First, the goal was 2 million subscribers. Now it's half that ... At March 13th, 2012. Something to think about conisdering their claims of the 'vast majority' of the 1.7 million subscribers re-subscribed. (In short, it was BS...)
Second, it's not clear they're 'well on their way. The churn is horrific. They have 3/8th the game users (XFire log-on metrics) than they had on January 8th, 2012 with somewhat under 1.9 million units sold. They've sold another 350K-to-400K since January 8th and yet we have 3/8ths the player base (measured in unique log-ons).
Third, current sales are so bad that they're somewhere around 16K units/week sold ahd are still dropping. This cannot sustain a million-subscriber MMO with any normal churn rate. (50% (or more) leave during trial, 70% of the remainder are gone in a year - that's 125K left after a year's worth of sales (832K)).
In a game that has sold almost 2.3 million copies and has 3/8ths the player-base (at those playing) of the 1.9 million boxes sold... Sorry, the trends point to massive failure to meet expecations, not success. You can't increase your sales by 21% and have your player base decrease by 63% and think 'things are going well' and 'one-million subscribers' is a realistic level.
Now, for those who want to cry 'hater' and go back to WoW. This isn't about WoW. Or SWTOR. It's about math and modeling. And how the industry works. You should expect a MASSIVE EXODUS after the initial trial period. It is NORMAL. WoW (in current form, not the WoW of old) looses (according to their internal records) 70% of trials. Eve Online, a number of years ago, said they lose just over 50% of their initial trials.
SWTOR is not an exception to the modern MMO market regardless of how you feel about it and wish to believe it is.... The days of starting small and growing seem to be over. Rather, people rush in, at least half leave in a month, then the MMO takes a year to get to it's 'normal, sustainable' population. If the dev does a good job, it will continue to grow. If the dev does a bad job, it will shrink and go F2P/shut-down.
Does anybody remember how big a deal ability delay was when the game launched? You see anyone posting about it now?
And you guys say they aren't listening or fixing their game.
No... They fixed some of it. The big issue now is that people have been using the /who command by level groups and have determined that the 'standard' population threshold is 350 people on the server. And 30% of the servers no longer get out of light except weekends. And they barely get into standard...
People are desperate for mergers. People are tired of re-rolling.
You should read the 'Server Population is dropping' thread: http://tinyurl.com/7lp479h (This is the third one in four weeks, btw.) Besides a few BioDrones lying their butts off, its really clear what people are upset about is the lack of "massive" on most servers. Who cares about the remaining ability delay when you can't even do HEROIC-2s with someone else...?
First, the goal was 2 million subscribers. Now it's half that ... At March 13th, 2012. Something to think about conisdering their claims of the 'vast majority' of the 1.7 million subscribers re-subscribed. (In short, it was BS...)
Second, it's not clear they're 'well on their way. The churn is horrific. They have 3/8th the game users (XFire log-on metrics) than they had on January 8th, 2012 with somewhat under 1.9 million units sold. They've sold another 350K-to-400K since January 8th and yet we have 3/8ths the player base (measured in unique log-ons).
Third, current sales are so bad that they're somewhere around 16K units/week sold ahd are still dropping. This cannot sustain a million-subscriber MMO with any normal churn rate. (50% (or more) leave during trial, 70% of the remainder are gone in a year - that's 125K left after a year's worth of sales (832K)).
In a game that has sold almost 2.3 million copies and has 3/8ths the player-base (at those playing) of the 1.9 million boxes sold... Sorry, the trends point to massive failure to meet expecations, not success. You can't increase your sales by 21% and have your player base decrease by 63% and think 'things are going well' and 'one-million subscribers' is a realistic level.
Now, for those who want to cry 'hater' and go back to WoW. This isn't about WoW. Or SWTOR. It's about math and modeling. And how the industry works. You should expect a MASSIVE EXODUS after the initial trial period. It is NORMAL. WoW (in current form, not the WoW of old) looses (according to their internal records) 70% of trials. Eve Online, a number of years ago, said they lose just over 50% of their initial trials.
SWTOR is not an exception to the modern MMO market regardless of how you feel about it and wish to believe it is.... The days of starting small and growing seem to be over. Rather, people rush in, at least half leave in a month, then the MMO takes a year to get to it's 'normal, sustainable' population. If the dev does a good job, it will continue to grow. If the dev does a bad job, it will shrink and go F2P/shut-down.
Good assessment.
I'm lukcy to play on one of the most loaded server and some planets feels like graveyards.
IMHO the management should just shut up and start delivering instead of doing some (bad) PR and (wrong) damage control. Thing is when the real investors will see how 1.2 does not raises the subs, people will start running in BioWare offices because positions will be cut... the hard way
Now what makes me sad is, more than probably, the clueless people that took the decisions to make the game the way it is now might certainly avoid the cut while the honest and hard workers artits, designers, coders will be fired.
Check the link below and you'll see the suits admitting they were unable to manage such a large project.
And the sad thing is that, if not for short-sighted greed and the general fuck-wittedness of your average suit (e.g. most of them), this could have been prevented.
All the warning signs were there months in advance.
"BioWare used the Colonel John Boyd fighter pilot model of decision making, which says that the winner of a dogfight is the one who makes the most decisions the fastest. A development team is like a fighter pilot, said Dickinson, in that good decisions made slowly can impact a project fatally. The team iterated through a method of observing, orienting, deciding, acting, and then observing again (the OODA model) to make super fast decisions, based on the combined experience of the production team. This led to faster decisions over time, and, said the producers, a better game on launch day"
This seems to be a great method on how to win a battle, but not so good for winning a war. Notice it is the fighter pilot method, not the admirals or generals method.
This may be the crux of the problem. They were able to make fast decisions that put the game on the market, but did they forget about the forest looking for trees?
Don't get me wrong, I think SWToR is a good mmo; and a nice setting change from traditional fantasy. But I see way to much 'structure' and 'formalization' in this game, I can see the machines behind the curtain, it is an inorganic world built of 'blocks' instead of an organic world built on 'balanced interconnected ecosystem' . I think probably the result of these bullet speed decisions.
And what I mean by that is like...
Although every class has a unique quest line, I feel like that was a parameter made before the stories were written. So, I feel like the consular story is there, because the structure demanded a consular story. I don't feel like the story was a unique piece of art that some dev always wanted to include in an mmo.....i feel like it was written, 'because all classes have to have a story, so make one up, fast'. They feel phoned in, is what I'm saying. Their presence just emphasizes the structure of the game rather than organically adds to it, or is an intrinsic part of it. It feels like it is there because, 'all classes have a quest' rather than, 'because we have to find a vehicle to tell this story'.
I also feel the game is way too segmented and compartmentalized. The class stories don't seem to weave together in anyway, its not 'one part of an epic story' they are literally, completely separate from each other. I think what was great about star wars movies were the ensemble elements......different folks from different backgrounds thrown together with a common goal. I feel like in the spirit of 'fast decisions'......they separated the writing teams and gave them autonomy, without having to consult or step on toes of other writing teams, the product could be completed faster.
But in addition to that - it just feels like an mmo placed in a single player world. My ship is always in an instance, never in the pervasive world. The maps, especially in urban settings feels like - here's the level 1 map. Now takea speeder to the lvl 2 map. Now tke a speeder to the lvl 3 map. They feel like separate maps.They don't feel like different neighborhoods of the same city.
Here's a typical scenario:
Log in to the fleet. Que up for a warzone. Run to your ship. Instance. Run to your ships door. Instance. Choose a planet to fly to. Instance out of your ship. Instance into the space port. Cut scene while you pick up quest. Warzone pops. Instance. Get slammed in hutball. Instance. Restart cutscene cuz your warzone popped. Speeder to your next map. Go in the class quest instance. Cut scene. Defeat something. cut scene. leave your instance. ......
It's all very segmented. Even when you are in the persistent world you have to speeder past all this unplayable, unaccessible area to get to the next 'map'.
I don't know the circumstances which led Dallas to make this choice. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think the investor's sword of damacles was hanging above his head.
But hopefully he understands that 'faster' doesn't equate to 'better'. If his job was to get a highly polished mmo out the door quickly. He should be proud, he did what was asked of him. If his job was to create a simulated living breathing world, he did not.
He put out a great game; I am entertained by it. But there were a lot of long term consequences to the choices they made to make their decisions fast.
Anyway, I think it led to the game being a product of the structure rather than the structure being a product of the game.
"BioWare used the Colonel John Boyd fighter pilot model of decision making, which says that the winner of a dogfight is the one who makes the most decisions the fastest. A development team is like a fighter pilot, said Dickinson, in that good decisions made slowly can impact a project fatally. The team iterated through a method of observing, orienting, deciding, acting, and then observing again (the OODA model) to make super fast decisions, based on the combined experience of the production team. This led to faster decisions over time, and, said the producers, a better game on launch day"
This seems to be a great method on how to win a battle, but not so good for winning a war. Notice it is the fighter pilot method, not the admirals or generals method.
This may be the crux of the problem. They were able to make fast decisions that put the game on the market, but did they forget about the forest looking for trees?
Don't get me wrong, I think SWToR is a good mmo; and a nice setting change from traditional fantasy. But I see way to much 'structure' and 'formalization' in this game, I can see the machines behind the curtain, it is an inorganic world built of 'blocks' instead of an organic world built on 'balanced interconnected ecosystem' . I think probably the result of these bullet speed decisions.
And what I mean by that is like...
Although every class has a unique quest line, I feel like that was a parameter made before the stories were written. So, I feel like the consular story is there, because the structure demanded a consular story. I don't feel like the story was a unique piece of art that some dev always wanted to include in an mmo.....i feel like it was written, 'because all classes have to have a story, so make one up, fast'. They feel phoned in, is what I'm saying. Their presence just emphasizes the structure of the game rather than organically adds to it, or is an intrinsic part of it. It feels like it is there because, 'all classes have a quest' rather than, 'because we have to find a vehicle to tell this story'.
I also feel the game is way too segmented and compartmentalized. The class stories don't seem to weave together in anyway, its not 'one part of an epic story' they are literally, completely separate from each other. I think what was great about star wars movies were the ensemble elements......different folks from different backgrounds thrown together with a common goal. I feel like in the spirit of 'fast decisions'......they separated the writing teams and gave them autonomy, without having to consult or step on toes of other writing teams, the product could be completed faster.
But in addition to that - it just feels like an mmo placed in a single player world. My ship is always in an instance, never in the pervasive world. The maps, especially in urban settings feels like - here's the level 1 map. Now takea speeder to the lvl 2 map. Now tke a speeder to the lvl 3 map. They feel like separate maps.They don't feel like different neighborhoods of the same city.
Here's a typical scenario:
Log in to the fleet. Que up for a warzone. Run to your ship. Instance. Run to your ships door. Instance. Choose a planet to fly to. Instance out of your ship. Instance into the space port. Cut scene while you pick up quest. Warzone pops. Instance. Get slammed in hutball. Instance. Restart cutscene cuz your warzone popped. Speeder to your next map. Go in the class quest instance. Cut scene. Defeat something. cut scene. leave your instance. ......
It's all very segmented. Even when you are in the persistent world you have to speeder past all this unplayable, unaccessible area to get to the next 'map'.
I don't know the circumstances which led Dallas to make this choice. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think the investor's sword of damacles was hanging above his head.
But hopefully he understands that 'faster' doesn't equate to 'better'. If his job was to get a highly polished mmo out the door quickly. He should be proud, he did what was asked of him. If his job was to create a simulated living breathing world, he did not.
He put out a great game; I am entertained by it. But there were a lot of long term consequences to the choices they made to make their decisions fast.
Anyway, I think it led to the game being a product of the structure rather than the structure being a product of the game.
A good read, I agree with you on many points. They made a game on rails. They didn't deliver a living world.
"BioWare used the Colonel John Boyd fighter pilot model of decision making, which says that the winner of a dogfight is the one who makes the most decisions the fastest. A development team is like a fighter pilot, said Dickinson, in that good decisions made slowly can impact a project fatally. The team iterated through a method of observing, orienting, deciding, acting, and then observing again (the OODA model) to make super fast decisions, based on the combined experience of the production team. This led to faster decisions over time, and, said the producers, a better game on launch day"
This seems to be a great method on how to win a battle, but not so good for winning a war. Notice it is the fighter pilot method, not the admirals or generals method.
This may be the crux of the problem. They were able to make fast decisions that put the game on the market, but did they forget about the forest looking for trees?
Don't get me wrong, I think SWToR is a good mmo; and a nice setting change from traditional fantasy. But I see way to much 'structure' and 'formalization' in this game, I can see the machines behind the curtain, it is an inorganic world built of 'blocks' instead of an organic world built on 'balanced interconnected ecosystem' . I think probably the result of these bullet speed decisions.
And what I mean by that is like...
Although every class has a unique quest line, I feel like that was a parameter made before the stories were written. So, I feel like the consular story is there, because the structure demanded a consular story. I don't feel like the story was a unique piece of art that some dev always wanted to include in an mmo.....i feel like it was written, 'because all classes have to have a story, so make one up, fast'. They feel phoned in, is what I'm saying. Their presence just emphasizes the structure of the game rather than organically adds to it, or is an intrinsic part of it. It feels like it is there because, 'all classes have a quest' rather than, 'because we have to find a vehicle to tell this story'.
I also feel the game is way too segmented and compartmentalized. The class stories don't seem to weave together in anyway, its not 'one part of an epic story' they are literally, completely separate from each other. I think what was great about star wars movies were the ensemble elements......different folks from different backgrounds thrown together with a common goal. I feel like in the spirit of 'fast decisions'......they separated the writing teams and gave them autonomy, without having to consult or step on toes of other writing teams, the product could be completed faster.
But in addition to that - it just feels like an mmo placed in a single player world. My ship is always in an instance, never in the pervasive world. The maps, especially in urban settings feels like - here's the level 1 map. Now takea speeder to the lvl 2 map. Now tke a speeder to the lvl 3 map. They feel like separate maps.They don't feel like different neighborhoods of the same city.
Here's a typical scenario:
Log in to the fleet. Que up for a warzone. Run to your ship. Instance. Run to your ships door. Instance. Choose a planet to fly to. Instance out of your ship. Instance into the space port. Cut scene while you pick up quest. Warzone pops. Instance. Get slammed in hutball. Instance. Restart cutscene cuz your warzone popped. Speeder to your next map. Go in the class quest instance. Cut scene. Defeat something. cut scene. leave your instance. ......
It's all very segmented. Even when you are in the persistent world you have to speeder past all this unplayable, unaccessible area to get to the next 'map'.
I don't know the circumstances which led Dallas to make this choice. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think the investor's sword of damacles was hanging above his head.
But hopefully he understands that 'faster' doesn't equate to 'better'. If his job was to get a highly polished mmo out the door quickly. He should be proud, he did what was asked of him. If his job was to create a simulated living breathing world, he did not.
He put out a great game; I am entertained by it. But there were a lot of long term consequences to the choices they made to make their decisions fast.
Anyway, I think it led to the game being a product of the structure rather than the structure being a product of the game.
I dont think he knows what they got wrong because he thinks they got so much right.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I dont think he knows what they got wrong because he thinks they got so much right.
I agree,
but how much could he really say anyway? I'm sure he doesn't want to do any torpedoing. There's quite a bit of that going on without him adding to it. If he got caught purposely delivering bad press on the game it would not go well for him I'm sure.
Comments
Their goal, for now, is to gain over one million subscribers in the long-term, one they’re apparently well on their way to meeting.
First, the goal was 2 million subscribers. Now it's half that ... At March 13th, 2012. Something to think about conisdering their claims of the 'vast majority' of the 1.7 million subscribers re-subscribed. (In short, it was BS...)
Second, it's not clear they're 'well on their way. The churn is horrific. They have 3/8th the game users (XFire log-on metrics) than they had on January 8th, 2012 with somewhat under 1.9 million units sold. They've sold another 350K-to-400K since January 8th and yet we have 3/8ths the player base (measured in unique log-ons).
Third, current sales are so bad that they're somewhere around 16K units/week sold ahd are still dropping. This cannot sustain a million-subscriber MMO with any normal churn rate. (50% (or more) leave during trial, 70% of the remainder are gone in a year - that's 125K left after a year's worth of sales (832K)).
In a game that has sold almost 2.3 million copies and has 3/8ths the player-base (at those playing) of the 1.9 million boxes sold... Sorry, the trends point to massive failure to meet expecations, not success. You can't increase your sales by 21% and have your player base decrease by 63% and think 'things are going well' and 'one-million subscribers' is a realistic level.
Now, for those who want to cry 'hater' and go back to WoW. This isn't about WoW. Or SWTOR. It's about math and modeling. And how the industry works. You should expect a MASSIVE EXODUS after the initial trial period. It is NORMAL. WoW (in current form, not the WoW of old) looses (according to their internal records) 70% of trials. Eve Online, a number of years ago, said they lose just over 50% of their initial trials.
SWTOR is not an exception to the modern MMO market regardless of how you feel about it and wish to believe it is.... The days of starting small and growing seem to be over. Rather, people rush in, at least half leave in a month, then the MMO takes a year to get to it's 'normal, sustainable' population. If the dev does a good job, it will continue to grow. If the dev does a bad job, it will shrink and go F2P/shut-down.
No... They fixed some of it. The big issue now is that people have been using the /who command by level groups and have determined that the 'standard' population threshold is 350 people on the server. And 30% of the servers no longer get out of light except weekends. And they barely get into standard...
People are desperate for mergers. People are tired of re-rolling.
You should read the 'Server Population is dropping' thread: http://tinyurl.com/7lp479h (This is the third one in four weeks, btw.) Besides a few BioDrones lying their butts off, its really clear what people are upset about is the lack of "massive" on most servers. Who cares about the remaining ability delay when you can't even do HEROIC-2s with someone else...?
Good assessment.
I'm lukcy to play on one of the most loaded server and some planets feels like graveyards.
IMHO the management should just shut up and start delivering instead of doing some (bad) PR and (wrong) damage control. Thing is when the real investors will see how 1.2 does not raises the subs, people will start running in BioWare offices because positions will be cut... the hard way
Now what makes me sad is, more than probably, the clueless people that took the decisions to make the game the way it is now might certainly avoid the cut while the honest and hard workers artits, designers, coders will be fired.
Check the link below and you'll see the suits admitting they were unable to manage such a large project.
Source
And the sad thing is that, if not for short-sighted greed and the general fuck-wittedness of your average suit (e.g. most of them), this could have been prevented.
All the warning signs were there months in advance.
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
"BioWare used the Colonel John Boyd fighter pilot model of decision making, which says that the winner of a dogfight is the one who makes the most decisions the fastest. A development team is like a fighter pilot, said Dickinson, in that good decisions made slowly can impact a project fatally. The team iterated through a method of observing, orienting, deciding, acting, and then observing again (the OODA model) to make super fast decisions, based on the combined experience of the production team. This led to faster decisions over time, and, said the producers, a better game on launch day"
This seems to be a great method on how to win a battle, but not so good for winning a war. Notice it is the fighter pilot method, not the admirals or generals method.
This may be the crux of the problem. They were able to make fast decisions that put the game on the market, but did they forget about the forest looking for trees?
Don't get me wrong, I think SWToR is a good mmo; and a nice setting change from traditional fantasy. But I see way to much 'structure' and 'formalization' in this game, I can see the machines behind the curtain, it is an inorganic world built of 'blocks' instead of an organic world built on 'balanced interconnected ecosystem' . I think probably the result of these bullet speed decisions.
And what I mean by that is like...
Although every class has a unique quest line, I feel like that was a parameter made before the stories were written. So, I feel like the consular story is there, because the structure demanded a consular story. I don't feel like the story was a unique piece of art that some dev always wanted to include in an mmo.....i feel like it was written, 'because all classes have to have a story, so make one up, fast'. They feel phoned in, is what I'm saying. Their presence just emphasizes the structure of the game rather than organically adds to it, or is an intrinsic part of it. It feels like it is there because, 'all classes have a quest' rather than, 'because we have to find a vehicle to tell this story'.
I also feel the game is way too segmented and compartmentalized. The class stories don't seem to weave together in anyway, its not 'one part of an epic story' they are literally, completely separate from each other. I think what was great about star wars movies were the ensemble elements......different folks from different backgrounds thrown together with a common goal. I feel like in the spirit of 'fast decisions'......they separated the writing teams and gave them autonomy, without having to consult or step on toes of other writing teams, the product could be completed faster.
But in addition to that - it just feels like an mmo placed in a single player world. My ship is always in an instance, never in the pervasive world. The maps, especially in urban settings feels like - here's the level 1 map. Now takea speeder to the lvl 2 map. Now tke a speeder to the lvl 3 map. They feel like separate maps.They don't feel like different neighborhoods of the same city.
Here's a typical scenario:
Log in to the fleet. Que up for a warzone. Run to your ship. Instance. Run to your ships door. Instance. Choose a planet to fly to. Instance out of your ship. Instance into the space port. Cut scene while you pick up quest. Warzone pops. Instance. Get slammed in hutball. Instance. Restart cutscene cuz your warzone popped. Speeder to your next map. Go in the class quest instance. Cut scene. Defeat something. cut scene. leave your instance. ......
It's all very segmented. Even when you are in the persistent world you have to speeder past all this unplayable, unaccessible area to get to the next 'map'.
I don't know the circumstances which led Dallas to make this choice. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think the investor's sword of damacles was hanging above his head.
But hopefully he understands that 'faster' doesn't equate to 'better'. If his job was to get a highly polished mmo out the door quickly. He should be proud, he did what was asked of him. If his job was to create a simulated living breathing world, he did not.
He put out a great game; I am entertained by it. But there were a lot of long term consequences to the choices they made to make their decisions fast.
Anyway, I think it led to the game being a product of the structure rather than the structure being a product of the game.
A good read, I agree with you on many points. They made a game on rails. They didn't deliver a living world.
I feel this post is just plain excellent.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
A fighter pilot's rapid decision making skills don't help him when he's out of ammo, his home base/carrier are destoryed and he's running on fumes.
I dont think he knows what they got wrong because he thinks they got so much right.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I agree,
but how much could he really say anyway? I'm sure he doesn't want to do any torpedoing. There's quite a bit of that going on without him adding to it. If he got caught purposely delivering bad press on the game it would not go well for him I'm sure.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011