NVM

Still winning this thread.   ^_^

God Bless America <<< clicky  Reminds me of Kick-Ass

Trailer  <<< clicky

There is no way in hell they retained 85% of their playbase.  I'd bet mylife on that.   In fact I'd bet right - today as of now, this game has more like 1.2 million subs and has lost upwards of 750k since release.   That means they have seen 45% loss in players since the games release. 

Tag this...and in 2 months we'll come back to these words  I typed, because I am about to make another prediction.  I predict within 2 more months this game is going to be nearing 500k subs.

I am going to be putting up part 2 later today.    I would just like to thank everyone that has participated in this first part.   Thank you for giving your input.  

Originally posted by grunty

I've never had one but there is something you need to check on and that is the laws of your state about what constitues a motorized vehicle. If I remember correctly in Texas any vehicle that can exceed 20 MPH by the sole use of a motor must pass state inspection, emission, licensing, and insurance laws.

 

Good point.   I'll look into that.  :)

Originally posted by Shodanas

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Shodanas

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Why so hung up on the 1.7 million subscribers. I just noticed something from a updated on Darth Hater.

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call

Key Statistics:

• 2,000,000+ copies sold – 40% sold through Origin
• 1,700,000+ active subscribers – 1 million concurrent
• Average session time was four hours during the first month and a half
• 99.5% Server Uptime

 

1 million doesn't sound right, especially with 4.5 hours avg session time;  avg. session time would have to be 13-14 hours to match concurrent.  Not sure what that number is about.

If you read the rest of the article, they state that at this point, most of those 1.7 million subs are "paying subs".  That is, they're past their free month and have paid their first sub fee. 

Either way, the haters are choking on their sour grapes, right now.  The WAR-esque predictions haven't come true, and likely won't.  That doesn't guarantee success indefinitely(nothing does), but any talk of "titanic" failure is even more absurd now than it was closer to launch.

 

Really? War sold 1.2 million copies and had 800.000 subs after the first month so in that regard SW:TOR is so far similar to WAR.

Except for one difference,  SWTOR has more subs right now than WAR ever did. 

Well naturally, this is Star Wars we are talking about, it is way bigger IP than Warhammer, and it was released during the christmas holidays, which further boost sales. So the numbers are not exactly the same but similar. For sure this is no WoW killer we are talking about because WoW gained subs, month after month, where as SW:TOR is already starting to lose subs.

As Teala said, down around 400k subs from 2.1 million just after a month. I guess the loss will be even greater after the second month when more people have played through the storylines and realised there is not much after.

I don't care about the whole "WoW Killer" thing.  Never have.  I really don't think most people who are playing do either.  Some people will throw that term around, but I don't give a crap about wow.

 

Second, the only thing this shows is that SWTOR had a VERY successful launch and first month, with pretty decent retention. It doesn't indicate what's going to happen next month.  It doesn't mean 400k people are going to quit next month or that the game will grow.   

 

You guys can deny it all you want, but in the first month and a half, this game is very successful from where I'm standing.  Their first month retention is very high, by your own admission.  

 

I'm not saying that the game is going to do better or worse next month.  All I'm saying is that this first month was very successful. 

No doubt, it was extremely successful in it's first month.   The trick now is to keep being as successful.   I am not seeing it.   But hey, maybe Bioware will do something awesome and the game will eventually start growing, as it is now, it isn't growing, it is losing subs at a substantial rate.

And you know this how exactly? Of course it's not the first time you write BS out of thin air in these boards without anything to back up your claims. 

1.7 million subs 6 weeks after release.. yeah, it is losing subs at a substantial rate indeed

Come talk to me in 3 months when people are screaming for merger servers - I'll stand by what I have wrote.   In 6 to 8  months this game will be merging servers. 

I'm still waiting for you to elaborate on the  "..it's losing subs on a substantial rate.." thingy. Give us the figures or the facts. Btw, weren't you one of them doomsayers claiming that the game will have ~300k after the first month? I'm to lazy to search your posts but i'm sure you're one of them. 

See you in 6 months. 

I never said the game would have x number of subs after its first month.   Never have said anything remotely like that.

Has anyone here ever had a recumbent trike? I am looking into getting one for commuting purposes.   I was just wondering if they are better than a bike.   I have used my bike to commute in the summer and my wrist always hurt really bad after.   I understand that with a recumbent that is not an issue.

There is also an electric motor assisted version that I am looking at for steap hills.   I live in a very hilly area.    So an electric assist would help a lot.

So I am curious...anyone have any experience with a recumbent trike like this.   Rear wheel has an electric motor in the hub.  :)  I understand they can push these machines upto 50mph on a the flats.

Originally posted by Shodanas

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Why so hung up on the 1.7 million subscribers. I just noticed something from a updated on Darth Hater.

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call

Key Statistics:

• 2,000,000+ copies sold – 40% sold through Origin
• 1,700,000+ active subscribers – 1 million concurrent
• Average session time was four hours during the first month and a half
• 99.5% Server Uptime

 

1 million doesn't sound right, especially with 4.5 hours avg session time;  avg. session time would have to be 13-14 hours to match concurrent.  Not sure what that number is about.

If you read the rest of the article, they state that at this point, most of those 1.7 million subs are "paying subs".  That is, they're past their free month and have paid their first sub fee. 

Either way, the haters are choking on their sour grapes, right now.  The WAR-esque predictions haven't come true, and likely won't.  That doesn't guarantee success indefinitely(nothing does), but any talk of "titanic" failure is even more absurd now than it was closer to launch.

 

Really? War sold 1.2 million copies and had 800.000 subs after the first month so in that regard SW:TOR is so far similar to WAR.

Except for one difference,  SWTOR has more subs right now than WAR ever did. 

Well naturally, this is Star Wars we are talking about, it is way bigger IP than Warhammer, and it was released during the christmas holidays, which further boost sales. So the numbers are not exactly the same but similar. For sure this is no WoW killer we are talking about because WoW gained subs, month after month, where as SW:TOR is already starting to lose subs.

As Teala said, down around 400k subs from 2.1 million just after a month. I guess the loss will be even greater after the second month when more people have played through the storylines and realised there is not much after.

I don't care about the whole "WoW Killer" thing.  Never have.  I really don't think most people who are playing do either.  Some people will throw that term around, but I don't give a crap about wow.

 

Second, the only thing this shows is that SWTOR had a VERY successful launch and first month, with pretty decent retention. It doesn't indicate what's going to happen next month.  It doesn't mean 400k people are going to quit next month or that the game will grow.   

 

You guys can deny it all you want, but in the first month and a half, this game is very successful from where I'm standing.  Their first month retention is very high, by your own admission.  

 

I'm not saying that the game is going to do better or worse next month.  All I'm saying is that this first month was very successful. 

No doubt, it was extremely successful in it's first month.   The trick now is to keep being as successful.   I am not seeing it.   But hey, maybe Bioware will do something awesome and the game will eventually start growing, as it is now, it isn't growing, it is losing subs at a substantial rate.

And you know this how exactly? Of course it's not the first time you write BS out of thin air in these boards without anything to back up your claims. 

1.7 million subs 6 weeks after release.. yeah, it is losing subs at a substantial rate indeed

Come talk to me in 3 months when people are screaming for merger servers - I'll stand by what I have wrote.   In 6 to 8  months this game will be merging servers. 

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Teala

Thought I would toss in my 2 cents.   I know right, you've probably been wondering were I was at.  Anyway, I look at it like this.  They sold just under 2.1 million copies(based on box sales and the fact that they said that 40% was digital) we know how many boxes were sold and if we do the math we can see they have sold 2,078,456 units of the game - roughly(based on box sales recorded by 3rd party sources such as NPD and Origins DL's-  on EA's own report that 40% of total sales were degital downloads from Origin).

They report that they have retained 1.7 million subscribers of those units sold(they could have rounded that number up or down so lets give them a shadow of a doubt and say they rounded down).   Most of those were sold in December prior to launch - in fact if we go by what EA's has told us about digital sales we can see that SWTOR sold 80% of the current total of units prior to the Dec 20th release date - 80%.

Then if we correlate the recently released info, we can guess that since the first month SWTOR has retained just over 60% of their player base.  That means a 40% drop in subscribers since release.

Now I do not know about you, but a game that lost almost 400k players in its first month of release - is not doing very good.

Just my take on this whole quarterly report story.  

Well, if we go buy your numbers we can also see how many of the 1.7 million are paying subs.

 

By your math, about 80% are paying for a subscription and only about 20% are on their free month. That's pretty much what I've been saying.  

 

It's easy to say "Oh look! They lost 400k players in their first month! It's a failure!!"  Well of course they did. Doesn't make the game a failure, especially when they hung on to 1.7 million people.  

 

Saying the game "is not doing very good" is quite a stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's doing very well.  If they keep losing subs at that rate, yeah that would be terrible, but it's going to level out at some point.  

 

People quit MMOs after the free month. It happens to damn near every game.  How many of them hang on to 1.7 million people?

 

That's the point, for a game to lose 40% of their plaeyr base withint the first month of the games release is not a good sign.   As you said, if it maintains that drop rate over the next 2 or three months this game will be lucky to retain 20% of their player base.  20% of 2mill is like 400k players.  For a big AAA game like this with as much hype as it has had 400k does not bode well.   Is it still successful.  To some of us it will seem successful...hell any MMO that retains 400k subs should be considered successful to some degree - but it certainly isn't going to shattering any MMO sub numbers any time soon in the future.

 

 

Wait just a damn minute Teala.  Your math is very very wrong. 

 

You yourself said that they sold (including digital) 2.1 million.  I dont know if that number is right on, but it's the number you gave.

 

They currently have retained 1.7 million people.

 

Then you go on to say that they lost 40% of their player base!!!! Grab a calculator lets go through this together!!!! 

1.7 million   /   2.1 million  = .8

 

That, my friend, is 80% retention rate.  So by the numbers you provided, SWTOR has only lost about 20% of it's player base.

 

How does that work?

I highlighted something you seem to have missed...I am saying they do not have 1.7 million subs.  They are basing that on a number from just after the first free month.  Since then they have lost more.
 

Originally posted by DaRoamer

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Teala

Thought I would toss in my 2 cents.   I know right, you've probably been wondering were I was at.  Anyway, I look at it like this.  They sold just under 2.1 million copies(based on box sales and the fact that they said that 40% was digital) we know how many boxes were sold and if we do the math we can see they have sold 2,078,456 units of the game - roughly(based on box sales recorded by 3rd party sources such as NPD and Origins DL's-  on EA's own report that 40% of total sales were degital downloads from Origin).

They report that they have retained 1.7 million subscribers of those units sold(they could have rounded that number up or down so lets give them a shadow of a doubt and say they rounded down).   Most of those were sold in December prior to launch - in fact if we go by what EA's has told us about digital sales we can see that SWTOR sold 80% of the current total of units prior to the Dec 20th release date - 80%.

Then if we correlate the recently released info, we can guess that since the first month SWTOR has retained just over 60% of their player base.  That means a 40% drop in subscribers since release.

Now I do not know about you, but a game that lost almost 400k players in its first month of release - is not doing very good.

Just my take on this whole quarterly report story.  

Well, if we go buy your numbers we can also see how many of the 1.7 million are paying subs.

 

By your math, about 80% are paying for a subscription and only about 20% are on their free month. That's pretty much what I've been saying.  

 

It's easy to say "Oh look! They lost 400k players in their first month! It's a failure!!"  Well of course they did. Doesn't make the game a failure, especially when they hung on to 1.7 million people.  

 

Saying the game "is not doing very good" is quite a stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's doing very well.  If they keep losing subs at that rate, yeah that would be terrible, but it's going to level out at some point.  

 

People quit MMOs after the free month. It happens to damn near every game.  How many of them hang on to 1.7 million people?

 

That's the point, for a game to lose 40% of their plaeyr base withint the first month of the games release is not a good sign.   As you said, if it maintains that drop rate over the next 2 or three months this game will be lucky to retain 20% of their player base.  20% of 2mill is like 400k players.  For a big AAA game like this with as much hype as it has had 400k does not bode well.   Is it still successful.  To some of us it will seem successful...hell any MMO that retains 400k subs should be considered successful to some degree - but it certainly isn't going to shattering any MMO sub numbers any time soon in the future.

At it's peak of popularity WoW was losing 45% of it's new subs after 2 months.  This is considered a very good churn rate for an MMO.

WoW maintained it's numbers but selling a lot of boxes and having old customers resub from time to time.

That's another point, 80% of this games sales came before Dec 20th.  It is now Feb 2 and they have sold only 20% more units since then.  That is not a good sales record.  Box sales have dropped off dramatically since release.   They are not selling as many units as they are losing. 

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by Thachsanh

Why so hung up on the 1.7 million subscribers. I just noticed something from a updated on Darth Hater.

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call

Key Statistics:

• 2,000,000+ copies sold – 40% sold through Origin
• 1,700,000+ active subscribers – 1 million concurrent
• Average session time was four hours during the first month and a half
• 99.5% Server Uptime

 

1 million doesn't sound right, especially with 4.5 hours avg session time;  avg. session time would have to be 13-14 hours to match concurrent.  Not sure what that number is about.

If you read the rest of the article, they state that at this point, most of those 1.7 million subs are "paying subs".  That is, they're past their free month and have paid their first sub fee. 

Either way, the haters are choking on their sour grapes, right now.  The WAR-esque predictions haven't come true, and likely won't.  That doesn't guarantee success indefinitely(nothing does), but any talk of "titanic" failure is even more absurd now than it was closer to launch.

 

Really? War sold 1.2 million copies and had 800.000 subs after the first month so in that regard SW:TOR is so far similar to WAR.

Except for one difference,  SWTOR has more subs right now than WAR ever did. 

Well naturally, this is Star Wars we are talking about, it is way bigger IP than Warhammer, and it was released during the christmas holidays, which further boost sales. So the numbers are not exactly the same but similar. For sure this is no WoW killer we are talking about because WoW gained subs, month after month, where as SW:TOR is already starting to lose subs.

As Teala said, down around 400k subs from 2.1 million just after a month. I guess the loss will be even greater after the second month when more people have played through the storylines and realised there is not much after.

I don't care about the whole "WoW Killer" thing.  Never have.  I really don't think most people who are playing do either.  Some people will throw that term around, but I don't give a crap about wow.

 

Second, the only thing this shows is that SWTOR had a VERY successful launch and first month, with pretty decent retention. It doesn't indicate what's going to happen next month.  It doesn't mean 400k people are going to quit next month or that the game will grow.   

 

You guys can deny it all you want, but in the first month and a half, this game is very successful from where I'm standing.  Their first month retention is very high, by your own admission.  

 

I'm not saying that the game is going to do better or worse next month.  All I'm saying is that this first month was very successful. 

No doubt, it was extremely successful in it's first month.   The trick now is to keep being as successful.   I am not seeing it.   But hey, maybe Bioware will do something awesome and the game will eventually start growing, as it is now, it isn't growing, it is losing subs at a substantial rate.

Originally posted by dubyahite

Originally posted by Teala

Thought I would toss in my 2 cents.   I know right, you've probably been wondering were I was at.  Anyway, I look at it like this.  They sold just under 2.1 million copies(based on box sales and the fact that they said that 40% was digital) we know how many boxes were sold and if we do the math we can see they have sold 2,078,456 units of the game - roughly(based on box sales recorded by 3rd party sources such as NPD and Origins DL's-  on EA's own report that 40% of total sales were degital downloads from Origin).

They report that they have retained 1.7 million subscribers of those units sold(they could have rounded that number up or down so lets give them a shadow of a doubt and say they rounded down).   Most of those were sold in December prior to launch - in fact if we go by what EA's has told us about digital sales we can see that SWTOR sold 80% of the current total of units prior to the Dec 20th release date - 80%.

Then if we correlate the recently released info, we can guess that since the first month SWTOR has retained just over 60% of their player base.  That means a 40% drop in subscribers since release.

Now I do not know about you, but a game that lost almost 400k players in its first month of release - is not doing very good.

Just my take on this whole quarterly report story.  

Well, if we go buy your numbers we can also see how many of the 1.7 million are paying subs.

 

By your math, about 80% are paying for a subscription and only about 20% are on their free month. That's pretty much what I've been saying.  

 

It's easy to say "Oh look! They lost 400k players in their first month! It's a failure!!"  Well of course they did. Doesn't make the game a failure, especially when they hung on to 1.7 million people.  

 

Saying the game "is not doing very good" is quite a stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's doing very well.  If they keep losing subs at that rate, yeah that would be terrible, but it's going to level out at some point.  

 

People quit MMOs after the free month. It happens to damn near every game.  How many of them hang on to 1.7 million people?

 

That's the point, for a game to lose 40% of their plaeyr base withint the first month of the games release is not a good sign.   As you said, if it maintains that drop rate over the next 2 or three months this game will be lucky to retain 20% of their player base.  20% of 2mill is like 400k players.  For a big AAA game like this with as much hype as it has had 400k does not bode well.   Is it still successful.  To some of us it will seem successful...hell any MMO that retains 400k subs should be considered successful to some degree - but it certainly isn't going to shattering any MMO sub numbers any time soon in the future.

Thought I would toss in my 2 cents.   I know right, you've probably been wondering were I was at.  Anyway, I look at it like this.  They sold just under 2.1 million copies(based on box sales and the fact that they said that 40% was digital) we know how many boxes were sold and if we do the math we can see they have sold 2,078,456 units of the game - roughly(based on box sales recorded by 3rd party sources such as NPD and Origins DL's-  on EA's own report that 40% of total sales were degital downloads from Origin).

They report that they have retained 1.7 million subscribers of those units sold(they could have rounded that number up or down so lets give them a shadow of a doubt and say they rounded down).   Most of those were sold in December prior to launch - in fact if we go by what EA's has told us about digital sales we can see that SWTOR sold 80% of the current total of units prior to the Dec 20th release date - 80%.

Then if we correlate the recently released info, we can guess that since the first month SWTOR has retained just over 60% of their player base.  That means a 40% drop in subscribers since release.

Now I do not know about you, but a game that lost almost 400k players in its first month of release - is not doing very good.

Just my take on this whole quarterly report story.  

I cannot wait!!!  /does happy dance

Originally posted by fivoroth

I have read so much ranting and whining about the new expansion MOP yet no one is talking about these changes which I think have the potential to make the game super fun.

1. Heroic versions of Scholomance and the kewlest dungeon ever SM :P

2. World bosses return! - This is the best thing evah! Who doesn't love world bosses?

3. Increased focus on max level content - multiple hubs. This was the worst thing about cata. Not enough endgame content. And questing in only one place is shit.

4. 3 new battlegrounds which are more than just a variation of existing battlegrounds (aka cata battlegrounds). Payload from TF2 should be sweet, Murderball also sounds cool. But most importantly we will finally get Azshara's Crater after 7 years of speculations about the battleground. I am not sure how they will do the whole DOTA gameplay but this might be fun.

5. Account wide achievements - nuff said.

6. And there you go! Resilience will work more as a base stat which will be gained every level. If we don't have this huge difference between PvP and PvE gear I think the pvp game will be much more fun! I miss that from Vanilla. This res crap which was introduced in TBC made the game less fun imo.

7. Druids have 4 specs - okay if you are not a druid that's not a huge deal but it is for me :P

The following is some more goodness but it is not like people don't talk about it - pet battles, scenarios sound cool and challenge dungeons.

All this is good - but Blizzard still doesn't get it.   They still are not fixing their game!  Major cities will continue to go on being neglected leaving Orgrimmar and Stormwind the only cities worth going to.   They are neglecting the open world PvP that so many players are craving for.   They continue to do the same old song and dance of gear grinding.   Crafting needs a total revamp.   When will they add housing?  Guild Halls?  I look forward to MOP, but come on, there is so much that needs addressed in the current game it is sad to see them continue to neglect it.  /le sigh

A big thank you to all the people that have voted so far.  

Originally posted by tillamook

Beyond the obvious complaints about how TOR is not an MMO, these complaints seem to be more frequent with every game launch, which leads me to believe that most folks don’t want to pay a subscription for the level of game design we are now seeing in MMOs.

 

If things are going to remain the same from here on out with MMos should we bother paying for them? Someone in another thread brought up a good point; most single player games have more robust and better multiplayer tools then most of these so called MMOs. MMOs seem to be catering to people who like to play alone, are we seeing a merge in genera here?  

 

If someone made the most epic and awesome hybrid MMO would people eventually feel that paying to play this was just as pointless as the one on rails? Here is what I expect to see…. “I’m not going to pay for this beyond the first month” Why? Are MMos these days just boring? What’s the secret to making folks want to pay a regular subscription rather than pay as they go?

 

Opinions and thoughts?

For a game like SWTOR there should be no monthly sub fee - SWTOR should be B2P with purchasable DLC.  For a truly good MMORPG, yes I think there is a place for a monthly fee - but that comes with conditions.

Those conditions beings(in my opinion):

• good customer support
• live team to squash bugs
• live team to add some content updates on at a fairly decent bases - like maybe once every two months
• everything is accessible to players that pay the monthly fee in one form or another

"Free trees - lets cut!"   LOL!   He came across another clans tree farm, waited for them to grow, came back to cut them down, started cutting them and one of the owners showed up.    Too funny.  

Originally posted by Edeus

I voted "other" because its impossible....

The "Magic" variable always exists, whether you call it magic, or the force, aether, nanobots, whatever. 

Think of it in terms of healing.  Nothing heals your ship faster quite like those nanobots that for some reason have a cast time or a cooldown.  Nothing heals you quite as fast as magic. 

Or think of it in terms of niche roles.  Why are your swords glowing purple?  It's because of magi--- err, I mean, it's vibrating really fast...  How is it you can shoot lightning from your fingers?  Magi--- errr the force!  How can your ship emit a pulse that repairs my ships armor?  Repair bots!  How can we breathe in space?  THE ENERGY OF THE UNIVERSE MAINTAINS US, which is called not-magic.

 

No...when I mean no magic, there is no magic, no nano-bots, nothing like lightning shooting out of a persons fingers.   :)