are not being merged with others at all. I really feel that they didn't do this properly and that this will backfire on BioWare/EA in a very serious way. I wont cancel my account I have put too much time and money into it to stop now but I really disapprove of this FORCED transfer so soon after the last one. Also as to the problems and bugs that need to be fixed people want immediate solutions to these problems when they don't realize that this is not possible so they quite. As to adding content I have no opinion on that one way or the other.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Kyriosgundam

[Luxidenstore]

I'm f'ing tired of them continuously merging servers with my server, the server was fine, you should've just created one server for the rest to merge to. The amount of idiots running around now is off the charts and honestly, it makes me loose interest in the game. Edited September 19, 2012 by Luxidenstore

[Jarlgon]

LOL what profit? By their own projections, they needed to maintain around 500K subs for quite a while to break even. Considering the development costs, and the drop in subs, there will likely not be profit for quite some time. The last quarterly financial review indicated they were "under-performing."

 

underperforming and making a profit are two different things. BW/EA made back what the game initially cost to make, in the first 6 months.

[AngelofMissy]

underperforming and making a profit are two different things. BW/EA made back what the game initially cost to make, in the first 6 months.

 

EA as a whole is bleeding....EA just plain sucks as a company.

[Darvus]

underperforming and making a profit are two different things. BW/EA made back what the game initially cost to make, in the first 6 months.

 

I would love to know where you got that idea. Among other things, this game apparently has a significantly higher development cost than any other game made, thus far. How did they make the cost back in 6-months? The under-performing was that it was not reaching their expectations. The box and digital sales did not make up for it. Even if 75% of the people that purchased the game bought the CE (which we know they didn't) it would not have paid for the initial cost. BTW, I define initial costs as all cost prior to launch day of the game. Let's also remember there are costs, after that date, as well.

[Jarlgon]

I would love to know where you got that idea. Among other things, this game apparently has a significantly higher development cost than any other game made, thus far. How did they make the cost back in 6-months? The under-performing was that it was not reaching their expectations. The box and digital sales did not make up for it. Even if 75% of the people that purchased the game bought the CE (which we know they didn't) it would not have paid for the initial cost. BTW, I define initial costs as all cost prior to launch day of the game. Let's also remember there are costs, after that date, as well.

 

they EA/BW stated that they did in fact make the $200mil back just from box sales (including online purchases) they would have deleted the source of the information by now.

[Asavar]

No argument here, but I thought the first merge handled that issue. I guess my point was that I was surprised to see a further reduction in servers. Perhaps I have misunderstood and the purpose of this was to force the remaining holdouts from the dead servers on to new servers so they could officially shut them down. Did the amount of "destination" servers (or active servers I guess) actually remain the same ?

 

Obviously not, as it wasn't a "forced" merge the first time, and morons were still sitting on near empty servers.

[Darvus]

they EA/BW stated that they did in fact make the $200mil back just from box sales (including online purchases) they would have deleted the source of the information by now.

 

LOL. Why would that info get deleted? The game is not even a year old. Maybe they didn't want to be reminded. Let's do a little basic math, with that. If we take 2 million (I know their numbers said 1.8 million) and we multiply that by $15 (again, assuming that none of those people cancelled before being billed near the end of January) then that is $30 million for the first month. That means that with 7 months worth of subscriptions (we had 2 free months - the first month, and the one they gave after the first quarter ended) that would be an additional $210 million (again, this is pretending that they did not lose 25% of the subs in that first quarter - or any, for that matter, since launch). This would total $410 million. The initial development cost was estimated at well over $300 million. Let's not forget they had to press all those discs and make those nice Darth Malgus statues, as well as pay staff. Remember that these numbers assume that we had 2 million subs (they said 1.8 mil), and assumes that we lost none of those subs (we know we lost 25% in the first quarter, and were below 1 million subs at the 2nd quarter). Where is the profit that you see them rolling in???

[Bloodstealer]

Only people that left were the strict PvP players which are usually the worst players anyway. But pulling this back to the OP this all comes down to making a better environment to play in.

 

Lol only the strict PvP'ers.. ookayy you keep telling yourself that.

 

The exodus has hit every area of the playerbase.. sure since GW2 came out I am sure many of the PvP die hards have been tempted away but if you think that a story based PvE game has a majpor playerbase swing to the PvP side then you really need to stop smoking that fat one.

 

The mass decline of subs since launch, what is is now approx 70%??..heck even if its only 50% - all PvP'ers yeah right!

 

The server mergers have come about so that they can save $$$ by reducing the server overheads, it brings players together and keep the game feeling healthy on those fewer servers.. doing this keeps players playing and soon, hopefully lining the EA cashop with more $$$ than they can throw a stick at...and the hope is that F2P will draw lots new players in or old players back, which it likely will... the real problem this game has is retaining players interests long enough to make it all worthwhile and F2P is their latest attempt to halt the decline.. will it work??? ONLY TIME WILL TELL

Edited September 19, 2012 by Bloodstealer

[Andryah]

LOL what profit? By their own projections, they needed to maintain around 500K subs for quite a while to break even. Considering the development costs, and the drop in subs, there will likely not be profit for quite some time. The last quarterly financial review indicated they were "under-performing."

 

Sharpen you pencil now and take some notes please.....

 

1) They replanned their operations in May to reduce total operations cost to be in line with reduced subscription numbers. Hence.... wait for it..... 500K is no longer their break even number. Best estimate from available data, they can run a profit at current operations at ~300K subs. But it's meaningless, as they go freemium soon and it becomes revenue from active accounts, NOT subscriptions from that point onward.

 

2) Development costs have no bearing in profitabilty. Development costs are capital investment costs that are treated under tax law and financial reporting as non-recoverable capital investments.

 

3) underperforming has nothing to do with profitability. When you underperform, you replan your operations costs to maintain profitability (see #1 above).

Edited September 19, 2012 by Andryah

[Jarlgon]

LOL. Why would that info get deleted? The game is not even a year old. Maybe they didn't want to be reminded. Let's do a little basic math, with that. If we take 2 million (I know their numbers said 1.8 million) and we multiply that by $15 (again, assuming that none of those people cancelled before being billed near the end of January) then that is $30 million for the first month. That means that with 7 months worth of subscriptions (we had 2 free months - the first month, and the one they gave after the first quarter ended) that would be an additional $210 million (again, this is pretending that they did not lose 25% of the subs in that first quarter - or any, for that matter, since launch). This would total $410 million. The initial development cost was estimated at well over $300 million. Let's not forget they had to press all those discs and make those nice Darth Malgus statues, as well as pay staff. Remember that these numbers assume that we had 2 million subs (they said 1.8 mil), and assumes that we lost none of those subs (we know we lost 25% in the first quarter, and were below 1 million subs at the 2nd quarter). Where is the profit that you see them rolling in???

 

even a small profit is a profit. Plus any company that leaves there profit info on the net is open to getting in trouble with the IRS when they claim they didn't make as much profit as they actually have.

[Darvus]

Sharpen you pencil now and take some notes please.....

 

1) They replanned their operations in May to reduce total operations cost to be in line with reduced subscription numbers. Hence.... wait for it..... 500K is no longer their break even number. Best estimate from available data, they can run a profit at current operations at ~300K subs. But it's meaningless, as they go freemium soon and it becomes revenue from active accounts, NOT subscriptions from that point onward.

 

2) Development costs have no bearing in profitabilty. Development costs are capital investment costs that are treated under tax law and financial reporting as non-recoverable capital investments.

 

3) underperforming has nothing to do with profitability. When you underperform, you replan your operations costs to maintain profitability (see #1 above).

 

Cash flow does not equal profit. Development costs DO have a bearing on profit. We are not talking about taxes, here. We are talking about the amount of money that they have to make in order to recover that initial investment. REAL businesses look at this figure in relation to when they actually start to make a profit. Yes, they made a lot of money since launch. It is not profit, it is cash flow. I will not insult you by defining the word profit, and will assume that you know what it means. This game can make lots of money and still not be profitable. Alas, I am not here to educate anyone on operating costs, revenue, or etc. Believe what you want. If the game were profitable, we would not be seeing the actions that we are seeing. They may be trying to get into a position where they will be profitable in the future, but they are not there, yet.

[Darvus]

even a small profit is a profit. Plus any company that leaves there profit info on the net is open to getting in trouble with the IRS when they claim they didn't make as much profit as they actually have.

 

You do know this is a publicly traded company, right?

[xXloneXxXwolfXx]

NO!!!!!

[Sorwen]

Watch, for the first 3 or 4 months of f2p they are going to have too many people and will expand the servers. Then in 6 months they will have to cut back again because they don't have enough people.

[KinCharBamin]

Pick an answer :

1. They had to get rid of the old servers because it looked really bad to have ALL THOSE SERVERS with nobody really on them.
   
2. They realized that even for free they will never have enough people to fill ALL THOSE SERVERS !
   
3. ALL THOSE SERVERS belonged to Ray and he quit and took his toys and went home!
   

[DarthSabreth]

I for one am very happy with the free consolodation of my account, i now have 15 toons on Ebon hawk and now i can finally dust off my imp toons that were on lord adraas colecting dust. they were stuck there because i had no slots avilable on Ebon Hawk for them to move the first time around. \o/ BW you are awesome!!!