Tbh, my gut feeling tells me this game is doomed. I am the first to admit I was wrong when it makes a big return or whatever in a year, but what I feel now is, despite the fact you can have fun in SWTOR, the games is bleeding subs dramatically. And neither GW2 nor TSW have even yet launched. If these 2 games are even halfway good, the remaining community will simply break down!
It is really painful and sad to see this happening, but I am just confirmed in all the critique I had for the last few years of development of SWTOR. And Bioware's denial just makes it worse. They deny they makes some fundamental mistakes, they do not work on repairing the issues and they do no merge servers because that would admit their failure. It's a tragedy.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
lol... before I canceled my sub, often times I would be the ONLY one on a planet! I would usually have to just delete the HEROICS for a planet as I leveled up because there were never enough people to complete them.
For the record, I play mostly daytime, never a big population for MMOs. But still, of all the MMOs I've played over the years, this is by far the emptiest I have ever seen world to world, realm to realm, etc. in any of them.
Server merges would certainly help, but Bioware will not do this for fear of 'bad press'. Well, they will do it eventually, but only when the game is so empty that it would be classified as dead for any other 'AAA' mmo.
Sigh, alas this.
Was on Quesh yesterday the only person for 2 hours.
I really wish they would just either merge servers or at least make a cross server dungeon finder for Flashpoints and Warzones. So is so depressing.
To be fair, Quesh is only a two level planet. Two hours is about all you need to level up and move on. Granted, they would have beeen better of just putting those two levels on another planet and dismissing Quesh all together.
Isn't that part of the problem, there is no reason to go back to the planets.
Well, its still the second most successfull mmo release for an AAA title.
It depends on what you consider a success.
If you look at success purely in box sales, then it was 'arguably' successful, although I think Aion lays claim to 2nd place in that respect.
But... Star Wars is the largest IP in the world, coupled with a Christmas launch (with no competition I might add), the largest marketing budget ever... and from a (previously revered) studio the likes of Bioware, they could hardly fail to sell a lot of copies.
If you consider profit made, to be a truer measure of success, then it has a long way to go.
SWTOR has yet to make a dime. It needs a minimum of 500k subs for 12 months, just to break even!
Bioware are quoted as saying 'investors will not be happy with that'.
It appears that 'real' subs are already under 500k which doesn't bode well for the future.
I really have to question your understanding of 'success'.
Well, its still the second most successfull mmo release for an AAA title.
It depends on what you consider a success.
If you look at success purely in box sales, then it was 'arguably' successful, although I think Aion lays claim to 2nd place in that respect.
But... Star Wars is the largest IP in the world, coupled with a Christmas launch (with no competition I might add), the largest marketing budget ever... and from a (previously revered) studio the likes of Bioware, they could hardly fail to sell a lot of copies.
If you consider profit made, to be a truer measure of success, then it has a long way to go.
SWTOR has yet to make a dime. It needs a minimum of 500k subs for 12 months, just to break even!
Bioware are quoted as saying 'investors will not be happy with that'.
It appears that 'real' subs are already under 500k which doesn't bode well for the future.
I really have to question your understanding of 'success'.
Make that 13 months, because they gave everyone free month ;P
But true state of the game will be know only after 1st of september when finally all 6 months subs+all free days everyone got expire.
Although EA said last year "500k to be substantially profitable" at their last earnings call they said 500k to break even and that they would noy have gone ahead if they had expected less than 1M subs.
The general interpretation is that 500k is the number needed to cover its costs and make a profit on a monthly basis (some analysts reckon it could break even on 350k, maybe that is with no monthly profit). A large number probably because of the royalty payment to LucasArts - if it is 35% then 3 SWTOR subs, financially, are the same as 2 WoW/Rift etc. subs (ignoing freee months etc etc.)
The 1M is assumed to be needed to recover the cost of the investment - and needed for 1-2 years. How long depending on e.g. advertising costs, promotions like free months, ratio of box sales to Origin sales, total sales - analysts assumed $60M from 2M sales so that got back some of the cost but .... a long way to go.
And if it has slipped below 500k .... expect cut-backs in development/staff etc. Can't see that for at least another quarter though unless it is in truly dire straits. At least WAR had 300k 6 months after launch.
And if it has slipped below 500k .... expect cut-backs in development/staff etc. Can't see that for at least another quarter though unless it is in truly dire straits. At least WAR had 300k 6 months after launch.
Pretty sure SWTOR has already dropped below 400-450k subs.
Notice that there is no 1.3 PTS yet, and no testing going on for the urgently promised 1.2 ranked warzones? It has been a few weeks now, and nothing new is being done.
Note also that the game is not earning any money this month.
Major cutbacks incoming, new content development is going to grind to a halt pretty soon.
And if it has slipped below 500k .... expect cut-backs in development/staff etc. Can't see that for at least another quarter though unless it is in truly dire straits. At least WAR had 300k 6 months after launch.
Pretty sure SWTOR has already dropped below 400-450k subs.
Notice that there is no 1.3 PTS yet, and no testing going on for the urgently promised 1.2 ranked warzones? It has been a few weeks now, and nothing new is being done.
Note also that the game is not earning any money this month.
Major cutbacks incoming, new content development is going to grind to a halt pretty soon.
Love how your pulling these numbers out of your ass. What proof do you have of anythng you just stated?
Tbh, my gut feeling tells me this game is doomed. I am the first to admit I was wrong when it makes a big return or whatever in a year, but what I feel now is, despite the fact you can have fun in SWTOR, the games is bleeding subs dramatically. And neither GW2 nor TSW have even yet launched. If these 2 games are even halfway good, the remaining community will simply break down!
It is really painful and sad to see this happening, but I am just confirmed in all the critique I had for the last few years of development of SWTOR. And Bioware's denial just makes it worse. They deny they makes some fundamental mistakes, they do not work on repairing the issues and they do no merge servers because that would admit their failure. It's a tragedy.
XFire highest # sw tor players was 11.8 k players. Today at 2.9 k players ... Or 25%.
1.700.000/ 25% = ... 425.000 active sw tor players that still log in and play, the rest is no longer active.
it is confirmed by the servers, the in game counting.
Now add the free weekend play, the free month play, the 50 free trial accounts play ...
... and the launch of block busters like D3, GW2, MoP,...
Of course this game is doomed as a subscription based game 5 months after launch. It will be funny how the CEO will describe their subscription definitions this time to arrive at 1.7 M once again ...
The internet didn't explode with the launch of SW TOR (as some said...) : Sw tor imploded.
And if it has slipped below 500k .... expect cut-backs in development/staff etc. Can't see that for at least another quarter though unless it is in truly dire straits. At least WAR had 300k 6 months after launch.
Pretty sure SWTOR has already dropped below 400-450k subs.
Notice that there is no 1.3 PTS yet, and no testing going on for the urgently promised 1.2 ranked warzones? It has been a few weeks now, and nothing new is being done.
Note also that the game is not earning any money this month.
Major cutbacks incoming, new content development is going to grind to a halt pretty soon.
Love how your pulling these numbers out of your ass. What proof do you have of anythng you just stated?
- Xfire data 75% drop in activity
- SWTOR.com official forum activity down by 80%
- data from torstatus.net
- number of dead servers
- testimony of players
==> SWTOR is actually below 400k subs
Free month + inactive still subbed will prop up numbers until June, then a crash of Warhammer proportions.
And just like WAR's development budget got cut, expect new content to dry up for SWTOR once EA start trimming the team.
I was a huge fan of a lot of aspects of this game, but plain and simple it's an anti-social game. I more or less played it as a single player experience as it gives you no reason or incentive to group up. I've thrown in the towel, it's taken them way too long to fix this issue and make it a multiplayer game. It was also really disappointing how long it took them to implement something as simple as UI customization. I don't think they'll retain a decent amount of subs over the next 6 months.
I was a huge fan of a lot of aspects of this game, but plain and simple it's an anti-social game. I more or less played it as a single player experience as it gives you no reason or incentive to group up. I've thrown in the towel, it's taken them way too long to fix this issue and make it a multiplayer game. It was also really disappointing how long it took them to implement something as simple as UI customization. I don't think they'll retain a decent amount of subs over the next 6 months.
I can't comment on what it's like now, though I guess none of the basics could concievably have changed, but I know that even at release with a large and eager playerbase, a lot of those planets after 30ish certainly FELT empty but that was more to do with the fact that they were large (which is good) and souless (which is bad). It just feels that the whole project initially started off Bioware but somewhere along the line it ended up EA.
The planets after Level 35 are all empty on European servers. YES i mean empty ... on some servers with always LIGHT population theres no one in some areas. All players on my friend list are gone but 1 that played to Level 43 with me. The most of them stopped playing in their low 20is.
In the last 3 weeks i have only met a few other players while exploring and questing on the different planets... after Tattooine... Most players i see are on the Imperial Fleet but thats it. Some bored level 50is .....
On Corelia or Voss i never see more than max 20-50 people playing at peaktimes then later i am one of 5 or maybe 6 players left usually ....
even the starter and low level areas are quiet since a while
If BioWare doesnt react soon this will turn out bad for SWTOR.....
Wow. I would have killed for 20-30 people on a planet. I was only getting single digits when I quit.
The problem is the fact that they just made too many planets, thus stretching everyone out. They should have cut the number of planets in half . This would have concentrated more people on them. You could have gotten rid of Voss, Belsavis, and Balmora and no one would have complained when they are all on Tattoine or Hoth slugging it out.
That doesn't add up to to any kind of scrutiny. When they opened those additional servers, they'd old sold 1.2 million copies. And all those servers were at least routinely in standard, with almost all of them going to 'heavy' during peak. Now they've sold 2.3 million copies and there are FOUR healthy NA servers. Another six barely hanging on to viability (more than 50% standard). And the rest spend the majority of the time in 'light' (350 or fewer players).
Even in January, after the holidays, most servers hit heavy in the evening and were (at a minumum) standard during the day. For example, when I quit on January 20th, my EGA server had a 1.54 TORStatus rating. It was 85th. Now it has a 1.08 TORStatus rating and, if it were as populated now as it was when I quit, it'd be the number 9 server in NA.
You can't sell one-million more boxes. Not add servers (save three Oceania) and go from everything Heavy/Standard to everything Light/Standard and a handful of decent-to-good servers. It doesn't add up. It makes NO SENSE.
If the game was good and people liked it, they'd be at the point of adding more servers since they've sold a MILLIION copies since they added those serveres. Where are the players? Where are they? They're certainly not logging in.
I mean... I just don't get it. How can you think a solid, vibrant population turns into a ghost town in four months DESPITE increasing your install base 40%+ in four months? How is this 'because they added too many servers?' Those servers were FULL at 1.2 million. Those servers were full at 1.7 million. By the end of January, they were starting to empty fairly fast. And now... Yet they're mostly ghost towns....
It's not because they added too many servers at the beginning. They didn't. The servers they had fit the population they had and made room for those 1 million additional sales. They got those 1 million sales. These sales are not questionable. THey got them. The've sold 2.3 million copies now. So, I'm sorry, this canard of 'too many servers' isn't the problem. The data does NOT support the contention. What supports the contention is that the game is the problem. People bailed fast-and-furious. And while the 'subs' won't show it this reporting quarter (there are some technical accounting reasons for that) they will in July when the June numbers come out.
Switch servers. Server I'm on there is plenty of people online and I cannot not get a group for any heroics
Not everyone is willing to go from level 50 to zero and start the whole grind over again just for the privilige of playing on a heavy server. It's not unreasonable to ask for server merges or transfers.
Guess you shouldn't have rolled on low pop servers to try and dodge a measly 40 minute queue at launch.
Lesson learned?
I was on an FULL EGA server. It's TorStatus number is now 1.08. That means it spends 8% of its time at standard, the rest at light.
Illustrative sample using East Coast EGA servers cross referenced with TORStatus (server utililzation statistics):
Canderous Ordo 1.87
Corellian Run 1.38
Darth Bandon 1.33
Dreshdae Cantina 1.35
Giradda the Hutt 1.32
Grand Master Zym 1.32
Jedi Covenant 2.03
Juyo 1.35
Kaas City 1.38
Keller's Void 1.38
Krayt Dragon 1.40
Mind Trick 1.45
Shadow Hand 1.46
Shii-Cho 1.33
Sith Meditation Sphere 1.37
Sith Wyrm 1.36
Tarro Blood 1.32
Telos Restoration Project 0.98 (pretty much never gets out of light now)
The Shadowlands 1.46
Thana Vesh 1.23
The Corsair 1.20
The Constant - 1.11
Krayiss Obelisk - 0.98 (pretty much never gets out of light now)
Kathol Rift - 1.21
Red is heavy. Green is more than 50% standard. All of these servers were the Early Game Access servers. They were all full. You waited HOURS to get on. NONE of them were 'light.'
Now some of them don't even get out of light. The heaviest of the servers. The most populated. The most vibrant.
Now mostly dead and dying.
And you're blaming the players? It isn't the players. There weren't too many servers. Even the most crowded EGA servers now spend 50% or more of their time in light. People don't like the game. THey left.
Comments
Tbh, my gut feeling tells me this game is doomed. I am the first to admit I was wrong when it makes a big return or whatever in a year, but what I feel now is, despite the fact you can have fun in SWTOR, the games is bleeding subs dramatically. And neither GW2 nor TSW have even yet launched. If these 2 games are even halfway good, the remaining community will simply break down!
It is really painful and sad to see this happening, but I am just confirmed in all the critique I had for the last few years of development of SWTOR. And Bioware's denial just makes it worse. They deny they makes some fundamental mistakes, they do not work on repairing the issues and they do no merge servers because that would admit their failure. It's a tragedy.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Isn't that part of the problem, there is no reason to go back to the planets.
It depends on what you consider a success.
If you look at success purely in box sales, then it was 'arguably' successful, although I think Aion lays claim to 2nd place in that respect.
But... Star Wars is the largest IP in the world, coupled with a Christmas launch (with no competition I might add), the largest marketing budget ever... and from a (previously revered) studio the likes of Bioware, they could hardly fail to sell a lot of copies.
If you consider profit made, to be a truer measure of success, then it has a long way to go.
SWTOR has yet to make a dime. It needs a minimum of 500k subs for 12 months, just to break even!
Bioware are quoted as saying 'investors will not be happy with that'.
It appears that 'real' subs are already under 500k which doesn't bode well for the future.
I really have to question your understanding of 'success'.
Make that 13 months, because they gave everyone free month ;P
But true state of the game will be know only after 1st of september when finally all 6 months subs+all free days everyone got expire.
IMHO, it wont be a pretty sight.
The big issue with SWTOR is keeping concurent users online.
The game has a massive amount of subs but people hardly log in.
It as if the game is filled with people that log on once or twice a week or just on the weekends.
I can imagine this being an issue to the more active player as they end up in a non-active guild that hardly ever logs in, yet still stays subscribed.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
I think the inclusion of Fleets was a big mistake on Bioware's part. It's what's killing planets on low pop servers.
As a previous poster said, having many planets also plays into this...
In the end I think bigger but fewer planets without the implementation of fleets would be much better for this game.
Ìm still playing but yeah, im also deleting the heroic quests. Unless i play online when others are also, i play on the european servers...
But the game needs a dungeon kind of tool
But the game is lacking more players, and the only way i can see to deal with this is to merge servers...
If you want my opinion, SWTOR will struggle to get bare minimum of 500k subs. Yah.
Although EA said last year "500k to be substantially profitable" at their last earnings call they said 500k to break even and that they would noy have gone ahead if they had expected less than 1M subs.
The general interpretation is that 500k is the number needed to cover its costs and make a profit on a monthly basis (some analysts reckon it could break even on 350k, maybe that is with no monthly profit). A large number probably because of the royalty payment to LucasArts - if it is 35% then 3 SWTOR subs, financially, are the same as 2 WoW/Rift etc. subs (ignoing freee months etc etc.)
The 1M is assumed to be needed to recover the cost of the investment - and needed for 1-2 years. How long depending on e.g. advertising costs, promotions like free months, ratio of box sales to Origin sales, total sales - analysts assumed $60M from 2M sales so that got back some of the cost but .... a long way to go.
And if it has slipped below 500k .... expect cut-backs in development/staff etc. Can't see that for at least another quarter though unless it is in truly dire straits. At least WAR had 300k 6 months after launch.
Pretty sure SWTOR has already dropped below 400-450k subs.
Notice that there is no 1.3 PTS yet, and no testing going on for the urgently promised 1.2 ranked warzones? It has been a few weeks now, and nothing new is being done.
Note also that the game is not earning any money this month.
Major cutbacks incoming, new content development is going to grind to a halt pretty soon.
Love how your pulling these numbers out of your ass. What proof do you have of anythng you just stated?
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=mmorpg.com%2Chttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.guildwars2.com%2Fen%2F%2Cswtor.com%2Chttp%3A%2F%2Fus.battle.net%2Fwow%2Fen%2F%2Chttp%3A%2F%2Fbeta.xfire.com%2F&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
- Xfire data 75% drop in activity
- SWTOR.com official forum activity down by 80%
- data from torstatus.net
- number of dead servers
- testimony of players
==> SWTOR is actually below 400k subs
Free month + inactive still subbed will prop up numbers until June, then a crash of Warhammer proportions.
And just like WAR's development budget got cut, expect new content to dry up for SWTOR once EA start trimming the team.
If this is what fans have to resort to, no wonder the haters have mostly gotten bored and moved on. It's just too easy.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
When it gets to the point that the fans bash the game better than the haters it's time to find something else. This battle has been won.
+1
Umm not flaming you Elikal but i swear i read in at least 3 posts of yours on how you quit SWTOR.
I am curious what made you change your mind ?
Lolipops !
Wow. I would have killed for 20-30 people on a planet. I was only getting single digits when I quit.
That doesn't add up to to any kind of scrutiny. When they opened those additional servers, they'd old sold 1.2 million copies. And all those servers were at least routinely in standard, with almost all of them going to 'heavy' during peak. Now they've sold 2.3 million copies and there are FOUR healthy NA servers. Another six barely hanging on to viability (more than 50% standard). And the rest spend the majority of the time in 'light' (350 or fewer players).
Even in January, after the holidays, most servers hit heavy in the evening and were (at a minumum) standard during the day. For example, when I quit on January 20th, my EGA server had a 1.54 TORStatus rating. It was 85th. Now it has a 1.08 TORStatus rating and, if it were as populated now as it was when I quit, it'd be the number 9 server in NA.
You can't sell one-million more boxes. Not add servers (save three Oceania) and go from everything Heavy/Standard to everything Light/Standard and a handful of decent-to-good servers. It doesn't add up. It makes NO SENSE.
If the game was good and people liked it, they'd be at the point of adding more servers since they've sold a MILLIION copies since they added those serveres. Where are the players? Where are they? They're certainly not logging in.
I mean... I just don't get it. How can you think a solid, vibrant population turns into a ghost town in four months DESPITE increasing your install base 40%+ in four months? How is this 'because they added too many servers?' Those servers were FULL at 1.2 million. Those servers were full at 1.7 million. By the end of January, they were starting to empty fairly fast. And now... Yet they're mostly ghost towns....
It's not because they added too many servers at the beginning. They didn't. The servers they had fit the population they had and made room for those 1 million additional sales. They got those 1 million sales. These sales are not questionable. THey got them. The've sold 2.3 million copies now. So, I'm sorry, this canard of 'too many servers' isn't the problem. The data does NOT support the contention. What supports the contention is that the game is the problem. People bailed fast-and-furious. And while the 'subs' won't show it this reporting quarter (there are some technical accounting reasons for that) they will in July when the June numbers come out.
I
Not everyone is willing to go from level 50 to zero and start the whole grind over again just for the privilige of playing on a heavy server. It's not unreasonable to ask for server merges or transfers.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I was on an FULL EGA server. It's TorStatus number is now 1.08. That means it spends 8% of its time at standard, the rest at light.
Illustrative sample using East Coast EGA servers cross referenced with TORStatus (server utililzation statistics):
Canderous Ordo 1.87
Corellian Run 1.38
Darth Bandon 1.33
Dreshdae Cantina 1.35
Giradda the Hutt 1.32
Grand Master Zym 1.32
Jedi Covenant 2.03
Juyo 1.35
Kaas City 1.38
Keller's Void 1.38
Krayt Dragon 1.40
Mind Trick 1.45
Shadow Hand 1.46
Shii-Cho 1.33
Sith Meditation Sphere 1.37
Sith Wyrm 1.36
Tarro Blood 1.32
Telos Restoration Project 0.98 (pretty much never gets out of light now)
The Shadowlands 1.46
Thana Vesh 1.23
The Corsair 1.20
The Constant - 1.11
Krayiss Obelisk - 0.98 (pretty much never gets out of light now)
Kathol Rift - 1.21
Red is heavy. Green is more than 50% standard. All of these servers were the Early Game Access servers. They were all full. You waited HOURS to get on. NONE of them were 'light.'
Now some of them don't even get out of light. The heaviest of the servers. The most populated. The most vibrant.
Now mostly dead and dying.
And you're blaming the players? It isn't the players. There weren't too many servers. Even the most crowded EGA servers now spend 50% or more of their time in light. People don't like the game. THey left.