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SWTOR player numbers quadrupled since F2P launch...
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Sums up what I was thinking.
Anyone even bother to research the effect of an mmo going f2p? This isn't news. It still comes down to who pays money and who sticks around.
F2p turns a game into a ghetto mall. Most players are there only to litter, vandalize and spit while window shopping while others try to file past them to get into the shops and spend their money on things they want and get back home unscathed. The mall looks full but loses more from theft that what it earns.
Bioware will be doing little else now other than developing content for cash shop paying clients, creating content gates to maximize pay options and protecting paying players from free loaders. The players wanting new content will get it by being forced to pay even more outside of the sub in return for a small percentage of the f2p player rush actually sticking around.
You stay sassy!
I've been helping F2P'ers with heroics and such and they generally leave good impressions. Stereotyping gets you nowhere.
I'm not sure where exactly your reasoning is based.
SWTOR went FTP, one would hope there would be a significant spike in activity. I'm going to go out in a limb and suggest that the FTP relaunch may have had a part in the "sharp" rise in x-fire numbers.
"And if the trend on x-fire is up so sharply, given that hardly anyone uses it...I wonder what the trend is like accross the broader player base?" - Kinda shows that you aren't quite sure how statistics work.
Again, I'm not sure of the dig on GW2. X-Fire has shown a slow but steady decline in GW2 activity over time. I'm pretty sure the GW2 fanbase isn't bragging about their x-fire numbers. (Although I should point out that in comparison they dwarf SWTOR's).
Come back in a week, and then a week after that, etc.
Perhaps you are right, and SWTOR's ftp will be a smashing success and significantly grow the SWTOR playerbase. At the moment, it would be premature to state that it is.
Another caveat of course is that since SWTOR is no longer solely P2P, player activity will no longer be a yardstick to profitability. The game could in theorey grow to million of players, but they could not be paying in. Or the game could loose even more of its playerbase, but become more profitable from remaining subscribers purchasing items in the cash shop.
The actual revenue of the game is now hidden behind what fiscal stats EA chooses to divulge and they have been ellusive about specific figures in the past. Even Turbine with their LOTRO numbers only couched their numbers as "Three times the revenue". This didn't mean uch since they never said how much the original revenue was or what the ongoing costs of the game's development or maintenence were.
Anyway, being pragmatic, I'd say initial numbers are where they should be, close to server load. Whether that trend should stick, too early to say.
You are right though that if x-fire numbers just sat with no uptick, it would be alarming. Stay enthusiastic, keep checking back.
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