All sources show that subs have TANKED. Of course EA hasn't reported this, but virtually every other news source has. Their last numbers released (about 4 months ago) included all the accounts they gave free time to.
So no, they don't. And I'm pretty sure when you lose most of your staff and most of your servers, on the most expensive MMO ever made, with the STAR WARS IP...you're a failure.
It worst its third, because there are only 2 other games over 200k subs (EvE, WoW).
Is it a failure? sure. biggest failure? not even close.
The real question is....what kind of issues cause someone to care so much about it at this stage?
I still wish Tabula Rasa had gone F2P, but considering NCSoft shutdown CoH so relatively quick after it went F2P, I don't think it would've lasted much longer anyway. Their Korean imports seem to hold up when looking at Lineage, but not so sure Aion will survive another year.
SWTOR can't be the biggest failure with me until it's shutdown completely. It could still make a miraculous recovery if they listen to the playerbase and get a bunch of new or returning fans when F2P goes live. I didn't have any problem with the game outside of the fact that I don't need to pay a subscription anymore for decent MMOs. I don't want to feel pushed to play something just to get my money's worth each month. I've been enjoying games like GW2, Aion, Diablo 3, and looking forward to Torchlight 2 with no subscription fee so it's one of those things with me that once I have it, I won't go back. Too many quality games out now to pay $10-$15/month even if that is just pennies a day. It still adds up.
edit: Just to clarify, I'm definitely going back to SWTOR once it's F2P. I was having fun with it and I'm looking forward to playing out the story on a couple characters. So that's a part of why I don't see it as a failure at all. It kept me entertained, and is a pretty good game in my book. I already bought it though. I'm not paying more for it, simple as that. It's only a failure in the sense that it failed to earn a subscription out of people, but maybe it can recover going F2P.
All sources show that subs have TANKED. Of course EA hasn't reported this, but virtually every other news source has. Their last numbers released (about 4 months ago) included all the accounts they gave free time to.
So no, they don't. And I'm pretty sure when you lose most of your staff and most of your servers, on the most expensive MMO ever made, with the STAR WARS IP...you're a failure.
It worst its third, because there are only 2 other games over 200k subs (EvE, WoW).
Is it a failure? sure. biggest failure? not even close.
Haha what would be a bigger failure then? No other game has had a budget this large, or did this poorly right after launch.
Starting with 2 million subs and going down to under 500k within months? The rention rate is AWFUL.
And you're ignoring the entire eastern market when you count subs. If we ignore the eastern market than WoW only has about 1.2 million subs.
All sources show that subs have TANKED. Of course EA hasn't reported this, but virtually every other news source has. Their last numbers released (about 4 months ago) included all the accounts they gave free time to.
So no, they don't. And I'm pretty sure when you lose most of your staff and most of your servers, on the most expensive MMO ever made, with the STAR WARS IP...you're a failure.
It worst its third, because there are only 2 other games over 200k subs (EvE, WoW).
Is it a failure? sure. biggest failure? not even close.
Haha what would be a bigger failure then? No other game has had a budget this large, or did this poorly right after launch.
Starting with 2 million subs and going down to under 500k within months? The rention rate is AWFUL.
And you're ignoring the entire eastern market when you count subs. If we ignore the eastern market than WoW only has about 1.2 million subs.
Trying to debate with someone who doesnt understand why, when discussing games like SWTOR, its important to talk about the western region only (and also thinks WoW only has 1.2 million western subs) is pretty pointless. But like if it helps you sleep at night then believe whatever you want...
SWTOR is not about being profitable, they're just going F2P to recover as much money as possible. Failing less is the goal here, not becoming "more profitable". whoever said SWTOR was profitable? They wasted a ton of money on the thing and they're doing as little as possible for as much money as they could possibly get their hands on.
They'll close down when cost to keep it open > revenue.
All sources show that subs have TANKED. Of course EA hasn't reported this, but virtually every other news source has. Their last numbers released (about 4 months ago) included all the accounts they gave free time to.
So no, they don't. And I'm pretty sure when you lose most of your staff and most of your servers, on the most expensive MMO ever made, with the STAR WARS IP...you're a failure.
It worst its third, because there are only 2 other games over 200k subs (EvE, WoW).
Is it a failure? sure. biggest failure? not even close.
Haha what would be a bigger failure then? No other game has had a budget this large, or did this poorly right after launch.
Starting with 2 million subs and going down to under 500k within months? The rention rate is AWFUL.
And you're ignoring the entire eastern market when you count subs. If we ignore the eastern market than WoW only has about 1.2 million subs.
Trying to debate with someone who doesnt understand why, when discussing games like SWTOR, its important to talk about the western region only (and also thinks WoW only has 1.2 million western subs) is pretty pointless. But like if it helps you sleep at night then believe whatever you want...
WoW at its height about 4 years ago had 3.5 million western subs in US and EU. WoW has since fallen by about 20-30% of its subs.
HAHAHAH, you call make million of dollars a failure???? Some people have no clue...
Yah, when you need tens of millons just to stay afloat and youre making only millions its called a failure.
So yah, ill give you a hint:
get a clue
You don't really understand the concept of return on investment, do you? It often takes time for large projects to break even and start making money. If you think TOR isn't going to end up making money when it goes f2p you're living in a fantasy world.
And you dont really understant basic concept of economy do you? Let me explain it to you:
You must make MORE money than you invested/are investing REGARDLESS of financial model/plan you opted for.
There you go.
And yeah, i dont think freemium will change anything long term, payment model wasnt really THE problem with SWTOR. And its just a matter of time SWTOR will go in maintenance mode and "make it lose as little money as possible" milking few players that would play it no matter what happened.
I'd say you could only measure the biggest failure as the one with the largest gross loss as a percentage of the total cost. We'll never have that info for any of the failied MMOs, but I don't doubt SWTOR will break even.
I'd say TSW may be in the category of biggest MMO flops based on this criteria. It certainly was a bigger flop than SWTOR.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
Yep. There's a minute chance that SWTOR doesn't go full maintenance mode with greedy gouging of its players like LOTRO. F2P should be more successful for SWTOR than it was for LOTRO. If they get enough cash invested and deliver strong MMO space combat and deliver regular updates on endgame content they could go back in the right direction.
WB/Turbine chose the route of giving up and delivering the bare minimum while charging higher than the industry standard for expansions. Hopefully EA and Lucas Arts don't go that route.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
Yep. There's a minute chance that SWTOR doesn't go full maintenance mode with greedy gouging of its players like LOTRO. F2P should be more successful for SWTOR than it was for LOTRO. If they get enough cash invested and deliver strong MMO space combat and deliver regular updates on endgame content they could go back in the right direction.
WB/Turbine chose the route of giving up and delivering the bare minimum while charging higher than the industry standard for expansions. Hopefully EA and Lucas Arts don't go that route.
Uh...
Enlighten me, for I have not played LOTRO. What happened to it exactly?
Originally posted by Souldrainer So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...
EQ2 lasted many years with a sub, something I would say isn't a failure as it also has a pretty fair player base. Tabula Rasa and Darkfall both have subs and have been running for many years as well. SWTOR didn't even last a year with a sub. This shows that either people don't want subs at all (but would be contradicted seeing WoWs numbers), or that this game was so bad that no one thought it was worth a box price and $15 a month. SWTOR was't and is not a good MMO for how much time and money was poured into it.
I'd say you could only measure the biggest failure as the one with the largest gross loss as a percentage of the total cost. We'll never have that info for any of the failied MMOs, but I don't doubt SWTOR will break even.
I'd say TSW may be in the category of biggest MMO flops based on this criteria. It certainly was a bigger flop than SWTOR.
TSW is definitely in the category of big financial mmo flops. TSW sold far south of funcom's worst case scenario, they had to fire people involved in all of their games just to keep afloat, and their stock dropped 85% since launch.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
Yep. There's a minute chance that SWTOR doesn't go full maintenance mode with greedy gouging of its players like LOTRO. F2P should be more successful for SWTOR than it was for LOTRO. If they get enough cash invested and deliver strong MMO space combat and deliver regular updates on endgame content they could go back in the right direction.
WB/Turbine chose the route of giving up and delivering the bare minimum while charging higher than the industry standard for expansions. Hopefully EA and Lucas Arts don't go that route.
Uh...
Enlighten me, for I have not played LOTRO. What happened to it exactly?
Originally posted by Souldrainer So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...
EQ2 lasted many years with a sub, something I would say isn't a failure as it also has a pretty fair player base. Tabula Rasa and Darkfall both have subs and have been running for many years as well. SWTOR didn't even last a year with a sub. This shows that either people don't want subs at all (but would be contradicted seeing WoWs numbers), or that this game was so bad that no one thought it was worth a box price and $15 a month. SWTOR was't and is not a good MMO for how much time and money was poured into it.
Each game needs to be considered carefully; to easy to say "fail".
Darkfall for example is interesting. It launched with 1 "normal" server because that was all they could afford. And - novel concept here - the company refused to sell more copies than the one server could hold people. They wouldn't let you pay to queue! As they sold copies they increased the server capacity (over 10,000 concurrent maybe more now) and sold more copies.
Needless to say a lot of people went ballistic and shouted fail because they couldn't buy the game. The company stuck to its guns, didn't rush to the bank, borrow money, open lots of new servers, close lots of servers after a few months, go bankrupt, close. Eventually (after nearly a year?) they did a deal that enabled them to open a North Amercian server to go with the European server. (Doubled the server capacity post launch!)
So Adventurine Inc, a tiny company (less than 20 employees from memory) developed the game taking am eternity it seemed; marketed, distributed and subsequently launched a well tested, fluid, "bug free" game with no queues to play (people queued to buy it when it launched and only a limited number of copies were made available each day!).
Darkfall will "never" sell as many copies as SWTOR; it will "never" have as many subs as SWTOR had but, over time, it will take in more monthly subs.
Even today in its slightly softer form Darkfall remains a brutal game with free for all, essentially unlimited PVP. It has no story and no level based progression but it's in-game tools are very good, its AI is vicious and adaptive, it's game engine is fluid supporting large scale conflicts.
A niche product; managed as a niche product, charging a subscription .... a successful game financially and on on many other levels but a game that was never going to be "liked" by everyone.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
How will they be making money? People will play the story for free then leave. It might help keep some of the old subbers around. It could even bring a few back, but how will they turn a profit?
Originally posted by Souldrainer So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...
EQ2 lasted many years with a sub, something I would say isn't a failure as it also has a pretty fair player base. Tabula Rasa and Darkfall both have subs and have been running for many years as well. SWTOR didn't even last a year with a sub. This shows that either people don't want subs at all (but would be contradicted seeing WoWs numbers), or that this game was so bad that no one thought it was worth a box price and $15 a month. SWTOR was't and is not a good MMO for how much time and money was poured into it.
EQ2 never what SoE hoped and needed to poweful a system to run it until SoE tweaked things and 1 to 2 years passed - which didn't help but well liked combat system. As mentioned had a sub for years. Not a fail
Hellgate - strong story based game, good single player, failed as a sub-based game, introduced dual mode sub / F2P option - closed. Reminds me of SWTOR except for the cost!
CoH - a success on multiple levels including financial as NCSoft would never have taken it on as they did (initially they were just running it). Sad that it went F2P and is now not making the money needed to continue. (How can this be, it is F2P ...)
Mortal Online - a niche game, two years old. Another sub based game that has just had its second expansion. Like Darkfall a brutal niche game but unlike Darkfall it has had and continues to have bug issues. So not a fail financially but not really a success (yet) technically.
And APB? Failed as a sub-based game but went F2P. Time will tell.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
How will they be making money? People will play the story for free then leave. It might help keep some of the old subbers around. It could even bring a few back, but how will they turn a profit?
HAHAHAH, you call make million of dollars a failure???? Some people have no clue...
Yah, when you need tens of millons just to stay afloat and youre making only millions its called a failure.
So yah, ill give you a hint:
get a clue
You don't really understand the concept of return on investment, do you? It often takes time for large projects to break even and start making money. If you think TOR isn't going to end up making money when it goes f2p you're living in a fantasy world.
And you dont really understant basic concept of economy do you? Let me explain it to you:
You must make MORE money than you invested/are investing REGARDLESS of financial model/plan you opted for.
There you go.
And yeah, i dont think freemium will change anything long term, payment model wasnt really THE problem with SWTOR. And its just a matter of time SWTOR will go in maintenance mode and "make it lose as little money as possible" milking few players that would play it no matter what happened.
Actually, that's not how ROI works. ROI is something that happens over time. How long will it take to get the ROI is a question asked when a project is being planned, money is being asked for, etc.. It takes time to make that money back, that's why it's an investment. You need to be making a profit, yes but it's not like was expected that they'd make their ROI in the first month - it takes time for any MMO to become profitable because of the initial cost of developement, infrastructure, advertising, etc.
I don't think you quite understand how these things work considering what you're trying to say is "the basic concept of economics" - not "the basic concept of economy." Do you mean economy class flights? I understand that too, flown economy many times.
I would actually say yes. BioWare was counting on subs from this title to bring fuel their company like WoW fuels Blizzard.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Comments
It worst its third, because there are only 2 other games over 200k subs (EvE, WoW).
Is it a failure? sure. biggest failure? not even close.
The real question is....what kind of issues cause someone to care so much about it at this stage?
I still wish Tabula Rasa had gone F2P, but considering NCSoft shutdown CoH so relatively quick after it went F2P, I don't think it would've lasted much longer anyway. Their Korean imports seem to hold up when looking at Lineage, but not so sure Aion will survive another year.
SWTOR can't be the biggest failure with me until it's shutdown completely. It could still make a miraculous recovery if they listen to the playerbase and get a bunch of new or returning fans when F2P goes live. I didn't have any problem with the game outside of the fact that I don't need to pay a subscription anymore for decent MMOs. I don't want to feel pushed to play something just to get my money's worth each month. I've been enjoying games like GW2, Aion, Diablo 3, and looking forward to Torchlight 2 with no subscription fee so it's one of those things with me that once I have it, I won't go back. Too many quality games out now to pay $10-$15/month even if that is just pennies a day. It still adds up.
edit: Just to clarify, I'm definitely going back to SWTOR once it's F2P. I was having fun with it and I'm looking forward to playing out the story on a couple characters. So that's a part of why I don't see it as a failure at all. It kept me entertained, and is a pretty good game in my book. I already bought it though. I'm not paying more for it, simple as that. It's only a failure in the sense that it failed to earn a subscription out of people, but maybe it can recover going F2P.
Haha what would be a bigger failure then? No other game has had a budget this large, or did this poorly right after launch.
Starting with 2 million subs and going down to under 500k within months? The rention rate is AWFUL.
And you're ignoring the entire eastern market when you count subs. If we ignore the eastern market than WoW only has about 1.2 million subs.
Trying to debate with someone who doesnt understand why, when discussing games like SWTOR, its important to talk about the western region only (and also thinks WoW only has 1.2 million western subs) is pretty pointless. But like if it helps you sleep at night then believe whatever you want...
SWTOR is not about being profitable, they're just going F2P to recover as much money as possible. Failing less is the goal here, not becoming "more profitable". whoever said SWTOR was profitable? They wasted a ton of money on the thing and they're doing as little as possible for as much money as they could possibly get their hands on.
They'll close down when cost to keep it open > revenue.
WoW at its height about 4 years ago had 3.5 million western subs in US and EU. WoW has since fallen by about 20-30% of its subs.
Do the math.
And you dont really understant basic concept of economy do you? Let me explain it to you:
You must make MORE money than you invested/are investing REGARDLESS of financial model/plan you opted for.
There you go.
And yeah, i dont think freemium will change anything long term, payment model wasnt really THE problem with SWTOR. And its just a matter of time SWTOR will go in maintenance mode and "make it lose as little money as possible" milking few players that would play it no matter what happened.
SWTOR as the WoW Killer is pretty much a pipe dream.
SWTOR as the maintenance mode money milking machine is only beginning...
That sound about right?
I'd say you could only measure the biggest failure as the one with the largest gross loss as a percentage of the total cost. We'll never have that info for any of the failied MMOs, but I don't doubt SWTOR will break even.
I'd say TSW may be in the category of biggest MMO flops based on this criteria. It certainly was a bigger flop than SWTOR.
Yep. There's a minute chance that SWTOR doesn't go full maintenance mode with greedy gouging of its players like LOTRO. F2P should be more successful for SWTOR than it was for LOTRO. If they get enough cash invested and deliver strong MMO space combat and deliver regular updates on endgame content they could go back in the right direction.
WB/Turbine chose the route of giving up and delivering the bare minimum while charging higher than the industry standard for expansions. Hopefully EA and Lucas Arts don't go that route.
Uh...
Enlighten me, for I have not played LOTRO. What happened to it exactly?
TSW is definitely in the category of big financial mmo flops. TSW sold far south of funcom's worst case scenario, they had to fire people involved in all of their games just to keep afloat, and their stock dropped 85% since launch.
It's a long story.
Each game needs to be considered carefully; to easy to say "fail".
Darkfall for example is interesting. It launched with 1 "normal" server because that was all they could afford. And - novel concept here - the company refused to sell more copies than the one server could hold people. They wouldn't let you pay to queue! As they sold copies they increased the server capacity (over 10,000 concurrent maybe more now) and sold more copies.
Needless to say a lot of people went ballistic and shouted fail because they couldn't buy the game. The company stuck to its guns, didn't rush to the bank, borrow money, open lots of new servers, close lots of servers after a few months, go bankrupt, close. Eventually (after nearly a year?) they did a deal that enabled them to open a North Amercian server to go with the European server. (Doubled the server capacity post launch!)
So Adventurine Inc, a tiny company (less than 20 employees from memory) developed the game taking am eternity it seemed; marketed, distributed and subsequently launched a well tested, fluid, "bug free" game with no queues to play (people queued to buy it when it launched and only a limited number of copies were made available each day!).
Darkfall will "never" sell as many copies as SWTOR; it will "never" have as many subs as SWTOR had but, over time, it will take in more monthly subs.
Even today in its slightly softer form Darkfall remains a brutal game with free for all, essentially unlimited PVP. It has no story and no level based progression but it's in-game tools are very good, its AI is vicious and adaptive, it's game engine is fluid supporting large scale conflicts.
A niche product; managed as a niche product, charging a subscription .... a successful game financially and on on many other levels but a game that was never going to be "liked" by everyone.
(Tabula Rasa closed after a year btw).
How will they be making money? People will play the story for free then leave. It might help keep some of the old subbers around. It could even bring a few back, but how will they turn a profit?
EQ2 never what SoE hoped and needed to poweful a system to run it until SoE tweaked things and 1 to 2 years passed - which didn't help but well liked combat system. As mentioned had a sub for years. Not a fail
Hellgate - strong story based game, good single player, failed as a sub-based game, introduced dual mode sub / F2P option - closed. Reminds me of SWTOR except for the cost!
CoH - a success on multiple levels including financial as NCSoft would never have taken it on as they did (initially they were just running it). Sad that it went F2P and is now not making the money needed to continue. (How can this be, it is F2P ...)
Mortal Online - a niche game, two years old. Another sub based game that has just had its second expansion. Like Darkfall a brutal niche game but unlike Darkfall it has had and continues to have bug issues. So not a fail financially but not really a success (yet) technically.
And APB? Failed as a sub-based game but went F2P. Time will tell.
ages after this was actually an interesting topic, 50 pages totaly agree with you"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
What would you have me call it?
Actually, that's not how ROI works. ROI is something that happens over time. How long will it take to get the ROI is a question asked when a project is being planned, money is being asked for, etc.. It takes time to make that money back, that's why it's an investment. You need to be making a profit, yes but it's not like was expected that they'd make their ROI in the first month - it takes time for any MMO to become profitable because of the initial cost of developement, infrastructure, advertising, etc.
I don't think you quite understand how these things work considering what you're trying to say is "the basic concept of economics" - not "the basic concept of economy." Do you mean economy class flights? I understand that too, flown economy many times.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
GW2.
Can't believe I paid for that stinker. The only way it makes any money is if everybody goes in and buys a pirate shirt out of the cash shop.
Twice a day.
For a year.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
WTF are you talking about? That doesn't even make any sense.
The cash shop is the only revenue stream GW2 has. Once the box sales subside they better start selling some pirate shirts.
My youtube MMO gaming channel