Pretty good. I wonder how many people bought the game though. I expected that number to be much, much higher.
Could you elaborate what made you think it would be higher?
It's a PC MMORPG game, and isn't that the niche combination in modern gaming genre?
Them doing a million initial buyers is a tremendous success, and if they manage to keep half of that in 6Mo (I'm afraid they end up much lower) marker, they're a huge success in their niche.
Well, there were lenty of sources saying that there were 3 million preorders a while before launch.
Not that 1 million is bad or anything, but I thought it would be more as well based on those threads. Just loojk back a few weeks in the TOR forum and you will find many people stating 3 million preorders.
I don't think it will get 6M players, 0,5-3M is rather likely. Anything over a million for more than 3 months is great, so far have only Wow done that.
Just to clarify, 6Mo doesn't mean 6Mio (as million) but 6 Month time after the launch.
1mio "registered" is in fact a big surprise, even me as a skeptic expected 2-2.5mio on Bioware and the IP alone.
If it goes up or downhill from now depends on how and how quick Bioware will react. The first patches don't mean much as this is usually the stuff that was about ready and in line anyway -so they may keep the soon-to-be 50s busy for a while. If they go into Blizzard juggernaut-snailmode "takes 4-6month for a patch" after, they will find themselves in the 300k subs club soon.
But their bigger problem may be that with SWTOR alot of complains aren't related to lack of content. Gamers in this genre have grown up, hence today's complains are also about blatant flaws in concepts, design and basics. These things won't likely get changed though, so alot of folks will quit about them. Bioware won't get through with alot of current ingame stuff that was alright in 2007, as they have to cope with 2012 expected standards.
My prediction is that the game will take a massive dive in it's 2nd to 3rd month and we won't ever hear EA/Bioware talking straight numbers other than the common PR drivel such as "1.5mio accounts created/units shipped/players registered".
Congrats to Bioware and team for hitting the one million mark, now the question is how many will we keep and how many more will come into the game. I won't pop the cork yet until after the free month, but so far the doom and gloomers and haters have been proven wrong with their predictions.
wow, so everything is based on one month? This game is atleast good for 3 months. Like all the others. 1 month mark it will have a lot of subs. after that the mass exodus will commence.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore) Now Playing: N/A Worst MMO: FFXIV Favorite MMO: FFXI
1 mil? Where are all the fanboi with their 3 mil and 6 mil figures go? Here is a suprising fact: Warhammer online has 1.2 million subscribers at this time and didn't have a Star Wars franchise to back them. (At the 6 month mark they were bragging about having 500k so we'll see how SWTOR's retention numbers look like at 6 months) This is, by scale, troubling. 1.5 mil should have been easily attainable and most folk I spoke with were expecting (as in we have a vested interest in this) around 2 mil.
This doesn't bode well for the MMO industry if the 1 mil figure is accurate. This may be taken to strongly indicate that the market is at a saturation point and investors are not going to be willing to put the kind of money they have in the past into MMO projects as they currently exist.
However, this may also be a blessing to fans of the F2P model as indicating that people are more willing to deal with MMOs in a F2P format rather then subscription based. Time will tell.
Another possible point to be studied is the key Gamer demographic that carried MMOs (my age group) may now be at the point there the majority of us have families and simply do not have the time for conventional MMOs. Even the follow up players (those lagging by 5 years) are now hitting college and in a sour economy might be taking their education a bit more serious then some of us did back in the MUDMeridianUOEQ period.
However many subscriptions there actually are, it was probably more than they expected judging from the blasted queues . So for now, SWTOR is probably doing okay.
I still hold my reservations about the longevity of this game, but time will tell.
My prediction is that the game will take a massive dive in it's 2nd to 3rd month and we won't ever hear EA/Bioware talking straight numbers other than the common PR drivel such as "1.5mio accounts created/units shipped/players registered".
With most MMOs, a lot of inactive players still have active subs for a little while, so its especially easy for marketting to keep spinning big numbers. Technically, subs are still growing then, due to huge percentage of subs that haven't expired, yet. Takes a while for that to happen, especially with people jumping on discounts for 3 and 6 month plans.
For the first few months, players might notice a less and less people around and all that, fans will say all sorts of things to explain it, but then at around 6 months, massive population declines become indisputable. Then, all that's left to say in defense of the game is that it's not dying. It's still successful, as long we like it, and it's not getting shut down, etc.
(edit: wow, comically bad grammar..)
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
My prediction is that the game will take a massive dive in it's 2nd to 3rd month and we won't ever hear EA/Bioware talking straight numbers other than the common PR drivel such as "1.5mio accounts created/units shipped/players registered".
With most MMOs, a lot of inactive players still have active subs for a little while, so its especially easy for marketting to keep spinning big numbers. Technically, subs are still growing then, due to huge percentage of subs that haven't expired, yet. Takes a while for that to happen, especially with people jumping on discounts for 3 and 6 month plans.
For the first few months, players might notice a less and less people around and all that, fans will say all sorts of things to explain it, but then at around 6 months, massive population declines become indisputable. Then, all that's left to say in defense of the game is that it's not dying. It's still successful, as long we like it, and it's not getting shut down, etc.
(edit: wow, comically bad grammar..)
Won't ever happen in SWTOR. The zones are so heavily sharded that a nearly empty server would probably look the same as a full one .
Still early days, the 1 mill subs thing was very early. I do not doubt that it has gone up quite a bit since then.
Still say grats to SWTOR, and all, but the selling that many boxes and holding them for a while are 2 very different things.
If they hold more than they lose after a few months they will be breaking the mold as far as the way most MMO's have done for a long time.
Heck i hope they do, the game can not do anything but get better, the more money they have to put into it. It may be a better game by the time i get around to trying it out if i do:P
1 mil? Where are all the fanboi with their 3 mil and 6 mil figures go? Here is a suprising fact: Warhammer online has 1.2 million subscribers at this time and didn't have a Star Wars franchise to back them. (At the 6 month mark they were bragging about having 500k so we'll see how SWTOR's retention numbers look like at 6 months) This is, by scale, troubling. 1.5 mil should have been easily attainable and most folk I spoke with were expecting (as in we have a vested interest in this) around 2 mil.
This doesn't bode well for the MMO industry if the 1 mil figure is accurate. This may be taken to strongly indicate that the market is at a saturation point and investors are not going to be willing to put the kind of money they have in the past into MMO projects as they currently exist.
However, this may also be a blessing to fans of the F2P model as indicating that people are more willing to deal with MMOs in a F2P format rather then subscription based. Time will tell.
Another possible point to be studied is the key Gamer demographic that carried MMOs (my age group) may now be at the point there the majority of us have families and simply do not have the time for conventional MMOs. Even the follow up players (those lagging by 5 years) are now hitting college and in a sour economy might be taking their education a bit more serious then some of us did back in the MUDMeridianUOEQ period.
Interesting times indeed.
Investors will still invest in these games because even with the massive decline of subs after 90 days these MMO's still turn a profit. Until they start to not turn a profit thats when investors will start pulling out. Even with the stagnation I dont see these over simplified themeparks going anywhere because every single one of these types sell over a million copies. These themeparks are going to become even more streamlined and even more cheeply made, its really a sad thing thats happining here, I dont see anything changinging anytime soon. Atleast in the western MMO market.
I think we need a new genre for real MMO' s maybe call it Massive WORLD online (MWO) let these themepark, single player, over instanced collection of zones, with a chat box have at it. All they are now is a glorified console game. hell some console games last longer than some of these new mmo's.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore) Now Playing: N/A Worst MMO: FFXIV Favorite MMO: FFXI
1 mil? Where are all the fanboi with their 3 mil and 6 mil figures go? Here is a suprising fact: Warhammer online has 1.2 million subscribers at this time and didn't have a Star Wars franchise to back them. (At the 6 month mark they were bragging about having 500k so we'll see how SWTOR's retention numbers look like at 6 months) This is, by scale, troubling. 1.5 mil should have been easily attainable and most folk I spoke with were expecting (as in we have a vested interest in this) around 2 mil.
This doesn't bode well for the MMO industry if the 1 mil figure is accurate. This may be taken to strongly indicate that the market is at a saturation point and investors are not going to be willing to put the kind of money they have in the past into MMO projects as they currently exist.
However, this may also be a blessing to fans of the F2P model as indicating that people are more willing to deal with MMOs in a F2P format rather then subscription based. Time will tell.
Another possible point to be studied is the key Gamer demographic that carried MMOs (my age group) may now be at the point there the majority of us have families and simply do not have the time for conventional MMOs. Even the follow up players (those lagging by 5 years) are now hitting college and in a sour economy might be taking their education a bit more serious then some of us did back in the MUDMeridianUOEQ period.
Interesting times indeed.
I was thinking about this sometime a few weeks back. The subs game is not going to make people the bazillionaires it once did when WoW was in its prime because the economy and players have both changed. I consider myself a fan of the F2P model so long as cash shops aren't abused, and more companies - even Sony - are seeing a marked increase in revenue for their previously subscription based games by going F2P or at the very least giving players the option if they so choose it. Where once people were afraid to flock to anything F2P, people are loving the variety of payment choices offered now. Games that have a sub fee and additional paid services and items are being unfair to those challenged by the current economic situation, but I don't expect much else from Activision or EA (though at least Activision doesn't support SOPA).
As for Warhammer, their universe - especially W40K - deserves better than it's had over the years. To me personally, it's a far more interesting place than anything these "Star Wars" happen in. Most of TOR's sales were probably a result of name recognition alone, not to mention the almighty advertising dollar. It's disappointing, but hey, that's business.
It is fucking incredible to watch people make shit up out of thin air on virtually no factual basis.
From people claiming that the dev team will be unable to make new content at a reasonable rate and that the dev team already has stockpiles of content that they are just holding back. Just because the game took a while to release has nothing to do with new content. These conclusions are on the level of a 10 year old.
I have played every MMO out there. The game is quality I could tell within 10 minutes. It is well crafted and gets done what it set out to do. Enjoy the game for what it is and if the devs release new content that keeps all interested great. Spend less time making shit up on the mmorpg forums and more time enjoying the games/life.
its a good game. ive been wondering if they are gonna be able to keep doing cutscenes and voice overs in all their content updates and expansions, i'm sure thats gonna slow things down and be expensive and if they don't its kinda gonna be messed up since you get used to that type of thing in the game then they hardly use it later on.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
Congrats to Bioware and team for hitting the one million mark, now the question is how many will we keep and how many more will come into the game. I won't pop the cork yet until after the free month, but so far the doom and gloomers and haters have been proven wrong with their predictions.
i figured it would be higher since people were saying every star wars fan would play this game.
i think it will stay high though, hope so for them since they opened up all them servers. it always looks bad and scares people away when you have to start merging and closing servers.
i'll even say blizzard needs to do the same with some of their servers buy they don't want the negative image so they just come up with others ways for people to group up.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
But expected I suppose; EA has shown time and time again that they will resort to insanely clever marketing tactics to dupe current and potential consumers.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
That's quite low considering it's Star Wars and all the buzz surrounding it.
Everyone has to keep in mind that this is people that bought into the hype and are in the free month period. Wait till the end of /mid months in Janurary when people have to actuaally start paying for it. You are gonna see a huge drop in accounts, then!!! Just be patient and you will see!
I would give you a guest pass to SWOTR, but then I wouldn't be able to find a way to live with myself afterwards....
That's quite low considering it's Star Wars and all the buzz surrounding it.
Everyone has to keep in mind that this is people that bought into the hype and are in the free month period. Wait till the end of /mid months in Janurary when people have to actuaally start paying for it. You are gonna see a huge drop in accounts, then!!! Just be patient and you will see!
Well drop or increase or stay the same, the real time to measure an MMOs health is not at launch with box sales that say Star Wars on the box...
Give it a month or 2 as you said and we shall see where things lie... I for one will say I did not like the TOR experience but I hope it brings many more poeple into the MMO genre and is a huge success so more development dollars flow into MMO development !!!
This is kind of weak, i predicted 3-4 million sales on launch... guess i was wrong about SW popularity
I actually first predicted around 1 million and corrected it for 1.5 million later. Still, it's better to talk about sub numbers in March after early players have made their decisions.
In the prediction thread i made the prediction of 3-4 Million -sales- at launch with a 50% retention rate at month 1.
I'm sticking to my retention rate, because thats how the retention-rates for all MMOs look in the present (50-60%), I just gave the game the benefit of the doubt that it will have huge sales at launch so the retention would not hit it as hard (having 2M subs at month one would be great for an MMO).
But with only 1.5M sales and the projected retention rates the game will hover around 700k subs, and usually the sub-numbers don't really go up past month one (exceptions happened, but not in the recent past), so I'm afraid it doesn't bode well.
Also sales numbers in this case are a bit distorted, because there is no waiting on the "first week" sales, because if anyone bought the game, its for Xmass, not afterwards.
So while other games can hope for a steady sales-increase, SWTOR can't expect that to happen, it really has to do with the timing of the launch.
Comments
Just to clarify, 6Mo doesn't mean 6Mio (as million) but 6 Month time after the launch.
1mio "registered" is in fact a big surprise, even me as a skeptic expected 2-2.5mio on Bioware and the IP alone.
If it goes up or downhill from now depends on how and how quick Bioware will react. The first patches don't mean much as this is usually the stuff that was about ready and in line anyway -so they may keep the soon-to-be 50s busy for a while. If they go into Blizzard juggernaut-snailmode "takes 4-6month for a patch" after, they will find themselves in the 300k subs club soon.
But their bigger problem may be that with SWTOR alot of complains aren't related to lack of content. Gamers in this genre have grown up, hence today's complains are also about blatant flaws in concepts, design and basics. These things won't likely get changed though, so alot of folks will quit about them. Bioware won't get through with alot of current ingame stuff that was alright in 2007, as they have to cope with 2012 expected standards.
My prediction is that the game will take a massive dive in it's 2nd to 3rd month and we won't ever hear EA/Bioware talking straight numbers other than the common PR drivel such as "1.5mio accounts created/units shipped/players registered".
wow, so everything is based on one month? This game is atleast good for 3 months. Like all the others. 1 month mark it will have a lot of subs. after that the mass exodus will commence.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
1 mil? Where are all the fanboi with their 3 mil and 6 mil figures go? Here is a suprising fact: Warhammer online has 1.2 million subscribers at this time and didn't have a Star Wars franchise to back them. (At the 6 month mark they were bragging about having 500k so we'll see how SWTOR's retention numbers look like at 6 months) This is, by scale, troubling. 1.5 mil should have been easily attainable and most folk I spoke with were expecting (as in we have a vested interest in this) around 2 mil.
This doesn't bode well for the MMO industry if the 1 mil figure is accurate. This may be taken to strongly indicate that the market is at a saturation point and investors are not going to be willing to put the kind of money they have in the past into MMO projects as they currently exist.
However, this may also be a blessing to fans of the F2P model as indicating that people are more willing to deal with MMOs in a F2P format rather then subscription based. Time will tell.
Another possible point to be studied is the key Gamer demographic that carried MMOs (my age group) may now be at the point there the majority of us have families and simply do not have the time for conventional MMOs. Even the follow up players (those lagging by 5 years) are now hitting college and in a sour economy might be taking their education a bit more serious then some of us did back in the MUDMeridianUOEQ period.
Interesting times indeed.
Well...I look at it this way.
However many subscriptions there actually are, it was probably more than they expected judging from the blasted queues
. So for now, SWTOR is probably doing okay.
I still hold my reservations about the longevity of this game, but time will tell.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
With most MMOs, a lot of inactive players still have active subs for a little while, so its especially easy for marketting to keep spinning big numbers. Technically, subs are still growing then, due to huge percentage of subs that haven't expired, yet. Takes a while for that to happen, especially with people jumping on discounts for 3 and 6 month plans.
For the first few months, players might notice a less and less people around and all that, fans will say all sorts of things to explain it, but then at around 6 months, massive population declines become indisputable. Then, all that's left to say in defense of the game is that it's not dying. It's still successful, as long we like it, and it's not getting shut down, etc.
(edit: wow, comically bad grammar..)
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Won't ever happen in SWTOR. The zones are so heavily sharded that a nearly empty server would probably look the same as a full one
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Still early days, the 1 mill subs thing was very early. I do not doubt that it has gone up quite a bit since then.
Still say grats to SWTOR, and all, but the selling that many boxes and holding them for a while are 2 very different things.
If they hold more than they lose after a few months they will be breaking the mold as far as the way most MMO's have done for a long time.
Heck i hope they do, the game can not do anything but get better, the more money they have to put into it. It may be a better game by the time i get around to trying it out if i do:P
Now we have for it to rach 11 million lol
Investors will still invest in these games because even with the massive decline of subs after 90 days these MMO's still turn a profit. Until they start to not turn a profit thats when investors will start pulling out. Even with the stagnation I dont see these over simplified themeparks going anywhere because every single one of these types sell over a million copies. These themeparks are going to become even more streamlined and even more cheeply made, its really a sad thing thats happining here, I dont see anything changinging anytime soon. Atleast in the western MMO market.
I think we need a new genre for real MMO' s maybe call it Massive WORLD online (MWO) let these themepark, single player, over instanced collection of zones, with a chat box have at it. All they are now is a glorified console game. hell some console games last longer than some of these new mmo's.
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
I was thinking about this sometime a few weeks back. The subs game is not going to make people the bazillionaires it once did when WoW was in its prime because the economy and players have both changed. I consider myself a fan of the F2P model so long as cash shops aren't abused, and more companies - even Sony - are seeing a marked increase in revenue for their previously subscription based games by going F2P or at the very least giving players the option if they so choose it. Where once people were afraid to flock to anything F2P, people are loving the variety of payment choices offered now. Games that have a sub fee and additional paid services and items are being unfair to those challenged by the current economic situation, but I don't expect much else from Activision or EA (though at least Activision doesn't support SOPA).
As for Warhammer, their universe - especially W40K - deserves better than it's had over the years. To me personally, it's a far more interesting place than anything these "Star Wars" happen in. Most of TOR's sales were probably a result of name recognition alone, not to mention the almighty advertising dollar. It's disappointing, but hey, that's business.
It is fucking incredible to watch people make shit up out of thin air on virtually no factual basis.
From people claiming that the dev team will be unable to make new content at a reasonable rate and that the dev team already has stockpiles of content that they are just holding back. Just because the game took a while to release has nothing to do with new content. These conclusions are on the level of a 10 year old.
I have played every MMO out there. The game is quality I could tell within 10 minutes. It is well crafted and gets done what it set out to do. Enjoy the game for what it is and if the devs release new content that keeps all interested great. Spend less time making shit up on the mmorpg forums and more time enjoying the games/life.
its a good game. ive been wondering if they are gonna be able to keep doing cutscenes and voice overs in all their content updates and expansions, i'm sure thats gonna slow things down and be expensive and if they don't its kinda gonna be messed up since you get used to that type of thing in the game then they hardly use it later on.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
You don't measure subs until the 3 month mark my friend. You are measureing box sales right now... So put your champagne away for now...
BTW ? Do you have bioware stock or something ? lol
i figured it would be higher since people were saying every star wars fan would play this game.
i think it will stay high though, hope so for them since they opened up all them servers. it always looks bad and scares people away when you have to start merging and closing servers.
i'll even say blizzard needs to do the same with some of their servers buy they don't want the negative image so they just come up with others ways for people to group up.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
How utterly disingenuous of them.
But expected I suppose; EA has shown time and time again that they will resort to insanely clever marketing tactics to dupe current and potential consumers.
"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
I need to take this advice more.
That's quite low considering it's Star Wars and all the buzz surrounding it.
Everyone has to keep in mind that this is people that bought into the hype and are in the free month period. Wait till the end of /mid months in Janurary when people have to actuaally start paying for it. You are gonna see a huge drop in accounts, then!!! Just be patient and you will see!
I would give you a guest pass to SWOTR, but then I wouldn't be able to find a way to live with myself afterwards....
Well drop or increase or stay the same, the real time to measure an MMOs health is not at launch with box sales that say Star Wars on the box...
Give it a month or 2 as you said and we shall see where things lie... I for one will say I did not like the TOR experience but I hope it brings many more poeple into the MMO genre and is a huge success so more development dollars flow into MMO development !!!
GO TOR !
Someone on Ventrilo last night said they may be close to 2 million subs, we'll have to wait and see.
This is kind of weak, i predicted 3-4 million sales on launch... guess i was wrong about SW popularity
In the prediction thread i made the prediction of 3-4 Million -sales- at launch with a 50% retention rate at month 1.
I'm sticking to my retention rate, because thats how the retention-rates for all MMOs look in the present (50-60%), I just gave the game the benefit of the doubt that it will have huge sales at launch so the retention would not hit it as hard (having 2M subs at month one would be great for an MMO).
But with only 1.5M sales and the projected retention rates the game will hover around 700k subs, and usually the sub-numbers don't really go up past month one (exceptions happened, but not in the recent past), so I'm afraid it doesn't bode well.
Also sales numbers in this case are a bit distorted, because there is no waiting on the "first week" sales, because if anyone bought the game, its for Xmass, not afterwards.
So while other games can hope for a steady sales-increase, SWTOR can't expect that to happen, it really has to do with the timing of the launch.