SWG Revive?

[theUndead]

I like how you call yourself "people".

 

Oh please you know exactly what he meant. The fact is this should be over at the SWG forums. Not here. Two different games. Two different sets of fans. But really don't go belittling just because we don't share your opinions.

[Hazaz]

Oh please you know exactly what he meant. The fact is this should be over at the SWG forums. Not here. Two different games. Two different sets of fans. But really don't go belittling just because we don't share your opinions.

 

I don/t know exactly what he meant. He meant to pretend that he speaks for a whole host of people (tens? hundreds? thousands?! More?!?!!?), and you imagine typing "we" makes you the voice of unheard masses. You imagine attacking somebody with plurals makes your need to denigrate somebody else' enthusiasms' more valid.

 

You speak for you. I speak for me, and echoing OP's vaguely worded interest in this possibility (however unlikely) is a valid point. Voicing that interest, and an interest in the discussion on a game we forum we actually play, rather than one we don't, is not irrelevant.

 

Just because you think it, does not make your musings inherently logical.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Hazaz

[Vandicus]

SOE, per their own statement, decided not to renew the license, probably because it was not possible to pay for the license with less than 25k accounts. Unless given some reason to believe that re-opening a now even more outdated MMO will suddenly bring in hundred of thousands of players, SOE is not likely to be willing to pay for the Star Wars license.

[BJWyler]

lol assumptions much? I'm pretty sure there's a lot of legit sources that put SWTOR in the top5 on EA's revenue list.

 

Indeed, in their last investor call, SWTOR was one of the two biggest sources of income for the quarter as I recall.

 

And as others mentioned - this is a SWTOR forum. Discussions on SWG should be taken elsewhere, such as:

 

http://forums.lucasarts.com/thread.jspa?threadID=90820&start=0&tstart=0

[Totaltrash]

lol assumptions much? I'm pretty sure there's a lot of legit sources that put SWTOR in the top5 on EA's revenue list.

 

Read before you comment.

The only assumption I made was that we will never see SWG revived - that's a pretty safe bet, imo.

 

The financial world is in agreement - SWTOR was and remains a failure. Even EA has admitted as much.

I suggest you study Forbes, Motley Fool, Wallstreet Journal, International Business Times, etc - lots of good articles out there.

[theUndead]

I don/t know exactly what he meant. He meant to pretend that he speaks for a whole host of people (tens? hundreds? thousands?! More?!?!!?), and you imagine typing "we" makes you the voice of unheard masses. You imagine attacking somebody with plurals makes your need to denigrate somebody else' enthusiasms' more valid.

 

You speak for you. I speak for me, and echoing OP's vaguely worded interest in this possibility (however unlikely) is a valid point. Voicing that interest, and an interest in the discussion on a game we forum we actually play, rather than one we don't, is not irrelevant.

 

Just because you think it, does not make your musings inherently logical.

 

Be that as it may. The fact is this isn't just a game forum it's the SWTOR forum. As such it isn't so much that the OPs request is irrelevant it's the fact that discussing SWG in any capacity always and I mean always generates heated exchanges from both sides. My personal gripe is when ever it is brought up and people like myself say no or disagree it gets seriously heated and I just well am sort of tired of arguing about it. Again that's me.

[kirorx]

Then take it over to the EMU forums there... where there are like minds to share with instead of get all combative because people don't share you pasion.

 

This is true.

 

I play the EMU to get my tattooinee sunset fix and when I really miss my old sullustan

 

EMU still does not have Dathomir but mayb one day, it's still better than nothing and its pretty fun

 

Above all else it's free

 

When you miss SWG go try out the EMU and show your support there, supporting swg here is pointless

And does not help the fellas working on EMU, those guys have my respect because they are doing something about it other than complaining

[Skyrison]

I like how you call yourself "people".

Please don't rag on Andryah. She is a very nice person and has great ideas. It's true what she says though. This is for discussion about SWTOR not SWG. He should go to the EMU boards then Honestly, not being mean in any way shape or form

[Altyrell]

Ignorant. Buying the license precludes the idea of copyright issues. Pay attention.

 

Reread what I wrote because just because someone tries to use Kickstarter to restart SWG doesn't mean that they can because they do NOT have the License from Disney to restart SWG.

[annabethchase]

I can't see this being profitable for Disney in any way. It's a dated game engine that simply would not attract a long term customer base. It wouldn't be able to re-launch as a niche game with say 50k customers being a break-even point, because a ton of work would be needed to get the game back to a presentable state to not embarass the brand image Disney is trying to project.

 

Secondly, it would hurt this game. Everyone's spending is limited at a certain point. Even the people spending $100 on cartel coins would likely buy less if they were spreading it out to SWG as well.

 

What I could see happening is in about 5 years a new SW mmo is launched with both themepark and sandbox elements involved. Then everyone can be happy.

[DarthVitrial]

Quoted for truth. Seriously just let be already.

 

Seriously. If you miss it that much, that's what SWGEmu and Project SWG are for, anyway.

Edited April 8, 2013 by DarthVitrial

[Kubernetic]

Question. If now lucas arts closed and are licencing star wars games could sony bring back swg? It might cost money but, a kickstarter could work. Please post your ideas (i'm not hating or dissing swtor just want it back)

 

Doesn't SWG have its own forum somewhere? These posts belong there.

[Aedey]

Then take it over to the EMU forums there... where there are like minds to share with instead of get all combative because people don't share you pasion.

 

I would, but EMU is the Pre CU version. My personal taste lies in the NGE. Which as of yet has not been emulated & completed to the point of a full release.

[AMKSED]

Lucas Arts and all its intellectual properties, including Star Wars, was sold to Disney.

Disney now owns the rights and collects the royalties from the licenses, including the one for SWTOR.

 

Bioware obtained a license for Star Wars from Lucas Arts.

EA owns Bioware and thereby owns SWTOR.

Now EA pays royalties for the Star Wars trademark to Disney.

 

Because of its huge popularity and marketing value, Star Wars is the most lucrative license to hold. Hence, it's royalties are the most exorbitant. The cost of the license for SWG was approximately 35% of their total revenue. While I do not know the numbers, I'm certain that EA's license for SWTOR is in the same ballpark.

 

To be successful with that kind of license price tag, a game needs to attract a huge number of paying customers. And this is exactly the reason why the financial world considers SWTOR a failure - the game was unable to attract and keep the large numbers of subscribers needed to return a profit. Even with the F2P Cartel Market, SWTOR is barely profitable now and only a very small part of EA's portfolio.

 

Most licenses have non-competition clauses in them. In other words, Disney is excluded from issuing the same license to another MMO (or making one themselves) while the license with EA is still active. SWG is similar enough to SWTOR to be covered by such a clause.

 

Most licenses have expiration dates. While I have no way to confirm this, EA's license is said to run for 3 years. After that time, EA has to decide if it makes economic sense to renew it or if it is better to close SWTOR down.

Time will tell.

 

Overall, the gaming industry is trying to move away from licensing agreements in general because they are simply too expensive to maintain.

 

So, to answer the OP's question - no, not any time soon and probably not ever will we see a revival of SWG.

 

I am sorry but EA has easily already made the money they put into SWTOR.

[AMKSED]

SOE, per their own statement, decided not to renew the license, probably because it was not possible to pay for the license with less than 25k accounts. Unless given some reason to believe that re-opening a now even more outdated MMO will suddenly bring in hundred of thousands of players, SOE is not likely to be willing to pay for the Star Wars license.

 

SOE knew years before SWTOR's announcement they weren't going to renew the license. Hence why they made the cash cow TCG and milked players of their money because they knew the remaining players were the hard core collector veterans still playing.

[BrianDavion]

I am sorry but EA has easily already made the money they put into SWTOR.

 

yeah but they don't wanna break even. they wanna PROFIT

[Darka]

SWG seems to be loved so much by the people who wouldnt dare play the game they really liked in the later years.

 

Everyone tends to forget the bugs, broken classes, and lack of well any content in SWG, or the delays on items that should have been their Day One.

 

I had a great time in SWG, but for me it was the people who made the experience great for me.

[Devlonir]

Lucas Arts and all its intellectual properties, including Star Wars, was sold to Disney.

Disney now owns the rights and collects the royalties from the licenses, including the one for SWTOR.

 

Bioware obtained a license for Star Wars from Lucas Arts.

EA owns Bioware and thereby owns SWTOR.

Now EA pays royalties for the Star Wars trademark to Disney.

 

Because of its huge popularity and marketing value, Star Wars is the most lucrative license to hold. Hence, it's royalties are the most exorbitant. The cost of the license for SWG was approximately 35% of their total revenue. While I do not know the numbers, I'm certain that EA's license for SWTOR is in the same ballpark.

 

To be successful with that kind of license price tag, a game needs to attract a huge number of paying customers. And this is exactly the reason why the financial world considers SWTOR a failure - the game was unable to attract and keep the large numbers of subscribers needed to return a profit. Even with the F2P Cartel Market, SWTOR is barely profitable now and only a very small part of EA's portfolio.

 

-snip-

 

And there you went wrong. In the last earnings call it was mentioned that SWTOR, together with EA's HUGE sports titles, as leading the charge for EA's digital sales. How can it not be financially succesful if that's the case? They also admitted it was too close to call it a succes, but all signs were up for SWTOR since F2P.

And if you look at everything that is true and honest, so ignoring the unbased naysayers, you see that both critical acclaim as well as actual server populations have also been up since F2P launch. The game is, for the first time in launch, in an upward trend again in population, activity, financial state and gameplay.

 

But sure, the financial world sees SWTOR as a failure. Go live on that little bubble of 6 month old truth a little longer. Anyone with any real financial sense doesn't look to 6 months ago, but everything between now and 6 months ago. And in that timeframe, almost every bit of news concerning SWTOR has been positive.

 

When we hear F2P as gamers, many think "the game has failed because it cant live on subs alone". Which is a huge lopgical phallacy by itself, as even the biggest sub game in the world hasn't lived on subs alone for over 4 years now, thanks to paid character transfers, race changes and mount/pet shop. And that doesn't even mention physical merchandise like the Trading Card Game, which also had ingame consequences thanks to the loot cards.

When the 'financial world' hears F2P they see a possibility for increased revenue from the already existing customer base. A new avenue to make money off the fans. Like how Star Wars films not only make money on Star Wars flms, but also on merchandise. In many ways, F2P, or more exactly Freemium, is the same. A game that doesn't only make money on subscribers, but also on digital merchandise that allows fans to spend even more cash.

 

So no, you are wrong. The financial world sees a nearly dead subscriber game get a huge financial boom thanks to the Freemium model and probably sees: "This is the future of MMO's." They see anything but a failure.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Devlonir

[Skyrison]

And there you went wrong. In the last earnings call it was mentioned that SWTOR, together with EA's HUGE sports titles, as leading the charge for EA's digital sales. How can it not be financially succesful if that's the case? They also admitted it was too close to call it a succes, but all signs were up for SWTOR since F2P.

And if you look at everything that is true and honest, so ignoring the unbased naysayers, you see that both critical acclaim as well as actual server populations have also been up since F2P launch. The game is, for the first time in launch, in an upward trend again in population, activity, financial state and gameplay.

 

But sure, the financial world sees SWTOR as a failure. Go live on that little bubble of 6 month old truth a little longer. Anyone with any real financial sense doesn't look to 6 months ago, but everything between now and 6 months ago. And in that timeframe, almost every bit of news concerning SWTOR has been positive.

 

When we hear F2P as gamers, many think "the game has failed because it cant live on subs alone". Which is a huge lopgical phallacy by itself, as even the biggest sub game in the world hasn't lived on subs alone for over 4 years now, thanks to paid character transfers, race changes and mount/pet shop. And that doesn't even mention physical merchandise like the Trading Card Game, which also had ingame consequences thanks to the loot cards.

When the 'financial world' hears F2P they see a possibility for increased revenue from the already existing customer base. A new avenue to make money off the fans. Like how Star Wars films not only make money on Star Wars flms, but also on merchandise. In many ways, F2P, or more exactly Freemium, is the same. A game that doesn't only make money on subscribers, but also on digital merchandise that allows fans to spend even more cash.

 

So no, you are wrong. The financial world sees a nearly dead subscriber game get a huge financial boom thanks to the Freemium model and probably sees: "This is the future of MMO's." They see anything but a failure.

 

Extremely well said Exactly it.

[Totaltrash]

And there you went wrong. In the last earnings call it was mentioned that SWTOR, together with EA's HUGE sports titles, as leading the charge for EA's digital sales. How can it not be financially succesful if that's the case? They also admitted it was too close to call it a succes, but all signs were up for SWTOR since F2P.

And if you look at everything that is true and honest, so ignoring the unbased naysayers, you see that both critical acclaim as well as actual server populations have also been up since F2P launch. The game is, for the first time in launch, in an upward trend again in population, activity, financial state and gameplay.

 

But sure, the financial world sees SWTOR as a failure. Go live on that little bubble of 6 month old truth a little longer. Anyone with any real financial sense doesn't look to 6 months ago, but everything between now and 6 months ago. And in that timeframe, almost every bit of news concerning SWTOR has been positive.

 

When we hear F2P as gamers, many think "the game has failed because it cant live on subs alone". Which is a huge lopgical phallacy by itself, as even the biggest sub game in the world hasn't lived on subs alone for over 4 years now, thanks to paid character transfers, race changes and mount/pet shop. And that doesn't even mention physical merchandise like the Trading Card Game, which also had ingame consequences thanks to the loot cards.

When the 'financial world' hears F2P they see a possibility for increased revenue from the already existing customer base. A new avenue to make money off the fans. Like how Star Wars films not only make money on Star Wars flms, but also on merchandise. In many ways, F2P, or more exactly Freemium, is the same. A game that doesn't only make money on subscribers, but also on digital merchandise that allows fans to spend even more cash.

 

So no, you are wrong. The financial world sees a nearly dead subscriber game get a huge financial boom thanks to the Freemium model and probably sees: "This is the future of MMO's." They see anything but a failure.

Any press release of any publicly traded company will spin the numbers until bad news looks like good news.

Why? Because their stock value depends on it and shareholders, like myself, would like to see it go up.

 

What really matters is how the market interprets a quarterly report.

Did EA's stock jump up? No. It has steadily declined since December 2011 (~$23 to about ~$17 today).

That's why I rely on independent financial analysis and not EA's press releases.

 

I know you like the game and want it to succeed, and so do I, but wishful thinking is not going to help here.

I am sorry but EA has easily already made the money they put into SWTOR.

 

In February 2012, EA said it would need 500K subscribers to break even and they said they had about 500K subscribers left (down from 1.7M). What they conveniently omitted is for how long they would need to keep 500K subscribers - 6 months, 1 year, for the duration of the Star Wars license? To my knowledge, EA never released the exact production cost for SWTOR either. It is estimated to be upwards of $200M, but outside of EA, nobody knows for certain.

 

Btw, breaking even is not a desirable financial model. Generating revenue in excess of operational cost is!

[danielearley]

No one is going to invest to relaunch SWG, it failed you don't back failure. As mentioned by others, let it go......

[Devlonir]

Any press release of any publicly traded company will spin the numbers until bad news looks like good news.

Why? Because their stock value depends on it and shareholders, like myself, would like to see it go up.

 

What really matters is how the market interprets a quarterly report.

Did EA's stock jump up? No. It has steadily declined since December 2011 (~$23 to about ~$17 today).

That's why I rely on independent financial analysis and not EA's press releases.

And SWTOR is to blame for that?

As you claim to be a shareholder, you must also know that the real decline in EA stock has more to do with general decline in the entire gaming sector when it comes to sales numbers. With EA being the 'big man' on the gaming entertainment sector in the stock market, the stock shows as much actual company value as it does general sector value.

Taking it even further, almost all digital markets have seen a slow decline these last years as well. And some companies felt it a lot harder than others. See, for example, the current state of Apple.

 

Stock value depends on a LOT more than one MMO. So it will also not rise because one MMO does a better job than what was expected from it. The quarterly report with the good news about SWTOR also had bad news in other departments. Also, any positive news from the actual game is also overshadowed by the uncertainty concerning what Disney will do with the license.

 

The point I am trying to make is that the financial success of SWTOR can, in no way, be measured by the response the stockmarkets have on EA's current status. It is just one of many things determining the share's market value. Now, if Bioware was a publicly traded company, you'd have a better story. But it's not, we only have EA. And EA is a lot bigger than one MMO.

 

I know you like the game and want it to succeed, and so do I, but wishful thinking is not going to help here.

It is, in no way, wishful thinking. The markings on the wall are very clear. The markets favour freemium models that give the possibility for 'Whales" to spend a lot of cash on a game, while other play it for less money or entirely for free. It is the same way many other markets work, from movies with merchandise in my earlier example, to Las Vegas and it's casino's.

Eventually, what it comes down to is creating more ways for people to part with their money in your favour. The time when you bought a box for 60 bucks and never spent another dime on a game anymore are over. The markets have seen game fans are willing to spend more on games they love, so why not give them a chance to do this?

 

Freemium, the model SWTOR and other F2P MMO's use, is a perfect model for this. Another is the B2P + cash shop model like Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World uses. But is also very common in other multiplayer or even singleplayer games already, see the Mass Effect DLC's and multiplayer boxes, or Battlefield 3's Premium model. What all these models have in common though, is incentive for people with money to burn, to spend it on your game.

 

Almost all financial analysts agree on that. Only those who come from gaming and have wishful thinking that this is not the way the market is moving see it differently.

 

 

In February 2012, EA said it would need 500K subscribers to break even and they said they had about 500K subscribers left (down from 1.7M). What they conveniently omitted is for how long they would need to keep 500K subscribers - 6 months, 1 year, for the duration of the Star Wars license? To my knowledge, EA never released the exact production cost for SWTOR either. It is estimated to be upwards of $200M, but outside of EA, nobody knows for certain.

 

Btw, breaking even is not a desirable financial model. Generating revenue in excess of operational cost is!

 

Way to twist numbers and timelines. In February 2012 the announcement was made there were 1.7 million subscribers. Around F2P announcement, which was August 2012, the number was "between 500k and 1 million", claiming it to be 'about 500k' from that really twists their words (which were admittedly vague). Taking all possibilities into account, if you take 'between 500k and 1 million' and call that 'around 500k' you are deliberately giving your statement a 100% margin of error. Not a smart thing to do for a self-proclaimed shareholder. That's like saying: "I expect Shell to have a sales number of between $ 0,- and $ 10 billion. Nobody takes that kind of statement seriously.

All serious analysts took that number and said to themselves: "Around 750k, most probably below that, because otherwise they would have said 'between 750k and 1 million' "

 

Also, they did not have to say how long they needed 500k to break even. If you have the exact latest statement (from Februari 2012):

 

Q: You've previously said you need about a half million subscribers to be profitable, is that still the case?

A: At 500,000 subscribers, we'd break even. At a million, we'd be making a profit but nothing worth writing home about. As it scales up from there, we're talking about a nice profit. At this point with the successful launch, we can take the worst case scenarios off the table.

 

So, especially the last line, means the succesful initial sales probably covered (most of) the production costs. Why else take the worst case scenarios off the table? They were under a million after 9 months though, so not making a profit. In that light, the change to F2P was more than logical, it was the right business decision to make. It was so logical that shortly after the 500k - 1 million sub number they announced F2P. That was clearly one scenario, and clearly not a worst case one, as those were already off the table, and the game never went below 500k.

 

Considering that last bit, official statements since August concerning Sub numbers were all vague but were:

August: 500k - 1 million

Shortly before F2P launch: Subscription drop has evened out (suggesting it has not gone under 500k, which torstatus.net numbers showed as well, where activity on servers was stable or even slightly rising because of F2P announcement)

Post F2P: More subscribers, and 2 million new accounts made.

 

But sure, financial failure is your story still. Next time when you naysay, at least get your facts right.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Devlonir

[Totaltrash]

<snip>

It is, in no way, wishful thinking. The markings on the wall are very clear. The markets favour freemium models that give the possibility for 'Whales" to spend a lot of cash on a game, while other play it for less money or entirely for free. It is the same way many other markets work, from movies with merchandise in my earlier example, to Las Vegas and it's casino's.

Eventually, what it comes down to is creating more ways for people to part with their money in your favour. The time when you bought a box for 60 bucks and never spent another dime on a game anymore are over. The markets have seen game fans are willing to spend more on games they love, so why not give them a chance to do this?

 

Freemium, the model SWTOR and other F2P MMO's use, is a perfect model for this. Another is the B2P + cash shop model like Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World uses. But is also very common in other multiplayer or even singleplayer games already, see the Mass Effect DLC's and multiplayer boxes, or Battlefield 3's Premium model. What all these models have in common though, is incentive for people with money to burn, to spend it on your game.

 

Almost all financial analysts agree on that. Only those who come from gaming and have wishful thinking that this is not the way the market is moving see it differently.

Discussing with fan boys is tedious at best.

 

Read Forbes from last week with regards to Disney's closure of Lucas Art.

Read what Motley Fool has to say about the same.

A lot more was published when Disney bought the Star Wars franchise a while ago.

Read what the analysts had to say when EA shutdown parts of Bioware.

Read what they had to say when Bioware's top management resigned.

 

There is still the same consensus that SWTOR has sorely disappointed, given the huge investment and the tremendous marketing potential of the Star Wars franchise.

 

With regards to SWTOR (not necessarily other games), what you claim is a new, successful marketing model is almost across the board viewed by independent financial analysts of reputed news organizations as a last-gasp effort to save a failed investment. Sure, it might work out after all - as I said a few posts ago, only time will tell.

 

But really, this discussion has moved too far from the SWG thread topic, so let's end this here.

[AlexDougherty]

Calm down Everyone. SWG probably won't come back, EA's license probably would prohibit Disney allowing it, Disney probably would rather have someone create a brand New Version anyhow, if it was allowed by pre-existing agreements, SWG had a Huge sub base at it's height, but not at it's end, And Swtor is one of EA's biggest money earners.

 

Now that's everything summed up, stop arguing and have a pleasant discussion or none at all.

[KariTalRathe]

You can in no way compare the combat in an mmo from 2003 to an mmorpg from 2012. Just no, get out.

 

launched in the same year as SWG and knocks spots off even some current day combat animations, so there were definitely engines available that could handle all the bells and whistles back then. Not that I am suggesting for one moment that animations appropriate to a high fantasy MMORPG would fit well in Star Wars, but to imply the technology wasn't available then (or is far superior now) is incorrect. Edited April 8, 2013 by KariTalRathe