Vanguard

Warhammer Online

These games were meant to be the next big thing/ wow-killer.

Shadowbane

Fury

Tabula Rasa

Dungeon Runners

Chronicles of Spellborne

These games are not even playable anymore

Hellgate London (don't know anything about this game)

Uh, and wait EQ2 was the second part of the most successful MMO of its time, but somehow lost to a game made by a company that knew nothing about MMOs?

Originally posted by Zorgo

Originally posted by sammandar

Originally posted by Gdemami

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Originally posted by sammandar

But that's the thing, they didn't just lose some money, they lost and are still losing tons of money. I don't think anyone other than Bio/EA execs know exactly how much money they've lost, but I'm certain it is no small change.

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Ah, so even EA top management does not know but you do... I think that explains it.
Also do I get it right that "failure" is measured in how much people talk about it?
I think I got it already...

You misunderstand what I mean. Failure is obviously measured on how bad something does; of course, failure is subjective. Some would argue that Tabula Rasa was a bigger failure than SWTOR, yet we we most certainly know that SWTOR lost much more money than TR ever did; however, TR is no longer available for play, SWTOR still is (key word "still"). TR was also P2P before it went to F2P before it went "adios"... will the same happen to SWTOR, only time will tell.

Having said all that, SWTOR is by far the biggest failure in the mmo industry. It never met any of it's objectives (Bio/EA kept having to redifine what they were aiming for) and who knows how much further it will fall... we'll see.

But SWToR isn't losing money. They are not making as much as projected. They aren't making as much as last month. They aren't making as much as the first month.

But they are not losing money.

The income is positive atm. They have sub money coming in, and still even some box sales coming in, so that is positive income. The fact that they have laid off so many workers also shows that they made sure they could meet not only their expenses, but maintain their profit margin.

So, I'm not sure where SWToR ever 'lost' money. I see SWToR as completely missing the mark on 'how much' would be made.

It may be making some money at the moment, but I do not see it happening after this month when peoples 6 month subs run out.

They have implied that they have between 500k -600K subs, as if it was above 600K they would have said above 600k but below 1 mill

They then say that they only break even if they can sustain 500K, but after this month will go below that 500K, so from next month SWTOR will be losing money, when the 6 month subs expire plus the other people naturally quitting from being finished with the game. Next month will have steeper drop in subs than normal, and will be the last steep drop.

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by eddieg50
A failure at half a million players LOL,  Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players

If SWTOR did not go F2P, Vanguard will probably have more pop than SWTOR soon!

SWTOR has gone from 1.7m to 0.5m in 6 months and is still declining, and the 6 month subbers expire this month too, plus some will probably quit and wait for F2P now.

Vanguard goes F2P soon too. It will be interesting to see which one will do the best.

One of Vanguards probelms is similar to SWTOR, in that it does not run too well on older machines (at the time of their release), if at all. Now more people should be able to play Vanguard, yet with SWTOR it will take a few more years for more people to have PCs capable.

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Originally posted by sammandar

If EA reported a net loss of $205 million on Q3, with SWTOR failing as it did, I wonder how much of a net loss will they report on Q4.

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EA made net profit of 400M for Q4FYI2012, 76M net profit for FYI2012. Enough said, enough stupid talk.

Originally posted by Mahavishnu

Vanguard

Warhammer Online

These games were meant to be the next big thing/ wow-killer.

 

Shadowbane

Fury

Tabula Rasa

Dungeon Runners

Chronicles of Spellborne

These games are not even playable anymore

 

Hellgate London (don't know anything about this game)

 

Uh, and wait EQ2 was the second part of the most successful MMO of its time, but somehow lost to a game made by a company that knew nothing about MMOs?

Chronicles of Spellborne actually had a very impressive character creation & customization system which should be "borrowed" by a future MMO.

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by eddieg50
A failure at half a million players LOL,  Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players

If SWTOR did not go F2P, Vanguard will probably have more pop than SWTOR soon!

SWTOR has gone from 1.7m to 0.5m in 6 months and is still declining, and the 6 month subbers expire this month too, plus some will probably quit and wait for F2P now.

Vanguard goes F2P soon too. It will be interesting to see which one will do the best.

One of Vanguards probelms is similar to SWTOR, in that it does not run too well on older machines (at the time of their release), if at all. Now more people should be able to play Vanguard, yet with SWTOR it will take a few more years for more people to have PCs capable.

Even with newer machines TOR hasn't been smooth for some people. For me I upgraded my video card and ran gamebooster and the game ran like a champ. Then again my rig was bought in 2010 on discount for 600 bucks. MMO makers really need to take this kind of stuff into account if they expect their games to reach a mass audience. 

Originally posted by Mahavishnu

Vanguard

Warhammer Online

These games were meant to be the next big thing/ wow-killer.

Vanguard was never meant to be a WOW killer - its targeted audience was EQ Classic players

post by Aradune

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/showthread.php?p=424297

Does our core gamer = WoW's casual gamer? I don't have their internal data, obviously, but I doubt it. Our core gamer is someone who plays 2-4 hours every night, occasionally spending a full day or so raiding, but who is normally focussed on challenging group oriented gameplay. The casual and raid gamer will indeed have content for them, but the core gamer is our focus. So also is creating a more challenging and longer term game -- a home.

I do know the average EQ player earlier on (launch->Velious) and it is their playstyle and time commitment whom we are targeting primarily. Those who raided full time were about 6-10% of the player base.

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Originally posted by Nadia

I do know the average EQ player earlier on (launch->Velious) and it is their playstyle and time commitment whom we are targeting primarily. Those who raided full time were about 6-10% of the player base.
 

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This brings up an interesting question: How do people relate to endgame content?

Is there even an interest in endgame content and does it keep people playing or average user quits before reaching an endgame or shortly after?

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by monarc333

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by monarc333

 

 

CEO John Riccitiello claims that the forthcoming sci-fi MMORPG will be "substantially profitable" with just a half-million subscribers.

 

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/star-wars-the-old-republic-needs-only-500k-subscribers-ea-6297338

 

The way things are twisted around these parts it great entertainment and a insight into the minds of many posters, believe what you want  niceguy but SWG was a complete mess and a disaster of an MMO and is never coming back so it TOR or broke for you now and the next 8+ years.

 

I am not twisting things.

Outdated information you have there, it is dated Feb 2011, a projected forecast

August 2012 here, in the here and now where all the costs are real:

The President of EA Labels Frank Gibeau said the Star Wars game would still break even so long as it maintained 500,000 subscribers, but admitted that its current performance was "not good enough".

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19077238

 

I like the timing of that statement as they change their business model to reasure shareholders this is the best thing to do and appease players that the game wouldn't survive at the 500k point. Common sense tells me that a game making over 7.5 million dollars per month cannot make a profit must have a silly amount of overheads even with Lucasarts taking a big cut, so I'm inclined to believe that its all just smoke and mirrors to get people on board with the freemium transistion which was most probably planned al along if numbers slipped.

Originally posted by eyelolled

I'd say Tabula Rasa over SWTOR [mod edit]

I agree, however TR was much better imo.

Originally posted by Valentina
Worst MMO failures include FFXIV (by a long shot), followed by Vanguard (by a long shot), followed by Tabula Rasa (by a long shot), followed by Age of Conan, need I go on? SW:TOR isn't really a commercial failure like these games were by all means SWTOR was a massive success commercially. Subscription business models are dead, they won't work anymore it needs to be optional as painful as it can be to realize this.

When I played my first free2play, Perfect World, about 4 years ago I asked myself exactly that, why pay a sub when games can be made like this and give players freedom on how they paid and played. Now I'm not saying I predicted this as I'm no visionary but I've personally prefered the free2play model ever since and in hindsight it was inevitable the MMO world would go this way. Freedom of choice on how you play and pay for an MMO is a better choice for many and over that time and many many massives threads on here debating the pro's and cons, mainly con's on MMORPG.com players have softened when they actually got to try out the many new freemium games. I still personally prefer fully free2play I'm not really keen on the heavily restrictive freemium models with have these days. So I will have to see the full plan on SW:TOR freemium model to see if I stay around.

I had a lot of fun for 6 months, I loved the story content, sadly there is a very abrupt end to the game. In an mmorpg with a subscription, you can't have an end or people will stop paying for the game.

I wish the game had more long term appeal, they spent enough money to make another Star wars movie. Bioware got alot right with the game but the big wrong is the abys of dailies while perfectly good planets just go unused.

Originally posted by rdrpappy

I had a lot of fun for 6 months, I loved the story content, sadly there is a very abrupt end to the game. In an mmorpg with a subscription, you can't have an end or people will stop paying for the game.

I wish the game had more long term appeal, they spent enough money to make another Star wars movie. Bioware got alot right with the game but the big wrong is the abys of dailies while perfectly good planets just go unused.

 You got six months out of it at least. Not bad for a story themed mmo. You lasted a hell of a lot longer than me.

There are a lot of things they need to do with this game. Does seem they're making an attempt to change some thing but my be too little...too late.

Gamers tend to be a rather unforgiving bunch.

Originally posted by Gdemami

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Originally posted by sammandar

If EA reported a net loss of $205 million on Q3, with SWTOR failing as it did, I wonder how much of a net loss will they report on Q4.

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EA made net profit of 400M for Q4FYI2012, 76M net profit for FYI2012. Enough said, enough stupid talk.

Then I stand (sit) corrected. Unlike others I have no issue in being corrected, and will admit when my predictions are inacurate; not sure how that qualifies as "stupid talk" though.

Having said that, for it being a 15% year-over-year increase, their net income did fall 263%; yikes! With a company the size of EA, $76 million net profit is barely cutting it; however, it's still a profit. I wondered how much of a loss they would report in Q4 and they ended up reporting a profit in Q4; barely. I guess I was just $77 million off... not bad for a guess :-)

Either way, I think it does demonstrate the catastrophic effect SWTOR's failure had on Bio/EA.

P.S. consider the fact that Bio/EA also fired employees in Austin and several of their execs left the company... never a good sign.

Originally posted by Calerxes

Originally posted by Valentina
Worst MMO failures include FFXIV (by a long shot), followed by Vanguard (by a long shot), followed by Tabula Rasa (by a long shot), followed by Age of Conan, need I go on? SW:TOR isn't really a commercial failure like these games were by all means SWTOR was a massive success commercially. Subscription business models are dead, they won't work anymore it needs to be optional as painful as it can be to realize this.

 

When I played my first free2play, Perfect World, about 4 years ago I asked myself exactly that, why pay a sub when games can be made like this and give players freedom on how they paid and played. Now I'm not saying I predicted this as I'm no visionary but I've personally prefered the free2play model ever since and in hindsight it was inevitable the MMO world would go this way. Freedom of choice on how you play and pay for an MMO is a better choice for many and over that time and many many massives threads on here debating the pro's and cons, mainly con's on MMORPG.com players have softened when they actually got to try out the many new freemium games. I still personally prefer fully free2play I'm not really keen on the heavily restrictive freemium models with have these days. So I will have to see the full plan on SW:TOR freemium model to see if I stay around.

I agree. I think F2P works best though when everyone is a VIP member and gets equal content etc... and then can choose to spend the money they would have spent on the sub in the cash shop. I bought a lifetime sub to LOTRO on launch. Now I can spend what would be my sub money (around £10 a month) on the items in the cash shop if I want, or not at all. I don't think it works so well when many F2P players are denied the best aspects of the game unless they pay because then it becomes Pay To Win, and you're right some games are just too heavily restricted at F2P and i'm sure a lot who try LOTRO don't get the full flavour of the game and leave because of that, which is a problem in my opinion. But for costume changes, faster mounts, dyes etc... no problem.

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Originally posted by sammandar

 

Then I stand (sit) corrected. Unlike others I have no issue in being corrected, and will admit when my predictions are inacurate; not sure how that qualifies as "stupid talk" though.

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Their net income did not fall, they went from net loss of 276M to net income of 76M.

[mod edit]

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by eddieg50
A failure at half a million players LOL,  Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players

If SWTOR did not go F2P, Vanguard will probably have more pop than SWTOR soon!

SWTOR has gone from 1.7m to 0.5m in 6 months and is still declining, and the 6 month subbers expire this month too, plus some will probably quit and wait for F2P now.

Hey I like Vanguard, but people have been praising it for years and it is still dead, well maybe when Vanguard goes F2P this summer-oh its run by sony oh oh!

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Originally posted by pharazonic
SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken.

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Let me guess...
You made a post back before SW:TOR launched saying it would fail and now you are trying validate that post.

I think your definition of "failure" and most other people's definition differ quite a bit. At the very basic element, "Is it making money?" That, to me, defines failure.

Maybe the game failed *you*. Maybe it failed many others. It failed *me* in what I had hoped it would be. That's mainly my own fault :) Trying to grasp wildly, speaking for others, EA/BioWare included, does not make it so. Did SW:TOR fail in it's goals? Possibly. I don't *know* what their goals were. Neither do you.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

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Originally posted by pharazonic
SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken.

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With 500K subs as of July 31. How many of the 583 games listed on this site alone today have that many? I don't know. I am curious. Of course, many are F2P, so it would be hard to compare :

 

I'm confused. Why go F2P when there is the healthy sub base you describe? Are you suggesting F2P was the plan six months down the line regardless of how many subs they had? Why suddenly kill that golden goose? Genuine questions.

I wonder if some of those subs (myself included) are people who subbed this month for something to do before GW2 is released. I wonder how many of those subs are reactivations for just one month (myself included) while there is nothing out there to play at the moment (I don't count TSW).