SWTOR $1 million decrease in subscription

[Alanbra]

 

And how often did people simply stop giving a sh*t about the element, or actually admitted that their response was premature? Espescially in regards to gameplay changes such as level synch and discplines? I remember a fifty+ pages discussion with countless threads about how that system would destroy the game, made no sense gameplay and story wise, and would be the NGE of SWTOR. Come 4.0 and 4.2 later on, nobody gave a cr*p anymore. It stopped being an issue. The same thing goes for utilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUOTE]

 

Raises hand. I'm one of the people who complained and whined about how awful level synch would be, and you know what? It's even worse than I thought it would be. Not only does it drag things out so everything takes a few second longer to get around on lower level planets like I expected, but it also ruined certain fights such as SI/SW class boss fights and bounty event kingpins.

 

But what would be the point of posting and complaining about it still? It would be as crazy as demanding iconic jedi robes or original tracer missile animations. The ship has sailed and there's no going back now. I still liked the game enough to keep playing, but I liked it just a bit less. Everyone has a point where they realize "you know? That's it, that's the breaking point", and sometimes you don't even know you have a breaking point until it happens.

 

And for me, that point was reading (from places that dare not speak their name) about the random gear and the class changes. The next day I bought Legion. I used to play about 2 hours a day here. In the past five weeks I've only been on for about 20 minutes.

 

My sub lasts until first week of Jan so I'll give 5.0 a try. But I'm moving into the most dangerous mood a gamer can have about a game: Apathy.

 

 

 

(and yes, I also still hate disciplines. Do you remember the reason why we had to have them? It was to speed up creating content because the developers had to spend so much time balancing classes. With disciplines class changes would be so easy to implement and class balance would be obtained, freeing up developer time to create more content. The game would have had so much more content if it weren't for those pesky skill trees.)

[MeNaCe-NZ]

-snip-

 

And yet people are quitting ... there is nothing suggesting this games player base is growing or remaining static over the years is there?

 

You try imply that people are all talk and don't leave yet clearly a hell of a lot of people have left ( can't say if they were the vocal ones or not ) and you just need to look at the state of some of the servers to see this. Torstatus shows a diminishing level of players , this very thread topic shows a diminishing level of subscribers ...

 

Had this system come in with new raids and flashpoints I would happily adopt the "give it a go" approach but honestly to give it a go I have to part with $15 more to do so and I really have no interest in doing that as it I don't agree with the majority of changes and I don't want to support them by paying to try them out.

 

I've paid my $15 to try the story and quickly do some uprisings and that DvL stuff ( probably ) as those are things

that are positive with the upcoming expansion but beyond that I don't feel it's worth my money.

 

I'll of course review my decision when they announce next year's plan but there is little point to paying money to try a system that makes the content that was becoming monotonous even more monotonous ( and making me waiting longer to even be able to do the content I may want to do like HM raiding ) from my perspective.

 

Time will tell how things turn out but similar discussions happened around the direction of 4.0 with episodic story content and there is nothing to suggest that turned out very well for BWA or at least as well as expected.

[Morrolan]

And yet people are quitting ... there is nothing suggesting this games player base is growing or remaining static over the years is there?

 

You try imply that people are all talk and don't leave yet clearly a hell of a lot of people have left ( can't say if they were the vocal ones or not ) and you just need to look at the state of some of the servers to see this. Torstatus shows a diminishing level of players , this very thread topic shows a diminishing level of subscribers ...

 

I've unsubbed (sub hasn't run out yet), and every revelation since the initial announcement of the rng gearing has simply solidified the decision in my mind. If the gear from crates was only set bonus gear then I might come back but the recent revelations that we can get blues and greens from it means that it is going to be a nightmare gearing up for pvp and raids. Then there's the possibility of cxp potions.

[TX_Angel]

TUX, let's be honest here. How often has the forum gone apesh*t crazy over a proposed change in X.0 and predicted the end of the world (SWTOR) as we know it? How many countless NGE examples have been made for level sync, RNG boxes, Discplines and Utilities and even slot machines?

 

The game's continued existence does not mean those issues turned out to be nothing...

 

The empty servers would seem to indicate they are very big problems indeed...

[Transcendent]

From your posts it would seem you don't. And you might want to look up a dictionary to see what a loss is. I don't think it means what you think it means

 

The terminology was in fact the correct usage of the word. Let me clarify that statement for you a little bit.

 

If for example SWTOR gained 31% in subscription revenue in Q3 last year, and then sees a shift reducing that subscription revenue in Q3 this year to 30%, they have made a loss of 1% from the previous quarters.

 

I think you're too busy arguing semantics with TUXs to understand the point being made. EA has attributed the loss of 1% subscription revenue primarily to SWTOR in their report. They previously made gains, they have now made a loss of those gains. This isn't an end of year financial report, this is a quarterly report where they've specifically called out SWTOR for a reduction in revenue from subscriptions.

 

It seems you are trying to construe this as something it isn't, TUXs is being quite clear in his posting.

[Celise]

Sorry but why would we need to do that? Why can't we just play the games enjoy things and when things are shut down just move on? It is pretty clear WoW has been and currently is a very popular MMO. The Legion model is doing very well and unlike BioWare Blizzard has said a lot about their road map for the future. Not quite sure I follow what you're trying to say there. I do think everything has an end however so maybe that is all you are trying to communicate?

 

You and i and everyone else would have no idea if WoW could find itself shut down within the next few years, so prepare for that possibility even if as you say, it may not happen due to Legion. Even so i used CoH as an example because they released content for that game not long before the shut down.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Celise

[Eshvara]

You and i and everyone else would have no idea if WoW could find itself shut down within the next few years, so prepare for that possibility even if as you say, it may not happen due to Legion. Even so i used CoH as an example because they released content for that game not long before the shut down.

 

City of heroes had 10-20k players, WoW would have to fail so hard in the next expansion in order to be closing.

 

Don't be silly.

[Transcendent]

How many countless NGE examples have been made for level sync, RNG boxes, Discplines and Utilities and even slot machines?

 

We still see complaints about Level Sync. I personally miss being able to play a hybrid class but can live with that, I pretty much ignored playing Merc in PvP for most of 4.0 due to rubbish Utility placements by BioWare. I still have 3 slot machines sat in my stronghold, however still think BioWare went too far with those nerfs.

 

Each and every single one of those "NGE" examples has eroded my faith in BioWare to get the balance right when they alter something in the game.

 

As to RNG gearing, I think perhaps BioWare underestimate how many players who have reached end-game will tolerate it being so RNG intensive. If they had left the loot tables as set bonus gear only, perhaps it would have a less detrimental effect on those already at end-game.

 

I do welcome BioWare implementing a way for new players reaching end-game being able to access top tier gear regardless of content type played, however not at the expense of making it the only way to gear for end-game. Even RNG heavy gearing games such as The Division have vendors selling parts of set bonus gear on a rotating basis, as a way to mitigate RNG.

 

If Eric has confirmed some players may never get a full set, how is that an improvement in gearing?

[Nightblazer]

They'll get rid of RNG in swtor once Blizzard gets rid of RNG in wow. But hey, anything is possible I guess. Edited November 15, 2016 by Nightblazer

[MeNaCe-NZ]

You and i and everyone else would have no idea if WoW could find itself shut down within the next few years, so prepare for that possibility even if as you say, it may not happen due to Legion. Even so i used CoH as an example because they released content for that game not long before the shut down.

 

Doesn't WoW have millions of paying subscribers every month and a license they ideally don't have to pay another company for and thus get ROI?

 

WoW won't go anywhere until this game is long since dead unless they launch a successor to WoW ( which wouldn't do this game any favors ).

 

Fwiw I've never even played WoW but all this talk around it possibly closing just seems ludicrous.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

The game's continued existence does not mean those issues turned out to be nothing...

 

The empty servers would seem to indicate they are very big problems indeed...

 

Exactly and to be fair in relation to my previous post around WoW I don't see this game closing as long as it's profitable or a successor comes along. I've always stated it at the very least helps pay the star wars licensing fees.

 

Of course that can mean a stretched out life span of minimal new content but if that's what the few players who are left are happy with then power to them. Personally I'm subbing as I see value in my money and I will get it in December but not going to extend that based on information at hand.

 

@ TUXs ... what do you still find fun in this game that warrants your sub fee? I'm honestly curious now and wondering if it's more the social interaction factor with friends within the game than any game play you haven't done to death before.

 

I think if that is the case it's a reasonably large factor that keeps a lot of people subbed that would otherwise leave - not wanting to lose the ability to hang out with their friends and there is nothing wrong with that at all but BWA seem to be borderline exploiting this these days instead of also trying to provide those customers awesome new customer experiences.

[Eshvara]

Doesn't WoW have millions of paying subscribers every month and a license they ideally don't have to pay another company for and thus get ROI?

 

WoW won't go anywhere until this game is long since dead unless they launch a successor to WoW ( which wouldn't do this game any favors ).

 

Fwiw I've never even played WoW but all this talk around it possibly closing just seems ludicrous.

 

Yeah, and even if WoW were to lose do many subs, it would probably go free to play with a cosmetic shop before it would close.

WoW makes about 1b annually, or it did in 2013, might have changed. I don't see that game closing anytime soon, even if it were to make half of that a year.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Eshvara

[Tsillah]

Doesn't WoW have millions of paying subscribers every month and a license they ideally don't have to pay another company for and thus get ROI?

 

WoW won't go anywhere until this game is long since dead unless they launch a successor to WoW ( which wouldn't do this game any favors ).

 

Fwiw I've never even played WoW but all this talk around it possibly closing just seems ludicrous.

 

Ultimately WoW is always a terribly choice for a comparison. WoW is the exception in the market. It's been so hugely successful and no other MMO has been able to even come close to that, certainly not here in the West.

 

The only sensible thing to do is take WoW out of it and see how the rest stands. In math we know the terms average and median. In the simple variant we see the average by taking all the revenue from all the MMOs and divide it by the total. The problem with an average is that it may not be representative of the norm. So the median is more appropriate.

 

Example: Five people need to perform and action. They individually perform this action in 3,6,7,8 and 20 mins. So then we have a total of 44 mins which brings you to an average of 11 mins. Of course since most people are below 11 mins it doesn't seem a realistic representation.

For a basic median you would take off the extremes (3 and 20) and that leaves 3 participants with 21 mins and then the median is 7 mins. That may in fact be more representative of how long the task should last than the actual average.

 

So it is with WoW. It's the extreme that has done so much better than the entire rest of the market that it is no longer representative of the market. Wanting to be a WoW killer or trying to even get close to their success has not been achieved by anyone. Why not? Because in my view WoW was the lucky one to be there at the right time and the right place with the right idea and anyone wanting to repeat that will have to do something very different rather than copy what's already been done before. But that involves risk and it's hard to make a business case for that I guess, so we are stuck in this perpetual state of MMOs just essentially picking up the leftovers from WoW.

 

I mean WoW has survived drops in subs that would've wiped SWTOR twice over, but in the scope of SWTOR this drop of 1% in this particular quarter is not as I said "a harbinger of doom". It would need to be a downward trend that cuts through the months and quarters. At this stage this is simply a dip with some reasons that could be explained. To avoid it becoming a trend BWA will have to do something. I guess we'll find out what that is in this January live stream they referred to.

[DarthSpuds]

The biggest contributing factor to subscriber retention will be (as I pointed out) the group content stream in January.

 

You may have pointed it out - doesn't make it right.

 

In a game that has spent the last 3 years, at least, shifting its focus to solo and casual play styles, and to which style the majority of players have now become accustomed, why would "group play content" be the key factor in subscription retention?

 

My Sub is currently on hold, has 35-ish days left.

 

If 5.0 launches with the class revamps as they stand my sub will not be renewed.

If 5.0 launches with RNG being the only route for gearing up my sub will not be renewed.

If the story and chapter elements of 5.0 are not at least twice as good as how KOTFE ended then my sub will not be renewed.

 

Group play content will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the status of my subscription.

 

And, given how much of the playerbase has become accustomed to the solo/casual friendly style of play over the last three years I would suggest that there is a very significant chance that I am in the majority.

 

Please note, I am not saying that group play content is not needed - it clearly is, even someone as solo-centric as me can see that. And I do engage in that content - it is just not a major enough factor for me for it to be a deal-breaker just yet.

 

From what I have seen of the class revamps they are designed by people that have almost no experience of playing the live version of the game in the same way that the playerbase does. It is this factor that will, IMO, be the deal-breaker for most players.

 

Most players play the toon they do because they like how it feels, how it plays, how it fits into the lore. If the class changes break that (and as they stand they WILL break that) players, en masse, will start to lose what connection they have left to their toons, and that will see subs fall.

 

All The Best

[Deaconik]

You may have pointed it out - doesn't make it right.

 

In a game that has spent the last 3 years, at least, shifting its focus to solo and casual play styles, and to which style the majority of players have now become accustomed, why would "group play content" be the key factor in subscription retention?

 

My Sub is currently on hold, has 35-ish days left.

 

If 5.0 launches with the class revamps as they stand my sub will not be renewed.

If 5.0 launches with RNG being the only route for gearing up my sub will not be renewed.

If the story and chapter elements of 5.0 are not at least twice as good as how KOTFE ended then my sub will not be renewed.

 

Group play content will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the status of my subscription.

 

And, given how much of the playerbase has become accustomed to the solo/casual friendly style of play over the last three years I would suggest that there is a very significant chance that I am in the majority.

 

Please note, I am not saying that group play content is not needed - it clearly is, even someone as solo-centric as me can see that. And I do engage in that content - it is just not a major enough factor for me for it to be a deal-breaker just yet.

 

From what I have seen of the class revamps they are designed by people that have almost no experience of playing the live version of the game in the same way that the playerbase does. It is this factor that will, IMO, be the deal-breaker for most players.

 

Most players play the toon they do because they like how it feels, how it plays, how it fits into the lore. If the class changes break that (and as they stand they WILL break that) players, en masse, will start to lose what connection they have left to their toons, and that will see subs fall.

 

All The Best

 

Because it seems that ignoring loyal customers over casual new players didn't work. That's why almost everything from 5.0 requires subscription. It seems to me someone from EA screamed hard at BWA about subscription revenue....

[Piepyr]

Most players play the toon they do because they like how it feels, how it plays, how it fits into the lore. If the class changes break that (and as they stand they WILL break that) players, en masse, will start to lose what connection they have left to their toons, and that will see subs fall.

 

All The Best

 

This can be more detrimental to a game than people realize. I've read a lot of posts going on about how WoW is an exception to MMO's and how successful it is and so on and so forth. The thing is, WoW is not in such a great spot anymore and hasn't been for several years. When a game loses 5 million subs during the first few months after an xpac is released, it's doing something very, very wrong.

 

Legion is dropping subs as quickly as WOD ever did. You don't need sub numbers to see this in the AH. You can see it in guilds, you can see it in queue times, and you can see it in activity feed graphs. Too little too late the devs admitted in the last Q&A that they took pruning "a bit too far," (an understatement as many classes were decimated to 3 buttons) and are planning on returning some abilities. When they shove their humongous egos aside and admit a mistake, you know people are leaving their game over this.

 

It doesn't matter how fantastic content is, no one wants to play a boring or broken garbage class.

 

This doesn't even begin to address the RNG and time gating that have driven off multitudes of players. Blizzard may be doing well thanks to their other titles, but WoW is foundering. And now we see BW copying their mistakes. Yeah, I don't get it.

[jozkopucik]

Yes the overall situation of the game is bad and is getting worse.

 

The main decisions are coming from the top so even if Bioware wanted to save the game their hands are tied. We have almost no official reports on how the game is actually doing, we only have a few press release where they naturaly say how great the game is and how it is succesful.

 

It is not hard to time a press release and pull of statements which are true at that time, but not for long. We had statements where they said they had 1 mil subs, then they said they need 500k subs to stay alive and they are above that, soon after they said they have largest sub count in 2 years, but that wasnt 2 years after they said they are above 500k. So slowly like this you can add the numbers and get a slight picture of the situation, but there are other factors that contribute to this, like Episode 7 etc, also the events they do in game.

 

For example many ppl unsubbed for KOTFE but resubbed for 1 month to get all chapters and play them once. They waited 6 months for all chapters to release and then subbed. That was also a point at which Bioware can say: We have a sub rise!!! Sure, cause ppl didnt wanna pay for nothing, waiting for chapters and doing Prio ops for gear for nothing.

[jozkopucik]

The biggest contributing factor to subscriber retention will be (as I pointed out) the group content stream in January. If there is some new group content, and even something that doesn't follow the previous Operation/FP paradigm, we might see a better player retention than last year.

 

Dont smoke em yet!

 

The problem with this game that has been here for some time is that not all people enjoy ops!! That is actually the main issue why the game changed direction. Before we had NiM ops with NiM buff but what do we have now? Just MaB which only suffers due to improper level sync!!

 

They have realized that the people that play swtor play it to play dress up, RP, level toons and other similar activities. Swtor has become a game where people dont want to bother with BiS gear, calculating the best stats, using best rotation etc. If it were up to the 90% of the game population you would only have the "Win Button" for every encounter.

 

I see it everywhere on the planets, flashpoints, PVP..... people have bad gear, no class knowledge only use the abilities that "look cool". The problem is that Group Content is only for like 10% of the game population, not more so they dont care about us.

[Deaconik]

Dont smoke em yet!

 

The problem with this game that has been here for some time is that not all people enjoy ops!! That is actually the main issue why the game changed direction. Before we had NiM ops with NiM buff but what do we have now? Just MaB which only suffers due to improper level sync!!

 

They have realized that the people that play swtor play it to play dress up, RP, level toons and other similar activities. Swtor has become a game where people dont want to bother with BiS gear, calculating the best stats, using best rotation etc. If it were up to the 90% of the game population you would only have the "Win Button" for every encounter.

 

I see it everywhere on the planets, flashpoints, PVP..... people have bad gear, no class knowledge only use the abilities that "look cool". The problem is that Group Content is only for like 10% of the game population, not more so they dont care about us.

 

Sure, when you don't update the content players care about many players will leave and then you got what stayed. Those are the plaeyrs you are referring to. This is the same fault as BW and their metrics. We haven;t seen any update in content other than story in 2 years. No wonder only solo players mostly left...

[jozkopucik]

Sure, when you don't update the content players care about many players will leave and then you got what stayed. Those are the plaeyrs you are referring to. This is the same fault as BW and their metrics. We haven;t seen any update in content other than story in 2 years. No wonder only solo players mostly left...

 

Well swtors end started at the start

 

They had the subs!! They had over 1 mil ppl, but they just started off badly. There wasnt enough content to keep the people and the subs took a big decline right at start. If they had started off with more content and better game play the game would have been better off.

[Galahard]

Well swtors end started at the start

 

They had the subs!! They had over 1 mil ppl, but they just started off badly. There wasnt enough content to keep the people and the subs took a big decline right at start. If they had started off with more content and better game play the game would have been better off.

 

Well, you're probably referring to the Wow kids that came over to SWTOR from Wow and was expecting and demanding the exact same experience, just in a Star Wars skin, than in Wow.

This means they space barred through story content and rushed to end-game within a few weeks, just to find that there was not the same amount of end-game yet at launch, as at the time 7 year old veteran Wow. Surprise!

They screamed 'no content' and ragequit, pooing all over the place that SWTOR has no content.

The game came out with A LOT of content at launch, just the majority of MMO players ignored it first hand.

With what Bioware failed is to communicate that this is not Wow, this is a story based game, with 8 distinct class stories. I would be very very surprised if the majority of those ragequitters played through ALL 8 class stories in those first few weeks (let's remember, with a much slower leveling experience than now, it took about 80-100 hours to take a character to 50 and finish a class story AND there was still content after that, openworld PvP, some operations etc. just not on the level of WoW right away).

So therefore, let's not say it was only Bioware's fault, it was both the player bases fault and Bioware's fault.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Galahard

[Alssaran]

Raises hand. I'm one of the people who complained and whined about how awful level synch would be, and you know what? It's even worse than I thought it would be.

 

And you are still around. Whether you're apathetic, hyped, grotesquely turned off from level sync or anything inbetween: You continued to pay a subscription. That's what a veteran playerbase usually does, and that hasn't changed in ten years. Do you think those six million players that stuck to WoW through WoD were nothing but the playerbase that goes through every bad change, but stays nonetheless?

 

The next day I bought Legion. I used to play about 2 hours a day here. In the past five weeks I've only been on for about 20 minutes.

 

This is called taking a break. We all do it, but we eventually return due to the sunk time and cost fallacy. I also bought Legion and play it about two hours a day. Or did you think I only play SWTOR?

 

The game's continued existence does not mean those issues turned out to be nothing...

 

The game's continued CM revenue seems to sugges that Bioware has found a small, but at the same time strangely devoted community to a space dress up simulator. EA couldn't care less about subscriber revenue if CM sales went up and continues to turn a good profit for them. This deliberate subscriber retention move is not due to EA demanding they raise subscriber revenue and sacrifice CM revenue, but it's a move to attempt to squeeze the maximum out of anyone possible. If this community continues to pay for cosmetic items and boost items through the nose, then EA hardly cares how many people do it. If there are 200k people who pay an additional 200€ a month on the CM, that's more money than what 800k subs would make them with less focus on easy CM content.

 

If for example SWTOR gained 31% in subscription revenue in Q3 last year, and then sees a shift reducing that subscription revenue in Q3 this year to 30%, they have made a loss of 1% from the previous quarters.

 

Losing money on a project and a decreased revenue are not the same thing. The first is about not gaining enough money to cover your investment, the second is about a relative number, but it can still retain the possibility of profit (a gain from investment) The two sentences are not synonymous in this context. I explained that two pages ago, and I'm not going to explain it in detail again. TUX is being as deliberately hostile towards Bioware as usual.

 

As to RNG gearing, I think perhaps BioWare underestimate how many players who have reached end-game will tolerate it being so RNG intensive.

 

You mean the same kind of players that complain about RNG gearing and luck legendaries in WoW, but continue to pay Blizzard good money to access that hated system?

[Zasszz]

Most players play the toon they do because they like how it feels, how it plays, how it fits into the lore. If the class changes break that (and as they stand they WILL break that) players, en masse, will start to lose what connection they have left to their toons, and that will see subs fall.

Yes and no.

I played wow for many years and the abilities and playstyles changed over time to the worst. The latest expansion killed my warlock playstyle completely and I left because I didnt have enough motivation to bring the other chars, one from each class, to the current max level. They all just didnt feel fun anymore.

 

Yet the long term raiders dont care. They just adapt and run after the raiding success in any way they can. From my point of view they dont have much fun, it turned into some form of work they like. They are less likely to leave than the little guys who actually want to enjoy the class outside of raids too.

 

Currently I have all classes, several sorcerers and warriors and knights because I enjoy those the most. The devs demonstrated that they dont really play their own game in the recent streams so I agree that the expansion will be bad for classes considering someone is working on those classes without understanding the ingame concept, the feel of playing a class thats fun. This is an easy prediction.

 

But we players know that and the devs dont care.

[TUXs]

TUX, let's be honest here. How often has the forum gone apesh*t crazy over a proposed change in X.0 and predicted the end of the world (SWTOR) as we know it? How many countless NGE examples have been made for level sync, RNG boxes, Discplines and Utilities and even slot machines?

The NGE examples are ridiculous. That was a one time entirely new game dump...Bioware has incrementally changed enough things though that I don't think the comparison is quite as silly as it once was...and lets face it, the servers reflect NGE sized changes (a fraction of the players). You can disagree if you like, but the servers tell nothing but a tale of failure upon failure...but that's what happens when you ignore your customers.

The game's continued existence does not mean those issues turned out to be nothing...

 

The empty servers would seem to indicate they are very big problems indeed...

EXACTLY!!!

@ TUXs ... what do you still find fun in this game that warrants your sub fee? I'm honestly curious now and wondering if it's more the social interaction factor with friends within the game than any game play you haven't done to death before.

 

I think if that is the case it's a reasonably large factor that keeps a lot of people subbed that would otherwise leave - not wanting to lose the ability to hang out with their friends and there is nothing wrong with that at all but BWA seem to be borderline exploiting this these days instead of also trying to provide those customers awesome new customer experiences.

That's EXACTLY it...well..that's 98% of it (the people I play with). The other 2% is the Star Wars environment. I don't want swords and elfs...I like blasters and sabers...if there was another sci-fi MMO, I'd certainly give it a shot. Combat in SWTOR is still exceptional, which is why I love PvP and Ops still...even though I've been Valor 100 for years and have everything I could ever want from Ops.

Edited November 15, 2016 by TUXs

[TUXs]

Yes the overall situation of the game is bad and is getting worse.

 

The main decisions are coming from the top so even if Bioware wanted to save the game their hands are tied. We have almost no official reports on how the game is actually doing, we only have a few press release where they naturaly say how great the game is and how it is succesful.

Yes and no...their hands are tied by budgets and meeting expectations...but 99.9999% of every bad decision is due to mismanagement directly by Bioware Austin, not EA. BA doesn't even attempt to interact with their customers and they clearly have no understanding of what their customers want. Any semi competent management team could have done a million times better.

 

Hell, just look at the RNG gearing that's coming...not only has it already failed miserably in this game, at that time, it only impacted the few PvPers...now they're bringing that crap idea to EVERYONE!!! LOL! You can't make this **** up.