Yeah. Not sure about the 2 million 'opened boxes' by June. unless they figure say the Asian servers will get them another 300K of boxes OR their new 'trial/friend invite system' will corral that many friends at least in the short term.
I would be more interested in what 'vast majority' (poor PR terminology) entails and /or how much of the 'vast majority' don't log in for a week or more at a time.
I like the game (and wanted to love it) but it's kind of dry the 2nd and 3rd time through. I have a 6month sub (subbed 1st day I logged in, I think) and my remaining 3.5 months is out there. I'll log in to play a bit and chat but for now, I'm pretty much done with it.
Wait a minute, they said 1.7 million subs by the end of January. We are in early March and you are to tell me that they still have 1.7 million subs? That is simply put, bullshit.
They apparently sold a bit over 2 million boxes and still have 1.7 million subs? How many people are paying for a game they are not playing, seriously...
Judging from this it looks like a shitload...or maybe they aren't being completely honest or clear with the 1.7million subs estimate.
If i were you i would worry more about Tera considering it lost half of its population in Korea... i don't think you are in any position to comment on SWTOR and its population trends.. seriously.
Wait a minute, they said 1.7 million subs by the end of January. We are in early March and you are to tell me that they still have 1.7 million subs? That is simply put, bullshit.
They apparently sold a bit over 2 million boxes and still have 1.7 million subs? How many people are paying for a game they are not playing, seriously...
Judging from this it looks like a shitload...or maybe they aren't being completely honest or clear with the 1.7million subs estimate.
If i were you i would worry more about Tera considering it lost half of its population in Korea... i don't think you are in any position to comment on SWTOR and its population trends.. seriously.
Hello troll, I was just wondering, what does TERA have to do with my post?
I am simply pointing out that I believe EA is being crafty with it's numbers.
Wait a minute, they said 1.7 million subs by the end of January. We are in early March and you are to tell me that they still have 1.7 million subs? That is simply put, bullshit.
They apparently sold a bit over 2 million boxes and still have 1.7 million subs? How many people are paying for a game they are not playing, seriously...
Judging from this it looks like a shitload...or maybe they aren't being completely honest or clear with the 1.7million subs estimate.
If i were you i would worry more about Tera considering it lost half of its population in Korea... i don't think you are in any position to comment on SWTOR and its population trends.. seriously.
Hello troll, I was just wondering, what does TERA have to do with my post?
I am simply pointing out that I believe EA is being crafty with it's numbers.
When you spend majority of your time defending a game likle Tera which lost half of its servers in Korea; do i need to tell you how ironic i find it when you post about servers and population of SWTOR? when you yourself live in house of glass it is betetr not to throw stones at others.
1 month! early beta bird leave after 30 days are up
2 next to leave will be those that took the prepaid card(vast majority)since ea gave player a free30 days add that to the prepaid 60 days.it make 90 days!the 90 days end about the 1 of april for the average yes some came later so it could be may or june ,but the idea is,MOST WILL NOT GET A SECOND PREPAID CARD!
gaming season as about 45 days left at most so most will go play f2p for the remainder!since aion is about to be f2p and l2 is f2p and eq1 is going f2p .this means lot of people will have various game they ll want to try.check me i am playing l2
it isnt cheaper i baught a mount for 2000 ncoin(about 25$)plus some soulshot!if you forget the cost of the mount in any game that are f2p,you ll see you can get by for about 15$ a month!if you arent carefull tho you could spend 400 $ in 1 minute!
but then same can probably be done in wow!me i baught item that could enhance my progression rate!
When you spend majority of your time defending a game likle Tera which lost half of its servers in Korea; do i need to tell you how ironic i find it when you post about servers and population of SWTOR? when you yourself live in house of glass it is betetr not to throw stones at others.
Unfortunately TERA has not released here, so I have no idea how well it will do and I didn't say it would do well or do bad, ever. Not to mention what happened in Korea has nothing to do with what will happen here.
I am not throwing stones, I am pointing out something, and that something is that the numbers don't add up, there's a difference, nobody is covering up TERAs subscription numbers, we know they aren't where they should be, but it seems like someone is covering up SW:TORs.
Now please do not bring up irrelevant points about TERA in a thread for discussing SW:TOR and it's sub numbers.
When you spend majority of your time defending a game likle Tera which lost half of its servers in Korea; do i need to tell you how ironic i find it when you post about servers and population of SWTOR? when you yourself live in house of glass it is betetr not to throw stones at others.
Unfortunately TERA has not released here, so I have no idea how well it will do and I didn't say it would do well or do bad, ever. Not to mention what happened in Korea has nothing to do with what will happen here.
I am not throwing stones, I am pointing out something, and that something is that the numbers don't add up, there's a difference, nobody is covering up TERAs subscription numbers, we know they aren't where they should be, but it seems like someone is covering up SW:TORs.
Now please do not bring up irrelevant points about TERA in a thread for discussing SW:TOR and it's sub numbers.
From where i stand it is quite relevant especially when the said person is a major Tera fan. I am allergic to hypocricy can not help it.
I believe the numbers of the CEO and for people referring to Xfire as an indicator of the fail of SWTOR. None of my friends are using Xfire (pretty big group) so I wonder how this prooves anything.
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello has confirmed that Star Wars: The Old Republic is sporting 1.7 million subscribers and indicated that the "vast majority" of the subscribers have passed beyond the thirty days of game time that was included in the purchase price.
A stock analyst from Cowen & Company had this to say about the short term future of SWTOR:
Read the first sentence. It becomes clear that 1.7 million subscribers is not currently subscribed players, but all who have activated the game. Then, parse the second half of that sentence: the "vast majority" of those "Subscribers" have passed beyond the 30 days of game time that was included in the purchase price. How much is a "Vast Majority"? 60%? 70%? We are past the first month of subscriptions after the 30 days of included time. If the retention numbers were at least 50% of all players who activated the game are still playing, why not say "The majority of subscribers have passed beyond the first month of paid subscription time"? Or, "the majority of subscribers are still maintaining active subscriptions"?
So, my take on this is that of the 1.7 million who actually activated the game and started counting, in EA's eyes as subscribers, maybe 1.2 million payed for at least one month beyond the first 30 days of included time, but some number less than 850K are still currently active subscribers.
Also, I seem to remember a few people projecting that it wouldn't be long before the total number of activated accounts exceeded 2 million, so I'm surprised that 1.7 million is still the number being tossed around.
If I was investor, I'd at least have to factor in the real possibility that box sales have stagnated and overall retention numbers after three months may be below 50%. That would signal a lot of churn and very few new sales being generated by positive word of mouth.
I will say with a high degree of confidence that the analyst's estimate of 2 million active subscriptions by the end of June at 2 Million and absolutely no loss of net subscribers by the end of the year is just completely absurd fantasy.
Very observant. So they might just saying that 1.7 millions have subscribed and a vast majority of those have passed the 30 days. So he could be using a kind of language that makes you think that it has 1.7 millions current subscribers where as it is 1.7 millions which has subscribes but are not neccessarily currently subscribed.
Gotta love this corporate double talk... damn weasels.
Activation and subscription are not in anyway the same. You are linking them. Normally subscribers mean those who take up a monthly or longer subscription. That is the normal understanding of the term and for them to use it as activation instead is clearly misleading and false. Would they falsely represent themselves in this method so obviously . I doubt a public company can do that and not be brought up and questioned by their shareholders.
Even WoW uses words like "active subscribers" as opposed to subscribers that would indicate a figure far larger because over the course of some 8 years a large number of people subscribe but active would refer to how many are currently subscribing to the game. Similarly subscribing is not when you activate the game box code because subscribing requires you to take up an obligation of paying beyond the free month.
Your assumption that they are making the reference to the current figure of 1.7 million as those who activated the box would clearly be in error as more than 1.7 million purchased the game and each one of them would have activated the game. So why did they pick 1.7 million instead of the actual figure of sold games. Each sold game would theorectically mean a subscription according to your definition.
I do agree though that it is highly unlikely that they have 1.7 million subscribers at this very moment given the low population of some of the servers but then again I am not privy to the caps on each server and how many subscribers are on the heavy, standard or light servers. That being the case they have clearly opened far too many servers but that does not necessarily translate into a lower figure than 1.7 million . We cannot actually speculate because like I said even 1.7 million players spread out over the number of servers is possible. We do not not know the distribution and are in no position to get that information.
hm .. maybe people DID stay past their 30days paid time included with the game. The only reasons they would have done so, however, would have been if they [foolishly] bought into the multi-month game time card, or if they decided to play it out an extra month to see if anything changed before quitting for good.
I was in the latter group. Love SW to death, played swtor hoping that it would be everything KOTOR1+2 was in mmo form but in a new-generation format ... and after about 50 days wanted to punch every BioWare/EA dev who worked on this game in the face.
No seriously. That's what you get for popping a squat and dumping all over the Star Wars IP. Unforgiveable (imo).
P.S. I'll never buy another ea/bioware game again. me3/swtor sealed the f'ing deal on that one. Period.
I have several friends who were suckered into buying 6 months ... they quit after 1.
We all know it is a lie and they also know that. Desperate measures are implemented here.
SWTOR is a nice single playing game with an OPTION for multiplayer as such there is no future for it.
I am amoung the ppl that payed 2 months and now i canceled it cause the game just does not have a multyplayer vibe at all. And I cleared all content in 2 months (leveling included), game is way to easy and have way too many tehnical problems.
WOW had almost the same problems at the beggining but WOW made a STANDARD after 7 years, you cant expect ppl to tolerate stuff that are wrong and make game so unplayable in some moments.
Bioware did GREAT work, but ppl who are behind the big FAIL off SWTOR are ppl that invested money in game and they are not gamers at all and ofc Mythic Games who totaly failed in making this game a good MMO.
I have several friends who were suckered into buying 6 months ... they quit after 1.
Lol, my friend bought the collectors edition + multiple month sub(not sure how long it was) but he defended to game saying it's not that bad until i'd say the beginning of January and then just finally came to terms that he wasted an insane amount of money and gave up on the game.
$150+ for less than a month of gameplay...I actually felt bad for him lol.
I got no stake in seeing the game fail, but they said 2 million people bought the game.
1.7 million subs after about three months is a 15% attrition rate.
To put it another way, their game is on par for a Warhammer Online 40% attrition rate by the end of its first year.
Regardless, the game will be a financial success because about 5x more people purchased it than WAR, but it's sad to see how despite all that money, Bioware released a game that, as MMORPG itself said: "It's only innovation is it's lack of innovation."
I'm not a hater nor a fanboy. I played the beta up to level 14 and enjoyed it. Just not enough to buy the game.
They said they sold 1.7 mil copies of the game - I believe that. Now they say there are 1.7 mil subscriptions..
Question: How can ANY game keep a 100% subscription rate?
Obviously, more have bought the game since. The figures if they have the 1.7m, which I am not disputing, are better than even the fans were expecting, it just means more people populating the living breathing dead sterile worlds until the story or their sub runs out. It will be interesting to see what next month brings when the 60 day game cards needed to activate run out.
Very clever of them to release these numbers now I didnt think theyd have the balls. The 3month subbers who chose to quit will close soon in one week or so if I am right in my dates.
Its much better to show the small losses sooner than the large losses later.
I'm not a hater nor a fanboy. I played the beta up to level 14 and enjoyed it. Just not enough to buy the game.
They said they sold 1.7 mil copies of the game - I believe that.
Now they say there are 1.7 mil subscriptions..
Question: How can ANY game keep a 100% subscription rate?
Obviously, more have bought the game since. The figures if they have the 1.7m, which I am not disputing, are better than even the fans were expecting, it just means more people populating the living breathing dead sterile worlds until the story or their sub runs out. It will be interesting to see what next month brings when the 60 day game cards needed to activate run out.
Hmm losing 300k and getting another 300k players. Ok I will put on the tinfoil hat and keep pondering.
I'm not saying I'm right and you guys are wrong. I'm just sceptical and such a huge success must be very very hard to achieve.
Comments
Yeah. Not sure about the 2 million 'opened boxes' by June. unless they figure say the Asian servers will get them another 300K of boxes OR their new 'trial/friend invite system' will corral that many friends at least in the short term.
I would be more interested in what 'vast majority' (poor PR terminology) entails and /or how much of the 'vast majority' don't log in for a week or more at a time.
I like the game (and wanted to love it) but it's kind of dry the 2nd and 3rd time through. I have a 6month sub (subbed 1st day I logged in, I think) and my remaining 3.5 months is out there. I'll log in to play a bit and chat but for now, I'm pretty much done with it.
If i were you i would worry more about Tera considering it lost half of its population in Korea... i don't think you are in any position to comment on SWTOR and its population trends.. seriously.
If Cowen have upgraded it to outperfomr it's time to concider getting short. Not quite as much as if it had been a strong buy but hey.
Yeah, it seems like they dropped a 100k players or so if you read between the lines, but i am still actually very impressed.
Heck, anything over a million players in a P2P game is just amazing, only Wow have topped that for more than a month.
Hello troll, I was just wondering, what does TERA have to do with my post?
I am simply pointing out that I believe EA is being crafty with it's numbers.
Congratz to SW:TOR. It's quite an impressive number.
When you spend majority of your time defending a game likle Tera which lost half of its servers in Korea; do i need to tell you how ironic i find it when you post about servers and population of SWTOR? when you yourself live in house of glass it is betetr not to throw stones at others.
dont need to be a genious to know the curve!
1 month! early beta bird leave after 30 days are up
2 next to leave will be those that took the prepaid card(vast majority)since ea gave player a free30 days add that to the prepaid 60 days.it make 90 days!the 90 days end about the 1 of april for the average yes some came later so it could be may or june ,but the idea is,MOST WILL NOT GET A SECOND PREPAID CARD!
gaming season as about 45 days left at most so most will go play f2p for the remainder!since aion is about to be f2p and l2 is f2p and eq1 is going f2p .this means lot of people will have various game they ll want to try.check me i am playing l2
it isnt cheaper i baught a mount for 2000 ncoin(about 25$)plus some soulshot!if you forget the cost of the mount in any game that are f2p,you ll see you can get by for about 15$ a month!if you arent carefull tho you could spend 400 $ in 1 minute!
but then same can probably be done in wow!me i baught item that could enhance my progression rate!
Unfortunately TERA has not released here, so I have no idea how well it will do and I didn't say it would do well or do bad, ever. Not to mention what happened in Korea has nothing to do with what will happen here.
I am not throwing stones, I am pointing out something, and that something is that the numbers don't add up, there's a difference, nobody is covering up TERAs subscription numbers, we know they aren't where they should be, but it seems like someone is covering up SW:TORs.
Now please do not bring up irrelevant points about TERA in a thread for discussing SW:TOR and it's sub numbers.
From where i stand it is quite relevant especially when the said person is a major Tera fan. I am allergic to hypocricy can not help it.
No no no... you gotta keep with the corporate l33tspeak: its "subs" not "players," and "the majority" of them are paying!
The number of players is anyones guess really, and they wont go public with that, or the retention, unless it goes reeeaaally well.
I believe the numbers of the CEO and for people referring to Xfire as an indicator of the fail of SWTOR. None of my friends are using Xfire (pretty big group) so I wonder how this prooves anything.
Very observant. So they might just saying that 1.7 millions have subscribed and a vast majority of those have passed the 30 days. So he could be using a kind of language that makes you think that it has 1.7 millions current subscribers where as it is 1.7 millions which has subscribes but are not neccessarily currently subscribed.
Gotta love this corporate double talk... damn weasels.
My gaming blog
Activation and subscription are not in anyway the same. You are linking them. Normally subscribers mean those who take up a monthly or longer subscription. That is the normal understanding of the term and for them to use it as activation instead is clearly misleading and false. Would they falsely represent themselves in this method so obviously . I doubt a public company can do that and not be brought up and questioned by their shareholders.
Even WoW uses words like "active subscribers" as opposed to subscribers that would indicate a figure far larger because over the course of some 8 years a large number of people subscribe but active would refer to how many are currently subscribing to the game. Similarly subscribing is not when you activate the game box code because subscribing requires you to take up an obligation of paying beyond the free month.
Your assumption that they are making the reference to the current figure of 1.7 million as those who activated the box would clearly be in error as more than 1.7 million purchased the game and each one of them would have activated the game. So why did they pick 1.7 million instead of the actual figure of sold games. Each sold game would theorectically mean a subscription according to your definition.
I do agree though that it is highly unlikely that they have 1.7 million subscribers at this very moment given the low population of some of the servers but then again I am not privy to the caps on each server and how many subscribers are on the heavy, standard or light servers. That being the case they have clearly opened far too many servers but that does not necessarily translate into a lower figure than 1.7 million . We cannot actually speculate because like I said even 1.7 million players spread out over the number of servers is possible. We do not not know the distribution and are in no position to get that information.
I have several friends who were suckered into buying 6 months ... they quit after 1.
1.7 million!!!
We all know it is a lie and they also know that. Desperate measures are implemented here.
SWTOR is a nice single playing game with an OPTION for multiplayer as such there is no future for it.
I am amoung the ppl that payed 2 months and now i canceled it cause the game just does not have a multyplayer vibe at all. And I cleared all content in 2 months (leveling included), game is way to easy and have way too many tehnical problems.
WOW had almost the same problems at the beggining but WOW made a STANDARD after 7 years, you cant expect ppl to tolerate stuff that are wrong and make game so unplayable in some moments.
Bioware did GREAT work, but ppl who are behind the big FAIL off SWTOR are ppl that invested money in game and they are not gamers at all and ofc Mythic Games who totaly failed in making this game a good MMO.
Lol, my friend bought the collectors edition + multiple month sub(not sure how long it was) but he defended to game saying it's not that bad until i'd say the beginning of January and then just finally came to terms that he wasted an insane amount of money and gave up on the game.
$150+ for less than a month of gameplay...I actually felt bad for him lol.
I'm not a hater nor a fanboy. I played the beta up to level 14 and enjoyed it. Just not enough to buy the game.
They said they sold 1.7 mil copies of the game - I believe that.
Now they say there are 1.7 mil subscriptions..
Question: How can ANY game keep a 100% subscription rate?
I got no stake in seeing the game fail, but they said 2 million people bought the game.
1.7 million subs after about three months is a 15% attrition rate.
To put it another way, their game is on par for a Warhammer Online 40% attrition rate by the end of its first year.
Regardless, the game will be a financial success because about 5x more people purchased it than WAR, but it's sad to see how despite all that money, Bioware released a game that, as MMORPG itself said: "It's only innovation is it's lack of innovation."
Obviously, more have bought the game since. The figures if they have the 1.7m, which I am not disputing, are better than even the fans were expecting, it just means more people populating the living breathing dead sterile worlds until the story or their sub runs out. It will be interesting to see what next month brings when the 60 day game cards needed to activate run out.Actually, they sold over 2 million copies if I remember the last go-round we had with these financial statements.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Very clever of them to release these numbers now I didnt think theyd have the balls. The 3month subbers who chose to quit will close soon in one week or so if I am right in my dates.
Its much better to show the small losses sooner than the large losses later.
Hmm losing 300k and getting another 300k players. Ok I will put on the tinfoil hat and keep pondering.
I'm not saying I'm right and you guys are wrong. I'm just sceptical and such a huge success must be very very hard to achieve.
There is the point i made earlier ... i had 5 friends buying this for 6 months ... 1 is still playing.
So it says 1.7M paid subs, not active players.
That's some quick growing. Good job on that.