SWTOR $1 million decrease in subscription

[AllisonLightning]

Good point, was too early in the morning for my brain to be working out figures Still, that puts the subscriber base at around the 2m mark. Which all things considered isn't bad. Perhaps this is why we're seeing the moves to lock sub numbers in by making GC subscriber only, as well as locking gearing behind that in an effort to retain subscribers.

 

Sadly that also means there isn't going to be any shift from BioWare on that method, as the management will be under pressure to retain those numbers. It also wouldn't surprise me if that 1% has a direct correlation to NiM raiders in the game, which is probably another reasoning behind the shift in gearing method enabling all players to achieve that top tier of gear. Albeit by a very non-transparent tweaking of RNG behind the scenes to lengthen the time it requires, while locking in that subscriber base.

 

I think they're taking a risk by doing it this way, purely depends on how many subscribers they're willing to lose overall, because they absolutely will lose some due to the frustration of RNG gearing. Perhaps it'll be the PvP player base they're sacrificing this time around.

 

You don't go after sustained higher subs in this way though. It's not a 'we've got healthy steady numbers' move, it's a 'our sub numbers are bouncing up and down and we're desperate to stabilize that' so as the chapters didn't work, they're moving onto the next thing. Too many people who don't post on these boards as subs have quit- I'm not talking the 'I'll quit' but back next month, they're just leaving. And they weren't keen to stick around as Preferred either.

 

At the moment PvP is looking like a complete write-off at max level. I love warzones but the idea of hoping to get enough pieces on just one character to be competitive.

 

And two million subs, let's pretend that a quarter of that number don't play at all... okay, let's pretend another 500k don't play often. A million subs- now, pretending that all is even between the servers in some mythical fairytale which is about 58k, and using a twelve hour period there's around 4,800 thousand players on per server, per day and half of that number are on Fleet or a Capital world for, 1208 players. Server load for the most populated servers, knowing some of the servers are virtual ghost towns, should be at Heavy or Very Heavy.

 

The subscriber base for WoW was rumoured with Legion to have gone past 10 million- if we were a fifth as populated as the most popular MMO- frell, they stopped reporting at dropping to 5.5 million, there's a very good chance we've dipped under the million sub mark a long time ago and the real subscriber number is much lower.

 

I think the real subscriber number is well under a million, and the active players are lower than that again.

[Galahard]

Good point, was too early in the morning for my brain to be working out figures Still, that puts the subscriber base at around the 2m mark.

You're pretty off with your sub numbers. I'm sure SWTOR never had more than 1.7M subs, and that was at its peak at launch.

From Wikipedia for you:

 

After launch, the game's subscribers rose to 1.7 million by February 2012.[37] By May 2012, those numbers fell to 1.3 million.[38] By July 2012, the subscriber base fell below 1 million, prompting EA to convert the game to free-to-play. EA stated that 500,000 subscribers were needed to make the game profitable saying that they were "well above" that number.[39] On November 15, 2012, the free-to-play option went live on all servers. As of August 2014 the game has over one million monthly players.[40]

 

Now to understand the release figures: the subscriptions for ALL EA digital games fell from $84M to $83M for the months July-Sept 2016.

 

These increases are partially offset by a $1 million or 1 percent decrease in subscription net revenue primarily due to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

So its a decrease of OVERALL subscription (meaning for ALL GAMES, only one of which is SWTOR), however SWTOR was a primary reason for that.

Now what we don't know:

- What percentage is the SWTOR subscription revenue of overall subscription revenue?

- How does the loss in sub revenue for SWTOR relate to the sub revenue change of other games?

 

It's even possible that all the other games have grown subs revenue, while SWTOR decreased 10% sub revenue.

We just don't know, because the numbers are buried in totals, and there is no breakout.

We only know that OVERALL loss is PRIMARILY due to SWTOR.

 

I would be the happiest person if SWTOR had 2M subs, but I am thinking it's more in the 0.5M-0.7M range, at best.

[AlrikFassbauer]

From EA's Quarterly Report: "$1 million or 1 percent decrease in subscription net revenue primarily due to Star Wars: The Old Republic."

 

Due to Blizzard's new Expansion ?

[Tsillah]

Good point, was too early in the morning for my brain to be working out figures Still, that puts the subscriber base at around the 2m mark. Which all things considered isn't bad. Perhaps this is why we're seeing the moves to lock sub numbers in by making GC subscriber only, as well as locking gearing behind that in an effort to retain subscribers.

 

Well, that's the other assumption. They say the loss is primarily due to SWTOR but that means what? As I explained, that doesn't mean that it's ALL SWTOR. It could be a 30% share on the total which makes the 1.9 million subs more around the 600k mark. Still not bad but certainly nowhere near the numbers you quote.

 

EA has a much wider portfolio. If they have 10 games within their sub revenues than something like 20-30% would stand out already. That's why people need to be careful with the word primarily. It doesn't mean over 90% as people tend to assume. It could be it doesn't have to.

 

Sadly that also means there isn't going to be any shift from BioWare on that method, as the management will be under pressure to retain those numbers. It also wouldn't surprise me if that 1% has a direct correlation to NiM raiders in the game, which is probably another reasoning behind the shift in gearing method enabling all players to achieve that top tier of gear. Albeit by a very non-transparent tweaking of RNG behind the scenes to lengthen the time it requires, while locking in that subscriber base.

 

I think they see that subs wane over time and they probably want people to stay subbed from expansion to expansion. Whether this new method will do the trick in combination with the group content they are promising remains to be seen of course.

 

I think they're taking a risk by doing it this way, purely depends on how many subscribers they're willing to lose overall, because they absolutely will lose some due to the frustration of RNG gearing. Perhaps it'll be the PvP player base they're sacrificing this time around

 

There is a risk but it may not be as big as you think. People who are subbed will feel a greater need to stay subbed and those who do enjoy content via passes will have to make a choice. I made a rough calculation in another thread but in essence guilds are able to keep people active at the cost of around 3-4 Euro's/Dollars a month. So if BWA can convince a quarter of them to sub they'll break even. Also new players no longer have the option when they want to experience more to bypass the sub as taught by the people who already do this. So yes, there is a risk it might backfire but the risk is not that big and there is a good chance it turns out positively for them. If it goes all wrong, I'm sure they can implement something like bringing in GC weekly passes but only if necessary.

 

In the end SWTOR still has the monopoly in the Sci Fi MMO genre. There is just nothing out there that is good enough to compete at this moment. To me SWTOR is a good game, it just has trouble bringing out content consistently enough across the board. As Yoda once said: boredom leads to anger and anger leads to the general forum....or something like that.

 

I just hope that BWA will make some major improvements to the game and doesn't wait too long. After thinking about it I have to say that this loss of revenue in the summer quarter with an Expansion coming later in the year than the previous one, by itself doesn't mean anything.

[Sarova]

From the 2016 figures Q3 FY16 Earnings release in that report:

Q3, STAR WARS™: The Old Republic grew to its highest subscriber level in nearly

three years.

That is pretty encouraging for the game and shows they are doing something right if they can relay in increase in subscriber figures to their investors (and investors/shareholders are all that matter). The game caters for casuals and solo players (like me) rather than raiders and group PvPers and I suspect that's where the reflected sub increase comes from.

[DarthSpuds]

I'm sure that is part of it, It's probably also part of the reason they're making galactic command crates exclusive to subscribers.

 

Oh wow.

 

My reward for being a Sub is to get lazy, unimaginative, incompetent RNG gear progression.

 

Lucky me!

 

All The Best

[DarthSpuds]

Due to Blizzard's new Expansion ?

 

Legion wasn't good enough to have that kind of impact IMO.

 

All The Best

[Galahard]

From the 2016 figures Q3 FY16 Earnings release in that report:

 

That is pretty encouraging for the game and shows they are doing something right if they can relay in increase in subscriber figures to their investors (and investors/shareholders are all that matter). The game caters for casuals and solo players (like me) rather than raiders and group PvPers and I suspect that's where the reflected sub increase comes from.

 

I agree, it's encouraging, although it must have been a very low base to beat.

The last exact number we know is from July 2012, when subs fell below 1M and since then, all we know that it has been well above 500K.

In August 2014. they had 1M monthly players, of which the sub ratio we don't know.

I assume, if it would have ever fallen below 500K subs, they would have shut the game down.

So we don't know if 'the highest sub number in nearly 3 years' is 550K or 900K, it's really a guessing game from there.

I'm guessing, if it would be closer to the say 900K range, they would have said 'we have almost doubled our sub numbers', which sounds like a pretty hyped statement. Since they said 'have the highest sub numbers in 3 years', that just means they beat a very low base, so I would say it's more in the range of 500K + anything up to your imagination.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Galahard

[Alssaran]

Alright guys. Please put away the pitchforks.

 

First of all: As someone else already pointed out, the 1m decrease in subscription revenue was primarily driven by Star Wars, but SWTOR might not have been the sole reason it happened. Even if we assume that a 90% share of the revenue decline across multiple subscription based games was due to SWTOR, we'd be looking at 20k players out the door. If we estimate an overall playerbase of 400k (as some other people did), that is a net loss of 5%. A loss of 5% of the playerbase between expansions isn't all that great for the game, but expansion hopping is a very common practice in the MMO genre.

 

However, the numbers might be much lower. A game can be "primarily responsible" for a net loss all the way from 30% to 90%.

 

This quarterly report is for the past fiscal quarter. Thus, we can assume that it was for July, August and September. A dropoff in subscriber numbers is to be expected. August saw the release of the last chapter of KotFE, but it also saw the release of WoW Legion. I'll bet my car on the fact that a lot of the subscriber loss was due to people switching over to Legion in order to try out Blizzard's new expansion. To my knowledge, that was also way before the actual announcement of KotET subscriber rewards or actual "features". We didn't get a glimpse of the entire expansion until October 7th, which was an entire week after the cutoff date from that fiscal quarter. This entire RNG gearing mess, the subscriber reward program, and even the announcement of "new group content streams" probably didn't impact those numbers at all. Those things will have a tremendous effect on the next quarterly report, but they aren't relevant for this one.

 

The report is also relative to EA's last fiscal report, and it comes during a time of "the highest subscriber number in three years" from last years fiscal report around the same time. After SWTOR reported growth during the KotFE release, and a stagnation earlier this year, it doesn't come as a surprise that SWTOR's revenue might drop in the aftermath of an expansion, and that the relative amount of "inbetween expansions" money compared to the money that was made during the March-June time of monthly new chapters is slightly down.

 

The primary loss of subscription money probably stems from the fact that September didn't see any noteworthy story/content release, and that Legion launched on 08/30. People were done with KotFE and moved on to play Legion. Some people from my SWTOR guild did that too, but they already said they will come back with KotET and do the new content. We'll see how much of a difference the announcement of new group content, the inclusion of Hard/Nightmare mode Uprisings and the repeatable story chapters in combination with the RNG gearing actually make.

 

In conclusion, we should all calm down and not get out knackers into a twist. This might be as much as a 22k subscriber dropoff rate, but it might also be in the 10k-20k range, depending on how much of a share SWTOR had. That's not unexpected between expansions and during the launch of a major story expansion in another game. The more interesting quarterly report will be released in January - the one that contains the numbers for the KotET subscriber reward period, the initial release, and the numbers on how well the content was received.

 

Legion wasn't good enough to have that kind of impact IMO.

 

Meanwhile, the community and magazines praise Legion as the best expansion since WotLK, and many players I have spoken to say that the salty taste of WoD is almost forgotten. Blizzard is releasing tons of content.

 

That quote might be your subjective opinion. The game was at least good enough so that a lot of people returned to check it out. That was in September, during the last month of that fiscal quarter. You might want to ignore Legion because it would make those numbers a direct result of Bioware's actions, and that would certainly make them much more scrutinizing in an argument against them, but Legion can't be discredited as an important factor in late August and September.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Alssaran

[xkcurtisx]

Huh? But I thought they said KotFE was their "most successful expansion to date".

 

Wait, could this be the reason why they're suddenly talking about group content again?

 

^ that

[CrazyCT]

{Didn't realise it was time for the quarterly "game is dead" thread already. Guess I'd better go and uninstall again. Thanks for letting me know before I wasted my time even attempting the new expansion.} Edited November 13, 2016 by CrazyCT

[Alssaran]

Wait, could this be the reason why they're suddenly talking about group content again?

 

You can call them out on their community relationship whenever you want, but Bioware has somewhat of a track record when it comes to responding to revenue loss. As soon as the subscriber revenue from story content drops after a year, they are going back to group content streams. Whether that group content includes operations/operation-esque content remains to be seen though.

 

I think they figured out that releasing 9-10 story chapters every 10-12 months and filling the time inbetween with some form of group content is much more favourable than offering monthly story chapters during that time.

[Galahard]

{Didn't realise it was time for the quarterly "game is dead" thread already. Guess I'd better go and uninstall again. Thanks for letting me know before I wasted my time even attempting the new expansion.}

It's not dead, it's just more in an undead state, like for example a rakghoul: it's mindless and is aggressively going for your wallet's contents.

In other words, it's alive and kicking...you in your groins.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Galahard

[Tsillah]

{Didn't realise it was time for the quarterly "game is dead" thread already. Guess I'd better go and uninstall again. Thanks for letting me know before I wasted my time even attempting the new expansion.}

 

That's an interesting conclusion for a thread where nobody actually claimed the game was dying.

[Alssaran]

That's an interesting conclusion for a thread where nobody actually claimed the game was dying.

 

I think you missed her sarcasm there. The "quarterly game is dead thread" thing really sounds like a silly jab at the OP and people who think a slight loss in revenue means the game is dying again.

Edited November 13, 2016 by Alssaran

[CrazyCT]

That's an interesting conclusion for a thread where nobody actually claimed the game was dying.

 

We get this every single time EA announce their quarterly report. Armchair financial pundits scouring the report for any signs that the game is finally "dying" and they can turn round and say "I told you so." No-one specifically said the game was dying but it's heavily implied in the OP -

 

From EA's Quarterly Report: "$1 million or 1 percent decrease in subscription net revenue primarily due to Star Wars: The Old Republic."

 

Maybe I misread the OPs intention, but I read that as "Subs are down, game is dying". Don't think he opened this thread to celebrate the game doing well. Would be totally out of character for a forum thread.

 

 

 

I think you missed her sarcasm there.

 

I thought I was making it obvious enough. Maybe I should find something better than {} round my text. I'll go back and edit it.

Edited November 13, 2016 by CrazyCT

[Galahard]

/SARCASM

 

{Didn't realise it was time for the quarterly "game is dead" thread already. Guess I'd better go and uninstall again. Thanks for letting me know before I wasted my time even attempting the new expansion.}

And now you ruined your perfectly formed sarcastic post, due to popular demand of the unwashed masses.

I am disappointed in you, you are not even worth ignoring anymore

(btw the / is usually to end a statement, not start it, just saying )

[CrazyCT]

And now you ruined your perfectly formed sarcastic post, due to popular demand of the unwashed masses.

I am disappointed in you, you are not even worth ignoring anymore

(btw the / is usually to end a statement, not start it, just saying )

 

I just can't win with you people. What is that one about trying to please all the people all the time?

[JamieKirby]

Well, i tend not to listen to that crap, since most of their profit from SWTOR comes from players buying the cartel coins, i mean when i buy coins, i always go for the 14k coins, which is £62.66 and that is more than the 6 month subscription i currently have and i buy those coins maybe 6 times per year.

 

The way i see it, if people want to do the Galactic Command thing, just subscribe.....i mean now-a-days, people want everything for nothing and when it comes to group content, i hope they do add more in, but i play for the story mostly, group content can be fun to do if its in a good group, but 99% of the time, you get grouped with utter morons who think about themselves and themselves alone.

[DarthSpuds]

AMeanwhile, the community and magazines praise Legion as the best expansion since WotLK, and many players I have spoken to say that the salty taste of WoD is almost forgotten. Blizzard is releasing tons of content.

 

That quote might be your subjective opinion. The game was at least good enough so that a lot of people returned to check it out. That was in September, during the last month of that fiscal quarter. You might want to ignore Legion because it would make those numbers a direct result of Bioware's actions, and that would certainly make them much more scrutinizing in an argument against them, but Legion can't be discredited as an important factor in late August and September.

 

 

I've played through Legion, on four separate toons. The initial hit of new content, the new way that content is delivered and initial love affair with the Artifact weapon and Legendary gear are all reasonably well handled, and are not doubt the prime reason for the initial enthusiasm. On initial impressions I would give Legion 8/10 and say it is no doubt as you say the best expac since WotLK.

 

Fast forward 6 weeks and all you have is the AP grind and rinse-repeat content to hope the RNG Gods are kind and don't drop you yet another Prydaz. But once you get through that veneer it is as grindy and unfulfilling as the very worst aspect of WoD (and I unsubbed after less than 2 weeks of WoD). The over reliance on Legendary and Gear RNG x RNG x RNG (Win The Drop x Is It A Usable Drop x Are Secondary Stats Appropriate) make the current gearing structure the very worst of any MMORPG I have ever played. Gating basic skill progression behind Group Content and the interminable AP/AK grind make it the least Alt friendly Expac for WoW ever, and so hugely diminishes replayability and thus player retention. Blizzard is releasining tons of content, and gating most of it so that - even by their own metrics - only roughly 30% of the playerbase will ever see it. No smart, not clever, not sustainable.

 

 

Ion Hazzikostas is a dangerous person to have as Lead Dev, he is arrogant enough to think he knows best and what the playerbase wants doesn't matter, and he is, IMO, stupid enough to think that what worked for some aspects of Diablo III will work in WoW (for reference see the livestream where he claims players will be excited by getting a Legendary that a) they can not use, and b) will reduce their chances of getting another Legendary AND where he admits that Legion's oft mentioned "Bad Luck Protection" boils down to play even more to get another chance of getting something you can't use) . A project lead who is arrogant OR stupid is a liability, but one that can, most of the time, be mitigated against; one who is arrogant AND stupid is a disaster waiting to happen.

 

When I first played Legion, about 2 weeks after it launched, I was regularly in in-game contact with 50+ people, by the time I left 3 weeks ago only 5 or 6 of those people were left. In a little over 6 weeks my social group in WoW dropped nearly 90%. That is unsustainable - for any game.

 

All The Best

[Alssaran]

... Insert Legion comment here...

 

I'll not go into too much detail about your post, seeing that this isn't necessarily a thread to comment about Legion or all of it's features in very specific detail.

 

I'll go as far as to say that there are some of the issues you've described, but your entire comment leaves out the fact that Legion also has a lot of positive aspects to offer. That's a statement without the intent of trying to advertise the game to a broader audience. There is a lot of secondary stat grind and AP grind, but Ion has already announced that the team is working on fixes for some of those problems. Secondary stat rebalancing, a reliable system to slightly pursue legendary items you might need, and artifact knowledge makes the AP grind doable. Espescially when you consider that 7.2 will introduce a mechanic to exchange order hall resources (a redundant material) for artifact power.

 

Your entire comment leaves out the positive things that have yet been introduces, and it totally leaves out the fact that the developers are working on Legion balancing since day one.

 

It also leaves out the fact that, inbetween all the AP grind, Legion introduces a lot of new content. There is no specific point a PvP or PvE player might get boring with this expansion. You always have something to do. I've been playing Legion on a casual basis for the past two months, and I have yet to hit a point at which I have time to think: "Hm, I'm done. What to do now?"

 

Legion, even with all it's flaws, is one of the best expansions in the past few years. WoD and MoP (during the middle-later stages) don't even come close. I wouldn't even say that it's because Legion has less flaws. It has roughly the same amount. It's just that the content delivery, as well as the overall experience has much more positive points to outweight the negative. WoD didn't have that.

 

The same 15 people on my friends list who started with the release of Legion are still online on a frequent basis.

 

While I appreciate your comment, it still stays a subjective account of your feelings about Legion - just as this one is a subjective count of my own thoughts. It remains a deciding factor that Legion (a story-wise significant expansion with a lot of pre-release hype) was released during the fiscal period we're talking about here. With the finishing chapters of KotFE in July and August, the attention of some subscribers probably switched to Legion as "the new" and "the shiny" MMO expansion. The retention mechanics KotFE used successfully (announcements, cinematic trailers, subscriber loyalty rewards) weren't announced until Legion was actually released.

 

As much as that is a flaw of Bioware's marketing timing as well as strategy, it remains to be said that the unique timing of Legion on 08/30 coupled with the announcements and cinematics releasing a week after the detailed fiscal period had a tremendous impact on subscriber behaviour. That behaviour was not unexpected.

 

Legion released when the last expansion concluded, and we had to wait for another month for detailed information, and probably 2-3 months until the actual expansion release. It was to be expected that people would switch to WoW for late August and September. Most of the advertisement on KotET didn't really start until shortly after the conclusion of KotFE and the second fiscal quarter. Even the Betrayed trailer (which has roughly 3.8m views on the YouTube channel right now) didn't release until a month after Legion, and an entire week after the conclusion of Q2.

 

While I appreciate your opinion about Legion, it doesn't change the fact that it was a very important contributing factor during the second fiscal quarter.

[dr_mike]

They have a legal duty to inform investors of certain points. They don't have to provide specific subscription numbers overall.

 

I have to wonder what they are telling their investors..

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/3106383683x0x902862/EB2B27C5-AC60-4022-87CC-BA3C36B8C6E0/EA-Transcript-2016-08-02T21_00.pdf

 

Start on page 19 with the question about bugs from Doug Creutz.

[AllisonLightning]

I have to wonder what they are telling their investors..

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/3106383683x0x902862/EB2B27C5-AC60-4022-87CC-BA3C36B8C6E0/EA-Transcript-2016-08-02T21_00.pdf

 

Start on page 19 with the question about bugs from Doug Creutz.

 

It does make me question whether they'd rather the game decline and close than getting replaced. I don't think the game is dying exactly- but I think the game is declining in subs. EA is really good when it comes to customer support and I love the fact they can do the subscription access game vault and maintain a heavy ordinary sale as well. EA, is a big company but I've never blamed them for things Bioware has done that upset me, because it's always been clear it was a 'captain's pick'. Translation: An Australian pejorative describing a poor choice unilaterally made.

 

EA does work really hard at communication, with their games. Bioware on the other hand...this is all bringing back memories of the way they talked in 2012, and their utter disregard for what their playerbase said as a whole.

 

So as for your 'what do they tell investors'- I'd like to raise that to 'how do they spin issues to their bosses at EA'?

[dr_mike]

So as for your 'what do they tell investors'- I'd like to raise that to 'how do they spin issues to their bosses at EA'?

 

Probably nothing but bottom line. Skim through that and previous reports. There's nothing about player retention.

[JediQuaker]

A quote from "Electronic Arts Reports Q3 FY16 Financial Results":

 

"In Q3, STAR WARS™: The Old Republic grew to its highest subscriber level in nearly three years."