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And by no means am I defending Swtor or saying its the best mmo. I enjoy it as do a lot of players. This was actually my last month in tor for awhile Helms Deep and Xbox one around the corner. My point in posting here was in a yr or 2 even 3 when I go back to play Tor it will be there and all the math majors with crazy calculations and predictions won't change that.
It's sad to watch, but every single failed mmo goes through this.
First....
A good company that produced or produces a/many successful games/mmo's Is bought out by (Big Game Company) , a few from the small game company get rich from the buyout.
Millions of dollars from the Big game company is thrown at the newly visioned project, Ego's of those in charge of the once small game companies go through the roof, they're still riding high on the sellout money in their pockets, and egos that tell them they know best, not the opinions of potential customers and word of mouth from (alpha/beta testers). They don't listen to feedback in alpha/betas, just the bum kissing, ego massaging, feedback...anything seen negative is ignored and shutdown during forum feedback.
People in charge are stabbing once friends in the back to stay on top during the years the game is being produced.
Devs that have been hired for the project have to listen to the back stabbing, ego maniacs in charge, and make a game they know is going to turn out bad from poor design, and decisions made throughout the games progress, hey, they just want to keep their job, so they keep their heads down, make the product they're not proud of, to hang onto their jobs a bit longer. Outsourcing only adds to the headaches as there's poor communications between now multiple teams.
(Big Game Company) rushes them to get a product out in any form, even unfinished, released, to make their initial investment back in sales, then rake in as much as possible before word spreads of how bad the product actually is. Meanwhile putting bandaids on huge problems to still to contain how bad the game is and how's its doing. All the while still having the PR train out saying there's no problem, and they're doing great.
Reality sets in for those trying to spin it around, but fans of the previous small company are loyal and not so realistic. They fight and defend the once small company that is no more as loyal fans, that the game is doing wonderful and couldn't be better. You'd think those people had money invested themselves into the game. All the while servers are low populated, they merge, the forums are quiet from no word on when fixes will come, they're ignored and forgotten. Fans still tout the box sales as means to try and defend the game as still successful.
People lose their jobs as the slimdowns start.. to get the cost down to a minimum to put the game on life support, sucking out the last bit of money possible for a few years until it's no longer even barely profitable to keep the very few servers running.
The game shuts down.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
The numbers being quoted were officlally released by Bioware a few months back. I know....an MMO maker actually announcing subscription numbers is hard to grasp.
MMOData shows swtor at 1.2 million subs, behind only WoW and Runescape.
MMOData also shows Warhammer Online peaking higher than Age of Conan.
Are you you sure that you still want to keep quoting that site as "fact"?
Edgar F Greenwood
BS no one had used the Hero Engine before how could you "know" it was going to be crappy.
doubt all you want it won't make you right.
Oh wow really? people still do the whole tortanic thing? Even after its very clear its one of the most succesful post WoW MMOS? I thought you people died off over a year ago. I mean what do you have left? The game is adding content every 6 to 8 weeks has some major additions still coming and yet here you still are saying its a sinking ship.
If it was really sinking EA would have pulled a Warhammer and put this in maitence mode 6 months after launch. Instead the game is going on strong. Hell even if you want to claim its behind EVE thats still insanely good.
actually no what you are doing isn't critical assesment. It would be hyperbole. See for it to be a critical assesment you actually have to look at the avilable information which you seem to avoid doing.
If you really don't see the difference between WARHAMMER and this then I feel sorry for you.
WARHAMMER just after 6 months after launch was put into maintence mode. They got reduced to only adding seasonal events. The staff was stripped away either fired or moved to other studios.
SWTOR however (Which EA has said is one of the top earning games) has continued to add new content every 6 to 8 months and we are talking about MAJOR additions to content not seasonal events.
SWTOR has also been hiring new staff which is a sign of growth.
How many other MMOs can you name that add new meanigful content every 6 to 8 weeks?
Next year i imgane we will still be having this conversation as SWTOR continues to release more content, and the year after that and the year after that. One day though maybe 5 to 8 years from now you people will be right and SWTOR will shut down. Then you can claim "I told you so" after SWTOR has been around for 7 to 10 years that is.
Really? Are you willfully ignoring that Swtor had 1.7 millions subscriptions after the " initial free month" expired? This isnt speculation, its officially released numbers, you know...something FFXIV (or every single other MMO except WoW and EVE) havent realeased lol
SWTOR is already in maintenance mode. The content that they have been dishing out up until now has all been done before (or around launch when things were thriving before F2P), with the space PVP content being the last of it. Any content after the space update will be new. If the game did not lose 1.5 mill subs within the first 6 months and then go F2P, the game would have become so much more, with many more story based content, plus would have gotten a proper expansion instead of a free update they then called an expansion and charged people for, but the lack of subs has meant the game does not have the funding to create the intended content which would have kept people playing.
Many people have lost their jobs and even the Doctors left the business. The only people I have seen where EA have hired new people are cheap / free testers.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
really?? You think that Star Fighter was finished 2 years ago?
Nope not ignoring that, in fact you proved a lot of peoples point here, yes SWToR had over 1 mill subs...and now just below 500k.
because its still the second largest western MMO how good is SWG if 100% of the subscribers are gone now?
They shut down the servers, and OH btw a lot of people (I do not have accurate numbers) play the Emulator of Pre-NGE SWG. So you are wrong all over the place.
I do have the numbers. SWG EMU peaked at 2,000 players at one time. Thats less then the people on fleet of SWTOR
They shut down the servers of SWG because the game failed hard.
Yeah after the NGE, which a majority of the player base was against. lol the emu peaked @ 2K, tell me, where did you get this information? Because I know for a fact that is inaccurate.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I didnt realise common knowledge was such a revalation here.
And one of the biggest things many ppl are forgetting, is that "just under 500k" is only subscriptions....the game hase more than double that in F2P population. there are many F2P MMOs on the market that dont even have 500k players, let alone subscriptions. In the whole "which MMOs are doing bad, and which are doing good", id say swtor is doing pretty well for itself. EA lists it every quarter since going f2p as one of its top 3 best performing games....but I guess thats just EA lieng to investors for the last 3 quarters.
I'v never even played the damn game, but im not blind to reality lol.
From the SWG EMU website
Basilisk
Status: Online
Population: 1846
Highest Population: 2081
Maximum Capacity: 3000
Uptime: 3day 15hrs 32min 5sec
Last updated 16sec
Doesn't matter if he thinks it was , it wasn't , only 1 person was working on it on his day off they have also announced recently that they/he stopped work on it for a few months when they were converting the game into a freemium model.
Also CZ-198 and it's 2 FP's are new content , Oricon and it's two OP's are new content. he is just using the same argument for whatever reason I'm not sure.
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 :[]
SWTOR has had 1,7 million subs? Never. Thats CONFIRMED, they said that number included those in first free month
SWTOR has 500k subs? No it doesnt. Last they said was in May "under 500k". Which is 0-499999. ANd they said subs dropped.
SWTOR has double F2P? Really? It has? lol
Announced "accounts" mean something? Nope, not a thing, F2P games get 10ns of millins acounts. In fact only 1,7 million accounts is a bit dissapointing.
SWTOR had surge of F2Pers back when it launched F2P and from that FELL DRASTICALLY. Same as it did after launch. Servers gone from full to constant light/standard with odd server going heavy.
EA NEVER mentioned profit with SWTOR.
Those are FACTS.
And why is that? Because it's STAR WARS...which is why I've just subscribed for the 1st time since launch: I miss Star Wars. The game itself is not awful...it's just not what it could have been.
If game developers would add in at least SOME sandbox elements to modern MMO's it would give them depth. Crafting in SWG meant something and a player could be just a Trader if he/she wanted to. Crafting has become either pointless or just a side distraction in today's MMO's.
The end game has become just a gear grind in most games and it's gotten very old.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
I would imagine it is because of what you commonly see written by bitter SWG vets.
They ruin it for the rest of us who hate SWToR by having similar feelings about it.
This was quality.
Anyway,
I wanted to mention something specifically, and that is that MMOs in general are famous for massaging the numbers.
You can say "well over 500,000 but under a million subscriptions" and as long as you have 500,0001 subscribers at the time of the statement, its not factually incorrect to the point that you would have to worry about the FCC and what not.
Its the same when they say "active accounts" in fact, its one of the reasons so many F2P games limit the amount of characters you can have. They want you to make multiple accounts because it makes the game look more active then it is. SWTOR can say it has 1.7 million accounts created since the F2P conversion, but we dont know anything about them - did they automatically convert all former sub accounts to F2P? I mean, there are tons of ways to be creative with the accounting without actually lying.
And anyway, all this pointless conjecture about how many people are playing SWTOR is exactly that - pointless.
You know how many severs there are, and you know how populated the areas are, and you understand basic math enough to figure out that at 20 servers, 25,000 people per server is what it would require at the bare minimum for subscribers (assuming the 500,000 thousand figure) alone, given that its a long held industry standard that only 5-10% of your paying playerbase is active at any given time.
in reality, they probably have around 350,000 paying subs and another 200,000 F2P players. But again, who cares? As long as whatever number they have keeps throwing around cash on virtual crap they will be fine.
Those are not FACTS those are your ASSUMPTIONS! Facts come with factual evidence to back up a claim. I'll play your game Swtor was one of the digital revenue producers for EA. So you could take that as making money. In their report what game DID they say made a profit? Why are you just making a big stink about them not mentioning Swtor making a profit? When they did not mention any single game making a profit?
The improvement in digital revenues was fueled by a 11.0% increase in extra content and free-to-play segment. Revenues were positively impacted by strong sales of FIFA Ultimate Team, Star Wars: The Old Republic and FIFA Online 3.
Swtor did create revenue for EA FACT!!! Here I'll provide you with proof above is a direct quote and here is the link from the quote.
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/113069/EA-Breezes-Past-Q2-Earnings-Revs-Estimates
Now until you can provide some evidence with your ASSUMPTIONS please stop posting them. YOURS ARE ASSUMPTIONS!!! NOT FACTS!! I provided FACTS with a link to prove it. Do you see the HUGE DIFFERENCE!!
It's because and and the rest are running out of copy/paste material . Just look at his history I didn't go through all 2000 post but look like 500 or so mention this. He was correct kind of until Makeb it was not finished at launch like he claims. But almost everything since makeb is new . These guys are running low on copy/paste material . Here is a short checklist of things on their copy/paste list they have been wrong on.
1) Swtor would close in '11
2) Swtor would close in '12
3) Swtor would close in '13 (they already started on '14
4) Swtor will never have an expansion (they don't count makeb or the new space as expansion sometimes you just can't reason with people like them)
5) Swtor will never have a level cap
6) Swtor will never have a new race
7) servers are still dead (they don't play that's obvious)
8) blah blah blah copy/paste for the next several years cause Swtor is not going anywhere. I wonder if these same posters will continue this for another few years they have already wasted how long crying about a video game? Posting their obsessed ASSUMPTIONS 90% of the time with not links or facts the other 10% with partial quotes or links from two years ago.
Yes, before launch they said that PVP space was coming after launch. The SSSP has been teased for ages since before mid 2012 where Bioware have claimed they have played the PVP space game, but were unable to disclose any information. With the game tanking its implementation was in doubt, but is finally coming now with no improvements like adding extra PVE elements
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Thats your first point, and you are absolutly incorrect. Let me share with you the exact quote form their first financial filing after SWTOR's launch:
"Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out"
Did you get that last part there? The 1.7 million does not include those who opted out of (IE: unsubbed) the first month after launch, or who had purchased the game, but did not yet activate their account. That is 1.7 million active subscribers after the game's first 30 days. Its hard to accept, I realise that, but lets stop rewriteing history please.
Now, I am sure some of those were people who purchased the game well after launch and were in their own personal free 30 days, but that same statement can be said for any subscritpion number announcment from any company (Blizz, CCP etc). You simply cant use that to discredit their active subscription numbers and keep a straight face (if thats what you are trying to do, I don't want to assume).
I honestly stopped reading the rest of your post, seeing as you were blatantly incorrect right off the bat.
Any chance you have a link to back up your bias assumption here? You could look through your copy/paste spreadsheet on your desktop. Also yes makeb was being worked on before launch was not 100% complete. Again please look through that copy/paste spreadsheet for any link that's says the last 2 areas along with the last 5 fps, 4 raids , new pvp content and all new gear was all done pre launch. Until you post links to back up your non-educated bias assumption everyone here will treat them as such . Worthless bias mumble jumble is all your copy/pasting is.