Hi All,

Sorry if this is redundant, I did a quick search and didn't find my answer here or on the bioware site.  Does anyone know how many toons we will be able to create with one account?  Basically I want to know how many boxes I need to buy to play the various configurations as well as play through some various plot variations. For example, I want to be a jedi, but a tool so I treat my companions like I am a tool, yet another play through I want to treat them nicely. Basically, how many toons can we make per account i guess will answer my question.

Cheers

Rintintin

I was happy I got my CE before they ran out.

Thanks for posting the interview, it was interesting.  I am looking forward to the game, but mostly because it is starwars "through and through", and because I trust bioware to make a good story out of it if nothing else.  In one video I seen a player wave to another, but didn't see any dialogue text (may have just missed it).  Any idea how chat works? Will there be a full gambit of emotes? Is there chat bubbles above heads or just a chat text box in the corner of the screen?

All, thanks for the info, all was helpful.

Cheers

Watched the developer walkthrough ofTatooine from the link above and it all looked pretty good, one nitpicky thing I thought was depressing and this may change by launch was that when you call or put away your speeder it magically appears and your companion disappears or reappears. 

Obviously there are probably development considerations why they chose this, like you don't want a bunch of abandoned speeders lying around like SWG used to have outside starports, but the current mechanic adds to the cheesy factor.  I used to think it was hilarious when someone's speeder would get wrecked by a mob they dismounted too close to in SWG, usually by stray fire from a blaster or something.  In PVP, it was fun shooting out their speeder from under them. 

Oh well, still should be a good game simply for the story and combat looks ok.  Not a fan of the art style, but I also understand why they chose that direction...if you want people playing in internet cafe's while their children starve, you have to make the game requirements playable in those types of environments as well as on home gaming rigs. 

I was interested to see such variety in the toons appearances.  I was expecting much less variety.  Anyone have any idea how the mechanics work, are all those toons in same group, or multiple smaller groups?  Probably too early to tell, but wonder if it will be the sort of thing where you have to wait an hour for a specific spec to show up. 

That's good to know...thanks for the feedback.  I was considering AT&T, they have  a pretty reasonable package deal including FOIS but this is actually the first time I heard of it so I was unsure.  Glad to hear you had a positive improvement in IS.

Thanks again

Hi All,

I did a search but did not find any topics containing fiberoptic.  I was wondering I should get fiberoptic internet service versus traditional cable.  Obviously fiberoptic communication is faster than digital, but data from fiberoptics has to go through switches and routers to be converted back and forth numerous times depending on the medium etc.  I know little about networking etc and thought perhaps some of you have had experience yourselves with fiberoptic internet service and gaming etc.  Currently I have cable and never experience lag during gaming, I was wondering if all the converting back and fourth from light to electronic through various routers and switches would cause it to be slower than simply using cable?

Thanks for your input in advance!

edited for grammer

I'm not arguing that the middle tiers kind of suck when it comes to matching with higher tanks, and I absolutely hated tiers 3-6.  The match making seems to depend on time of day and how many others are on etc.  Also, up to tier 6 and 7 depending on the nations tanks and type, the experience comes pretty quickly and you level through quickly without having to use gold.  At tier 6 and 7 it starts to bog down because the amount of xp you need is exponentially higher and the increase that you are awarded per match does not increase as much as the required amount for your next tier tank seems too.

Also, the original post was somewhat confusing.  You cannot just buy experience with gold.  You can convert excess experience earned with a tank that no longer has any use for experience (premium tank or elite tank).  There are two types of experience, the experience you earn with a tank that can only be used with that tank, or free experience, which can be used by any tank.  Each match you earn normal experience with a tank, 5% of that value is added to the free experience pool.  If you have an elite tank (all modules and next tank bought) or a premium tank (one you payed gold for) you can convert the experience earned by those tanks to free experience to be used by any tank so in a sense you can buy experience, but you still have to play matches with the elite or premium tank first.  One gold converts 25 regular experience to free experience.  You cannot convert experience that is earned in a tank that is not elite or premium unless you sell that tank.  I am actually not sure about premium tanks either though because I have not bought one....I am assuming they earn regular xp like an elite tank, I know you earn credits with them. 

The premium tanks, particularly the german Lowe or russian KV-5 seem pretty prevelant and only seem over powered, because they are essentially tier 10 tanks and very few have leveled all the way to a tier 10 tank, but even in my tier 7 tanks I can compete with them just fine.  Getting from tier 7 to 8 is taking for ever and is at times frustrating when you are only tier 7 with all tier 10's but that is similar situation to the original poster's frustration...my point being it can happen until you get to tier 10 I suppose.

Anyway...its an ok game if you just want to get in and shoot some stuff up...not really an MMO in my opinion, but I am having fun with it now and then. 

I only got the first email notice that my account information was stolen from the May 2 notice.  In that, it states that no cc info etc was stolen, but the recent press release states they are providing complimentary credit monitoring?  Did something change, i.e. did they get cc (minus they ones from 2007 the mentioned)?  I haven't received anymore updates from SOE to my email.

Thanks,

isn't the release date of ME3 supposed to be in December 2011?  If so, I can't imagine they would release TOR at the same time to compete with it, so if they don't release by September, maybe October, wouldn't they want to push TOR back to 2012 to avoid ME3?  It will only take ME3 players a couple of weeks to get board of it so they could release in first quarter of 2012. Just wondering if the timed release of ME3 has anything to do with the release date of TOR.

I bought an Ibuypower PC through Newegg and it works great and is a beast gaming rig.  I didn't realize all their stuff was refurbished :-/   I hope reading this post doesn't jinx my PC!  I've never had a problem buying anything from Newegg and trust their CS due to past dealing and have always been happy with things bought through them. 

Well, if what they show in the video...air, ground, and vehicle combat occuring simultaneously with space combat and orbital bombardments...oh my...if they even just pull off integrated air, ground and vehicle combat....oh my.  Or am I reading too much into this? 

The only thing better than a rage quit post is a rage quit post for a game that hasn't released yet.  haha, love it. 

I'm torn, I liked and still love space in swg so I was hoping for something similar, but then I remember there so few other people besides myself who like space who still play swg, so I have to imagine, the marketing people at bioware had to do some research on it right, and found out most like the POB (multiple people)/gunships only for housing?  I mean swg space combat isn't that bad, but most only get to pilot ace in swg so they can have a POB which from what I can tell is what our houses/ships are going to be TOR minus the ability to fly it around freely? 

When i watched the video it reminded me of River Raid   and I wanted to cry.  It looked nice, sure, but river raid? I will still likely get the game because I trust bioware will put together and interesting story, but my hypemeter did go down.  I'm going to go /pout now. 

It's good to see the staff are responsive to the communty's concerns.  A suggestion would be to have 2-3 people perform each review.  I know it is challenging to find 2-3 people that can write in an articulate manner, but if that were possible, the average of the scores could be reported rather than a single reviewers response. 

Anyhow, just a thought.
Cheers

Originally posted by brad813

How can someone hate Aion and City of Heroes?  For the time periods they were made, they were two of the best games in their respective genres.  I would even argue that Aion is the best MMORPG out there, even over WoW(too commercial).

I don't know, they just didn't appeal to me :-/ To each their own I suppose. 

Short list:

1. An IP I know (Star wars for example)
2. Story that gets me immediately immersed (guild wars for example even though i hate fantasy)
3. Friends already playing (was what caused me to try SWG, eq, eq2, COH, guild wars, etc etc)
4. I also tend to lean toward Sci-fi but so few out there compared to fantasy.

I didn't say company because take NC-Soft for example, love GW, hated Aion & COH. 

Long List:

Mainly, if it is an IP I know, or if the developers do such a good job to get me quickly immersed  in a game without extensive reading of some half-baked story (guild wars for example MMO or not).  I want to know there is a good reason I am killing 10 rats for example. 

The first MMO i played was SWG, and SW IP is probably the only reason I would have ever started playing MMO's.  Not a big fantasy fan, though I played the paper and pen D&D growing up.  I do like guild wars and I have tried nearly every other MMO on the market, but guild wars is the only fantasy game I seem to go back to. 

I like to RP, but I have no idea what two elves or orcs would talk about...you know, chitchat.  We have the lord of the ring movies to give us some ideas about how an elves would interact, but other than that, I have no idea how to make small talk with another elf.  I often cofuse the elves of the movie Elf with fantasy roleplaying elves (not really compatable).  Though, an IP I've known since I was a kid (Star Wars), well I can RP and understand how to act like a jedi or storm trooper, etc.  In guild wars, i just look at it as more of an action adventure game and don't group because I am not in a guild and hate PUGs.  I enjoy just PvEing by myself trying every profession as I think the devs got a lot of things right in that game, especially the skill system and story element. 

Another example is Aion, i bought the CE pre-order based on hype, thinking it is from the same company as GW, i would give it a shot, but absolutely hated it (same with WoW, Eq, Eq2, etc etc).  Where guild wars got me immediately invested in the story, I cannot even begin to tell you what the hell the purpose of Aion or WoW is.  I know the world in Aion is cracked in half and there are good and bad people with wings, but that is about it.  I liked the fact that guild wars had an end to each of the campaign's stories, though I know some do not like that fact.  PvP in GW is also well done though I am not a big PvPer I felt at least I could do it and have fun. 

Thought I would like EVE but started too late, the core players were already too entrenched and just didn't feel like trying to catch up and had a hard time just being a starship with no ground avatar.  I had a lot of hope for FE, but tried beta and for some reason it reminded me a lot of Pre-CU SWG, and having now tried so many other games, found it lacking (just as I would pre-cu SWG if it was just released , probably), though I hope after a year or so FE improves and maybe try again then. 

Originally posted by Kuro1n

TL;DR, read the first part.

The more users the more the cost... theres a average amount of bandwidth every user will use every month and except for that you need to protect your server against stuff such as DDOS atks and such things, you also gotta have GMs and other staff taking care of exploiters and ppl abusing different things as well as a small group of developers to fix bugs. ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC.... Theres a neverending list.

Yeah, I figured there were a lot of costs that are hard to put a nail on so that is why i guessed $2 million a month to maintain for about 88k players or so.  I have no idea really, but it must be rediculous, and I suspect any profit made from th $14 a month must fluctuate as well as players come and go, expansions are created, etc.  Anyhow, interesting topic I think. 

I was going to start a new thread but low and behold I googled my question and found this thread already started. I am not in the gaming industry so have no idea what various investment or monthly direct costs would be, please help out. I also do not have an MBA so those with business or economic degrees, I am assuming there is a more specific formula to calculate this.

ROI = Vf-Vi/Vi

where Vf equals money saved/earned and Vi equals your initial investment.

So let's consider this, please change the numbers and recalculate if you know more accurate numbers. Using Tabula Rasa's rumored $100 million price tag (may only be $20 million, lol, who knows). In 2007-8 it was estimated there was 88k paying customers (see article below). We'll estimate that 200k bought the game initially. Obviously, these are gross assumptions, but it is a starter, as players come and go, some paid a month or two, and more may have purchased it originally, etc etc.

Money going out:
Initial Investment:                                                                                                                         $100,000,000
Monthly cost to maintain, server upkeep & hosting, pay support, devs, etc                     $2,000,000
 

Money Coming In:
Initial Sales: $50 box, say $25 directly back to developer: 200k*$25 =                             $5,000,000
Monthly revenue from subscriptions: 88,000 * $14 =                                                           $1,232,000
 

Therefore the game would be bleeding money of over $700,000 a month with the possibility of never paying for itself, that is why it was shut down. Even if the monthly maintenance was closer to 1 million (based on Frotus' estimate), it would take over 400 months to repay the $100 million dollar initial investment. So essentially, what we need to know is what it costs to maintain a game monthly including the cost for hosting, server maintenance, customer service, development team, keep the water in the crapper flowing, etc.

I am guessing those in the industry have done the math and have estimated that each players costs X amount per month (Frotus's estimate is $10 a month per player), and thus $15 has persisted because a player pays for themselves and provide some profit back to the company. It is when that is no longer true that servers begin to close and or the game dies. In the Tabula Rasa example, though I am sure my numbers are incorrect, it had to be something to that effect to cause them to let the game die.

Obviously, companies can save direct costs by reducing the number of devs, close servers, reduce CS, etc to increase profit margin, and so every game will very as to the exact number of players needed to maintain itself, but I think this gives a rough estimate. Another wrench in the monkey is that some players may have multiple accounts, so though there may be 88k subscriptions, based on 75k players so one player leaving actually reduces the revenue multiplier by a factor of more than 1. Anyway, I acknowledge my numbers are crap so don't flame me for it, if you know better please offer more accurate estimates. I think it is an interesting question and it would be interesting to know what the range of subscriptions must be to maintain most games.

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/21/q4-2007-ncsoft-s-subscription-numbers-and-tabula-rasa-s-financial/