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My take on Swtor's success or failure form what I am seeing.

245

Comments

  • LoverNoFighterLoverNoFighter Member Posts: 294
    SWG pre cu was always a better game. Ok, maybe not better but it sure was more fun.
  • ZecktorinZecktorin Member Posts: 231
    Originally posted by tiefighter25

    Hey OP

    Again, you seem to be glossing over that SWTOR just underwent another server merger.

    All data indicates that SWTOR has continued to lose population.

    TorStatus, X-Fire, and even Scorpienne's population survey.

    They all indicate that SWTOR has lost 20% of population since GW2 has come out.

    Since the server merges didn't redistribute the remaining population evenly, you might be on a high population server, but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

    Every day there are threads opened on the SWTOR Forums with people begging for the 3 APAC servers to be merged due to populations measured in the tens. The same goes for North American server Jung MA.

    Jung MA is especially telling, because SWTOR consistiently reports it as standard despite it's very low population; indicating that these new Mega-servers still have individual population caps.

    Futhermore, several of the new Megaservers have gone form Very Heavy, to full with log-in waiting queues.

    This indicates that the new Megaservers aren't really Mega at all.

    All empirical data indicates that SWTOR shut down 6 servers, and now has 16 servers with decent populations. The standard servers around 800-1500. The heavy servers with 1500-3000. Also are 1 dead server in Jung Ma, and 3 dead servers in Australia.

    Nothing indicates that the population is growing.

    Nothing indicates that the servers are Mega.

    Calling a server Mega without any explanation to any sort of technolgy that has increased it's cap doesn't make it Mega.

    Ty this is what I wanted from someone who disagreed. All I said is from what I have seen on my server. people like to just use smartass remarks instead and just hate for the sake of hating. Its just arrogance from most people. How ever  going by what you have said it still doesnt add up. okay during prime time with the most people playing at any given time on a saturday lets say all the servers are heavy with 3k people each server.  Your telling me that by that math only 48k people are playing at a given time during this period. Even less of those are subs because of the trial accounts.... some of that data is incorrect as it is because there are now currently 20 servers not 16. The leaving players may be just getting replace with new players and so on and so forth.

  • SouldrainerSouldrainer Member Posts: 1,857

    It's annoying when people say they logged on and saw x number of players and try to make projections off of it. The other night, I was driving on a section of route 40 and only encountered 5 cars during that time.

    Under the snapshot projection fallacy, these people would project that 35 people use that road per week, and call for a shutdown... even though the reality is that it was a 2 mile trip at 3am and cars were constantly getting on and off that road. Tens of millions use route 40 a week, but these armchair projections are just plain stupid.

    They are even less accurate than just plugging numbers into a random number generator, which says a lot about how bad they are.

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  • ZecktorinZecktorin Member Posts: 231
    Originally posted by Yakamomoto

    If I had a penny for each time someone on the TOR forum saying "people had unrealistic expectations".

    You know, starting nearly ten years later with half the mechanics SWG had is not smart. They should have known TOR will be compared to SWG, and people would expect basic features from SWG to be in TOR.

    A kind of modernized, polished SWG2 plus Bioware story.

    You call modernization of 10 year old features high expectations?

    We got WoW in a Star Wars setting, I don't know exactly who wanted that, but certainly not me.

    No actually thats the people's fault. How dare you expect a good sandbox styled game in a theme park market especially when they said their fav quote when they said they used stuff from WoW " if its not broken then don't fix it." Talking about how the game mechanics from WoW work. Which they do just not for everyone. You shouldve know it was gonna be a normal theme park instead of something else. Bioware didn't lie about what this game was gonna be a lot of people lied to themselves. People pumped up their expections by comparing it to SWG themselves when if they paid attention would have known before they bought the game what it was gonna be.....

    Your average MMO with star wars lore and story. No where was SWG2 with Bioware story was promised.

  • mikahrmikahr Member Posts: 1,066
    Originally posted by Zecktorin

    Again another useless comment just trying to insult someone's intelligence over the internet. That was the main purpose of this response. Here let me say it again because you seem to have missed very important words in my post.

    "from what I have seen"

    "However who knows what will happen."

    " I beleive"

    "I could be wrong"

    I still <3 you though for a nice try. A for effort. No where did I say I knew without a doubt it was growing....

    I dont have to "attack" anything since you are doing fine job yourself.

    And i suggest you go and see eye doctor or stop drinking so much (that double/triple/x-ple vision can be nasty)

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    By their own data SWTOR is not a financial success; EA said they needed 1M subs if they were to recover their investment and they never hit 1M subs (highest was 1.7M of which "just about half" were subs0.

    SWTOR also needed 500k to make a day-to-day profit and it is reasonable to assume that EA's projections showed the game falling below this. The probable reason for their 500k - 1M number being the likely drop off in 6 month subs coming up for renewal is August / September.

    Going forward they must have expected subs to slip below 500k. In the short term EA could have spent lots more on advertising but it gets harder and harder to push a game; those who haven't bought or tried SWTOR by now will need lots of convincing.  

    To reduce costs EA opted to cut back on the size of the team. Smaller team = less new content = less happier subscribers.

    So they have rolled the dice and gone F2P. It should get some new players in but it is a risk as they may lose many of their remaining subscribers.

    EA have given presentations (available on the EA investor webpage) in which they have said that the majority of people who play F2P .... for free! And if Zynga's experience holds about 95% will pay nothing. Put another way if they get 1M new players 950,000 players will pay nothing. Of the other 50,000 most will pay very little. Zynga data suggests most pay only a few dollars.

    All on 20 servers. 

     

    EA's plan is probably centred around cutting costs - heavily - and retaining enough subscribers to cover these costs. Any F2P money will then be "extra". Fine line however. Cutting costs means less content = less reason to subscribe.

    Problems: 1. churn amongst F2P players - big problem with F2P games; 2. server capacity - at least until churn kicks in; 3. longevity - getting those 250k (or whatever) subs and long term F2P players; 4. what to offer by way of micro-transactions. 

    If they don't keep hold onto subs however then the only solution will be further cost reductions - and less content to justify a subscription. Vicious circle. They will gloss over it of course. Fear not our new team is going to produce content even faster. There will be weekly releases. Rejoice! Today green dye. Next week red. The week after white.....

    And 20 servers suggests that costs have been cut a long way already ... maybe expecting new dye colours might be a bit much ...

  • AG-VukAG-Vuk Member UncommonPosts: 823
    Originally posted by Zecktorin

     ................unrealistic expectations..............

    That's all you really needed to say.

    image
  • SouldrainerSouldrainer Member Posts: 1,857
    Originally posted by Dblstandard
    Tor has not been increasing in players.  if you look at ToR status

    Which accurately projects populations how, exactly?  When you look at ToR status, it is a snapshot, not an algorithim.  Don't get me wrong.  You can add up all of the pluses and minuses on the page and come up with a number.  That number is not complete, however, due to the fact that they list the servers based on load percent, and not on actual numbers.  You're additionally assuming that all servers have an equal player base here, which is just wrong.

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  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by Zecktorin

     

    SWTOR was never a bad game and as long as you didnt have unrealistic expectations

    So, SWTOR was never a bad game so long as our expectation was for it to be a bad game? Good to know.

     

    No, its an awful MMOs. It fails at being an MMO AND a singleplayer game. It has no audience, no reason to keep playing. The story is bad, the quests are bad, the combat is bad, the world is bad.

  • sirphobossirphobos Member UncommonPosts: 620
    SW:TOR had one of the most enjoyable leveling experiences I've had in an MMO in a long time.  Problem is, there wasn't (and still isn't) a lot to do at level 50 unless you are interested in doing warzones.  Bioware I think was banking on people playing through all eight class storylines, which most people aren't interested in doing.  If there was more to do at level 50 I would be still playing it, and I'm sure a lot of other people who quit would also be doing so.
  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403
    Originally posted by SuperXero89

    If it's not a success then it must be a failure.

    That has always been the mindset of the mmorpg.com all gamer forums.

    Fixed.  It isn't any different anywhere else. 

    "I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall."
    Eleanor Roosevelt (Sorry, not germane, but it made me chuckle just now.  Dirty old lady!)

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • Agnostic42Agnostic42 Member UncommonPosts: 405

    My take on SWTOR, I know, everyone has an opinion on it.

     

    The game they released was and still is a lot of fun. I truly enjoyed it. Once you get to max level, it's merely the same'ol same 'ol. You raid for gear so you can raid for more gear and raid for...well... you get the point. There are a ton of other games out there that do this as well.

     

    So, I made an alt, got him to max level, and another and another. So now I have four characters at max level and have no intentions of raiding. So where does that leave players like me? Either PvP'ing all day or farming with no reason why, other than...raiding... After years and years of raiding and always having my Star Wars game to fall back on when tired of raiding, having SWG gone, well, yea, I know, unreal expectations and all. At least I'm realistic about it.

     

    I love the game, and had a blast with it, I also played SWG from release up until after the NGE, they are not the same game and I never wished they would have been, but... EA needs to step back and let their companies actually make the games. Front the money for production and then stay the hell away, they ruin everything. Granted Bioware needed a few lessons in trying to break the mold, which they apparently did not do.

     

    If they released more Sandbox'y elements to it, such as, player housing outside of ship, or more custimizable ships. The ability to buy something outside of the story mode that let your character be just that, your character and not the same jo-schmo jedi guardian that everyone else has, it would be fun. Hell, make it the option to do what SWG had, own something that you could take pride in, anything, really.

     

    Oh, and a Jump to Light Speed expansion, that would help... (Yes, I read the speculatory thread on that one)

     

    Most of the people bashing SWTOR as a failure are people reading the forums and jumping on the bandwagon to bash the one that almost was while he is down. Reminds me of High School, seriously. The attitudes you find on these forums seem like kids straight out of school.

  • RavingRabbidRavingRabbid Member UncommonPosts: 1,168

    SWTOR is only failure based on an individuals evaluation of the game. The game is still running and I still enjoy it. Not a failure to me.... Nuff said.

    *** double Plunger salute to Scarlett Johansen for portraying the Black Widow in the avengers movie!***

    All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
    Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes

  • Sevenstar61Sevenstar61 Member UncommonPosts: 1,686
    Originally posted by SuperXero89

    If it's not a success then it must be a failure.

     

    That has always been the mindset of the mmorpg.com forums.

    Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Dark side is  strong on this Forum  image


    Sith Warrior - Story of Hate and Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxKrlwXt7Ao
    Imperial Agent - Rise of Cipher Nine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBj3eJWBvU&feature=youtu.be
    Imperial Agent - Hunt for the Eagle Part 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQqjYYU128E

  • KyngBillsKyngBills Member UncommonPosts: 452
    Originally posted by tiefighter25

     

    I would guess SWTOR's sub number around 250 thousand and dropping.

     

    Agreed...I think that number is VERY close...It will increase with the Freemium no question...But how many of those Folks stay is the real question...Despite BioWare/EA's best attempt to put a false spin on things, I don't know a single person that quit SWTOR due to it's Sub model...Not one...Now, you wanna know how many people I know who quit?...lol...Just about everyone I know who played...The problem is in the game itself, not the pay model...And from what I've seen they are simply not addressing the reasons folks quit this game in the 1st place...Not at all...Hell they still don't have an appearence tab...lol...MMORPG 101, and they don't have it...It's an MMO that put the MMO part last in priority...It's a mess...And I hate it because I wanted this game to be my final destination...Not just another reason to doubt MMO Developers...image

  • YakamomotoYakamomoto Member Posts: 363
    TOR is not even a year old, wait what the first expansion will bring... I guess BW is up for a big, big surprise
  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646
    Originally posted by Sevenstar61
    Originally posted by SuperXero89

    If it's not a success then it must be a failure.

     

    That has always been the mindset of the mmorpg.com forums.

    Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Dark side is  strong on this Forum  image

    .. and on every other forum, except the dedicated (& biased) SWTOR fansites whose revenue comes from a perceived success of SWTOR, and the SWTOR official forums, which is heavily moderated and full of EA shills with unlimited account access.

     

    The MMORPG.com people who talk about SWTOR and appear to be on your definition of the Dark Side, are also the same people who supported SWTOR from the start, yet found the game poorly designed, managed, maintained, and supported.  So go ahead and blame all the people who quit, but at some point you really need to step back and find out why those people quit in the first place.

     

    Just to throw this out there, if BioWare never sold their company to EA in 2007, would BioWare still be putting out high quality games like they used to?  In a parallel universe, where BioWare was never sold, would we finally have had the best Star Wars MMO ever conceived?

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646
    Originally posted by Yakamomoto
    TOR is not even a year old, wait what the first expansion will bring... I guess BW is up for a big, big surprise

    Considering the BioWare founding doctors have now resigned (likely after their post-BioWare-sale employment commitment now expiring), many other employees have flat out quit, and half the SWTOR team was layed off, I am not very hopeful that SWTOR will bring any kind of meaningful expansion to the MMORPG scene.  EA now runs SWTOR more than ever, and the suits who make the decisions are not even gamers anyways, just marketers and salesmen.  Essentially the core of what made BioWare into BioWare has left the building, either voluntarily or forcibly.  BioWare is officially no more.

     

    But maybe, just maybe you are correct, and that will be a big, big surprise to me.  Maybe EA is finally listening after they realized that ignoring their fans cost them dearly.  Still I think there will be more hype than actual meat, as we see that EA is still chasing dollars, providing the bare minimum & the smallest investment for the largest return (which is what has been happening since launch).  So the big surprise might be 3D free travel space exploration and combat .. it might be a casino .. it might be an addition of EA's 3D racing games converted to Star Wars vehicle races ...

     

    But it might also just be more instanced PVE dungeons, instanced PVP maps, "mega" space combat on rails, and a new gear grind with all new commendations .. in which case I tell you now, I won't be surprised.

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

  • YakamomotoYakamomoto Member Posts: 363

    The whole EA blaming is complete, utter BS, sorry.

    BW wrote the game design, BW created the game, BW chose the Hero engine, BW laughed at SWG and even marketed the game by saying "it's nothing like SWG", BW created the railshooter and thought it's a great idea, BW also thought it is a great idea to create static planets without day/night change, BW launched with an insane amount of servers, BW was incapable to launch with a bunch of high capacity servers instead and they have an utterly stupid naming system which is completely messed up as people lost their names for the second time now. Et cetera.

     

    Where exactly does EA come in to blame? Right. No where. 

    Everytime I hear about someone leaving BW, it can only be a good thing. It can only get better from now on.

  • Random_mageRandom_mage Member UncommonPosts: 1,093
    I will start with the fact I dont play swtor anymore.

    The only unreal expection with star wars is that I thought it would be an original deep vast game.
    You say unreal expectations, whats so unreal?
    For all intensive purposes, this game failed. I played 3 months. Games I consider not failures, I play longer.
    I play gw2 now, but I will not be playing that soon. The advantage is that I dont have to pay if I do come back.
    I am not saying gw2 is a better game, I am saying one game is what it says it is, one game is not. And the one that is not is now going f2p.
    I dont use sub numbers to declare the status of a game, I use the difficulty it is to find a group to do what I am doing.
    I quit swtor because I spent too much time trying to find a group, and too much time on empty planets. Now you could say the planets were too big... Which is a lie, and you could say my server was a low pop server.. Again lie

    Currently playing Real Life..

    http://i36.tinypic.com/2uyod3k.gif

    For all your stalking needs..
    http://www.plurk.com/Random_

  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646
    Originally posted by Yakamomoto

    The whole EA blaming is complete, utter BS, sorry.

    BW wrote the game design, BW created the game, BW chose the Hero engine, BW laughed at SWG and even marketed the game by saying "it's nothing like SWG", BW created the railshooter and thought it's a great idea, BW also thought it is a great idea to create static planets without day/night change, BW launched with an insane amount of servers, BW was incapable to launch with a bunch of high capacity servers instead and they have an utterly stupid naming system which is completely messed up as people lost their names for the second time now. Et cetera.

     

    Where exactly does EA come in to blame? Right. No where. 

    Everytime I hear about someone leaving BW, it can only be a good thing. It can only get better from now on.

    In which case, BioWare had the last laugh :-)

     

    Employee morale within a small company suffers when it's company gets bought out by a big corporation, especially one that they may dislike already.  Gordon Walton's decision to pick up the alpha version of the Hero Engine might have been sound, and it could have been made to work.  But once BioWare got sold, who is to say Gordon just stopped caring what happened to SWTOR, with a conscious decision to resign eventually anyways (which he ended up doing before launch).

    Also before EA bought BioWare, BioWare's policy was to only release games once they are finished.  SWTOR was fully under EA's control at launch, and EA decided to release an unfinished game, thus charging customers for 6+ months while it was getting up to a playable state.  Also your other examples were not decisions of BioWare, but rather EA decisions, since they owned the company (derp!).

     

    You can point the finger back to BioWare, but in the end, every game BioWare put out post BioWare sale to EA in 2007 has been garbage.  Nothing in the past 5 years even closely resembles the high level of quality prior to EA getting the reigns.  Why is that?  Yeah I'm sure EA owning BioWare was just a big coincidence to the lowering of game quality while still operating under the cover name "BioWare".

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

  • DraronDraron Member Posts: 993
    Originally posted by Karteli

    You can point the finger back to BioWare, but in the end, every game BioWare put out post BioWare sale to EA in 2007 has been garbage.  Nothing in the past 5 years even closely resembles the high level of quality prior to EA getting the reigns.  Why is that?  Yeah I'm sure EA owning BioWare was just a big coincidence to the lowering of game quality while still operating under the cover name "BioWare".

    Though I wouldn't say Bioware put out after 2007 has been complete garbage, I do agree there quality suffered. I have no doubts the reason for the unfinished SWTOR launching was because of EA.

  • RefMinorRefMinor Member UncommonPosts: 3,452
    Originally posted by Zecktorin
    Originally posted by tiefighter25

    Hey OP

    Again, you seem to be glossing over that SWTOR just underwent another server merger.

    All data indicates that SWTOR has continued to lose population.

    TorStatus, X-Fire, and even Scorpienne's population survey.

    They all indicate that SWTOR has lost 20% of population since GW2 has come out.

    Since the server merges didn't redistribute the remaining population evenly, you might be on a high population server, but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

    Every day there are threads opened on the SWTOR Forums with people begging for the 3 APAC servers to be merged due to populations measured in the tens. The same goes for North American server Jung MA.

    Jung MA is especially telling, because SWTOR consistiently reports it as standard despite it's very low population; indicating that these new Mega-servers still have individual population caps.

    Futhermore, several of the new Megaservers have gone form Very Heavy, to full with log-in waiting queues.

    This indicates that the new Megaservers aren't really Mega at all.

    All empirical data indicates that SWTOR shut down 6 servers, and now has 16 servers with decent populations. The standard servers around 800-1500. The heavy servers with 1500-3000. Also are 1 dead server in Jung Ma, and 3 dead servers in Australia.

    Nothing indicates that the population is growing.

    Nothing indicates that the servers are Mega.

    Calling a server Mega without any explanation to any sort of technolgy that has increased it's cap doesn't make it Mega.

    Ty this is what I wanted from someone who disagreed. All I said is from what I have seen on my server. people like to just use smartass remarks instead and just hate for the sake of hating. Its just arrogance from most people. How ever  going by what you have said it still doesnt add up. okay during prime time with the most people playing at any given time on a saturday lets say all the servers are heavy with 3k people each server.  Your telling me that by that math only 48k people are playing at a given time during this period. Even less of those are subs because of the trial accounts.... some of that data is incorrect as it is because there are now currently 20 servers not 16. The leaving players may be just getting replace with new players and so on and so forth.

    48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

  • DraronDraron Member Posts: 993
    Originally posted by RefMinor

    48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

    1 in 5? EVE touts ~500k subs and has around 35k on at average. I'd say average is 1 in 8 - 1 in 10, giving a few thousand leeway since you can train skills offline in EVE. To my knowledge, that's the only game with hard numbers we can go by.

  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646
    Originally posted by Draron
    Originally posted by RefMinor

    48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

    1 in 5? EVE touts ~500k subs and has around 35k on at average. I'd say average is 1 in 8 - 1 in 10, giving a few thousand leeway since you can train skills offline in EVE. To my knowledge, that's the only game with hard numbers we can go by.

    I've heard 1:10 being slung around before, but the ratios are as reliable as XFire data I suppose.  It would vary from game to game, depending how casual a game might be.

     

    Some smaller games I've played had a very small potential population, but the players logged on a lot, making the ratio more like 1:5.  Ultra casual games, especially some F2P games, might be 1:20 or even 1:50, who knows.

     

    1:10 seems a decent ballpark number for a P2P .. but a margin of error should be assumed, accordingly.  In SWTOR's case I'm really not sure, since the population has been so volatile.  Could it be 20% of the population staying logged in, even idling, for 10 hours a day?  It would seem the gamers left playing are hardcore Star Wars fans (some new players here and there, sure), so it's all up in the air.  This is not just some MMO, this is a SW MMO.  1:5 could fit for a SW game?  Maybe.

     

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

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