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How long after Swtor's release was it known that its population was going to drop off?
GeezerGamer
Member EpicPosts: 8,855
I'm writing this as I wait in a queue to log into FF14.
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I'll clarify:
Did SWTOR's population decline start during the free month?
While I do anticipate some decline in FF14, I don't think (IMO) comparisons to SWTOR in terms of the severe population drop immediately after the free period, are founded. There are so many people still playing every day after a month.
Was that the same case in SWTOR? There is no talk internally of players not planning to drop the game after 10/6. Not in my circles anyway.
To be honest, I'd actually welcome a small decline in the population as it is now.
Probably 1-2 months .. roughly depending on the server.
After 3 months the game was noticeably crippled with the remaining population spread thin over an excess of servers.
I think queue's lasted 2-4 weeks or so, but those stopped also eventually.
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.
It didn't take the companies CFO long to get as far away from that turkey as he could.
Game launched December 2011
CFO jumps ship February 2012. Because he knew he was on the Titanic.
I think SWTOR's population dropped faster than any MMO that I have ever played. But, it seems like that is the norm in all MMO's these days. FFXIV will suffer the same fate IMHO. Subscription games will need to be stellar to sustain itself. I played FFXIV during both beta's and I feel that it's subscription model doesn't have enough to keep people playing it long term.
/2cents
Pretty much. But might be apples to oranges, because the game was released a year too early, had (has) a horrendously unoptimized graphics engine, laggy, buggy, with a lot of angry SWG vets, betrayed SW fans, Blizzard fans playing, etc. Oh and a complaint list the size of a PHD dissertation. Tough call if the scenario is comparable in any way to FFXIV..
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.
Almost all populations drop after the free month. What is typical is that for every 2 players that leave because they get bored, 1 new player replaces them: total population does drop, but not off a cliff, you just see the slow steady decline until the next major content release.
Very very few games see overall increasing numbers after the initial introduction.
I did pick up SWTOR, maybe 2-3 months after the initial launch (February I think). There were still plenty of players around, I don't know how crazy it was in the onset. That being said, by around June/July, the place was mostly a ghost town and the only thing there really was left to do was the story on another class.. but since all of the side quests overlapped, it wasn't much fun for me. I did 2 classes to max level, a couple of classes over halfway, and dropped my sub. I played for around 3-4 months total.
I think, as far as FFXIV goes....
There will be an initial drop - a lot of people the game just isn't for them, which is fine. There was the entire first 2 week debacle, so there were a lot of missed opportunity sales there as well, so the initial population is probably a good deal off from what it could have been. But as far as to how fast and how far it will fall - that really depends on how quickly they can put out content, and how well they can mask the gating of said content.
A lot of players are only going to play 1 oe 2 jobs; they won't bother too much with the horizontal progression, or the DoH/DoL aspect of the game. For them, they are worried right now about getting their Relic+1 (a few already have it), and getting into Coil (a few are already there). 2.1 brings some intermediate content, but Coil remains the pentultimate activity. Not everyone will have cleared it, but more will, and once that's done and farmed, it will be on to the next activity - depending on when S/E can push this out...
I'm not trying to imply that everyone has their Relic+1 or has been through Coil. But it's the players at the top of the heap that keep a lot of the players in the middle of the pack around - chasing all the shiny gear and prestige that those top tier players have.
If content comes out quickly enough, it will drop, but not terribly fast. I could even see a scenario where it stays stead or slightly bumps, given the wrinkles early on suppressed sales and this would be an opportunity to get those potential players back in - but I kinda doubt it will happen unless they really push marketing. Hopefully S/E figures out a way to gate their content a bit better so that players aren't through it while still in the first month of playtime, or can push it out fast enough to keep up with the speed of consumption.
If content can't get pushed out, and 2.1 gets blown through like all this original ARR has been blown through, people will stay just long enough for the next big thing (maybe EQL, maybe ESO, maybe whatever), and then you'll see a huge defection of players as soon as whatever new hits the ground.
After 3 months or so, no less than that. Then it was a ghost town for most of the servers till the merge, the megaserver tech and the ¨an update every 8 weeks announcement¨ with the F2P.
From talking to friends who got sucked in, the drop off started in beta but was not a steady drain. There would be large/small/moderate floods of departures for a time then it would taper. Each individual flood tended to be a subset of one of the demographics either pvpers, pvers casuals hardcore raiders soloers ect. Each subset had differing expectations of the game so what was the "final straw" varied per group, and was hit at differing times. Witch of course, made it a moving target. It became readily apparent externally about 2-3 months post launch.
That spigot, tapering effect is one reason I suspect they were slow addressing or even acknowledging issues(witch acted as an accelerant to the whole thing). My guess is that at least initially when it tapered the first few times, they assumed they had turned a corner or stabilized until it started again with a different group. I don't doubt it felt like plugging a dike with your pinkie at times.
Bing a publicly traded company as well as the shear size of the budget just made this one a whole lot more visable but I don't think it was that unique for a mainstream theme park except in scale. Reading the quarterly investor reports you can also track SWTOR progress by when and in what manner it was referenced.
As far as FF they have a little cushion; the FF franchise is more niche so they will get some shielding, how much I can't even speculate.
This. I was also a member of beta and that TOR was a huge train wreck in the making was known by nearly everyone that participated. All of it's most critical problems were identified before live. Beta testers became frustrated that Bioware didn't seem to give a crap. People gave it a pass for the first few weeks after launch mostly out of respect for the IP I think, but reality sunk in quickly and the rest is history.
FF XIV is relatively niche as far as AAA MMO's go, but then so was XXI. My guess, initial drop off like all MMO's, with stabilization and many years of solid income, expansions, and a loyal core playerbase.
ARR won't be a smash, but it will be a long term success story.
My $0.02 at least.
There were queues on servers after the free month. In fact, there wasn't a noticeable drop off in population for 2-3 months after it launched.
But to answer your question, it was known immediately after release that the population would drop at some point. It is also known that the same will happen to FF XIV. We know this in the same way that we know water is wet. It's kinda what happens in MMOs.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
This is pretty much the truth. I knew from beta it was doomed. The devs didn't listen to a think we said. Didn't fix half the bugs we reported.
I had pre-ordered the game, after 6 months of beta, I canceled the pre-order and never looked back.
Smart people in the beta knew that the voiced over personal storyline and then...void approach wouldn't work out well for a sub based game ( Didn't keep FunCom from doing essentially the same with The Secret World, look where it got them... )
Population was healthy enough for a couple months in though, even considering their tiny tiny servers back then you'd still see plenty of people around. It wasn't before spring 2012, i.e. 3-4 months after release, when it became appearant that BioWare couldn't deliver any meaningful updates in a reasonable timeframe, that people left in droves.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
The bottom started to fall out a month before SWTOR's launch. As more people got to play the beta, the bad news was spreading fast.
The opposite sort of happened with FFXIV. It flew under the radar because of the botched 1.0 and EQNext was all the rage at E3. Then as more people got into the beta weekends, more pre-orders were happening and word of mouth got around that it had really turned around.
its nothing to claim DOOM about.. it happens to ALL mmos.
trying to stir up discord and viral prophetic DOOM is sad and people should find other things to do... like drown kittens or punch trees.
Unless it's Colorado then the trees drowned and the kittens floated away.
ok that was prob in bad taste, sorry in advance.
If swtor had released with fewer servers instead of doubling their servers just before real launch the perception of the population drop wouldn't have been noticed until much later.. The new servers had population problems almost from the start while it took 1-3 months until you could noticed the drop in population on the high pop servers.
yea this quandary is almost universal in mmo launches now. too few servers queues get too long and people walk away. pony up for the hardware and risk pop imbalance after launch retraction. Less of an issue ,but still an issue with mmos that don't shard.