Originally posted by tiefighter25

Originally posted by Eletheryl

Originally posted by tiefighter25
It bears mentionong that Terra has garnered a lot of interest since its far less restrictive Free To Play. That would explain a lot of SWTOR's FTP population migrating to a different game. (The trend can be seen at a third party website.)

The people playing games like swtor is not the same people who love to play korean games like Tera, you are talking about the AION players, the other F2P Korean MMO. 

By no means am I the Wizzard of Oz, but Path of Exile and Terra's poopuations (both FTP) appear to have grown rapidly in the last month. Aion appears to be stable. D3 (BTP) and SWTOR (Freemium) appear to have experienced a decline in population.

I was speculating on SWTOR's decline being attributable to other games as opposed to just attrition. Both Terra and Path of Exile have laxer FTP systems.

I think that you underestimate the FTP playerbases' ability to skip from genre to genre.

This is of course all speculation, (based on a some data). I'm sure someone will point this out.

yep,,most F2Pers arent picky

they just want a fast thrill,,for free of course

and if the game doesnt deliver, theyre just as fast in droppping it, and finding a replacement

look at the number of F2P mmos,,they wont have a hard time finding a new candidate

and still they keep coming,,TESO looks like a possible F2P candidate

i never played skyrim,,in a couple of years i can prolly play it for free,,and online

its just a matter of patience

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by superniceguy

City of heroes went F2P in 2011 and shut down 2012. Just when I was getting a new character going, they announced its shut down 1 month later, and did not get very far with the new content, and had I known it was closing that soon I would not have bothered and put my time to something else, plus it caused a stir and the Korean times were puzzled why it was closing.

 

Because the developers from Paragon Studios itself have confirmed that they game was making more money since the F2P conversion, and the game wasn't losing money according to them - hence NCSoft's "realignment of company focus" instead of saying anything regarding its profitability, and why the Korean Times questioned their decision in shutting down a game that was still providing a profit for them.

The closest thing I've seen when it comes to what reason they had for what they did is that they don't want too many titles to support, and only want the very best to represent their name - which seems weak at best, seeing how most other companies want as many succesful titles on their portfolio as possible.

Ah well, lesson learned - stay away from NCSoft as they are willing to shut down the game the moment they decide it no longer "fits" in their company lineup.

And I agree with you that its in SWTOR's best interest to make work of their updates and to get new content in game ASAP.

This encapsulates the issue with F2P conversions. COH making more money (apparently) right after it went F2P and then closing 1 year later because it was no longer making money. And if you search on other games that went F2P you will also find statements about "more revenue" "more players" etc. shortly after the game went F2P.

And then no more statements until months have passed and the next words are on the lines of: design teams are being reduced, game closed etc.

The reason is pretty obvious - as others have said many try the game, maybe make a one-off payment a short time after joining and then move on.  And Zynga numbers the problems are: churn is huge, revenue comes from just a few players, marketing costs to bring in new players can be huge, new games are needed to satisfy the core.

Clearly EA are not going to spend huge amounts on advertising so F2P players can be expected to drift off over time to something new. Leaving people who pay a sub wondering what they are paying the sub for.

Originally posted by simplius

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

SWTOR is a failure. Just face the truth already.

Should just have made SWG 2 instead. SWG pre cu style with content from CU / NGE.

According to your signature that holds true for every MMO that isn't "SWG pre CU". ;)

 Well it's a fact that no other MMO has ever been close to SWG pre cu's potential. ;-)

 

how many players in pre CU? 300-400k, right?

thats a pretty solid number,,but not for a AAA mmo,,and its still very far from the top dog

so the real life numbers prove that you are in a minority

and building a mmo for minorities will get you another niche game

thats what both SW mmos are,,,niche games

That was a solid figure for a AAA mmo at the time, but then WOW happened.

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by simplius

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

SWTOR is a failure. Just face the truth already.

Should just have made SWG 2 instead. SWG pre cu style with content from CU / NGE.

According to your signature that holds true for every MMO that isn't "SWG pre CU". ;)

 Well it's a fact that no other MMO has ever been close to SWG pre cu's potential. ;-)

 

how many players in pre CU? 300-400k, right?

thats a pretty solid number,,but not for a AAA mmo,,and its still very far from the top dog

so the real life numbers prove that you are in a minority

and building a mmo for minorities will get you another niche game

thats what both SW mmos are,,,niche games

That was a solid figure for a AAA mmo at the time, but then WOW happened.

Eve online is a AAA mmo, and only has 350k - 400k active subs, too many games developers are seeing WoW's figures and hoping for a piece of the 'pie'. And thats probably why so many games fail hard, they should be looking for 500k and growing slowly, too many times we're seeing flash in the pan games release and then have the numbers playing disolve over a period of just a few months, this even happened in GW2, which is still considered to be relatively successful.

Originally posted by Phry

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by simplius

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

SWTOR is a failure. Just face the truth already.

Should just have made SWG 2 instead. SWG pre cu style with content from CU / NGE.

According to your signature that holds true for every MMO that isn't "SWG pre CU". ;)

 Well it's a fact that no other MMO has ever been close to SWG pre cu's potential. ;-)

 

how many players in pre CU? 300-400k, right?

thats a pretty solid number,,but not for a AAA mmo,,and its still very far from the top dog

so the real life numbers prove that you are in a minority

and building a mmo for minorities will get you another niche game

thats what both SW mmos are,,,niche games

That was a solid figure for a AAA mmo at the time, but then WOW happened.

Eve online is a AAA mmo, and only has 350k - 400k active subs, too many games developers are seeing WoW's figures and hoping for a piece of the 'pie'. And thats probably why so many games fail hard, they should be looking for 500k and growing slowly, too many times we're seeing flash in the pan games release and then have the numbers playing disolve over a period of just a few months, this even happened in GW2, which is still considered to be relatively successful.

Yep, fairly sure even DAoC, UO and other big names were around that number back during their day.

The pool of players to draw from was also much smaller, WoW turned MMO's mainstream - whether you find that a good thing or not.

Originally posted by Karteli

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by darkhalf357x

Funny to me.  When we played games in the 80s.  We never sat around and asked "Is Megaman still selling?  I see that its Toys R Us volumes have been low"

I guess it was because we were having too much fun playing to care.  If I didnt like a game I sold it or threw it away.  Played something else.

Funny how things change....

Judging by how many topics like this are made, some people like complaining and picking apart numbers that have no meaning to them more than playing games it seems. Dunno though, I guess it can count as a hobby.

I could only imagine what gaming would have been like in the 80s had internet forums existed then. You'd have had Atari fans fighting with Coleco vision fans who would have lost their favorite platforms and then started hating on the NES because of it's dominance. That and cries of "Pac-Man clone" by posters who hate on every game that isn't Pong. 

You just posted your minimum age, if you didn't know that stuff had existed already! :D

 

If you said 70's well that would led to a whole lot of speculation .. but saying it wasn't available in the 80's pinponts it down :P  Because there was plenty of smack going down in the 80's, "online".

The only way you could have been smack talking online in the 80s is if you worked for a research or educational organization. ISPs didn't emerge until the late 80s and the commercialization of the internet didn't happen until 1995. Nice try though. 

By the way I'm in my late 30s so I remember the 80s quite well. 

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Karteli

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by darkhalf357x

Funny to me.  When we played games in the 80s.  We never sat around and asked "Is Megaman still selling?  I see that its Toys R Us volumes have been low"

I guess it was because we were having too much fun playing to care.  If I didnt like a game I sold it or threw it away.  Played something else.

Funny how things change....

Judging by how many topics like this are made, some people like complaining and picking apart numbers that have no meaning to them more than playing games it seems. Dunno though, I guess it can count as a hobby.

I could only imagine what gaming would have been like in the 80s had internet forums existed then. You'd have had Atari fans fighting with Coleco vision fans who would have lost their favorite platforms and then started hating on the NES because of it's dominance. That and cries of "Pac-Man clone" by posters who hate on every game that isn't Pong. 

You just posted your minimum age, if you didn't know that stuff had existed already! :D

 

If you said 70's well that would led to a whole lot of speculation .. but saying it wasn't available in the 80's pinponts it down :P  Because there was plenty of smack going down in the 80's, "online".

The only way you could have been smack talking online in the 80s is if you worked for a research or educational organization. ISPs didn't emerge until the late 80s and the commercialization of the internet didn't happen until 1995. Nice try though. 

By the way I'm in my late 30s so I remember the 80s quite well. 

Dialup services, Compuserve, hundreds of hobby BBS's (soon to be 10's of thousans before the popularity of the modern internet in the early 90's) .. professionally run BBS's... Prodigy was in there too, late 80's - early 90's.

 

Talkers, complainers, enthusiasists, fans, haters .. for every product there were followers.

 

Carry on.

 

 

Originally posted by Phry

Originally posted by superniceguy

Originally posted by simplius

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

Originally posted by LoverNoFighter

SWTOR is a failure. Just face the truth already.

Should just have made SWG 2 instead. SWG pre cu style with content from CU / NGE.

According to your signature that holds true for every MMO that isn't "SWG pre CU". ;)

 Well it's a fact that no other MMO has ever been close to SWG pre cu's potential. ;-)

 

how many players in pre CU? 300-400k, right?

thats a pretty solid number,,but not for a AAA mmo,,and its still very far from the top dog

so the real life numbers prove that you are in a minority

and building a mmo for minorities will get you another niche game

thats what both SW mmos are,,,niche games

That was a solid figure for a AAA mmo at the time, but then WOW happened.

Eve online is a AAA mmo, and only has 350k - 400k active subs, too many games developers are seeing WoW's figures and hoping for a piece of the 'pie'. And thats probably why so many games fail hard, they should be looking for 500k and growing slowly, too many times we're seeing flash in the pan games release and then have the numbers playing disolve over a period of just a few months, this even happened in GW2, which is still considered to be relatively successful.

yup, they all want to beat rocky, and be the champ, but they dont want to live in training camp for years

to prepare themselves

yes EVE is a AAA mmo, but íts also a HARDCORE mmo, so they can only support a company with about

70 employees,,no where near the budget of swtor

 

UO was solid with around 450k and EQ1 was the big player with a peak of 600-650k - doubtless a key reason why SoE got to develop SWG.

By the standards of the day SWG was a success. For whatever reason - and the IP cost is the likely culprit - the number of subs was deemed inadequate. It was after 1M and only managed "half" before starting to decline. Xpacs were taking longer and this probably didn't help keep subs up. Churn will probably have started to hurt. 

Back when EQ1 had its ..... 7th anniversary I think it was ..... SoE released some data about churn - the average subscription period being around 7 months. (EQ! had xpacs c. every 6 months - no content updates back then). 

DAoC and Eve provide a stark contrast:

 

DAoC chased EQ1's concept of releasing xpacs to increase subs and whilst this helped it maintain a 200-250k peak for 12 months the xpacs are possibly a reason it lost some of its core players - the nature of the game changed. Chasing the market leader - rather than its own uniqueness - hastened its demise. Eve pursued its own vision and has grown.

Bottonline for me: the game being developed has to "live within its means" - live being what it costs to develop and run, means being the likely revenue - which in turn is driven by the business model. And there were numerous examples EA could have followed that might have helped SWTOR.

 

Rift has done OK, never set out to gain mega status just a bottom feeder getting a small percentage of WoW's population. I it took off great but if not it should cover its costs. Opted for a "low" sub cost from day 1 and then used promotions heavily. Remember the discussions about was SWTOR worth $15 a month? It really is all about what people will pay and getting enough revenue in. Rift should have done OK by now, covered its costs. Question: was SWTOR's sub to high?

NCSoft opted to make GW2 B2P - it worked for GW1 and it has worked for GW2 (excellent results posted by NCSoft recently). If only they had left the sub model alone for CoH and been content with the - reportedly - small profit it was making. Question: should SWTOR have had a sub at all?

Darkfall - a success, costs were - had to be - tightly controlled. A throwback in many ways. A lot in common with Eve. Charges a sub, only available to buy online. Question: could SWTOR have been 100% download only?

And as for games released before they were finished ...

Costs clearly got out of hand on SWTOR and then EA chased $$$; unlimited sales (understandable), high sub, released to early. Sad.

 

 

Originally posted by simplius

yup, they all want to beat rocky, and be the champ, but they dont want to live in training camp for years

to prepare themselves

yes EVE is a AAA mmo, but íts also a HARDCORE mmo, so they can only support a company with about

70 employees,,no where near the budget of swtor

 

They all forget how EvE started. Definately NOT as AAA MMO.

Originally posted by gervaise1

Costs clearly got out of hand on SWTOR and then EA chased $$$; unlimited sales (understandable), high sub, released to early. Sad.

BW wanted it long term. EA wanted it short term. Its pretty obvious.

Dont know why people keep talking about the fail of swtor, sure, from a hater point of view it is but in the real world is far far far away from that. Is still the P2P MMO with more subs but WoW, and financially the Cartel Market was a huge success, the population is stable and will grow once again with the expansion and the 1.7 update. People was talking about the Death of swtor for a year, never happened. 

Originally posted by Eletheryl
Dont know why people keep talking about the fail of swtor, sure, from a hater point of view it is but in the real world is far far far away from that. Is still the P2P MMO with more subs but WoW, and financially the Cartel Market was a huge success, the population is stable and will grow once again with the expansion and the 1.7 update. People was talking about the Death of swtor for a year, never happened. 

If it was a success for EA/BW it would not have gone down in the ranks of priority, there would not be mass layoffs, it would not have gone F2P, the doctors would probably still be with Bioware etc

EA themselves said that its performance was "not good enough", and the reason for that is because it needs $7.5 million per month to break even. 

It may be asuccess to you and other players (even myself as I admit populations is better than SWG and other MMOs) and other MMO companies, but not to BW/EA and if the Cartel Market was a success for them then EA would be singing it from the rooftops in the latest financial report which they were not, all because it is a HUGELY COSTY MMO to run.

SWTOR is highly populated due to 1) 2 million sales from launch and people giving it a go, and because I bought it I am making the most of it instead of getting into GW2, Tera, TSW etc as spent money on this and not wasting more money on other MMOs (although when TSW went B2P I got it then) and 2) F2P, which most are probably playing for free to very little spending

 

Holy crap.  I reinstalled Swtor earlier because my friend persuaded me to play again.  There are only 8 NA servers now.  I was shocked.  All my characters are on The Harbinger now. (they used to be on Drooga's Pleasure Barge, and Darth Xedrix before that one).  The title of this thread isn't really important either.  If you go from 100+ servers to 8, you can't go any lower before you reach death and closure.  And here i thought the death of swtor was just an exaggeration.

Originally posted by mikahr

Originally posted by simplius

yup, they all want to beat rocky, and be the champ, but they dont want to live in training camp for years

to prepare themselves

yes EVE is a AAA mmo, but íts also a HARDCORE mmo, so they can only support a company with about

70 employees,,no where near the budget of swtor

 

They all forget how EvE started. Definately NOT as AAA MMO.

Originally posted by gervaise1

Costs clearly got out of hand on SWTOR and then EA chased $$$; unlimited sales (understandable), high sub, released to early. Sad.

BW wanted it long term. EA wanted it short term. Its pretty obvious.

EVE obviously made the right choices,,starting small , and improving slowly over time

letting the playerbase grow naturally through word of mouth

not starting big and with a loud PR hype

hyping the games only hurts them in the long run,,i wish the PR guys would realize that

Originally posted by Eletheryl
Dont know why people keep talking about the fail of swtor, sure, from a hater point of view it is but in the real world is far far far away from that. Is still the P2P MMO with more subs but WoW, and financially the Cartel Market was a huge success, the population is stable and will grow once again with the expansion and the 1.7 update. People was talking about the Death of swtor for a year, never happened. 

they have same retention rate after ONE year, as wow after EIGHT

they have gone from the BIGGEST MMO LAUNCH IN HISTORY, to F2P in the first year

if this game payed your salary,,im sure, that you wouldnt feel so good

i know swtor isnt dead yet,,but it sure isnt healthy either

realizing, that there is a problem is the first step

getting the fans to take that first step,,is impossible

so yes,,this game is heading directly for the cemetary

i expect it will be there at the end of this year

Originally posted by Eletheryl
Dont know why people keep talking about the fail of swtor, sure, from a hater point of view it is but in the real world is far far far away from that. Is still the P2P MMO with more subs but WoW, and financially the Cartel Market was a huge success, the population is stable and will grow once again with the expansion and the 1.7 update. People was talking about the Death of swtor for a year, never happened. 

Sources? On it being number 2 to WoW and the Cartel Market being a success. Amazed EA wasn't siging its praise if so.

And number 2? Eve (c. 400k subs), Battlefield 3 (2.9M subs according to EA), L1 in Asia (not US), FF etc.

My undertstanding is that we have no news on the number of subs but we do know that SWTOR is down to 20 servers - for both subs and F2P folk. Now maybe SWTOR has fewer F2P folk than subs but - assuming it has at least as many then 20 servers suggests 100k subs max. And 200k+ for 20 servers is pushing it.

So number 2? And that is before one starts thinking of Eve (c. 400k subs), Battlefield 3 (2.9M subs according to EA), possibly Rift, L1 in Asia (not US), FF etc.

 

swtor is NOT nr 2 in subs

if they were that successful, they would be blowing their hype horns, claiming to be nr one

the fact , that they hid swtor numbers in last report, shows that its doing worse than ever

if my kid had good grades, i wouldnt boast about his class average

if he had bad grades, class average is a good way to make it look better

I honestly can't believe some people are THIS obsessed with hating the game.

Well those saying 1.7 would being population levels back up, this is the week to see if that's correct.

I still think the game is churning FTP players, (Which timeframe wise, mirrored the population decline following launch), but we shall see.

Originally posted by Swanea
I honestly can't believe some people are THIS obsessed with hating the game.

welcome to planet earth,,humans do a lot of crazy things

and writing on forums about a game is harmless, compared to , what some other people do

this is the backlash from a a massive sale hype, and broken promises