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Makeb as an indication of sub numbers.
tiefighter25
Member Posts: 937
So Makeb has hit and people are playing it.
Oft times people ask how many SWTOR players are subscribers and how many are Free-To-Players.
Well, odds are if you were playing in Makeb, you were a subscriber.
Many people stated that Makeb had 30 instances (albeit with 50 people per instance.)
For shits and giggles, that means, on the generous side, 17 servers (leaving out the paltry APAC servers) times 30 instances, times 50 players, equals a max concurrent number of 25,500 players.
30 (instances) x 50 (players) x 17 (servers) = 25,500 players.
Since Makeb was new, it's pretty fair to assume that at least 10% of the people who ponied up the money to play it were playing it.
Even with erring on a generous side, that would mean SWTOR has around 255,000 subscribers. (Assuming a 10% concurrent population.)
Want to argue only 5% of the players played the game at the launch of the expansion, well that's 510,000 subscribers. (Which I find unlikely.)
Feel free to poke holes in my observations. I would guess EVE has more subscribers, and that SWTOR is funded a ton through the cartel shop and not a rush of new subscribers.
Prepare yourselves for 2.1 "Customization".
Comments
You can't compare EVE to SWTOR lol, EVE is unique, where swtor is another themepark template.
Where EVE looks full of players everywhere, if you have the bad luck to play on one of the less populated servers in swtor it looks like the game is dead.
SWTOR can have a zillion subscribers and EVE 50.000, but if they are all spread out on server copies with a 3k player limit where in EVE it's 1 big servercluster where everyone runs into each other, numbers don't matter.
EVE would look very populated to SWTOR in that case.
Don't compare 2 entirely different games.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
A: Your math is terrible.
B: Everything you just stated is complete speculation at best.
Played - EQ 1/2, WoW, SWG, SWTOR, GW 1/2 UO, STO, CO, DCUO, AO, Rift.
A: Basic multplication can not be terrible, only wrong or right.
B: Speculation yes, but reasonable.
Hello,
I think they make good money off ~5% of the population with the gambling cartel packs, I saw a lvl55 guy open up like 20 of these boxes in a row. But I think 95% don´t care about that stuff or buy it on the GTN with ingame credits.
Cheers,
Doc B
True. EVE is pretty unique in its server structure. (And you are right in that certain themepark servers do better then others, Jung Ma is pretty desolate.) The only reason I brought it up is that Bioware has of late been touting that they are the #2 sub based MMORPG (I know ironic for a game that went Freemium) game in the West. Of course, Bioware hasn't released any sub numbers, just statements saying that they are "growing".
I would guess around 200k subscribers now. I know James Ohlen said Swtor was 2nd biggest western subscription MMO, but I'm sure he just counted the amount of active players, F2P included, and since it still has a subscription model he calls it a subscription MMO.
I still think this game won't last until 2014. Recent EA layoffs made me even more sure. Think the announcement will come this summer and then it will be 6 months after the announcement before it's shutdown.
That's the thing: players look at the sub numbers if a MMO is good or not......."WOW > EVE because it has 100M players compared to 500k EVE" .........from a financial point WOW it MIGHT be the best MMO out there apparently, but subscription number wise you can't compare it to a game like EVE because that game would completely whipe the floor with Blizzard's pride if you look at serverpopulations.
Comparing subscription numbers MMO-wide is just wrong, they should make a list of MMO subscribers devided in types.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
I wonder how many people, like me, unsubbed and are not playing simply because:
I liked the game, graphics above all, I did -some- flashpoints, not the endgame ones, but I liked the game, the thing that made me quit were the awful engine. (lag with >15 players spamming specials in PVP) ,every planet felt very restricted, poor AI and the many instances/loading screens.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
is EVE so unique, that they dont need subs, and money?
that was, what he was comparing,,the $$value,,not the games
feel free to make it better
and until BW show some numbers, anything is speculation
and the math looks okay to me,,not accurate, but prolly a good estimate
that would mean a 90% drop in 18 months
a number i would expect from scarlet blade,,NOT from a PREMIUM STAR WARS mmo
The OP was making specific references to numbers which are entirely speculation and then interjecting 'safe' into them. That would normally mean speculation based on actual numbers, not verifiable in full (or part).
The status of SWTOR atm is entirely speculation from start to finish. Good or bad.
I couldn't speculate on how many of my guild were still active (last time I logged in a while back) other than the few who were on when I was on. It would be 'safe' to speculate that of the 500 names, 50 were still active....but then gain...I only saw 5 or 6.
Subscription numbers are an indication of the size of a target audience, and how well the MMO targets that audience. It's not solely an indicator of a game's build quality, but it's certainly a factor. A game could pick the right target audience, and have all the right ideas in play, but just do a bad job of building the game and get much lower than expected subscriptions.
But trying to get sub numbers from observation is a waste of time. There's too much information missing, and the results aren't open to interpretation, the results are interpretation. I think it's more honest than the site that shall not be named, but it is certainly not any better a process.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
lol.. people are still doing this? Man, and here I thought the year was 2013.. Those sub comparison threads take me back to 2006-7.. Good ol days of forum PvP..
Your math is wrong. When a planet shows you the number of people in your instance it's only showing you your faction, you can double your numbers.
Basic premise seems OK - just ignore any F2P folks who have bought it and assume any estimate is on the high side.
However to apply concurrence that would mean that all servers had e.g. 30 instances of Makeb all the time. Is this the case?
Also 10% seems very low for somethuing that is "new and shiny". Post launch EA were touting playtimes of 8 hours a day - which was supported by what X-Fire showed back then (which took a while to drop down to 5 hours a day average). Now 8 hours a day - suggesting 33% concurrence maybe - could be to high but 10% is probably on the low side.
Excellent point and very short-sighted of me. Doubling my numbers would put my estimate at 510,000 to 1,020, 000 subscribers. Close to EVE's number of subscribers.
Hat's off to you for recognizing my error.
I still think that's is giving SWTOR more subs then it has, but it still is a useful exercise.
Makeb may very well show what the true subsciber base number is. (Ballpark at any rate.)
I agree, but I was afraid of all the pitchforks that might come my way if I suggested anything higher then 10% concurence rate, even though it is a shiny new expansion. I envisioned people saying that the launch was spilt up over a pre-order head start and everyone else.
I think my estimate is inflated, but it does show that the subscriber base has not grown by leaps and bounds which Bioware has kinda/sort of been alluding to lately.
I still think it's disingenuous of Bioware to claim that SWTOR is the 2nd highest sub-based MMO (which implies over 500k which EVE has) and then when asked directly (by investors) how many subscribers SWTOR has, EA refuses to answer the question and states that sub numbers are unimportant.
Fleets are all the time same populated and based on comments majority of players there are subbed. And it was that way from the first day of Makeb. Add it to your equation please.
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
The error gap in this analysis is of a +/- 100%. you need to re-do this with a lot more data to back up your math.
once you have some solid numbers to go by (any data bank sunch as x-fire can help) you can the start doing some error propagation and it would help you come up with a much much more 'legitimate' estimate.
If i were to do this i would look at play time numbers of the game 20 days post release and then look at the play time numbers now, this will give you a ration of hours played and of # of unique players.
error propagation formula
error^2 = (partial with respect to x)^2(eror in x) + (partial with respect to y)^2(error in y)
x = amount of unique hits (players)
y = play time
There Is Always Hope!
Actually we know for a fact that SWTOR has more subs than Eve because Bioware has said they are second behind WoW in terms of sub numbers. I think between 500k and 1 million is a fair estimate and it was in the range previously provided. The rest of the population is made up of free to play and preferred players. When you add in extra revenue from subs on top of whatever free players are spending on the market I'd say SWTOR is quite healthy. 1 million was one of their target benchmarks and that only included sub money and not additional revenue from the store.