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More Than 1.7 Million Active Subscribers 2/1/12 [EA Conf Call Discussion Thread]
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nobody seems to believe blizzard when they post their subs, so i call BS on these numbers
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
Well, if we go buy your numbers we can also see how many of the 1.7 million are paying subs.
By your math, about 80% are paying for a subscription and only about 20% are on their free month. That's pretty much what I've been saying.
It's easy to say "Oh look! They lost 400k players in their first month! It's a failure!!" Well of course they did. Doesn't make the game a failure, especially when they hung on to 1.7 million people.
Saying the game "is not doing very good" is quite a stretch of the imagination. I would say that it's doing very well. If they keep losing subs at that rate, yeah that would be terrible, but it's going to level out at some point.
People quit MMOs after the free month. It happens to damn near every game. How many of them hang on to 1.7 million people?
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Well naturally, this is Star Wars we are talking about, it is way bigger IP than Warhammer, and it was released during the christmas holidays, which further boost sales. So the numbers are not exactly the same but similar. For sure this is no WoW killer we are talking about because WoW gained subs, month after month, where as SW:TOR is already starting to lose subs.
As Teala said, down around 400k subs from 2.1 million just after a month. I guess the loss will be even greater after the second month when more people have played through the storylines and realised there is not much after.
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Which is almost exactly what we get here. How is it unbelievable?
Most reports peg the first week sales at around 1.4 million.
Let's say they sold 1.4 million until the end of dec.
That means at the point of the conference call there were approx 600,000 people on their first month. That leaves 1.1 million who paid to sub. That puts the retention rate of the first month at 78%. It's high but not out of the realm of possibility. Even if you play it as a single player game there is more than enough content to keep the average purchaser playing for more than 1 month.
The churn rate I saw for WoW at it's peak was 45% over TWO months. Meaning out of everyone who bought the game 45% would unsub after 2 months. Using these number we're at 28% churn after the first month.
The trick is get people to keep buying the game and to keep providing content so that those who unsubbed resub from time to time.
And that's the problem, there's just too much one time content to keep people around. Re-rolling for new content can only get you so far.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
That's the point, for a game to lose 40% of their plaeyr base withint the first month of the games release is not a good sign. As you said, if it maintains that drop rate over the next 2 or three months this game will be lucky to retain 20% of their player base. 20% of 2mill is like 400k players. For a big AAA game like this with as much hype as it has had 400k does not bode well. Is it still successful. To some of us it will seem successful...hell any MMO that retains 400k subs should be considered successful to some degree - but it certainly isn't going to shattering any MMO sub numbers any time soon in the future.
I don't care about the whole "WoW Killer" thing. Never have. I really don't think most people who are playing do either. Some people will throw that term around, but I don't give a crap about wow.
Second, the only thing this shows is that SWTOR had a VERY successful launch and first month, with pretty decent retention. It doesn't indicate what's going to happen next month. It doesn't mean 400k people are going to quit next month or that the game will grow.
You guys can deny it all you want, but in the first month and a half, this game is very successful from where I'm standing. Their first month retention is very high, by your own admission.
I'm not saying that the game is going to do better or worse next month. All I'm saying is that this first month was very successful.
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This doesn't make sense if you're using subs in the same context as TOR. It's clear BW said that the 1.7 includes people in their free month although the majority are paying, they said that directly.
If you're saying after 12 days WAR had 1.2 million sold and 800k subs then they're not using the same metric since it had been less than a month so all 1.2m would still be active subs. If 400k people unsubbed after 12 days then that was a horrific sign and not what we're seeing with TOR at all.
No doubt, it was extremely successful in it's first month. The trick now is to keep being as successful. I am not seeing it. But hey, maybe Bioware will do something awesome and the game will eventually start growing, as it is now, it isn't growing, it is losing subs at a substantial rate.
Interesting
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
At it's peak of popularity WoW was losing 45% of it's new subs after 2 months. This is considered a very good churn rate for an MMO.
WoW maintained it's numbers but selling a lot of boxes and having old customers resub from time to time.
Wait just a damn minute Teala. Your math is very very wrong.
You yourself said that they sold (including digital) 2.1 million. I dont know if that number is right on, but it's the number you gave.
They currently have retained 1.7 million people.
Then you go on to say that they lost 40% of their player base!!!! Grab a calculator lets go through this together!!!!
1.7 million / 2.1 million = .8
That, my friend, is 80% retention rate. So by the numbers you provided, SWTOR has only lost about 20% of it's player base.
How does that work?
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That's another point, 80% of this games sales came before Dec 20th. It is now Feb 2 and they have sold only 20% more units since then. That is not a good sales record. Box sales have dropped off dramatically since release. They are not selling as many units as they are losing.
And you know this how exactly? Of course it's not the first time you write BS out of thin air in these boards without anything to back up your claims.
1.7 million subs 6 weeks after release.. yeah, it is losing subs at a substantial rate indeed
I highlighted something you seem to have missed...I am saying they do not have 1.7 million subs. They are basing that on a number from just after the first free month. Since then they have lost more.
/facepalm
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Actualy, the exact words that Gibeau used were "I can't tell you that the majority of the 1.7 million are paying subscribers for us currently, which is great considering"
"can't" as in CAN NOT. Now it's entirely possible he mispoke and meant "can"....but he's only able to be held accountable for what he ACTUALY said...not what someone might ASSUME he meant to say.
Another thing that I would wonder about which could effect numbers...were there any MULTI-MONTH deals offered with the game? or Multi-Month game cards purchased.
I know when I purchased LOTRO a few years back, I signed up for a 90 day subscription deal right off the bat, and I know people that have bought 60 day game cards for games as well. Something like that can play havoc with trying to estimate long term retention numbers....as those folks essentialy paid up front.
It's even tougher with games that sell LifeTime subscriptions or FTP for that matter as every one of those accounts permanently counts as an "Active" subscription, even if they haven't played in 3 years . Obviously that's not a problem in this case....but people that buy the game on day one and immediately sign up for a multi-month sub...or input a multi-month game card...can definately throw a monkey wrench in trying to figure how many players a game really is able to retain in the long haul.
Come talk to me in 3 months when people are screaming for merger servers - I'll stand by what I have wrote. In 6 to 8 months this game will be merging servers.
No doubt the first month of SW:TOR was a success but so was AoC and WAR, it does not mean much in the long therm. In 6 months the game will be less than 500k subs and there will be server merges not long after.
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Except you are wrong.
The 1.7 million number was accurate up to the conference call. Which was yesterday.
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Reading isn't that hard, understanding it however, is another matter.
What do you mean with "paid but have not yet subbed"? It doesn't make much sense to me. You seem to think you're only subbed when you're still playing past the free month. This is not the case.
It all comes down to when you consider someone as being "subbed/unsubbed" or as "having an active subscription or having opted out". When you start playing your first free month you need to set up an active subscription. No active subscription? Then you're not playing. They check wether the subscription is active by charging a dollar and giving the dollar back in the case of a credit card. With a time card you paid up front, no need to check anything but the code. When this succeeds your subscription is considered active.
When you're past the first free month then, they charge the subscription fee for the next month. When that fails your subscription is no longer active.
When you click the unsubscribe button a week after you started playing (and set up your subscription), your subscription is still active because they have not yet failed to charge your subscription fee. You could opt to choose for another payment method within the month you already paid for without deactivating your subscription. As long as your paid month isn't out, your subscription remains active.
The ones that haven't started playing yet have not yet set up an active subscription. The ones who played out their first month and where the sub was charged unsuccessfully no longer have active subscriptions.
The players that unsubscribed "the EA/BW way" (and no longer have active subscriptions) are not counted in the 1.7M not in any of those two versions. Players with active subscriptions are players with active subscriptions. Whether they already clicked the unsubscribe button is irrelevant as long as their paid for time isn't over yet, they still have time to purchase extra game time without deactivating their subscription. Whether those active subscriptions have been successfully charged for game time past the first free month is not considered with how they count these 'active subscriptions'. If you think there is a difference between the two it is due to your interpretation of "subbed".
Three months? There is already a growing trend in their forums for people requesting this or at the very least free transfers. Can't say I blame them because regardless their numbers there are clearly some rather sparse ones.
Oh...In before the "My fleet still has hundreds on so this cannot be true" brigade comes to say they're lying.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Merging servers in SWTOR will be a nightmare. Not only do they have to deal with first name conflicts they have legacy issues. If I was forced to change my legacy because I was moved to a server where someone already used it, I'd be right pissed.
WOW avoids merges by having cross server group finding. That eliminates most issues other than competitive raiding. Since those people are a minority they would likely be on a popular server already and if they weren't they would pay the $25 to move.
I predict cross server group finding before server merges.
And includes people who are in their free months, which mean that some of them will not be stay subbed so the number will most likely go down unless a surge of people join the game, which I doubt since the sale of the game has plummeted in the last few weeks.
My gaming blog
Wow, just noticed that.
I'm pretty sure that is a typo in the transcript though because he goes on to say "which is great considering we're only, like I said, 42 days into the launch, and you have a 30-day trial period."
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