CosmicKat Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 Blizzard isn't so foolish they only try to retain their fanbase. Your anecdotes mean next to nothing. Blizzard will offer different models for Titan, whatever it is. Blizzard will offer a F2P model for Titan at the same point they will for WoW... When it begins to fail, exactly the same time every other MMO that was a designed as a subscription based game goes F2P. Nobody gives away something that people are willing to pay for, ever. Nobody in the history of the world has ever or would ever invest $200 million in anything that is to be given away. If people were willing to pay for TOR it would not be F2P. If TOR had not dipped below 500k subscribers, it would not be F2P. F2P was in a glass case with a "Break Glass if Revenue is in the Red" sign on it. It's plan Z. It's the back-up chute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hizoka Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 Blizzard will offer a F2P model for Titan at the same point they will for WoW... When it begins to fail, exactly the same time every other MMO that was a designed as a subscription based game goes F2P. Nobody gives away something that people are willing to pay for, ever. Nobody in the history of the world has ever or would ever invest $200 million in anything that is to be given away. If people were willing to pay for TOR it would not be F2P. If TOR had not dipped below 500k subscribers, it would not be F2P. F2P was in a glass case with a "Break Glass if Revenue is in the Red" sign on it. It's plan Z. It's the back-up chute. It went F2P because of EA being the stupid poorly lead company that it is. All MMOs see a fair amount of sub drop the first 3 months... The issue with SWTORs launch was they opened too many servers.. so when they had the sub drop happen it left many servers barren, thus causing even more people to leave the game. They caused their sever population drop.. they should of kept the server number smaller and tole people to just deal with queue times instead of opening 125 servers when 25 would of worked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Levity Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 Way dont you ask your friends? My prediction is based on the market, your is your "friends". Good luck. Lol Yours is the market? Who's market? Blizzard makes a crap ton off of WoW's subscriptions so why would they think it to be any different with any other MMO they produce? No big company is going to launch a game straight f2p, they will launch it subscription based so they can get the revenue from box sales. If the game tanks, then they might go in some form of f2p route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Levity Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 It went F2P because of EA being the stupid poorly lead company that it is. All MMOs see a fair amount of sub drop the first 3 months... The issue with SWTORs launch was they opened too many servers.. so when they had the sub drop happen it left many servers barren, thus causing even more people to leave the game. They caused their sever population drop.. they should of kept the server number smaller and tole people to just deal with queue times instead of opening 125 servers when 25 would of worked. That and the fact that EA pushed BW to launch the game when they would of gladly taken another three months of development. They had a different engine they had to scrap, a bunch of content (including a completely different op) that they had to scrap, all because EA is an impatient company. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CosmicKat Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 That and the fact that EA pushed BW to launch the game when they would of gladly taken another three months of development. They had a different engine they had to scrap, a bunch of content (including a completely different op) that they had to scrap, all because EA is an impatient company. Whatever the reasons are, they don't matter. If it had remained profitable as a subscription game, it would never have gone F2P. Some companies are honest about their reasons and others just try to spin at as "it was always the plan!" fairy tales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shingara Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 (edited) Whatever the reasons are, they don't matter. If it had remained profitable as a subscription game, it would never have gone F2P. Some companies are honest about their reasons and others just try to spin at as "it was always the plan!" fairy tales. If it were as bad as you say it would have gone complete full free to play and no one would subscribe, thats not the case and they are making a shed load of money from subscribers and free to play players alike. The game never dropped below profit and its defo no where near unprofitable now. Edited April 25, 2013 by Shingara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlbo_Nabbins Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 You might be right on that. I seem to remember stats much much higher than that back in the days of UO and EQ, more like 50-80% during primetimes. On the other hand, it seems awfully convenient that the Booster Police always make up figures that magically result in TOR having exactly the number of subscribers it had when the numbers peaked at launch, even though there are less than 1/10th as many servers and none of them ever seem to be particularly busier than they ever were. 50-80%? Sorry but that has never been the case for any game. The servers are more busy than they were after the server merges, to try and deny that puts you in the realm of trolling. As to the "make up figures" claim if you look back you can see a number of people posted that active population is usually about 10-20 times peak numbers from posts before and after the server merges. We know, from data collected by players, that before F2P only about 15% of the population of a server was on fleet at any one time. Seeing the populations on the lower level planets - which are certainly much, much higher than even after the server transfers its very likely that there is a higher rate of activity on those planets now so fleet could now represent less than 10% of the player base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angedechu Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 I will try to find the link again, but the ''doctors'' (of Bioware) freely and openly admitted, a couple of weeks ago, that they could not really blame EA for what happened, since EA had given them so much money that that they (the ''doctors'') were overwhelmed by it. Whatever the faults of EA are, those faults came with 200 millions (at least) for TOR. If you invest 200 millions in a project, you kinda have a voice in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlbo_Nabbins Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 No but you listed games that came long after the ones i mentioned and you should have if you were going to take that path. But he did not claim that any of the games he listed were the first MMO, he just claimed that they were earlier than WoW so it was wrong to claim that WoW was the first MMO. His post and the claim made therein was correct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlbo_Nabbins Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 (edited) Every MMO has influx and reduction. This MMO saw 75% of the people who paid between $60 and $150 for a box decline to pay 50 cents a day after 3 months. That's not a normal MMO reduction. That's a cliff. Any source for this statement? From what I have seen in recent MMOs a sub 50% retention rate seems about par for the course when compared to initial interest. Edited April 25, 2013 by Arlbo_Nabbins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlbo_Nabbins Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 No, that doesn't make sense. If they did, numbers would never go down, and the number would be way higher than 10m. I wouldn't be surprised if swtor had about half of that in total accounts before f2p. Maybe there's some weirdness with the numbers going on in Asia, since apparently they have a different payment model, but I've seen no proof of that. There is a lot of weirdness in the numbers for Asia, if an account has even 1 minute of play time left on it Blizzard can legitimately claim that it is active. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaRoamer Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 2)I really don't see what people can buy on the cartel market that is so good. I'm a subber and I basically delete my free cartel packs. Oh, I remember you. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=586591 Hilarious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlbo_Nabbins Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 (edited) The game sold 2.4 mil... peak subs irrelevant... then was between 500k and 1 mil 3 months later. Let's split it and call it 750k subs meaning that 1.65 million people who bought it didn't subscribe. That's 68.75%. At 750k. If we think EA was being vague to cover a bigger problem and it was 600k, that's 1.8M buyers choosing not to subscribe which is... 75%! No it was not. You are using the wrong dates. The "Between 500k and 1mil statement£ was made in August. From memory the 3 month statement was 1.7 million and the 6th month was 1.3 million. so 6 months after launch it was at around 50%. EA did state the 500k-1M number, a 100% margin of error, mind you. However, the point is their ACTION that followed it was fire-drill mode to implement a cash shop to fund the game. No they did not. They stated that they had "well over that number" while referring to the 500k, posters here made the (reasonable) assumption that if they had over a million at that time they would have said so as its a nice round number to use. Edited April 25, 2013 by Arlbo_Nabbins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNahash Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 Oh, I remember you. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=586591 Hilarious. Tbh, I was pretty disappointed that there was no thread by that user complaining about the things he/she found and then deleted. There was one for each of the latest two packs, why not this one? And it's always accompanied by a reminder of how he/she gave some mats to some random dude and that random dude disappeared and never made them the things they had agreed on. And then they proceeded to delete the colour crystals because he/she was begging people to get them and no one wanted them etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icebergy Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 Whatever the reasons are, they don't matter. If it had remained profitable as a subscription game, it would never have gone F2P. Some companies are honest about their reasons and others just try to spin at as "it was always the plan!" fairy tales. The game never became unprofitable. They made a business decision that they would make MORE money with free to play. There is no magic sub number that means "if you go under this number go free". If right now today Blizzard thought they would make more money by going free to play than they make from their subscriptions, you can bet your *** they would do it regardless of their sub number. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angedechu Posted April 25, 2013 Share Posted April 25, 2013 (edited) Tbh, I was pretty disappointed that there was no thread by that user complaining about the things he/she found and then deleted. There was one for each of the latest two packs, why not this one? And it's always accompanied by a reminder of how he/she gave some mats to some random dude and that random dude disappeared and never made them the things they had agreed on. And then they proceeded to delete the colour crystals because he/she was begging people to get them and no one wanted them etc. Indeed, it's a sign of deep psychosis to be so disapointed by a server community that you try to have as little contact with them as possible outside of the dungeon finder. BTW, it's also a brillliant element of design that crafting is not close to instantaneous. This is a brilliant innovation over other MMOs, that use the so old techniques that ''give stuff to someone and he wlll craft you gear with it''. Here, to add fun and replay value, it take 30 minutes. Edited April 25, 2013 by Angedechu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinsali Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 Also, as we all know, WoW was the first MMO ever developed. again another incorrect person...Ever played Everquest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinsali Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 Meridian59 was released in late 1996 and Ultima Online was released in 1997, World of Warcraft, Release date 2004 How was WoW the 1st MMO ? an argument could even be made games like Island of Kesmai released in 1985 MUDs as they where called where the 1st mmos there defiantly the origins of them at least Everquest March 1999 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuixupu Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 His post about WoW was sarcasm, in response to an equally silly statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MillionsKNives Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 (edited) His post about WoW was sarcasm, in response to an equally silly statement. What are you talking about, we all know that everything posted on the internet is 100% true. There is no sarcasm or lies on the internet. I should know, I read it on the internet. Edited April 26, 2013 by MillionsKNives Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlon_Nabarlly Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 Everquest March 1999 WoW came out in 1985 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shingara Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 WoW came out in 1985 Horace goes ski'ing came out in 1982 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BJWyler Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 WoW came out in 1985 WoW - as in World of Warcraft, the MMO came out in 2004. Warcraft - as in the RTS that preceded and inspired WoW came out in 1994. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sobur Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 wow was at 9.6 million people in february. this game had to go free 2 play because it was below 1 million. i guarantee they make faaar less money. The WOW fanboys are strong in this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sobur Posted April 26, 2013 Share Posted April 26, 2013 WoW came out in 1985 WOW was released before the bible didn't you know that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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