I can't wait for guild wars 2 to come out because your all have something else to do, as all this bitching and moaning about swtor/ea/bioware is really old now.
Simple get over it you don't like it then why give it any of your time by moaning about it, if i don't like something i ignore it.
"TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy "
You make me laugh. EA is huge and has a big stable of games.
I think you underestimate the financial fragility of EA. It was widely stated SWtOR was boom or bust for the company. I can't be bothered to google it right now though.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
Hmm, you don't seem to be asking the person making the statement for any proof as would be the norm for any evidence based science, is this evidence of an underlying bias on your part?
You can simply look at ToR status and see that TiR onlyhas 11 NA and 2 Euro Servers left with an even moderate population. You can look at the numbers everyday and see huge hemoraging. Look at those numbers almost every server is dead. The game does not have 2 million subs, it does not have one million it may not have 500k but theyare not playing most likely the true population playing is 2much less than 500k. At the rate they are losing players there will only be 3-4 populated servers left in a few months.
Wonder why they are giving away free a free month of play? Because they need to populate the servers and give the the imrpession people are playing.
Good point Zippy, but still not PROOF. This game is extremely casual player friendly. Much more so than most other MMOs I have played. So while I agree that there is almost no chance this game has 2 million subs, I can't prove it and so will not be trying to make fun of people that make the claim. Keep in mind, that casual friendly also means that people do not feel like they have to play often, but are still subscribed.
Personally, I would say 1 million to 1.2 million is likely though. How long they can keep these numbers is up in the air, but I highly doubt they have 500K or less either. I base this on the fact that on average I find between 50 - 60 people playing on each of the 17 worlds (and fleet) on EACH of the 5 servers I play on. This tends to be off peak times most and ramps up considerably during peak times. This is not even taking into account people playing the miscellanious Flashpoints, Operations, Space Combat, or Warzones. Strangely enough, this only accounts for a "light" server load though it is between 1800 - 2160 people playing on a server even with the stuff you can not count. Concidering how many "light" servers as well as "standard" and "heavy" I see around the clock, as well as the total number of servers there are, putting the number of subscribers at 500K or less is highly unlikely.
SWTOR has only had 3 servers worldwide in the Standard range in the last month. About 30-40 in the light range and the rest dont even have enough players to record as light status. Oh yeah and EA keeps reducing the number of players needed to obtain light server status by the way. Light used to be 800 - 1200 not it is 500 - 900. I play on the heaviest server worldwide "The Fatman" and still do not see the numbers of players you are claiming at any point in the day. Fleet stations are pretty much the only zones with more then 10 players ever.
Flat out lies here. BioWare announced it was INCREASING server loads and even explained it pretty well in the forums. They increased the numbers for each category by the way. Currently, over 60 "standard" servers, 1 "heavy", 3 "very heavy", and 1 "full" server. This is at 0100 local time (Hawaii, USA). Funny too, but I have not seen any server status less than "Light" except "Off Line" during a maintenance cycle.
Strangely enough, I have now checked 4 times and "The Fatman" was listed as standard every single time.
Edit: I just checked again and it did finally go down to "Light".
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
You don't need to be a stock broker or follow the stock market to know that SWTOR is fail. All you need to do is just play it to realize that.
Yeah man, or just ask the million + players that play it. Amirite?
LOL! People really need to snap back into reality and stop bringing up those imaginary numbers.
If 1+ million people would still be playing this game, then there wouldn't be so many dead servers!
Everything below heavy load is dead!
I have characters on two servers and both are now Standard during peak times. This means around 40-50 people in fleet, around 20-30 on Corussant and about 7-15 people on the average other planet.
I have characters on Corussant, Tatooine and Alderaan. Especially Tatooine and Alderaan are totally dead! With roughly 7-12 people on those planet during peak hours. That's just horrible and a strong indication how little people each server actually holds.
To give you some proof.... during the first weeks of launch (when actually 1+ million people were playing), there were over 100 people on Fleet ALL the time (both during peak and off peak hours).
Corussant had always more than 1 instance running with over 70 people in each instance. During peak even 3-5 instances.
Other planets were people spread out more had at least one instance during peak times that holded over 30-40 people in it.
The vast majority of servers don't even come close to 20-30% of those numbers anymore!
So please, give us a break.... if 1+ million people are still playing this game, then I am going to win the lottery tomorrow lol.
You don't need to be a stock broker or follow the stock market to know that SWTOR is fail. All you need to do is just play it to realize that.
Yeah man, or just ask the million + players that play it. Amirite?
I wonder this myself. I mean, if the game is so horrible...and such FAIL. What does that make people that play it and actually LIKE it....?
God forbid we enjoy something you do not!
If you enjoy it, why care what others think? One of my favourite MMOs had subs numbered in the hundreds and closed down, it still gave me some of my best MMO memories yet no one else liked it.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
Hmm, you don't seem to be asking the person making the statement for any proof as would be the norm for any evidence based science, is this evidence of an underlying bias on your part?
You can simply look at ToR status and see that TiR onlyhas 11 NA and 2 Euro Servers left with an even moderate population. You can look at the numbers everyday and see huge hemoraging. Look at those numbers almost every server is dead. The game does not have 2 million subs, it does not have one million it may not have 500k but theyare not playing most likely the true population playing is 2much less than 500k. At the rate they are losing players there will only be 3-4 populated servers left in a few months.
Wonder why they are giving away free a free month of play? Because they need to populate the servers and give the the imrpession people are playing.
Good point Zippy, but still not PROOF. This game is extremely casual player friendly. Much more so than most other MMOs I have played. So while I agree that there is almost no chance this game has 2 million subs, I can't prove it and so will not be trying to make fun of people that make the claim. Keep in mind, that casual friendly also means that people do not feel like they have to play often, but are still subscribed.
Personally, I would say 1 million to 1.2 million is likely though. How long they can keep these numbers is up in the air, but I highly doubt they have 500K or less either. I base this on the fact that on average I find between 50 - 60 people playing on each of the 17 worlds (and fleet) on EACH of the 5 servers I play on. This tends to be off peak times most and ramps up considerably during peak times. This is not even taking into account people playing the miscellanious Flashpoints, Operations, Space Combat, or Warzones. Strangely enough, this only accounts for a "light" server load though it is between 1800 - 2160 people playing on a server even with the stuff you can not count. Concidering how many "light" servers as well as "standard" and "heavy" I see around the clock, as well as the total number of servers there are, putting the number of subscribers at 500K or less is highly unlikely.
SWTOR has only had 3 servers worldwide in the Standard range in the last month. About 30-40 in the light range and the rest dont even have enough players to record as light status. Oh yeah and EA keeps reducing the number of players needed to obtain light server status by the way. Light used to be 800 - 1200 not it is 500 - 900. I play on the heaviest server worldwide "The Fatman" and still do not see the numbers of players you are claiming at any point in the day. Fleet stations are pretty much the only zones with more then 10 players ever.
Flat out lies here. BioWare announced it was INCREASING server loads and even explained it pretty well in the forums. They increased the numbers for each category by the way. Currently, over 60 "standard" servers, 1 "heavy", 3 "very heavy", and 1 "full" server. This is at 0100 local time (Hawaii, USA). Funny too, but I have not seen any server status less than "Light" except "Off Line" during a maintenance cycle.
Strangely enough, I have now checked 4 times and "The Fatman" was listed as standard every single time.
Edit: I just checked again and it did finally go down to "Light".
Not sure what kind of proof you want without verified numbers. But you can see the decline everyday. You say the game is mad eup of casials but there are less and less of those casuals playing everyday. If it was not losing players once past the forst few weeks those casuals should play at the same rate.
One should note all 210 of these servers 3 months were close to 3.0 now almost all of them are close to 1.0 which is a dead server. I think its fair to say here looking at the ToR status numbers that the drop off is huge. Off a cliff. There are 13 server sin NA and Europe combined that are above light. Really only 4 servers with many players. If you look at the numbers there are less and less each day everyday. Check out the number at the bottom it tells you the toal change for all servers combined. At this rate in a two months all servers but 4-5 will be dead.
They really need server merges. The problem with merges is they are fighting a publicity problem. They are trying to represent that the game is healthy and doing well so they can sell more boxes and hopefully salvage whats left of the population with 1.2. 1.2's release has not slowed the hemorage of players nor has the free month. They need to massively merge servers. It may contradict their talking points about how greta the game is doing but otherwise pretty much every server will die. One idea that might work in the short run would be to use the Rift method and allow free server transfers. This allows people to move from dead servers and keep playing without all the negativity associated with forced server merges. Looking at the server list I doubt they have enough left to combine into more than 30 total NA and EU servers.
Originally posted by Talonsin "TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy "
You make me laugh. EA is huge and has a big stable of games. Some investors might have left when ToR didnt turn out as big as WOW and offer the huge returned they were expecting but EA is far from dead or even bankrupt. I'm not saying that ToR is doing well or even half as well as EA had hoped, I'm just saying its not the nail in EA's coffin you think it is.
I agree. Perhaps SWTOR might be the end of it's CREDIBILITY in the MMO sector, but certainly not it's actual finanical strength.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
"TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy "
You make me laugh. EA is huge and has a big stable of games. Some investors might have left when ToR didnt turn out as big as WOW and offer the huge returned they were expecting but EA is far from dead or even bankrupt. I'm not saying that ToR is doing well or even half as well as EA had hoped, I'm just saying its not the nail in EA's coffin you think it is.
I agree. Perhaps SWTOR might be the end of it's CREDIBILITY in the MMO sector, but certainly not it's actual finanical strength.
You have a point. But you also have to figure that they are one of the few game companies that has stock prices still falling on a daily basis and they are very near the lowest point in company history. Also it hurts when your company is blackmarked as "The worst Company in North America" by major financial magazines for poor business practises.
I for one hope they dont merge the servers, well not yet for sure, because the netcode for even such amounts of people in instances is pretty much disgusting.
Good on the OP for posting reponsible information about EA.
The deal is that BOTH consumers AND investors are pulling their wallets away from EA. Lookin @ EA's stocks to determine SWTOR's success is a VERY good strategy, however you get a much clearer picture when you combine BOTH subscriber number speculations along with market reports in order to "weed out" how much of a Failure SWTOR truly is.
I cannot wait for people to look back 3years from now and talk about how SWTOR was the tipping point in bringing the MMO market back to where it should be !
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
"TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy "
You make me laugh. EA is huge and has a big stable of games. Some investors might have left when ToR didnt turn out as big as WOW and offer the huge returned they were expecting but EA is far from dead or even bankrupt. I'm not saying that ToR is doing well or even half as well as EA had hoped, I'm just saying its not the nail in EA's coffin you think it is.
I agree. Perhaps SWTOR might be the end of it's CREDIBILITY in the MMO sector, but certainly not it's actual finanical strength.
You have a point. But you also have to figure that they are one of the few game companies that has stock prices still falling on a daily basis and they are very near the lowest point in company history. Also it hurts when your company is blackmarked as "The worst Company in North America" by major financial magazines for poor business practises.
They will need to down size and cut costs. A lot of people will probably be fired. Bioware will perhaps be the major target for that. But they are to big to die anytime soon.
EA's stock is falling because it spent too much and has little cash on hand to defend itself. SWTOR was just a cash cow to bolster itself, nothing more or less. But that didn't pan out for them. Overall SWTOR is at best, a large side project. EA is getting out of the PC market like many other companies, so all this does is make that stated goal sooner than expected.
The number of people playing the game isn't the same as the number of subscribers. Quite a few people bought gametime cards for up to 6 months and used those to activate the subscription. Even if they stopped playing and turned away in disgust, they're still subscribed.
The game isn't doing well, if they were the subscriber numbers would be out there. They're not and handing out free time to try and persuade people to stop leaving in great numbers. This speaks for itself really.
The number of people playing the game isn't the same as the number of subscribers. Quite a few people bought gametime cards for up to 6 months and used those to activate the subscription. Even if they stopped playing and turned away in disgust, they're still subscribed. The game isn't doing well, if they were the subscriber numbers would be out there. They're not and handing out free time to try and persuade people to stop leaving in great numbers. This speaks for itself really.
No, wrong, apparently that is just Bioware showing their generosity, there are no issues.
When WoW launched it was anything but casual play. No one got to max level in Wow in the first week.
Swtor should have stayed in the oven another year. It's pretty sad that STO has WAY better space combat.
I just can't help but wonder what they were doing the first 4 years of development....
*** /Pauly the B imagines ~~~~~ 4 years of sitting around talking about Star Wars and Doing Bong hits. Then in like January 2011 someone gets up from the drum circle and says," Hey we better start making the game now." ****
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
Again RefMinor, prove otherwise or admit to trolling. I also believe this game does not have 2 million subscribers, but since I can not prove it, I will not scoff at someone else saying it does. I will however laugh my butt off at you for laughing at someone for making an unlikely claim that he/she can't prove, when you can not prove them wrong either. Seems to me that in this situation, you are the bigger fool.
As for the OP. Almost all of the gaming industry has taken a HUGE hit on the stock market. A lot of that is due to the fact that less people working means less discretionary funds to buy games with when you need the money for things like food. Less sales go on to mean bad investment opportunity. Bad investment means that stock prices plumment. Since the people most likely to be investing large amounts of money are also looking for the greatest returns, you will not see a big jump in gaming company stock prices until a LOT more people are working again.
Hmm, you don't seem to be asking the person making the statement for any proof as would be the norm for any evidence based science, is this evidence of an underlying bias on your part?
You can simply look at ToR status and see that TiR onlyhas 11 NA and 2 Euro Servers left with an even moderate population. You can look at the numbers everyday and see huge hemoraging. Look at those numbers almost every server is dead. The game does not have 2 million subs, it does not have one million it may not have 500k but theyare not playing most likely the true population playing is 2much less than 500k. At the rate they are losing players there will only be 3-4 populated servers left in a few months.
Wonder why they are giving away free a free month of play? Because they need to populate the servers and give the the imrpession people are playing.
Good point Zippy, but still not PROOF. This game is extremely casual player friendly. Much more so than most other MMOs I have played. So while I agree that there is almost no chance this game has 2 million subs, I can't prove it and so will not be trying to make fun of people that make the claim. Keep in mind, that casual friendly also means that people do not feel like they have to play often, but are still subscribed.
Personally, I would say 1 million to 1.2 million is likely though. How long they can keep these numbers is up in the air, but I highly doubt they have 500K or less either. I base this on the fact that on average I find between 50 - 60 people playing on each of the 17 worlds (and fleet) on EACH of the 5 servers I play on. This tends to be off peak times most and ramps up considerably during peak times. This is not even taking into account people playing the miscellanious Flashpoints, Operations, Space Combat, or Warzones. Strangely enough, this only accounts for a "light" server load though it is between 1800 - 2160 people playing on a server even with the stuff you can not count. Concidering how many "light" servers as well as "standard" and "heavy" I see around the clock, as well as the total number of servers there are, putting the number of subscribers at 500K or less is highly unlikely.
But if someone claims there are 2 million, 1 million, 500K or whatever number of subscribers he/she will need to be able to prove it. Someone that is doubting it will not need to be able to prove anything.
If I claim the world will end 2013 I will need to prove its true. If you dont believe me you have the right to ask me for evidence. And without evidence my statement will be pointless. And there is no reason why anyone should believe me. Even if its possible but very very unlikely.
It does seem that you ahve an obvious bias. . if someone guesses a high number. . who are we to judge. . if they guess a low number they need proof. In this past post. . you said if someone claims 2 million they need proof. . yet in your previous posts you say. . . . bah nevermind
By the way I do agree that server population does not equal sub numbers. I would imagine. . and I am just guessing here. . .no proof. . . that there are people who log in on the week end and the odd evening. . Casual old starwars fans with not as much time as they would ilke.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
I think when the 6 months subs run out people will see that the game only has a few hundred thousand paying customers left and that's why BW is only giving transfers and giving out free 30 days like candy. In a guild with several hundred actual people, not alts. I know a lot of them bought 3-6 months subs/game cards thinking they would play at least that long, my husband included. I only pay month to month so they didn't get me, heh. Of those several hundred in the guild on Jung Ma only 3 are left, the rest are awaiting GW2 or Tera or both. That's a lot of gamecards/subs still floating about and no one online playing. If just that many in my guild aren't playing, imagine how many others are doing the same. That's why there are ghost town servers. They may be able to say they have this many subscribers, but that's only because people prepaid too many months and are now gone. When 6 month playtimes are up, they'll have to face reality that the game is a niche game, that only fanbois and extremely casuals will be playing. It will be lucky to have a few hundred thousand people playing by the end of the year.
That one thing is EAs stock price. In 2009, EA's stock was just north of $60. It tanked with the rest of the market during the financial crisis. The market rebounded and EA's stock rebounded with it but not nearly to the same extent. The stock peaked in Oct 11 around $25 right after the launch of SWTOR. As of Fri, the stock closed at $16.18- a drop nearly 36%. Furthermore, this drop has ha been virtually straight down and happened while the broad market was rallying. In addition, the selling has been on heavy volume meaning institutional investors are bailing on EA. These are the people who have the real numbers and they are not liking what they are seeing. Also, there are a fair number of people actively betting that EAs stock will fall further.
TOR may well be the end of EA or at least bring it to the brink of bankruptcy The chart patterns indicate that another large leg down is coming for EAs stock. This will make it even harder for them to borrow money at reasonable rates if they need to. Like the game or not, it may not be around for the long haul or at least that is what financial markets are betting on.
You do only need to look om one thing to decide if the game is a failure or not, and that is what the cost to make minus what it made in the first year.
If TOR mad more money after a year than the development cost it is far from a failure and that goes for any MMO. If it never ever get in the cost it is a disaster, like TR.
But EAs stock price is not a good measurement for any games success.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
I think when the 6 months subs run out people will see that the game only has a few hundred thousand paying customers left and that's why BW is only giving transfers and giving out free 30 days like candy. In a guild with several hundred actual people, not alts. I know a lot of them bought 3-6 months subs/game cards thinking they would play at least that long, my husband included. I only pay month to month so they didn't get me, heh. Of those several hundred in the guild on Jung Ma only 3 are left, the rest are awaiting GW2 or Tera or both. That's a lot of gamecards/subs still floating about and no one online playing. If just that many in my guild aren't playing, imagine how many others are doing the same. That's why there are ghost town servers. They may be able to say they have this many subscribers, but that's only because people prepaid too many months and are now gone. When 6 month playtimes are up, they'll have to face reality that the game is a niche game, that only fanbois and extremely casuals will be playing. It will be lucky to have a few hundred thousand people playing by the end of the year.
SWTOR might not be a good game, but it certainly isn't a bad one.
It has nearly 2million subs so it's doing allright considering how much BS bioware has pulled off in the past months. They aren't going to beat WoW which was their original plan but they are surely surviving and making profit.
Saying SWTOR is a fail just shows how very little you know :j
2m subs, ROFL
I think when the 6 months subs run out people will see that the game only has a few hundred thousand paying customers left and that's why BW is only giving transfers and giving out free 30 days like candy. In a guild with several hundred actual people, not alts. I know a lot of them bought 3-6 months subs/game cards thinking they would play at least that long, my husband included. I only pay month to month so they didn't get me, heh. Of those several hundred in the guild on Jung Ma only 3 are left, the rest are awaiting GW2 or Tera or both. That's a lot of gamecards/subs still floating about and no one online playing. If just that many in my guild aren't playing, imagine how many others are doing the same. That's why there are ghost town servers. They may be able to say they have this many subscribers, but that's only because people prepaid too many months and are now gone. When 6 month playtimes are up, they'll have to face reality that the game is a niche game, that only fanbois and extremely casuals will be playing. It will be lucky to have a few hundred thousand people playing by the end of the year.
This kind of brings up the elephant in the room that the OP completely missed: MMO companies don't rely on long term subs to make money any more!
Contrary to popular opinion that EA lost money on STWOR; it has already made back its investment and going forward everything it gets is just gravy. Box sales + collector edition markup + prepaid game time has already made STWO a financial success even if it isn't a MMO success. EA doesn't need people to actualy be on the servers playing, they just need them to have bought the time. So stop the silly arguments over wether the servers are packed or not, it doesn't matter to EA as long as they got their money and they did that already.
If you want to speculate, start a pool to see when it will go F2P to get a second bumb in revenue.
Comments
I can't wait for guild wars 2 to come out because your all have something else to do, as all this bitching and moaning about swtor/ea/bioware is really old now.
Simple get over it you don't like it then why give it any of your time by moaning about it, if i don't like something i ignore it.
Just move on
I think you underestimate the financial fragility of EA. It was widely stated SWtOR was boom or bust for the company. I can't be bothered to google it right now though.
Flat out lies here. BioWare announced it was INCREASING server loads and even explained it pretty well in the forums. They increased the numbers for each category by the way. Currently, over 60 "standard" servers, 1 "heavy", 3 "very heavy", and 1 "full" server. This is at 0100 local time (Hawaii, USA). Funny too, but I have not seen any server status less than "Light" except "Off Line" during a maintenance cycle.
Strangely enough, I have now checked 4 times and "The Fatman" was listed as standard every single time.
Edit: I just checked again and it did finally go down to "Light".
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
LOL! People really need to snap back into reality and stop bringing up those imaginary numbers.
If 1+ million people would still be playing this game, then there wouldn't be so many dead servers!
Everything below heavy load is dead!
I have characters on two servers and both are now Standard during peak times. This means around 40-50 people in fleet, around 20-30 on Corussant and about 7-15 people on the average other planet.
I have characters on Corussant, Tatooine and Alderaan. Especially Tatooine and Alderaan are totally dead! With roughly 7-12 people on those planet during peak hours. That's just horrible and a strong indication how little people each server actually holds.
To give you some proof.... during the first weeks of launch (when actually 1+ million people were playing), there were over 100 people on Fleet ALL the time (both during peak and off peak hours).
Corussant had always more than 1 instance running with over 70 people in each instance. During peak even 3-5 instances.
Other planets were people spread out more had at least one instance during peak times that holded over 30-40 people in it.
The vast majority of servers don't even come close to 20-30% of those numbers anymore!
So please, give us a break.... if 1+ million people are still playing this game, then I am going to win the lottery tomorrow lol.
I wonder this myself. I mean, if the game is so horrible...and such FAIL. What does that make people that play it and actually LIKE it....?
God forbid we enjoy something you do not!
Yeah man, or just ask the million + players that play it. Amirite?
I wonder this myself. I mean, if the game is so horrible...and such FAIL. What does that make people that play it and actually LIKE it....?
God forbid we enjoy something you do not!
If you enjoy it, why care what others think? One of my favourite MMOs had subs numbered in the hundreds and closed down, it still gave me some of my best MMO memories yet no one else liked it.Not sure what kind of proof you want without verified numbers. But you can see the decline everyday. You say the game is mad eup of casials but there are less and less of those casuals playing everyday. If it was not losing players once past the forst few weeks those casuals should play at the same rate.
One should note all 210 of these servers 3 months were close to 3.0 now almost all of them are close to 1.0 which is a dead server. I think its fair to say here looking at the ToR status numbers that the drop off is huge. Off a cliff. There are 13 server sin NA and Europe combined that are above light. Really only 4 servers with many players. If you look at the numbers there are less and less each day everyday. Check out the number at the bottom it tells you the toal change for all servers combined. At this rate in a two months all servers but 4-5 will be dead.
They really need server merges. The problem with merges is they are fighting a publicity problem. They are trying to represent that the game is healthy and doing well so they can sell more boxes and hopefully salvage whats left of the population with 1.2. 1.2's release has not slowed the hemorage of players nor has the free month. They need to massively merge servers. It may contradict their talking points about how greta the game is doing but otherwise pretty much every server will die. One idea that might work in the short run would be to use the Rift method and allow free server transfers. This allows people to move from dead servers and keep playing without all the negativity associated with forced server merges. Looking at the server list I doubt they have enough left to combine into more than 30 total NA and EU servers.
I agree. Perhaps SWTOR might be the end of it's CREDIBILITY in the MMO sector, but certainly not it's actual finanical strength.
I'm really sick of the whole "There's a massive fanbase for X", or "Y would be a WoW-killer if it just had a chance".
There is no massive conspiracy waiting in the MMO playerbase.
There are no "sleeper-agent fans" waiting to convert once the X or Y is unleashed on the world.
You have a point. But you also have to figure that they are one of the few game companies that has stock prices still falling on a daily basis and they are very near the lowest point in company history. Also it hurts when your company is blackmarked as "The worst Company in North America" by major financial magazines for poor business practises.
I for one hope they dont merge the servers, well not yet for sure, because the netcode for even such amounts of people in instances is pretty much disgusting.
Hmm guess I should sell my unopened copy of TOR then.
Early Access was enough to show me this game was not really an MMO.....
I would do it before they drop the price of the box, which, IMO would be a smarter move than giving away free time.Good on the OP for posting reponsible information about EA.
The deal is that BOTH consumers AND investors are pulling their wallets away from EA. Lookin @ EA's stocks to determine SWTOR's success is a VERY good strategy, however you get a much clearer picture when you combine BOTH subscriber number speculations along with market reports in order to "weed out" how much of a Failure SWTOR truly is.
I cannot wait for people to look back 3years from now and talk about how SWTOR was the tipping point in bringing the MMO market back to where it should be
!
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
They will need to down size and cut costs. A lot of people will probably be fired. Bioware will perhaps be the major target for that. But they are to big to die anytime soon.
EA's stock is falling because it spent too much and has little cash on hand to defend itself. SWTOR was just a cash cow to bolster itself, nothing more or less. But that didn't pan out for them. Overall SWTOR is at best, a large side project. EA is getting out of the PC market like many other companies, so all this does is make that stated goal sooner than expected.
The number of people playing the game isn't the same as the number of subscribers. Quite a few people bought gametime cards for up to 6 months and used those to activate the subscription. Even if they stopped playing and turned away in disgust, they're still subscribed.
The game isn't doing well, if they were the subscriber numbers would be out there. They're not and handing out free time to try and persuade people to stop leaving in great numbers. This speaks for itself really.
No, wrong, apparently that is just Bioware showing their generosity, there are no issues.Let me restate my post as to not upset all the people who still play this garbage.
I didn't need to be a stock broker or follow the stock market to know that SWTOR is fail. All i needed to do was just play it to realize that.
Casual game + Monthly subscription do not mix.
When WoW launched it was anything but casual play. No one got to max level in Wow in the first week.
Swtor should have stayed in the oven another year. It's pretty sad that STO has WAY better space combat.
I just can't help but wonder what they were doing the first 4 years of development....
*** /Pauly the B imagines ~~~~~ 4 years of sitting around talking about Star Wars and Doing Bong hits. Then in like January 2011 someone gets up from the drum circle and says," Hey we better start making the game now." ****
( Note to self-Don't say anything bad about Drizzt.)
An acerbic sense of humor is NOT allowed here.
It does seem that you ahve an obvious bias. . if someone guesses a high number. . who are we to judge. . if they guess a low number they need proof. In this past post. . you said if someone claims 2 million they need proof. . yet in your previous posts you say. . . . bah nevermind
By the way I do agree that server population does not equal sub numbers. I would imagine. . and I am just guessing here. . .no proof. . . that there are people who log in on the week end and the odd evening. . Casual old starwars fans with not as much time as they would ilke.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I think when the 6 months subs run out people will see that the game only has a few hundred thousand paying customers left and that's why BW is only giving transfers and giving out free 30 days like candy. In a guild with several hundred actual people, not alts. I know a lot of them bought 3-6 months subs/game cards thinking they would play at least that long, my husband included. I only pay month to month so they didn't get me, heh. Of those several hundred in the guild on Jung Ma only 3 are left, the rest are awaiting GW2 or Tera or both. That's a lot of gamecards/subs still floating about and no one online playing. If just that many in my guild aren't playing, imagine how many others are doing the same. That's why there are ghost town servers. They may be able to say they have this many subscribers, but that's only because people prepaid too many months and are now gone. When 6 month playtimes are up, they'll have to face reality that the game is a niche game, that only fanbois and extremely casuals will be playing. It will be lucky to have a few hundred thousand people playing by the end of the year.
*edit* made it easier on the eyes, appologies
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
You do only need to look om one thing to decide if the game is a failure or not, and that is what the cost to make minus what it made in the first year.
If TOR mad more money after a year than the development cost it is far from a failure and that goes for any MMO. If it never ever get in the cost it is a disaster, like TR.
But EAs stock price is not a good measurement for any games success.
Oh my, that's way to much logic you have there.
This kind of brings up the elephant in the room that the OP completely missed: MMO companies don't rely on long term subs to make money any more!
Contrary to popular opinion that EA lost money on STWOR; it has already made back its investment and going forward everything it gets is just gravy. Box sales + collector edition markup + prepaid game time has already made STWO a financial success even if it isn't a MMO success. EA doesn't need people to actualy be on the servers playing, they just need them to have bought the time. So stop the silly arguments over wether the servers are packed or not, it doesn't matter to EA as long as they got their money and they did that already.
If you want to speculate, start a pool to see when it will go F2P to get a second bumb in revenue.
Would you care to share the evidence you obviously have?