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More Than 1.7 Million Active Subscribers 2/1/12 [EA Conf Call Discussion Thread]
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Thanks, Im on the fence about it. Probablly will sucumb and pick it up as not much to play right now. Played the demo thought the PC UI was poor (I'll manage with it) and that gameplaywas quite 'on rails' (I enjoyed dungeon siege III). Combat was quite fun in an ARPG sorta way.
Incidentally it is Friday in the EU
How can people be this clueless:
ttp://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-beats-targets-on-sales-gain-forecast-off-2012-02-01?link=MW_story_featstor
"now has about 1.7 million active subscribers playing the online multiplayer title, which Brown said represents a mix of users who already have signed up for a paid subscription and users who have given their credit cards over, but have not yet had their paid plans kick in."
The actual active paying subscriber numbers were bad enough that EA refused to state them and instead played the game of lumping in with every new player who has bought the game, entered their credit card info and started playing but not yet canceled.
I doubt they've retained 85% too, but I can well believe they've got 1.7m players as TOR still seems to be selling pretty well.
Doh, and there was me prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the guys saying that it was all crystal clear in the earnings call. One would still havve to wonder why it was not crystal clear in the financial statement itself if that was the case. Time will tell ehat is going on.
They havent actually said anything about the retention rate, and if it was close to even 80% they would probably be very loud about that since it would be an amazing number.
What they said (IIRC) was that "the majority" of the 1.7m have paid a sub fee, the rest are in their free month still. And I doubt we'll ever get any information more specific than that.
EA didn't lie, they essentially just refused to give an actual paying subscriber number. Instead they used the fact that everyone who buys the game and starts to play is forced to enter their credit card info and effectively become an 'acitve subscriber' until the actually hit the cancel button.
So if the number they are stating is current it includes every single person who has bought the game and started playing but haven't hit the cancel buton yet.
The only thing we do know is EA is claiming the number of paying subscribers + new players is 1.7 million. Which does show box/online sales in the second month aren't very good.
All i see myself playing on 3 differents servers both on republic and empire is my guild falling appart, people not logging in anymore or unsubed waiting for the free month to expire, a lot as well like me payed 1 more month to finish their class quest and don't plan on resubbing after that.
My friend list filled with 10 + name see barelly 2 of this list logging on. Even in general chat people are more quiet its almost impossible on my reroll to find a group for a flashpoint and i am a tank and overall the zone are getting empty.
Can SWTOR still succed ? yes if they fixe the long list of bug and put in a looking for group system, will it be huge sucess ? Simply no, seeing how the game is geared toward solo game and flawed in many way there is no way it will ever be a huge sucess.
And that comming from a Star war ip fan, i am actually so sad that this game fail (for me) i really tried to like it and even more sad that it will probably the last time in my life i get to see a mmorpg based on the universe of star wars but that mmo is so 2007, while voiceover and all is fine and overall the quest entertaining (for the first time) everything else feel so outdated or copied, its unbearrable.
Wouldn't matter if they released detail information on every single account, haters will still hate and try to come up with ways to say the numbers are fake, EA just trying to look good, blah blah blah.
Of course it would matter.
The only single number that matters, and that EA refused to give, is active paying subscribers.
Let me guess...those numbers are so good that EA decided to keep them for themselves.
Are you trying to tell me that EA releasing that information is going to change people's opinion of the game? It won't. They just released information which shows that there are currently 1.7 million active accounts - these are accounts that have not cancelled and that's not good enough for the people who for some reason want to "prove" that TOR is a failure. It's ridiculous really, if people don't like the game, why do they even care?
dunno why this dicussion is still going it's same back in forth for the last few days.. either way ill repost this
stocks are irrelevant.. box sales irrelevant... what people are claiming as the number of "active" players irrelevant. What IS relevant? how many people are actually playing the damn game when you are. How many people are around in your guild or your friends or just around period to group with to do warzones with. Whole point of playing an MMO is to play with lots of other people. For me my server was declining I was seeing less and less people week after week. The starter zones were ghost towns. It was getting more and more difficult to find groups for flashpoints. As imperial i was doing nothing but huttball over and over and over... To me all this says a million times more than any of those numbers you can throw at me.. if your server is one of the still thriving ones than good for you go and play but not all of us are so lucky to be in one of those couple of servers that still maintain very heavy at peak hours...
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
This post is false. Why do you keep trying to spread lies?
Boggle.
The direct quote from EA is on the very previous page...
fact that everyone who buys the game and starts to play is forced to enter their credit card info and effectively become an 'acitve subscriber' until the actually hit the cancel button.
it includes every single person who has bought the game and started playing but haven't hit the cancel buton yet.
Those parts of your post are false. They said no such thing and you know it.
Do you want to quote the part where they said the majority of the 1.7 were paying subscribers?
represents a mix of users who already have signed up for a paid subscription and users who have given their credit cards over, but have not yet had their paid plans kick in
Same old ship to retail numbers being passed off as actual sold to customer numbers games that companies like Microsoft plays.
Enough.
The desperation to pretend there are 1.7 million PAYING subcribers or anywhere near that number really makes it clear how absurdly fake sales number sites like vgchartz exist. Give fans of a game some big number they desperately want to believe and it doesn't matter how fake it is. They will cling to it like their lives depend on it.
SWTOR has some 1.1 million paying subscribers +-100k. 600k new players this month that make up the remainder of the '1.7 million active subs'.
Not a total disaster. A bit better than Warhammer's first month of 800k or so paying subs. But certainly not the WoW killer EA blew hundreds of millions hoping for.
dude really give it a rest nothing you say is going to change peoples minds that are set in their ways of thinking.. read my post couple above this one.. ingame speaks worlds more than these numbers...
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
The direct quote from EA is on the very previous page...
fact that everyone who buys the game and starts to play is forced to enter their credit card info and effectively become an 'acitve subscriber' until the actually hit the cancel button.
it includes every single person who has bought the game and started playing but haven't hit the cancel buton yet.
Those parts of your post are false. They said no such thing and you know it.
Do you want to quote the part where they said the majority of the 1.7 were paying subscribers?
This is from their press release: Press Release
I can't find any comments about some portion of the 1.7 million subscribers not being paying subscribers. I remember reading something about that, but we all know how dodgy memory can get. If it existed, it could have been referencing the 2 million units sold, saying that a high percentage were paying subscribers. It could also have been referencing people who had not gone past the first month and paid the first month's subscription costs. In any event, I can't find the document and their official statement is that they have 1.7 million active subscribers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Where at any time has EA said that SWTOR was going to be a "WoW killer?" Oh that's right, they haven't. Sure the media and fans have said things like this, but neither Bioware or EA have ever come out stating they wanted to take down WoW. In fact, it's been claimed they only need to retain 500k users to make money - so far they've surpassed their goal.
No one has said the 1.7 million are all paying. You're the only one saying that and then trying to argue against your own claim.
I agree with you that they probably have 1-1.1 million paying subs. Considering how many bought the game in the first month then the retention rate is fantastic.
There is no negative here that you are trying to spin.
I think it would be fair to say that any company that releases an MMO would hope that their game would be the WoW killer. Hell who wouldn't want that kind of money. EA didn't have to say it it's pretty obvious that you do not spend hundreds of millions of dollars and not at least hope to take over the top spot.
It's no different than any company releasing any product would hope they could be #1 in market share. Most MMO devs know by now that you're not going to come out of the gate and hit 10 million subs. WoW grew over years, not the first three months it was out.
If you use VGChartz.com's sales numbers, and assume that everyone who buys a box is a player for 4 weeks, and then after the 4 weeks they may jet, you can work out a pseudo retention rate.
This image is the worksheet:
Some things to note:
* Retention Rates only affect the first and second week's sales. All sales after the first week or two are by default a 100% retention rate.
* If 78% of the people who bought the game the first two weeks stuck around, we get very close to 1.7 million players.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I am not going to disagree with you. It is only common sense that you would want your product to be the industry leader. I was simply replying to your post where you stated that EA never said they wanted a "wow killer". They never had to say it. It was pretty obvious that is what they were shooting for with ToR. EA got one of the most recognizable IP's in the the world and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try and take WoW out of that top spot. If they were not trying for the top dog spot they would have been better off using one of their own IPs. I would bet a Mass Effect MMO would have generated almost as much interest and none of the profit would have to go to LA.
My point was that people are trying to insinuate that EA was touting TOR as a WoW killer which simply isn't true. EA wants to have a succesful cash cow that will bring money in on a monthly basis, that's all they really care about it - a game that is making them a decent profit. If they're getting a good ROI they won't really care about being #2 if that's where they stay.
I think you're assuming that people start playing the week they bought the game. Since the 1Mth players annoucement came at around than the 1.5M sales date, it's safe to say that a considerably larger amount of players might still in their first month than you're assuming. Your retention rate is very pseudo, in fact it's highly improbable it's as high as your guessing.