Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by ianicus

In the end it doesnt matter what any of us think, if one enjoys it, perfect, a happy customer, if one does not, oh well you cant please everyone, and that is the ONLY fact that matters here. No matter what a company does they will not create a game that will make everyone happy, period. Bioware was trying to create a game that would be reasonably fun and make some money at the same time, have they done this? most likely. 

What I am really tired of on this website is all the folks out there expecting companies to make them a game that will somehow "change thier lives" or "make them whole" its kind of pathetic acctualy. These are video games guys, if you want a real sandbox expierience go outdoors, climb a cliff, ride a mountain bike, learn how to cook...for real....Im sorry but more an more mmo players are just looking to replace thier lives with a game and its sickening.

i was just looking a decent sci-fi MMO that didn't copy and paste everything from the past 15 years aside from full VO.. guess I'm being WAY to picky though..

 If you were looking at SWTOR I can't imagine what you were thinking. It's like buying ice cream and complaining because it's cold. Again and again and again. Time to get over it. Oh look there's a whole bunch of people bitching about Tera. Time to move the herd on to the next corral. Head 'em, up move 'em out there Rowdy.

Tera isn't really that good.. blade & soul combat is a ton better hopefully that game will get a NA release.. either way I still don't get the atiitude you SHOULD of been expecting exactly what was released and blah blah blah.. bottom line for me this game does not feel like the most expensive MMO ever created and in many ways feels worse than games like Rift on the MMO side.  Game is a letdown to me and many others plain and simple.. I don't feel I had any sort of insane expectations at all,  not even close.

 You are the steady drumbeat of rain on an empty city. No one hears you because it's all just white noise that never changes.

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by ianicus

In the end it doesnt matter what any of us think, if one enjoys it, perfect, a happy customer, if one does not, oh well you cant please everyone, and that is the ONLY fact that matters here. No matter what a company does they will not create a game that will make everyone happy, period. Bioware was trying to create a game that would be reasonably fun and make some money at the same time, have they done this? most likely. 

What I am really tired of on this website is all the folks out there expecting companies to make them a game that will somehow "change thier lives" or "make them whole" its kind of pathetic acctualy. These are video games guys, if you want a real sandbox expierience go outdoors, climb a cliff, ride a mountain bike, learn how to cook...for real....Im sorry but more an more mmo players are just looking to replace thier lives with a game and its sickening.

i was just looking a decent sci-fi MMO that didn't copy and paste everything from the past 15 years aside from full VO.. guess I'm being WAY to picky though..

 If you were looking at SWTOR I can't imagine what you were thinking. It's like buying ice cream and complaining because it's cold. Again and again and again. Time to get over it. Oh look there's a whole bunch of people bitching about Tera. Time to move the herd on to the next corral. Head 'em, up move 'em out there Rowdy.

Originally posted by Razephon

 

@Kyleran - how does one submit this appeal to this person called MikeB?

I'm curious to try it :).

 You reply to the PM but why would you? It was a temp ban. It's not like he's going to give you back the ability to post during the time you were banned. It's over so get over it.

Originally posted by Vrika

Originally posted by Vhaln

Originally posted by Vrika

SWTOR vs. WOW time played on XFire

DATE	SWTOR	WOW	SWTOR/WOW
Dec 24th	62k hours	79k hours	78%
Dec 31st	63k hours	72k hours	88%
Jan 7th	73k hours	102k hours	72%
Jan 14th	68k hours	101k hours	67%
Jan 21st	56k hours	96k hours	58%
Jan 28th	40k hours	98k hours	41%
Feb 4th	44k hours	82k hours	54%

 

 

Wasn't there major downtime on the 28th?  You should compare the high point of each weekend, which was sunday the 29th (48k hours)- doing that would probably be a better indicator than just blindly comparing saturdays.

 

Then I would screw the results in favour of the game with more downtime on weekends. I'd have to start taking total playing time from whole weeks to get any more accurate, and I don't have patience or need to count that.

 A more interesting graph would be hours played per player swtor/wow. It still wouldn't provide any clear conclusions other than people play less over time, which is a given anyway.

Originally posted by RabbiFang

Originally posted by jpnz

If only the 'waiting' actually were subscribing and supporting this industry.

The 'silent' crowd doesn't show up anywhere and companies can not define them or know how many there are.

Preaching over the internet is fine but to put actual $$$, well, make one yourself or support one that's the cloest to your ideal MMO.

Otherwise, why should anyone listen to you?

Firstly, I do support this industry; more so than most I bet. You've clearly not read my post properly. I have purchased pretty much every MMO to be released over the past 5 years, and I am currently subbed to 6, including those closest to that which I consider to be my ideal MMO.

The 'make one yourself' argument is getting old. I'm a Java/PHP developer that develops websites and software for smartphones, I am no game developer. Even if I was, I wouldn't have the time to put into the project with all the side businesses I run. 

The fact is, there are always impressive looking games on the horizon, many of which continue to let us down in a big way. The industry looked so bright back in 2002, and here we are, a decade later, still recovering from the WoW effect. 

Why should anyone listen to me? Well, why shouldn't they?

 

 I can see where you're coming from but if there were ever a case of being part of the problem and not part of the solution you're it. Developers follow the money and you're sending mixed messages.

It's a themepark. It will cater to people who like themeparks. They're not going to change the game's focus to suit you.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Loke666

I don´t log in to whaever game I play every day. Maybe 2 days out of 3 unless I am sick or a new expansion just came out.

I actually do other stuff as well as gaming, 1 million out of 1,7 does not seem that strange to me.

Not that I play TOR or have any special feelings about it one way or another but the reasoning sounds odd to me.

I don´t think we can see if TOR is a success or not for months yet.

The problem is more likely that those 1,7 million active subscribers just do not add up!

As I simply do not see anywhere near that kind of activity on the servers, even during primetime!

I have toons on both a US and an EU server, both where queueing and FULL during the first 2 weeks and both are now down to Standard / Heavy during primetime (Heavy only in weekends).

Not a single zone has more than one instance running anymore and at most not more than 40 to 50 people in it, except for Republic Fleet.

Groups are a total pain in the butt to get going most of the time.

Those 1,7 million are more likely the amount of people that created an account at launch, but in no way reflect the same numbers after 20th of January when the 30 days freetime were up!  As activity on servers dropped significantly directly after that.

So it really just doesn't add up.  So we just have to wait and see what the next Quarterly report will bring, as that one will contain the actually data after January 20th and gives a more truthful picture.

 Presenting anecdotes as fact to draw erroneous conclusions is a common mistake. The 1.7 million is current subscribers as of the end of January. It has nothing to do with cancellations or free months. It simply means at the given time 1.7 million customers had the ability to play. You can't spin that. It's a hard number and lying about it would be a violation of SEC regulations.

Nowhere was End of January cited!  The report talks about End of Dec. 2011! As that's the end of the Quarter of that report! Not end of january! Those numbers will come up in the next report.

Various journalists already jumped on that little detail and were wavered off with standard corporate spin, about how they use the standard way of reporting numbers commonly used in MMO's and that they could not provide anymore details. yadayadayada.

Take it for what you will. But there it is.

the next report is the one that will be interesting, as it will actually contain financial data from January! Specifically after January 20th!

 I won't bother to repeat the dozens of refutations you've ignored. You would only ignore them again. The 1.7 million number is as of the end of January.

Originally posted by JeroKane

Originally posted by Loke666

I don´t log in to whaever game I play every day. Maybe 2 days out of 3 unless I am sick or a new expansion just came out.

I actually do other stuff as well as gaming, 1 million out of 1,7 does not seem that strange to me.

Not that I play TOR or have any special feelings about it one way or another but the reasoning sounds odd to me.

I don´t think we can see if TOR is a success or not for months yet.

The problem is more likely that those 1,7 million active subscribers just do not add up!

As I simply do not see anywhere near that kind of activity on the servers, even during primetime!

I have toons on both a US and an EU server, both where queueing and FULL during the first 2 weeks and both are now down to Standard / Heavy during primetime (Heavy only in weekends).

Not a single zone has more than one instance running anymore and at most not more than 40 to 50 people in it, except for Republic Fleet.

Groups are a total pain in the butt to get going most of the time.

Those 1,7 million are more likely the amount of people that created an account at launch, but in no way reflect the same numbers after 20th of January when the 30 days freetime were up!  As activity on servers dropped significantly directly after that.

So it really just doesn't add up.  So we just have to wait and see what the next Quarterly report will bring, as that one will contain the actually data after January 20th and gives a more truthful picture.

 Presenting anecdotes as fact to draw erroneous conclusions is a common mistake. The 1.7 million is current subscribers as of the end of January. It has nothing to do with cancellations or free months. It simply means at the given time 1.7 million customers had the ability to play. You can't spin that. It's a hard number and lying about it would be a violation of SEC regulations.

Untestable theories are useless. Unless you have access to Bioware's metrics you might as well be making blind guesses.

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

general MMOers is a smaller group but they are also the group who pays and plays for years..  I don't agree when you say if you advertise to the masses you aren't going to convince them to play. It does exactly that, thats what marketing is all about thats why companies pay big bucks for this stuff, thats why sites like this one stay afloat and sites like IGN and gamespot. Advertising is what gets the idea of a game in peoples heads which in turns increases interest which in turns makes sales. All you need to sell something is good advertising. But having a famous IP is just the icing on the cake.

WOW is a whole other monster though because of the time it came out specifically. MMOs were a very small community back then and it was the first real themepark made for the masses.

Except if that was true, anything you threw money at as far as advertising would be a success. But it doesn't work that way.

Yes, marketing is about making something seem not only palatable but also something you just "have to have" or "have to be a part of".

But it's a two way street. People seeing that advertising have to not only be willing to be swayed but have to be the correct demographic that would consider taking part in that product.

So if you were to throw, say, WoW advertising dollars at Dark Fall you might get a few more people willing to try it out. But in no way, shape or form is Dark Fall going to start heading towards millions of players.

There are niche products in all genres as well as break out products that get the masses participating. ADvertise as much as you want you are not going to get the masses liking niche products. You might get some who are genuinely curious but Advertising can only do so much.

this is my point and why I feel in the next 3-6 months this game will decline heavily.. once all those who bought into the hype and advertising find how shallow the game really is they will unsubscribe.. 

Advertising is what sells boxes, the game itself is what sells subscriptions

 You're assuming no one else will buy the game. That is a mistake. WoW was wildly successful not just because of suscriber retention but because even to this day new sales continue. SWTOR will have a more modest success but the real question is will new sales continue?

Originally posted by Oneto

what's a xfire?

 What happens after the fire department gets there.

Xsyon does not need to disappoint me, again. Let me know when they have a playable game.

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by MartinZ

Originally posted by Dredphyre

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by I_Return

19.26  -0.31 (-1.56%)

 

So much for that theory .....

19.24 -0.33 (-1.66%) closing. SWTOR continues to drag the stock down.

Have to quote yourself because nobody pays attention to your silly presumptions?

 

How about EA stock soaring a few days ago ( up 6%) after the earnings report and conference call regarding SWTOR? 

EA's stock is down 20% in the past three months. Around 10% since SWTOR was release. And back down another 1.66% today on a 11 year record high for the NASDAQ.

EA was outperforming the NASDAQ this year until almost exactly when SWTOR was released where it suddenly dropped like mad.

Even worse EA warned in their conference call that their revenue and profits and revenue for this coming quarter are going to be below expectations.

Looks like EA knows this game is dying rapidly and won't be the WoW killer they spent all this money hoping to be.

 

 

 EA stock is fine, EA profits are fine, SWTOR is fine. As usuall dumb asses ran the stock up in anticipation of a new MMO launch and it corrected. It will slowly creep back up in the next few months.  It Happens Every Time. It did the same thing for Warhammer only it made a bigger swing down.

Teala SWTOR currently has in excess or 1.7 million subscribers. It probably does not have an 85% retention rate. As usual people are confabulating numbers to mean things they don't.

tyvm for the laugh. SWTOR is the thorn in EA stocks side . All of the other products EA published last year is what is stabalizing the slower then expected downward spiral of the current stock quotes.

 Yeah it'll probably drop like a rock the way AoC caused Funcom to go out of business in a month, no three months, no six months, no a year, Uh wait a minute....... 

I sold my EA stock three days before launch. I might buy some back after the dilittantes are done with their panic attack. Hard to say. I don't normally hold it but Blizzard is possibly about to take a short steep slide. We shall see.

you seem to be looking at this the wrong way. No one has said anything about a comapny going out of business. What I am looking at is the declining stock for the past three months, with a quartly report cutting the debit by 1/3  , from positive growth "outside" of SWTOR.

 

People are trying to relay that because the stock went up 6% in one day it was a direct reflection of SWTOR success, which is simply not true. The fact is BF3 , and other games had a great sales.

 

The factt hat SWTOR is not the WoW killer is scaring investors off , and we will see a decline in the stock over the next 3 months to 6 months until something better is released and projected to ship over 5-10million boxes.

 The fact that SWTOR isn't the WoW killer didn't scare anyone off. The day traders just went somewhere else to ride the next  hype bubble. 6% in one day means about as much as the drop after launch. Nothing. The AoC thing is just another example of people making predictions of catasrophe based on little or no information. And being inevitably wrong. The stock is fine, profits are fine, the game is fine. There are no large gains or losses on the horizon.

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by zymurgeist

Originally posted by MartinZ

Originally posted by Dredphyre

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by I_Return

19.26  -0.31 (-1.56%)

 

So much for that theory .....

19.24 -0.33 (-1.66%) closing. SWTOR continues to drag the stock down.

Have to quote yourself because nobody pays attention to your silly presumptions?

 

How about EA stock soaring a few days ago ( up 6%) after the earnings report and conference call regarding SWTOR? 

EA's stock is down 20% in the past three months. Around 10% since SWTOR was release. And back down another 1.66% today on a 11 year record high for the NASDAQ.

EA was outperforming the NASDAQ this year until almost exactly when SWTOR was released where it suddenly dropped like mad.

Even worse EA warned in their conference call that their revenue and profits and revenue for this coming quarter are going to be below expectations.

Looks like EA knows this game is dying rapidly and won't be the WoW killer they spent all this money hoping to be.

 

 

 EA stock is fine, EA profits are fine, SWTOR is fine. As usuall dumb asses ran the stock up in anticipation of a new MMO launch and it corrected. It will slowly creep back up in the next few months.  It Happens Every Time. It did the same thing for Warhammer only it made a bigger swing down.

Teala SWTOR currently has in excess or 1.7 million subscribers. It probably does not have an 85% retention rate. As usual people are confabulating numbers to mean things they don't.

tyvm for the laugh. SWTOR is the thorn in EA stocks side . All of the other products EA published last year is what is stabalizing the slower then expected downward spiral of the current stock quotes.

 Yeah it'll probably drop like a rock the way AoC caused Funcom to go out of business in a month, no three months, no six months, no a year, Uh wait a minute....... 

I sold my EA stock three days before launch. I might buy some back after the dilittantes are done with their panic attack. Hard to say. I don't normally hold it but Blizzard is possibly about to take a short steep slide. We shall see.

Originally posted by MartinZ

Originally posted by Dredphyre

Originally posted by I_Return

Originally posted by I_Return

19.26  -0.31 (-1.56%)

 

So much for that theory .....

19.24 -0.33 (-1.66%) closing. SWTOR continues to drag the stock down.

Have to quote yourself because nobody pays attention to your silly presumptions?

 

How about EA stock soaring a few days ago ( up 6%) after the earnings report and conference call regarding SWTOR? 

EA's stock is down 20% in the past three months. Around 10% since SWTOR was release. And back down another 1.66% today on a 11 year record high for the NASDAQ.

EA was outperforming the NASDAQ this year until almost exactly when SWTOR was released where it suddenly dropped like mad.

Even worse EA warned in their conference call that their revenue and profits and revenue for this coming quarter are going to be below expectations.

Looks like EA knows this game is dying rapidly and won't be the WoW killer they spent all this money hoping to be.

 

 

 EA stock is fine, EA profits are fine, SWTOR is fine. As usuall dumb asses ran the stock up in anticipation of a new MMO launch and it corrected. It will slowly creep back up in the next few months.  It Happens Every Time. It did the same thing for Warhammer only it made a bigger swing down.

Teala SWTOR currently has in excess or 1.7 million subscribers. It probably does not have an 85% retention rate. As usual people are confabulating numbers to mean things they don't.

Originally posted by Garvon3

Not buying it. We already know EA bribes the media, this very site included.

 

Hell, they fired one of their own long standing popular columnists because he gave SWTOR a 6/10 (which it deserves, it is NOT a good MMO, it's merely an average COOP game with a popular license).

I'd give you a banstick for that one. It's libel.

Originally posted by Theodwulf

       See what happens by the summer. Time will tell who is right and who are the idiots. If the game is F2P by June all the Company press releases  in the world won't change that.

 

Be patient, use the force. All the Lovers of this game are Posting defences of this game everywhere, NOT PLAYING THE FREAKIN' GAME. That is the first sign that something is amiss, out of place. IF I had a great game to play , I would NOT care if you liked it, I would be playing it. Seems like alot of people "at work" , don't have to work and have computer access and have free reign to surf the web. Many of them also know all about game developing and working in the "Industry".

 

  If you are still holding EA shares, prepare to take a bath

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I don't see 1.7 million posts defending the game. So obviously there are people playing the game. I'm playing it right now as a matter of fact. The only thing amiss is your rhetoric.

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by noncley

I'm sorry but a purchaser-to-subscriber conversion rate of 85% is just unbelievable unless you change the meaning of either the words 'purchaser' or 'subscriber'. Blizzard's 'WOTLK' expansion - which was converting pre-existing subscribers (ie people who were already playing and paying for World of Warcraft') - only managed a conversion rate of 69%.

 

If it is unbelievable, it is probably not true. Just saying.

 Believabilty has never been a guide for what is or isn't true. People believed in the piltdown man. People don't believe Oswald killed Kennedy. A current subscriber is anyone who can log in and play the game. The 85% number may as well have been pulled out of a hat. We don't know how many people who bought the game paid for a second month. Bioware/EA hasn't and probably won't release that number.

Originally posted by sanosukex

Originally posted by gurugeorge

Funny to see the haters clinging on to a bandwagon they thought was a surefire runaway :)

It was always pretty obvious they had the wrong end of the stick.  BW is opening up a market of new MMO fans, not trying to peel off bored ex-WoW-ers. 

Which is exactly how Blizzard went about it.  They weren't trying to filch EQ's subscribers, so much as attract a whole new bunch of people to MMOs (i.e. specifically those who tried EQ and didn't like it - i.e. they plugged holes that had put people off the previous king of MMOs).

The new people coming into SWTOR have no interest in the gabble of old MMO hands, so they're not really affected by the cries of d00000000m.

its more humorous to see the die hard fans actually beleive these numbers mean this game is going to be successful in the mmo market

 Too late. The game is already successful in the MMO market. The numbers prove it's clearly the largest launch of a western MMO since WoW. The naysayers continue to deny it but it's true.

Originally posted by Drakxii

Ehh as I said last summer SWTOR bad for MMOs no matter what.  

 

If it is a sucess we will get crappy SWTOR clones... which is will be terrible on so many levels.

 

If it fails the majority of devs and investors leave the P2P market and make more P2W crap... if they stay in the MMO market at all.

 So it's better for SWTOR to suceed so they have time to bring P2P around rather than just giving up and making nothing but F2P. Think about it.