You get what you pay for....if its FREE then its the best free game out!!!! if i decied i want to pay more then i do.......what more do u want? If you like me and simply dont like paying monthly subsribtion the pay for Preffered status and pay Cartel Coins as you go.
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
I don't like considering SWTOR as a f2p game because it was never developed with that in mind. It was developed as a subscription based game and that shows. The only reason they went f2p is to increase revenues through the item shop.
Now, this game is a download of over 20GB. If you're one of those gamers who plays on the test server as well, then it's closer to 45GB. I don't know any f2p game in the market that requires you to download 20GB before you can try it out. Rift is the closest I can think of at about 15GB and you can start playing within minutes/the hour while your download (13+GB) continues in the background. Nobody wants to wait for a 20GB download to try out a game, particularly one with the negative PR SWTOR has had since month 2.
I would say that in all honesty, SWTOR is one of the most fun MMOs you can play for free today. It may even be the most fun. It gives you a great deal of immersion and the f2p content allows you to experience the entire core game with certain limitations (which can be bypassed without paying anything more than in-game currency). The only real tough f2p restriction is player to player trade.
That said, the way SWTOR is currently built promotes player burnout on a spectacular scale. You'll love the game for months, get one or two toons to max level and then enter the gear grind which is possibly the worst of any game in the market today or in the last 15 years. You can work your way through the tiers a few times, but there comes a point when it just becomes more than you can handle. You then rage against the game as strongly as you advocated it, ignore it for a few months and then remember how much fun it was compared to all the other games out in the market today. Which is when you come back.
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
*********************
Some people think trading in the shotgun for the BFG2000 makes the game easier. It just allows you to enter a higher difficulty level.
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
..SNIP..
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
Unless something has changed, which is possible as it has been a long while since I checked, add in ridiculous f2p restrictions.
Again, the only real restriction is trade. Everything else can be bypassed. You want more than one crew skill? Unlocks sell on the GTN (player vending). You want to equip artifact gear? Unlocks for account and character sell on GTN. You have currency flowing into escrow because you hit the credit cap? Buy an escrow transfer from GTN. You want subscriber level access to PvP, space combat, raids and dungeons? Get a weekly pass on the GTN. You want to unlock species and play with races beyond what is offered on f2p? Get the unlock via the GTN. Want access to a guild bank or storage vault? Guess what? Unlocks available on the GTN.
All of these unlocks are there for f2p and preferred status players. They are also guaranteed sales, so subscribers tend to mostly use their complementary cartel coins to buy these items and generate some extra income or help guildies/friends out. Since these items are meant for f2p and preferred status players, they are not priced beyond the means of such players. Making money (just from quests and PvE content) is so easy in this game that it is easy for any f2p player to get all unlocks before hitting 50 (level cap for the core game).
The only things you don't get as f2p are:
The ability to trade with other players.
Access to expansion content (which includes the increased level cap). Till very recently, even subscribers had to pay for that one.
Everything else is just negative hype and whining. I've known a lot of players who raided and enjoyed all the game had to offer for months before going subscriber. The only reason most of them told me they were subing was because their time investment in the game justified it and because they wanted to have more alts/easier levelling. Heck, subscribers are dropping subscription to go preferred because it's so easy to enjoy all the content without paying subscription.
In terms of actual levelling, the levelling pace, needing to buy the sprint skill, paying for tree resets or waiting till level 25 for your mount (the things f2p players like whining about) were things subs had to deal with at launch. The only difference is that f2p don't get rested experience (which fills so slowly that even back at launch few subs bothered with it).
I have enough friends who started out as f2p, have brought in friends at f2p and seen enough great players start of as f2p (some of whom still haven't paid anything towards the game) to know that the whining about f2p restrictions is hyped out of context. It may have been true 12-13 months ago, but it stopped being the case close to 10 months ago.
*********************
Some people think trading in the shotgun for the BFG2000 makes the game easier. It just allows you to enter a higher difficulty level.
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
I don't like considering SWTOR as a f2p game because it was never developed with that in mind. It was developed as a subscription based game and that shows. The only reason they went f2p is to increase revenues through the item shop.
Now, this game is a download of over 20GB. If you're one of those gamers who plays on the test server as well, then it's closer to 45GB. I don't know any f2p game in the market that requires you to download 20GB before you can try it out. Rift is the closest I can think of at about 15GB and you can start playing within minutes/the hour while your download (13+GB) continues in the background. Nobody wants to wait for a 20GB download to try out a game, particularly one with the negative PR SWTOR has had since month 2.
I would say that in all honesty, SWTOR is one of the most fun MMOs you can play for free today. It may even be the most fun. It gives you a great deal of immersion and the f2p content allows you to experience the entire core game with certain limitations (which can be bypassed without paying anything more than in-game currency). The only real tough f2p restriction is player to player trade.
That said, the way SWTOR is currently built promotes player burnout on a spectacular scale. You'll love the game for months, get one or two toons to max level and then enter the gear grind which is possibly the worst of any game in the market today or in the last 15 years. You can work your way through the tiers a few times, but there comes a point when it just becomes more than you can handle. You then rage against the game as strongly as you advocated it, ignore it for a few months and then remember how much fun it was compared to all the other games out in the market today. Which is when you come back.
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
aion has around 6 mio accounts
around 3 times swtor accounts
so, the numbers say no
your opinion might differ, but thats purely subjective
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
Well you can't compare all free games there buddy . You need to compare similar games . Those games include ones like Age of Conan, lotro, Tera, STO, Rift, and Vanguard. When you compare it to those similar games then yes Swtor has more players. Swtor gained 1.7 million new accounts when they went f2p please show me a link of one the games that I listed added that many when they went f2p. I know you don't like to post links to back up any of your assumptions so we will just take your assumptions as what they are and that's purely baseless assumptions
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
*SNIP*
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
aion has around 6 mio accounts
around 3 times swtor accounts
so, the numbers say no
your opinion might differ, but thats purely subjective
Sorry to burst your SWTOR hating bubble here Mr. Simplius but SWTOR has 10 million accounts and over 1 million play every month , so yeah who's laughing now and I don't care what percentage of them spend , who the hell cares , it has a lot of followers and soon to be more with GS , have a great day .
I repeat SWTOR has 10 Million accounts and over 1 Million play every month.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing. "SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13 The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
*SNIP*
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
aion has around 6 mio accounts
around 3 times swtor accounts
so, the numbers say no
your opinion might differ, but thats purely subjective
Sorry to burst your SWTOR hating bubble here Mr. Simplius but SWTOR has 10 million accounts and over 1 million play every month , so yeah who's laughing now and I don't care what percentage of them spend , who the hell cares , it has a lot of followers and soon to be more with GS , have a great day .
I repeat SWTOR has 10 Million accounts and over 1 Million play every month.
"over 10 million play occasionally, while over 1 million play per month".
I don't think Eric Musco is talking about accounts. Simply doesn't fit with the other things that EA have said.
Bioware announced 2M new accounts since F2P in April; EA announced 1.7M F"P + 500k subscribers in May; numbers that included the re-launch hype and all the hype that surrounded Makeb.
For Eric to be talking about accounts EA would have to have signed up 7.8M in the 5 or 6 months since May. With no publicity and no hype.
And 1M active players per day on just 17 servers. An average population of 33k per day - more on some servers, at least double or triple that. I know they said they tweaked the servers to add capacity shortly after launch but if each server today can handle 70k or 100k loads then no way did they need 240 servers post launch. Again it simply doesn't fit.
Eric cannot be talking about accounts.
I think the numbers Eric gave out were based on "Daily Active User" (DAU) numbers. This is a metric that is actively tracked - especially in F2P games; essentially it is the number of (usually unique) sign ins each day.
If he is using DAUs then the 10M number and the 1M number will relate to each other. Which they do. Assuming the game had 1M at launch then 1M x number of months since F2P launched would be 11M. Close enough.
And the 1M per month number would mean about 33k average sign-ins per day. An average of about 2k on each of the 17 servers per day. An OK number for server capacity. More on some days of the week, more on some servers, sometimes the servers are down so the actual number will be higher, Eric said 1M so could be higher etc. The key is that the number is reasonable. 200 would be silly, 20k would be silly.
So it is possible that Eric could be using DAU. Arguably in a highly misleading way. It would be very, very interesting if an analyst asked the question in EA's next formal results session!
It's 10 million since the start , not since F2P , otherwise the lag on the fleet would be humongous ( that was a joke ).
Yay chat bubble gimme gimme , hi ignore me , yeah they have added a bit of story , over recent times , cz-198 and oricon , but yeah long term I'm hopeful. The chat bubbles are closer btw Ignore me , they said but yeah not sure when though and they said something more exciting than chat bubbles is on the way first :O.
Okay you got me I have most of the 10 million accounts , it gets very tiring logging in and out every month to get the amount of player up to and beyond 1 million per month I tell ye.
Seriously though some of the 10 million have obviously not played recently , if they did all in the same month the servers would explode literally , not enough space for them. Let's see what happens on the 3rd of December when GS releases , then in Jan and Feb .
Anyway a free Star Wars game would obviously attract a few million players to at least try it. Would be stupid of a fan not too , even if they think it stinks of poodoo after trying it .
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing. "SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13 The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
Originally posted by ignore_me With 10 million accounts shouldn't they be able to fix the engine? Maybe make some new story content? Chat bubbles?
not if those accounts are dead
of if theyre made by the same persons
but these are pretty important numbers
now , we know that approx. 7 mio players tried the game , since F2P
and those 7 mio transformed into roughly 500k players
Don't you mean just over 1 million players per month that the rough estimate of 7 million turned into ? Or you talking subbs from a few months old information of 500 k ? Still that makes it about 600k F2P or preferred players play every month too , not too shabby that either. At least we all now know that the game is alive and kicking let's see what happens in a few weeks time , it's only a pvp expansion but is quite involved by what iv'e read.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing. "SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13 The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
The 1.7M for SWTOR included people who were on their 30-day included. JR, EA CEO at the time, said that "just about half og the 1.7M were recurring subscribers". So the apples to apples comparison with SWG is c.850k for SWTOR to SWGs 500k.
As for the lowest sub number well if you factor in that EA have reported a 25% drop in subs since F2P then strictly the lowest reported number is 375k. Subs were clearly below 500k last November but going only off the reported number and its 375k! So 375k vs. 300k!
Were SWG wins however is lower development costs, lower IP cost (it was pre-WoW) ad it had a core subscriber base for a long time.
No way will there be a SWG 2 however imo. Or any other SW mmo for that matter unless SoE announce that it is making a fortune from Clone Wars.
SW Battlegrounds is the future for EA and whilst Disney could make a game if they wished (they retained the rights to do so when they did the IP deal with EA) I just can't see them being interested.
The 1.7M for SWTOR included people who were on their 30-day included. JR, EA CEO at the time, said that "just about half og the 1.7M were recurring subscribers". So the apples to apples comparison with SWG is c.850k for SWTOR to SWGs 500k.
As for the lowest sub number well if you factor in that EA have reported a 25% drop in subs since F2P then strictly the lowest reported number is 375k. Subs were clearly below 500k last November but going only off the reported number and its 375k! So 375k vs. 300k!
Were SWG wins however is lower development costs, lower IP cost (it was pre-WoW) ad it had a core subscriber base for a long time.
No way will there be a SWG 2 however imo. Or any other SW mmo for that matter unless SoE announce that it is making a fortune from Clone Wars.
SW Battlegrounds is the future for EA and whilst Disney could make a game if they wished (they retained the rights to do so when they did the IP deal with EA) I just can't see them being interested.
nope 1.7 mill was after the first month
they sold 2.2 million copies the first month. 1.7 million was the number of accounts in Feburary 1 month later.
EA CEO never said that but good try
SWG never had 500k either
You are also wrong about the 25% drop in subs as well.
You seem to get pieces of information and then you make up the rest of it.
You are also wrong about the lower IP costs. SWG came out during the prequels which means the IP would be much much more expensive. In fact it was in development before the Phantom Meance was released so the IP would have been at an all time high for it.
It's 10 million since the start , not since F2P , otherwise the lag on the fleet would be humongous ( that was a joke ).
Yay chat bubble gimme gimme , hi ignore me , yeah they have added a bit of story , over recent times , cz-198 and oricon , but yeah long term I'm hopeful. The chat bubbles are closer btw Ignore me , they said but yeah not sure when though and they said something more exciting than chat bubbles is on the way first :O.
Okay you got me I have most of the 10 million accounts , it gets very tiring logging in and out every month to get the amount of player up to and beyond 1 million per month I tell ye.
Seriously though some of the 10 million have obviously not played recently , if they did all in the same month the servers would explode literally , not enough space for them. Let's see what happens on the 3rd of December when GS releases , then in Jan and Feb .
Anyway a free Star Wars game would obviously attract a few million players to at least try it. Would be stupid of a fan not too , even if they think it stinks of poodoo after trying it .
Cheers,
BadOrb.
The lag wouldn't be a problem. 2k average per server is 34k per day, 1M a month and 11M since the start of F2P.
Could the 10M be from the start? Well they announced 2.4M sales in May 2012 and 2M new accounts post F2P in April 2013. And for sure more boxes were probably sold and more people will have signed up but that still leaves a 5M odd shortfall. The only things not accounted for are beta accounts and the free trials they gave out last year. Tens of millions of weekend trials and the play for free to level 15 or whatever - there were multiple trials.
Would Eric use free trial registrations? Daily average users is a know metric but free trial numbers are usually off limit.
As for the 1M I just can't see it being active accounts. I say active because EA have reported 2M new accounts along with the 2.2M number they gave out in May (1.7M+500k). 1M active accounts across 17 servers ... that's 60k per server. Now that would be humongous lag.
What puzzles me most though is why Eric bothered. Trying to suggest that the game has uber numbers just creates unrealistic expectations when all people really wanted was an idea of what was planned in the future. And if they think of SWTOR like an mmo of old (EQ, UO, AC, DAoC and yes even SWG) then they will only expect small periodic updates. Maybe he is trying to bolster his resume.
The 1.7M for SWTOR included people who were on their 30-day included. JR, EA CEO at the time, said that "just about half og the 1.7M were recurring subscribers". So the apples to apples comparison with SWG is c.850k for SWTOR to SWGs 500k.
As for the lowest sub number well if you factor in that EA have reported a 25% drop in subs since F2P then strictly the lowest reported number is 375k. Subs were clearly below 500k last November but going only off the reported number and its 375k! So 375k vs. 300k!
Were SWG wins however is lower development costs, lower IP cost (it was pre-WoW) ad it had a core subscriber base for a long time.
No way will there be a SWG 2 however imo. Or any other SW mmo for that matter unless SoE announce that it is making a fortune from Clone Wars.
SW Battlegrounds is the future for EA and whilst Disney could make a game if they wished (they retained the rights to do so when they did the IP deal with EA) I just can't see them being interested.
nope 1.7 mill was after the first month
they sold 2.2 million copies the first month. 1.7 million was the number of accounts in Feburary 1 month later.
EA CEO never said that but good try
SWG never had 500k either
You are also wrong about the 25% drop in subs as well.
You seem to get pieces of information and then you make up the rest of it.
You are also wrong about the lower IP costs. SWG came out during the prequels which means the IP would be much much more expensive. In fact it was in development before the Phantom Meance was released so the IP would have been at an all time high for it.
since you have the the concrete numbers:
how much did sony pay for the IP? and how much did EA pay?
they sold 2.2 million copies the first month. 1.7 million was the number of accounts in Feburary 1 month later.
EA CEO never said that but good try
SWG never had 500k either
You are also wrong about the 25% drop in subs as well.
You seem to get pieces of information and then you make up the rest of it.
You are also wrong about the lower IP costs. SWG came out during the prequels which means the IP would be much much more expensive. In fact it was in development before the Phantom Meance was released so the IP would have been at an all time high for it.
This is old stuff. All the information is on the EA Investor website - look under past events.
With their Feb'2012 results EA did indeed announce 1.7M "subscribers"; this was over 2 months after the launch of SWTOR by the way not after the one month.
In March 2012 however, at the Wedbush Technology Media and Telecomunications Conference, JR said:
"Star Wars this is an area that I think has got a lot of peopleanxious. I've heard from investors today that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have misunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about - just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers".
Hence c. 850k.
The 500k number for SWG subs was what the poster I responded to used. Not my number and absolutely don't want to debate SWG numbers!
On to the 25% drop.
EA investor homepage, Jul 23rd 2013 results transcript, page 9, Blake Jorgensen, EA CFO, said:
"In addition, as you know, we started a free-to-play Star Wars business and part of that is showing up in extra content. So you are seeing the subscription business down 25%. That's a reduction, some of the people moving away from Star Wars subscriptions and playing the free-to-play, which is helping drive the extra content side of the business."
So a 25% drop.
SW was indeed more popular at the time (in the west certainly). However expectations for an mmo were much more limited. And that will have limited what SoE would have been prepared to pay for the IP. Even with 500k subs for a full year that would only have brought in $90M. So SWG's IP cost will have been "low". Post WoW the dynamic changed. People know how much money can be made from an mmo. So based on my experience my opinion is that SWG will have had a lower IP cost than SWTOR. And if it didn't that simply means that SWTORs development costs were even higher - as EA said how many subs they needed to "make a profit but nothing to write home about".
Saddest thing is there are still people out there (here) blaming players and community.
No the saddest thing is watching people 2 years later STILL going on and on in multiple threads saying I told you so! I told you so!!
It is sad to see this much hate for this long over a video game. I don't like WOW but you don't see me littering their forums with how bad it is and how it should have been made into something else. It's just a game. Get a life people.
The only good one ( SWG ) was shut down after they screwed their customers over and screwed up the game.
There will never be a good SW MMO.
Let it rest in peace.
^ this
where is swg 2 disney
SWG 2??? really?
Ok SWG peaked at around 350k subscriptions and fell below 50k subscriptions.Possibly closer to 500k at peak, but more like 5k at lowest.
SWTOR peaked at 1.7 million subscriptions and had its lowest point at around 500k subscrpitions probably a little less but still in that area. EA was counting those on their free month in that number. According to bioware swtor was 'on its way' to a mil so 750k)give or take) at bes. They also said they needed a min of 300k to break even so it would need to be well below that to go f2p the way it did so 200k(give or take) pre f2p(and dropping).
So SWTORs lowest point is still higher then SWG highest point. Due to timeframe and budgets this is irrelevant information and is quite likely that swg turned more of a profit than swtor has at this point
Why would Disney or any developer ever even consider making SWG 2.0? Because, if handled properly it would turn a reasonable, if not good profit. Unfortunately the 'suits' still seem to think money=world of warcraft only even if it never does.
The OP asked how many people are playing the game.
People that don't play the game, in fact people that HATE the game are commenting and bashing the "fanbois". No one (outside of EA) knows what sub numbers are. Any numbers posted by someone here are just guesses, any links to other sites are just speculation. The only people who can give you any sort of idea of the population are the people playing it. That is why it cracks me up when people that don't play want to tell the OP how unhealthy the games population is.
I sub to this game, I have fun playing it. I'm a bit of an altoholic. I play on 5 characters on 2 different servers. That being said, I never feel alone in the game, and I almost never have a problem finding groups for heroics or flashpoints. Also, I generally never play during peak time.. I'm not sure anything else matters. Make of that what you will OP.
This thread asking a simple question has somehow devolved into an all out attack on the game itself, its F2P model, and its playerbase. Aren't there plenty of other threads for that?
i recently re-subbed and there is still lots of people on the server and my server is known as a low population server (the bastion)
last night in taris when i was playing there were over 70 people in the zone on republic side (the less populated faction on that server i believe)
seems lots of people still play and enjoy this game, whether its free to play or subs.
Yeah on the Ebon Hawk last night there where 3 instances of the fleet and I haven't seen that for a few months , I guess people are preparing for GS.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing. "SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13 The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
Comments
You get what you pay for....if its FREE then its the best free game out!!!! if i decied i want to pay more then i do.......what more do u want? If you like me and simply dont like paying monthly subsribtion the pay for Preffered status and pay Cartel Coins as you go.
Offical website: www.TheLostTribeSWTOR.enjin.com
if it was the best FREE game, then it would also have most players in that category
but theyre still very far from that..about 4 mio short
even with F2P, they didnt get more players, than they had at launch
I don't like considering SWTOR as a f2p game because it was never developed with that in mind. It was developed as a subscription based game and that shows. The only reason they went f2p is to increase revenues through the item shop.
Now, this game is a download of over 20GB. If you're one of those gamers who plays on the test server as well, then it's closer to 45GB. I don't know any f2p game in the market that requires you to download 20GB before you can try it out. Rift is the closest I can think of at about 15GB and you can start playing within minutes/the hour while your download (13+GB) continues in the background. Nobody wants to wait for a 20GB download to try out a game, particularly one with the negative PR SWTOR has had since month 2.
I would say that in all honesty, SWTOR is one of the most fun MMOs you can play for free today. It may even be the most fun. It gives you a great deal of immersion and the f2p content allows you to experience the entire core game with certain limitations (which can be bypassed without paying anything more than in-game currency). The only real tough f2p restriction is player to player trade.
That said, the way SWTOR is currently built promotes player burnout on a spectacular scale. You'll love the game for months, get one or two toons to max level and then enter the gear grind which is possibly the worst of any game in the market today or in the last 15 years. You can work your way through the tiers a few times, but there comes a point when it just becomes more than you can handle. You then rage against the game as strongly as you advocated it, ignore it for a few months and then remember how much fun it was compared to all the other games out in the market today. Which is when you come back.
tl;dr: SWTOR may not be the best game out there but it is the most fun game that can be enjoyed for free .... if you can put up with a 20+GB download.
*********************
Some people think trading in the shotgun for the BFG2000 makes the game easier. It just allows you to enter a higher difficulty level.
Unless something has changed, which is possible as it has been a long while since I checked, add in ridiculous f2p restrictions.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Again, the only real restriction is trade. Everything else can be bypassed. You want more than one crew skill? Unlocks sell on the GTN (player vending). You want to equip artifact gear? Unlocks for account and character sell on GTN. You have currency flowing into escrow because you hit the credit cap? Buy an escrow transfer from GTN. You want subscriber level access to PvP, space combat, raids and dungeons? Get a weekly pass on the GTN. You want to unlock species and play with races beyond what is offered on f2p? Get the unlock via the GTN. Want access to a guild bank or storage vault? Guess what? Unlocks available on the GTN.
All of these unlocks are there for f2p and preferred status players. They are also guaranteed sales, so subscribers tend to mostly use their complementary cartel coins to buy these items and generate some extra income or help guildies/friends out. Since these items are meant for f2p and preferred status players, they are not priced beyond the means of such players. Making money (just from quests and PvE content) is so easy in this game that it is easy for any f2p player to get all unlocks before hitting 50 (level cap for the core game).
The only things you don't get as f2p are:
*********************
Some people think trading in the shotgun for the BFG2000 makes the game easier. It just allows you to enter a higher difficulty level.
aion has around 6 mio accounts
around 3 times swtor accounts
so, the numbers say no
your opinion might differ, but thats purely subjective
Well you can't compare all free games there buddy . You need to compare similar games . Those games include ones like Age of Conan, lotro, Tera, STO, Rift, and Vanguard. When you compare it to those similar games then yes Swtor has more players. Swtor gained 1.7 million new accounts when they went f2p please show me a link of one the games that I listed added that many when they went f2p. I know you don't like to post links to back up any of your assumptions so we will just take your assumptions as what they are and that's purely baseless assumptions
Sorry to burst your SWTOR hating bubble here Mr. Simplius but SWTOR has 10 million accounts and over 1 million play every month , so yeah who's laughing now and I don't care what percentage of them spend , who the hell cares , it has a lot of followers and soon to be more with GS , have a great day
.
I repeat SWTOR has 10 Million accounts and over 1 Million play every month.
Eat this ( from Aliens ).
Biggest sci-fi MMO evar!
Lol almost forgot the links - http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1396514-SWTOR-has-10million-Casual-Players?p=23611028 and http://dulfy.net/2013/11/14/swtor-ea-cantina-tour-thumbdrive-asset-files/
Cheers and beers ,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing.
"SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13
The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
10 mio players would make it bigger than wow, even if they dont pay
do you think , they would let that happen, without a big press release, or something?
wouldnt the investors like to know stuff, like this?
10 mio accounts , maybe, but nowhere near 10 mio players
i know, aion prolly dont have 6 mio players either
but they didnt buy an expensive name tag for their product
and keeping 1 of 10 players in a star wars F2P mmo isnt exactly a breathtaking performance
swtor, the game , that 1 of 10 freebies prefer
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
not if those accounts are dead
of if theyre made by the same persons
but these are pretty important numbers
now , we know that approx. 7 mio players tried the game , since F2P
and those 7 mio transformed into roughly 500k players
"over 10 million play occasionally, while over 1 million play per month".
I don't think Eric Musco is talking about accounts. Simply doesn't fit with the other things that EA have said.
Bioware announced 2M new accounts since F2P in April; EA announced 1.7M F"P + 500k subscribers in May; numbers that included the re-launch hype and all the hype that surrounded Makeb.
For Eric to be talking about accounts EA would have to have signed up 7.8M in the 5 or 6 months since May. With no publicity and no hype.
And 1M active players per day on just 17 servers. An average population of 33k per day - more on some servers, at least double or triple that. I know they said they tweaked the servers to add capacity shortly after launch but if each server today can handle 70k or 100k loads then no way did they need 240 servers post launch. Again it simply doesn't fit.
Eric cannot be talking about accounts.
I think the numbers Eric gave out were based on "Daily Active User" (DAU) numbers. This is a metric that is actively tracked - especially in F2P games; essentially it is the number of (usually unique) sign ins each day.
If he is using DAUs then the 10M number and the 1M number will relate to each other. Which they do. Assuming the game had 1M at launch then 1M x number of months since F2P launched would be 11M. Close enough.
And the 1M per month number would mean about 33k average sign-ins per day. An average of about 2k on each of the 17 servers per day. An OK number for server capacity. More on some days of the week, more on some servers, sometimes the servers are down so the actual number will be higher, Eric said 1M so could be higher etc. The key is that the number is reasonable. 200 would be silly, 20k would be silly.
So it is possible that Eric could be using DAU. Arguably in a highly misleading way. It would be very, very interesting if an analyst asked the question in EA's next formal results session!
It's 10 million since the start , not since F2P , otherwise the lag on the fleet would be humongous ( that was a joke ).
Yay chat bubble gimme gimme , hi ignore me
, yeah they have added a bit of story , over recent times , cz-198 and oricon , but yeah long term I'm hopeful. The chat bubbles are closer btw Ignore me , they said but yeah not sure when though and they said something more exciting than chat bubbles is on the way first :O.
Okay you got me I have most of the 10 million accounts , it gets very tiring logging in and out every month to get the amount of player up to and beyond 1 million per month I tell ye.
Seriously though some of the 10 million have obviously not played recently , if they did all in the same month the servers would explode literally , not enough space for them. Let's see what happens on the 3rd of December when GS releases , then in Jan and Feb
.
Anyway a free Star Wars game would obviously attract a few million players to at least try it. Would be stupid of a fan not too , even if they think it stinks of poodoo after trying it
.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing.
"SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13
The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
Don't you mean just over 1 million players per month that the rough estimate of 7 million turned into ? Or you talking subbs from a few months old information of 500 k ? Still that makes it about 600k F2P or preferred players play every month too , not too shabby that either. At least we all now know that the game is alive and kicking let's see what happens in a few weeks time , it's only a pvp expansion but is quite involved by what iv'e read.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing.
"SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13
The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]
SWG 2??? really?
Ok SWG peaked at around 350k subscriptions and fell below 50k subscriptions.
SWTOR peaked at 1.7 million subscriptions and had its lowest point at around 500k subscrpitions probably a little less but still in that area.
So SWTORs lowest point is still higher then SWG highest point.
Why would Disney or any developer ever even consider making SWG 2.0?
Not a fair comparison with SWG actually.
The 1.7M for SWTOR included people who were on their 30-day included. JR, EA CEO at the time, said that "just about half og the 1.7M were recurring subscribers". So the apples to apples comparison with SWG is c.850k for SWTOR to SWGs 500k.
As for the lowest sub number well if you factor in that EA have reported a 25% drop in subs since F2P then strictly the lowest reported number is 375k. Subs were clearly below 500k last November but going only off the reported number and its 375k! So 375k vs. 300k!
Were SWG wins however is lower development costs, lower IP cost (it was pre-WoW) ad it had a core subscriber base for a long time.
No way will there be a SWG 2 however imo. Or any other SW mmo for that matter unless SoE announce that it is making a fortune from Clone Wars.
SW Battlegrounds is the future for EA and whilst Disney could make a game if they wished (they retained the rights to do so when they did the IP deal with EA) I just can't see them being interested.
nope 1.7 mill was after the first month
they sold 2.2 million copies the first month. 1.7 million was the number of accounts in Feburary 1 month later.
EA CEO never said that but good try
SWG never had 500k either
You are also wrong about the 25% drop in subs as well.
You seem to get pieces of information and then you make up the rest of it.
You are also wrong about the lower IP costs. SWG came out during the prequels which means the IP would be much much more expensive. In fact it was in development before the Phantom Meance was released so the IP would have been at an all time high for it.
The lag wouldn't be a problem. 2k average per server is 34k per day, 1M a month and 11M since the start of F2P.
Could the 10M be from the start? Well they announced 2.4M sales in May 2012 and 2M new accounts post F2P in April 2013. And for sure more boxes were probably sold and more people will have signed up but that still leaves a 5M odd shortfall. The only things not accounted for are beta accounts and the free trials they gave out last year. Tens of millions of weekend trials and the play for free to level 15 or whatever - there were multiple trials.
Would Eric use free trial registrations? Daily average users is a know metric but free trial numbers are usually off limit.
As for the 1M I just can't see it being active accounts. I say active because EA have reported 2M new accounts along with the 2.2M number they gave out in May (1.7M+500k). 1M active accounts across 17 servers ... that's 60k per server. Now that would be humongous lag.
What puzzles me most though is why Eric bothered. Trying to suggest that the game has uber numbers just creates unrealistic expectations when all people really wanted was an idea of what was planned in the future. And if they think of SWTOR like an mmo of old (EQ, UO, AC, DAoC and yes even SWG) then they will only expect small periodic updates. Maybe he is trying to bolster his resume.
since you have the the concrete numbers:
how much did sony pay for the IP? and how much did EA pay?
a lot of us would really like to know
This is old stuff. All the information is on the EA Investor website - look under past events.
With their Feb'2012 results EA did indeed announce 1.7M "subscribers"; this was over 2 months after the launch of SWTOR by the way not after the one month.
In March 2012 however, at the Wedbush Technology Media and Telecomunications Conference, JR said:
"Star Wars this is an area that I think has got a lot of peopleanxious. I've heard from investors today that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have misunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about - just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers".
Hence c. 850k.
The 500k number for SWG subs was what the poster I responded to used. Not my number and absolutely don't want to debate SWG numbers!
On to the 25% drop.
EA investor homepage, Jul 23rd 2013 results transcript, page 9, Blake Jorgensen, EA CFO, said:
"In addition, as you know, we started a free-to-play Star Wars business and part of that is showing up in extra content. So you are seeing the subscription business down 25%. That's a reduction, some of the people moving away from Star Wars subscriptions and playing the free-to-play, which is helping drive the extra content side of the business."
So a 25% drop.
SW was indeed more popular at the time (in the west certainly). However expectations for an mmo were much more limited. And that will have limited what SoE would have been prepared to pay for the IP. Even with 500k subs for a full year that would only have brought in $90M. So SWG's IP cost will have been "low". Post WoW the dynamic changed. People know how much money can be made from an mmo. So based on my experience my opinion is that SWG will have had a lower IP cost than SWTOR. And if it didn't that simply means that SWTORs development costs were even higher - as EA said how many subs they needed to "make a profit but nothing to write home about".
Please keep things civil
It is sad to see this much hate for this long over a video game. I don't like WOW but you don't see me littering their forums with how bad it is and how it should have been made into something else. It's just a game. Get a life people.Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
This may be the funniest thread I've ever read.
The OP asked how many people are playing the game.
People that don't play the game, in fact people that HATE the game are commenting and bashing the "fanbois". No one (outside of EA) knows what sub numbers are. Any numbers posted by someone here are just guesses, any links to other sites are just speculation. The only people who can give you any sort of idea of the population are the people playing it. That is why it cracks me up when people that don't play want to tell the OP how unhealthy the games population is.
I sub to this game, I have fun playing it. I'm a bit of an altoholic. I play on 5 characters on 2 different servers. That being said, I never feel alone in the game, and I almost never have a problem finding groups for heroics or flashpoints. Also, I generally never play during peak time.. I'm not sure anything else matters. Make of that what you will OP.
This thread asking a simple question has somehow devolved into an all out attack on the game itself, its F2P model, and its playerbase. Aren't there plenty of other threads for that?
i recently re-subbed and there is still lots of people on the server and my server is known as a low population server (the bastion)
last night in taris when i was playing there were over 70 people in the zone on republic side (the less populated faction on that server i believe)
seems lots of people still play and enjoy this game, whether its free to play or subs.
Yeah on the Ebon Hawk last night there where 3 instances of the fleet and I haven't seen that for a few months , I guess people are preparing for GS.
Cheers,
BadOrb.
PSO 4 years , EQOA 4 months , PSU 7 years , SWTOR launch ongoing , PSO2 SEA launch ongoing , Destiny 360 launch ongoing.
"SWG was not fun. Let it go buddy." quote from iiNoSkillzii 10/18/13
The original propoganda pixie dust villain :[]