I don't know about mass exodus and I wouldn't take these forums as a major source of info on that. I will say however that I already cancelled my account because the game is a buggy mess. I tried to love it, unfortunately I didn't listen to beta testers that warned the game changes after level 30 regarding the issues. I'll give the game 6 months for them to fix all of the broken shit and then maybe I'll try it again, nah no I won't.
I don't know about mass exodus and I wouldn't take these forums as a major source of info on that. I will say however that I already cancelled my account because the game is a buggy mess. I tried to love it, unfortunately I didn't listen to beta testers that warned the game changes after level 30 regarding the issues. I'll give the game 6 months for them to fix all of the broken shit and then maybe I'll try it again, nah no I won't.
That is pretty much how i felt. I did beta test and I was pretty un impressed with the game. I decided to play live anyway, my biggest draw? Slicing. I am not a fan of crafting, and I hate it when there is no point ot it. Slicing was the perfec answer for me. Now they wrecked that in to being completetly useless. Combine that with the screwed up crafting mess..it isn't even a system at this point, the lack of anything original in this game, and a developer that gives the feel ing that they think they are doing me a favor by making their game...extreme arrogance combined with horrid CS, and it was just enough for me, so I quit.
Now, having said that, I would not say that this particular game is going to die, fail etc etc. It's not for me, but I can see how some people would like it. As far as bugs, lol it's not even a month old at this point...OF COURSE there are bugs, but for a newly released game, it's doing pretty well in that department.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Originally posted by Ginaz Originally posted by Arkinia
Originally posted by Ginaz
Lol, I don't think as many people are leaving as some people here seem to hope/want/believe. Those are screen shots from about 30 mins ago.
thank you, maybe, just maybe, it will shut the haters up, but I doubt it. People just love to hate here. So sad. Those people will probably just say they're photoshopped. Ha! Little do they know that taking and posting screen shots is almost the extent of my knowledge when it comes to computers.
Screenshots didn't make it in the post editor for some reason.
Anyway...
Historically, what happens is that the people who predict the game's death will keep pushing the 'terminal date' out from the launch date. You can see this with the threads on SWToR and the references to the first free month getting ready to end. Then, the 'real' telling date will be the three month mark, then the six month mark, etc. After that, it'll be the release of the next big MMO.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Lol, I don't think as many people are leaving as some people here seem to hope/want/believe. Those are screen shots from about 30 mins ago.
thank you, maybe, just maybe, it will shut the haters up, but I doubt it. People just love to hate here. So sad.
Those people will probably just say they're photoshopped. Ha! Little do they know that taking and posting screen shots is almost the extent of my knowledge when it comes to computers.
Screenshots didn't make it in the post editor for some reason.
Anyway...
Historically, what happens is that the people who predict the game's death will keep pushing the 'terminal date' out from the launch date. You can see this with the threads on SWToR and the references to the first free month getting ready to end. Then, the 'real' telling date will be the three month mark, then the six month mark, etc. After that, it'll be the release of the next big MMO.
I've always believed that you can measure the success or failure of an MMO beginning at 3 months out. Thats more than enough time for people to either get bored or decide they enjoy the game. SWTOR won't be any different.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
The reason I'm not sticking around is that they focused too much on the "RPG" and not enough on the "MMO". I played through to 50, and enjoyed the IA story, but just found the game lacking in "game fun". I tried rolling an alt but was honestly just BURNT of story and so logged out and haven't logged back in for 2 weeks now. This game just wasn't for me.
There won't be any Mass Exodus. Because there is nowhere to go. At least for those, who like to play MMOs. For those who play them from time to time, it depends.
It's sad to say but my buddies and I are actually having more fun playing together now that we're back in WoW than we did in SWTOR. I really thought SWTOR was going to be my game of choice this year but it really fizzled out quick for me and the guys I game with.
I find it sad there are so many people who waste their lives trying to convince people they do not know, on what they should and should not play. It's almost to the point it's getting pathetic, and mmorpg does nothing to stop the flame wars that most of these trolls cause. about 80% of the players who believe SWTOR should be abolished are ex SWG players who feel they should be playing a star wars game built as if it were SWG 2.0.
It's never going to happen, and I really question these forums nowadays, mainly because they are so full of hatred by a select few and are allowed to repeatdly troll an entire forum.
SWG 2.0 would be kinda hawt though...funny i miss it now only after its gone....I Tor though...
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Having bought and played TOR I will say from my experience with mates/guildies the dropoff IS going to be huge. This game isn't made for the mature MMO crowd at all.
EDIT: By mature I mean by having played a lot of different MMO games, not age itself.
Historically, what happens is that the people who predict the game's death will keep pushing the 'terminal date' out from the launch date. You can see this with the threads on SWToR and the references to the first free month getting ready to end. Then, the 'real' telling date will be the three month mark, then the six month mark, etc. After that, it'll be the release of the next big MMO.
Historically, the people who say the mass exodus will come at the end of the free month are almost always wrong. They overestimate the subscription issue. It barely factors into it at all. It looks like we'll see some significant dropoff (and definitely not growth) but nothing huge.
Games that start really hemorrhaging subs tend to start doing so at two or three months, and even then, it really only becomes indisputable (to those of us without access to the real numbers) in retrospect, at six months or so. Historically speaking.
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.
Historically, the people who say the mass exodus will come at the end of the free month are almost always wrong. They overestimate the subscription issue. It barely factors into it at all. It looks like we'll see some significant dropoff (and definitely not growth) but nothing huge.
Games that start really hemorrhaging subs tend to start doing so at two or three months, and even then, it really only becomes indisputable (to those of us without access to the real numbers) in retrospect, at six months or so. Historically speaking.
Yeah, but it still looks like it to most people.
The reason is that a lot of people buy a MMO but doesn't really like it and just play it for a few hours or days. They are still counted as players until their free month ends even if they havn't played which make it looks like an exodus.
Many people just don't bother to research an upcomming game and just buy it, then find out it isn't what they thought it was. So close to all MMOs loses a lot of players exactly a month after they releases.
What really matter is if they can grow again after that thing and we still don't know that about TOR.
I have to laugh. When I opened up MMORPG, There was a SWOTR Mass exodus thread and a WOW mass exodus thread. I don't know where the mass exodus is happening, but I hope they materializze, because the many people of have a vested interest in wishing ill for various MMOs will be dissapointed.
Historically, people who say an mmo is successful are wrong.
Guess it depends what they mean by successful. SWTOR looks like it made EA a ton of money, so that's pretty successful. It'll probably be aroudnb for years, so that's successful too. Some people keep screaming mass exodus but I don't see it, not yet anyway. If there is an exodus it's potentially so gradual that it's hard to notice by server population from the individual perspective. I mean, if 100 people quit each server -- that's a lot of people -- but in game it'd be hardly noticeable. Patience, my pessimistic friends, very soon we'll know who was right and who was wrong -- and whether or not it even mattered
Originally posted by Beezerbeez Originally posted by adam_nox Historically, people who say an mmo is successful are wrong.
Guess it depends what they mean by successful. SWTOR looks like it made EA a ton of money, so that's pretty successful. It'll probably be aroudnb for years, so that's successful too. Some people keep screaming mass exodus but I don't see it, not yet anyway. If there is an exodus it's potentially so gradual that it's hard to notice by server population from the individual perspective. I mean, if 100 people quit each server -- that's a lot of people -- but in game it'd be hardly noticeable. Patience, my pessimistic friends, very soon we'll know who was right and who was wrong -- and whether or not it even mattered
I've spent a lot of time thinking about 'successful' mmorpg, and have come to the realization that it doesn't have that much to do with the total number of subs. If that was true, then Eve would not be considered successful, especially compared to WoW.
I've come up with the idea that a successful mmorpg spawns the development of new games (expansions can count here). Really successful mmorpg spawn the development of new mmorpg. Rift and Age of Conan are really successful because they have spawned the development of new MMORPG. In the case of Rift, they've spawned the development of an mmorts as well. WoW is really successful because it's spawned the development of a few games, and one of them is an mmorpg. Eve is successful, but it's not really successful yet, since development on WoD got trimmed.
Where does this leave SWToR? Nowhere, yet. Not enough time has passed to see if SWToR will fund development of new games or expansions.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
There won't be any Mass Exodus. Because there is nowhere to go. At least for those, who like to play MMOs. For those who play them from time to time, it depends.
LOL nowhere to go are you kidding me? There are older games already far superior to TOR, RIFT is hands down a better Themepark, so is WOW for that matter no reason to even leave those games for TOR, not to mention the Games in Development list is pretty large right now with most of them, including GW2 soon to be released. There are both better Themepark RAIDing options and there are certainly better pvp options in mmorpgs right now.
There won't be any Mass Exodus. Because there is nowhere to go. At least for those, who like to play MMOs. For those who play them from time to time, it depends.
LOL nowhere to go are you kidding me? There are older games already far superior to TOR, RIFT is hands down a better Themepark, so is WOW for that matter no reason to even leave those games for TOR, not to mention the Games in Development list is pretty large right now with most of them, including GW2 soon to be released. There are both better Themepark RAIDing options and there are certainly better pvp options in mmorpgs right now.
In your opinion you should add. What you have to factor in is the setting too, not the brand per se but the setting. Star Wars is SF or perhaps a mix of fantasy and SF. We don't have that many SF MMO:s do we?
Anyway 3-6 months then we can start talking about how the game is doing, even then it can be hard to judge - what is a success and what is a fiasco? I would say 300k subs as a minimum to be acceptable, 500k+ to be a good achievement and 750k+ subs after 3 months to be very good. Anything better than 1m. (not likely eventhough I like the game) is a clear success.
What you have to factor in is the setting too, not the brand per se but the setting. Star Wars is SF or perhaps a mix of fantasy and SF. We don't have that many SF MMO:s do we?
Eve, Tor, three superhero titles, a handful of F2P titles...but no, not really many.
Occupying the same ad space, roughly, a hundred variants of sword/dragon MMOs?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If a game is well done, it doesn't matter to me if it's fantasy or sci-fi. The problem is most of the fantasy games have tried to emulate WoW, which let's face it, is a cockeyed amalgamation of things Blizzard has ripped off of popular fantasy. That's hardly grounds to judge fantasy games as "bad".
Sci-fi is becoming more prominent though, I'm looking forward to Firefall.
Historically, the people who say the mass exodus will come at the end of the free month are almost always wrong. They overestimate the subscription issue. It barely factors into it at all. It looks like we'll see some significant dropoff (and definitely not growth) but nothing huge.
Games that start really hemorrhaging subs tend to start doing so at two or three months, and even then, it really only becomes indisputable (to those of us without access to the real numbers) in retrospect, at six months or so. Historically speaking.
Yeah, but it still looks like it to most people.
The reason is that a lot of people buy a MMO but doesn't really like it and just play it for a few hours or days. They are still counted as players until their free month ends even if they havn't played which make it looks like an exodus.
Many people just don't bother to research an upcomming game and just buy it, then find out it isn't what they thought it was. So close to all MMOs loses a lot of players exactly a month after they releases.
What really matter is if they can grow again after that thing and we still don't know that about TOR.
The thing about those people is that they never really pack servers to begin with, because if they disliked the game that much, they probably never played all that much. So to people just looking at server status, xfire, or just how crowded their game is, those people aren't really contributing to begin with. So they won't be seen as much of an exodus, by other players. Even though, of course they still count, just as much.
The only ones who see all those casual quitters are the ones at EA, who have the real numbers, they know exactly how many people registered accounts, played in early access, subscribed, and unsubscribed. Some of them probably never even played past early access, but from here, we can't see how many.
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.
Well I'm not re-subbing. I got to level 43 as a Sith Juggernaut on the Vrook Lamar server, and it was a lot of fun..but just in the last week, I am getting kinda bored. I don't really blame the game though, I think it's just because I'm much older than I was when I first joined this site (almost 8 years ago!) and I really have lost much of my interest in MMORPG's. Also, since I was off during Christmas break, I played a LOT.
That being said however, the game is not half as bad as all the doomsayer's would have you to believe. It was actually pretty fun, especially with RL friends and stuff. I love Bioware too so I hope the game is a huge success for them.
Historically, people who say an mmo is successful are wrong.
Guess it depends what they mean by successful. SWTOR looks like it made EA a ton of money, so that's pretty successful. It'll probably be aroudnb for years, so that's successful too. Some people keep screaming mass exodus but I don't see it, not yet anyway. If there is an exodus it's potentially so gradual that it's hard to notice by server population from the individual perspective. I mean, if 100 people quit each server -- that's a lot of people -- but in game it'd be hardly noticeable. Patience, my pessimistic friends, very soon we'll know who was right and who was wrong -- and whether or not it even mattered
To early to say yet - and I doubt you will find any analyst that believes SWTOR has made any money yet. (There was a lot of worry last year).
One analyst posted that if EA 'sell' 2M copies (and that is not the same as registrations because EA get paid a (small) percentage by BestBuy etc. even if the boxes don't sell then EA would make $60M. I won't bother explaining but looks OK.
And then you have to look at what SWTOR cost - which is a really difficult question to answer.
i) what the game cost to make. Maybe $120M. Basically Bioware's headcount cost. (Say 1200 man years at $100k a year for salary, company taxes, medical, dental, 401k etc. Put your own numbers in but supposedly over 400 people were working on the game last year.)
ii) what the game cost EA. Two part answer: EA Bioware's headcount cost (say $110M) plus what was included in the price that EA paid for Bioware and Pandemic. $620M cash - 12 titles to date, an extra $54M ( a 1/12) maybe: $164M.
iii) what the game cost EA shareholders. A part of the Bioware / Pandemic purchase price was in stock options - resulting in the widely reported $860M purchase price. EA's shareholders picked up the bill for the extra '$240M'. They were performance based but assiming they were 'worth' $240M taking 1/12 as above would be an extra $20M to give a cost of $184M.
So -
No surprise that you see such a wide range of numbers for 'what SWTOR cost'.
Pretty big number though and initial sales alone are not going to recoup the cost.
Comments
Still loads of players everywhere in-game. If it's dying it's not noticable yet.
Maybe you failed to see my earlier post with screenshots showing the opposite. Rage on tiny dancer, rage on.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
I don't know about mass exodus and I wouldn't take these forums as a major source of info on that. I will say however that I already cancelled my account because the game is a buggy mess. I tried to love it, unfortunately I didn't listen to beta testers that warned the game changes after level 30 regarding the issues. I'll give the game 6 months for them to fix all of the broken shit and then maybe I'll try it again, nah no I won't.
That is pretty much how i felt. I did beta test and I was pretty un impressed with the game. I decided to play live anyway, my biggest draw? Slicing. I am not a fan of crafting, and I hate it when there is no point ot it. Slicing was the perfec answer for me. Now they wrecked that in to being completetly useless. Combine that with the screwed up crafting mess..it isn't even a system at this point, the lack of anything original in this game, and a developer that gives the feel ing that they think they are doing me a favor by making their game...extreme arrogance combined with horrid CS, and it was just enough for me, so I quit.
Now, having said that, I would not say that this particular game is going to die, fail etc etc. It's not for me, but I can see how some people would like it. As far as bugs, lol it's not even a month old at this point...OF COURSE there are bugs, but for a newly released game, it's doing pretty well in that department.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Those people will probably just say they're photoshopped. Ha! Little do they know that taking and posting screen shots is almost the extent of my knowledge when it comes to computers.
Screenshots didn't make it in the post editor for some reason.
Anyway...
Historically, what happens is that the people who predict the game's death will keep pushing the 'terminal date' out from the launch date. You can see this with the threads on SWToR and the references to the first free month getting ready to end. Then, the 'real' telling date will be the three month mark, then the six month mark, etc. After that, it'll be the release of the next big MMO.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I've always believed that you can measure the success or failure of an MMO beginning at 3 months out. Thats more than enough time for people to either get bored or decide they enjoy the game. SWTOR won't be any different.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
The reason I'm not sticking around is that they focused too much on the "RPG" and not enough on the "MMO". I played through to 50, and enjoyed the IA story, but just found the game lacking in "game fun". I tried rolling an alt but was honestly just BURNT of story and so logged out and haven't logged back in for 2 weeks now. This game just wasn't for me.
There won't be any Mass Exodus. Because there is nowhere to go. At least for those, who like to play MMOs. For those who play them from time to time, it depends.
SWG 2.0 would be kinda hawt though...funny i miss it now only after its gone....I
Tor though...
No matter how cynical you become, its never enough to keep up - Lily Tomlin
Having bought and played TOR I will say from my experience with mates/guildies the dropoff IS going to be huge. This game isn't made for the mature MMO crowd at all.
EDIT: By mature I mean by having played a lot of different MMO games, not age itself.
Historically, the people who say the mass exodus will come at the end of the free month are almost always wrong. They overestimate the subscription issue. It barely factors into it at all. It looks like we'll see some significant dropoff (and definitely not growth) but nothing huge.
Games that start really hemorrhaging subs tend to start doing so at two or three months, and even then, it really only becomes indisputable (to those of us without access to the real numbers) in retrospect, at six months or so. Historically speaking.
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.
Yeah, but it still looks like it to most people.
The reason is that a lot of people buy a MMO but doesn't really like it and just play it for a few hours or days. They are still counted as players until their free month ends even if they havn't played which make it looks like an exodus.
Many people just don't bother to research an upcomming game and just buy it, then find out it isn't what they thought it was. So close to all MMOs loses a lot of players exactly a month after they releases.
What really matter is if they can grow again after that thing and we still don't know that about TOR.
Historically, people who say an mmo is successful are wrong.
I have to laugh. When I opened up MMORPG, There was a SWOTR Mass exodus thread and a WOW mass exodus thread. I don't know where the mass exodus is happening, but I hope they materializze, because the many people of have a vested interest in wishing ill for various MMOs will be dissapointed.
I self identify as a monkey.
Guess it depends what they mean by successful. SWTOR looks like it made EA a ton of money, so that's pretty successful. It'll probably be aroudnb for years, so that's successful too. Some people keep screaming mass exodus but I don't see it, not yet anyway. If there is an exodus it's potentially so gradual that it's hard to notice by server population from the individual perspective. I mean, if 100 people quit each server -- that's a lot of people -- but in game it'd be hardly noticeable. Patience, my pessimistic friends, very soon we'll know who was right and who was wrong -- and whether or not it even mattered
I've spent a lot of time thinking about 'successful' mmorpg, and have come to the realization that it doesn't have that much to do with the total number of subs. If that was true, then Eve would not be considered successful, especially compared to WoW.
I've come up with the idea that a successful mmorpg spawns the development of new games (expansions can count here). Really successful mmorpg spawn the development of new mmorpg. Rift and Age of Conan are really successful because they have spawned the development of new MMORPG. In the case of Rift, they've spawned the development of an mmorts as well. WoW is really successful because it's spawned the development of a few games, and one of them is an mmorpg. Eve is successful, but it's not really successful yet, since development on WoD got trimmed.
Where does this leave SWToR? Nowhere, yet. Not enough time has passed to see if SWToR will fund development of new games or expansions.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Holy hyberpole batman!
Edit: I do agree about the crafting though
LOL nowhere to go are you kidding me? There are older games already far superior to TOR, RIFT is hands down a better Themepark, so is WOW for that matter no reason to even leave those games for TOR, not to mention the Games in Development list is pretty large right now with most of them, including GW2 soon to be released. There are both better Themepark RAIDing options and there are certainly better pvp options in mmorpgs right now.
In your opinion you should add. What you have to factor in is the setting too, not the brand per se but the setting. Star Wars is SF or perhaps a mix of fantasy and SF. We don't have that many SF MMO:s do we?
Anyway 3-6 months then we can start talking about how the game is doing, even then it can be hard to judge - what is a success and what is a fiasco? I would say 300k subs as a minimum to be acceptable, 500k+ to be a good achievement and 750k+ subs after 3 months to be very good. Anything better than 1m. (not likely eventhough I like the game) is a clear success.
Eve, Tor, three superhero titles, a handful of F2P titles...but no, not really many.
Occupying the same ad space, roughly, a hundred variants of sword/dragon MMOs?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
If a game is well done, it doesn't matter to me if it's fantasy or sci-fi. The problem is most of the fantasy games have tried to emulate WoW, which let's face it, is a cockeyed amalgamation of things Blizzard has ripped off of popular fantasy. That's hardly grounds to judge fantasy games as "bad".
Sci-fi is becoming more prominent though, I'm looking forward to Firefall.
The thing about those people is that they never really pack servers to begin with, because if they disliked the game that much, they probably never played all that much. So to people just looking at server status, xfire, or just how crowded their game is, those people aren't really contributing to begin with. So they won't be seen as much of an exodus, by other players. Even though, of course they still count, just as much.
The only ones who see all those casual quitters are the ones at EA, who have the real numbers, they know exactly how many people registered accounts, played in early access, subscribed, and unsubscribed. Some of them probably never even played past early access, but from here, we can't see how many.
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.
Well I'm not re-subbing. I got to level 43 as a Sith Juggernaut on the Vrook Lamar server, and it was a lot of fun..but just in the last week, I am getting kinda bored. I don't really blame the game though, I think it's just because I'm much older than I was when I first joined this site (almost 8 years ago!) and I really have lost much of my interest in MMORPG's. Also, since I was off during Christmas break, I played a LOT.
That being said however, the game is not half as bad as all the doomsayer's would have you to believe. It was actually pretty fun, especially with RL friends and stuff. I love Bioware too so I hope the game is a huge success for them.
To early to say yet - and I doubt you will find any analyst that believes SWTOR has made any money yet. (There was a lot of worry last year).
One analyst posted that if EA 'sell' 2M copies (and that is not the same as registrations because EA get paid a (small) percentage by BestBuy etc. even if the boxes don't sell then EA would make $60M. I won't bother explaining but looks OK.
And then you have to look at what SWTOR cost - which is a really difficult question to answer.
i) what the game cost to make. Maybe $120M. Basically Bioware's headcount cost. (Say 1200 man years at $100k a year for salary, company taxes, medical, dental, 401k etc. Put your own numbers in but supposedly over 400 people were working on the game last year.)
ii) what the game cost EA. Two part answer: EA Bioware's headcount cost (say $110M) plus what was included in the price that EA paid for Bioware and Pandemic. $620M cash - 12 titles to date, an extra $54M ( a 1/12) maybe: $164M.
iii) what the game cost EA shareholders. A part of the Bioware / Pandemic purchase price was in stock options - resulting in the widely reported $860M purchase price. EA's shareholders picked up the bill for the extra '$240M'. They were performance based but assiming they were 'worth' $240M taking 1/12 as above would be an extra $20M to give a cost of $184M.
So -
No surprise that you see such a wide range of numbers for 'what SWTOR cost'.
Pretty big number though and initial sales alone are not going to recoup the cost.