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SW:TOR a flop? By who's standards...
Jakard
Member Posts: 415
I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by?
As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.
Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.
Comments
It has Fail aspects to it, but it is far from a failure. I still play and enjoy it but I can see, like most other mmo's, it doesnt have legs. Maybe this will change over time, maybe it will go f2p, who knows.
SWTOR: The only MMO with 100% retention rate.
1.7 million forever yo.
What ? I dont believe it. You ?
Its Flop by investors standards.
There is no way the game will even return the money invested in it, and far cry from bringing any profit.
So if that is not called flop, i dont know what is.
And I am not even talking about being flop in eyes of gamers
I think you'll find that the 1.7m figure was first touted back in December.
Early February they made another statement still touting 1.7m subscribers but if you read carefully, it also says that was the figure from the "December quarter".
There is absolutely NO WAY on earth that SWTOR still has anything like 1.7 million subs. I think half that figure is too optimistic!
Things are failures for different people for different reasons...I will list most probable for you.
1. Budget - People are wondering where the money went, and how 'bad' they percieve the game, given its huge budget..
2. Percieved retention rate - No solid numbers, just trends, graphs and speculations, but the 1.7 million number many say was false to begin with, as they counted people that were not past a free month yet...I personally feel the game will hover around 400-500k western subs, some will say higher, some lower...
3. Game/style - I thought the personal story and mmo meshing was bad, so people think it is a flop, I think as a MMO it is a flop...I got my $ out of it, played it a month, but for me, that is a flop...Shortest I have ever played a mmo that I had paid for.
If you are happy playing, that is all you need, well and enough people to keep BW/EA and Lucas happy, most importantly, the last one....Lucas likes to tinker with things, and imo was the driving force behind the CU/NGE for SWG, and I think they had 350k subs at one point, and he wasn't happy....The mmo market is even bigger now, and I imagine even with inflation TOR cost 4-5 times what SWG did, and the IP license is probably steeper...
It had 1.7m subscribers at 31st December, the vast majority(1.3 to 1.69m) passed the free month and subscribed for at least one month. That is all that is known for sure from EA statements, they certainly do not have 1.7m current subscribers. Trion spent 1/4 of the cash that BW spent and so their threshold for a decent return is much lower, also no LA licence fee of 35%. The difference for TOR is1m subs sustained gives EA a profit but nothing to write home about, if they sustain 500k they just break even with no return for the investment."After having that kind of budget and this is the best they can deliver" standard
Putting subscription numbers aside. If you look at the game from a developers point of view the game launched with fundamental elements which did not work or were not implemented properly. To list a few:
Open world PvP
Combat
Class balance
etc.
The game had little innovation and picked up good systems from other games but the developers failed in most cases to implement them. The story and voice overs were great but all BioWare did was prove that a MMORPG cannot be carried by that alone. I'm interested to see or hear a post mortem.
Personally I think EA came in at some point and told them to launch the game without regard to if it was complete or not. Whatever did happen, the final product was far from what people believed it to be. Thus there are many angles one could look at it as a flop.
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
Thanks for all your feedback.
Just to clarify, I don't believe the game has anywhere close to 1.7 millions subs. I was only going off the only "solid" information that I had. Anyone who's logged onto the game knows the game doesn't have 1.7 million subscribers (or at least active players).
I don't think I've really disagreed with what anyone has said (not that I was looking for a fight, LOL). LIke I said, I am still a subscriber at the moment. I like the game, don't love it. But was really interested to see why the game was perceived as a failure by the community.
I don't think it's a failure personally, from a buisness stand point, even if they only have 1 mill subs, that 15 mill a month give or take a couple million dollars, have they broke even yet? nah probably not, but it's well on its way IMHO. I don't like the game too much, i resubbed last month just to get back into my gaurdian, went back to other games last weekend, it just gets boring for me, but people enjoy it and to each their own, i just wish i made a product pulling in 15 mill a month haha.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
"Any game we don't like."
That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.
Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
This
I wouldn't say a "Flop" but certainly not to expectations. And that's player expectations, EA/Bioware's expectations.. etc. But this game was hyped to the moon, so it was pre-destine to disappopint no matter how you look at it.
Proof is in the current populations on almost all servers. (even the populated ones.) Anybody who says otherwise hasn't played the game or logged in since launch week.
Hey TSW Players http://www.unfair.co/ for Mission guides, Lore Locations and stuff....
"Any game we don't like."
That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.
Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.
Not if you had spent over 200m usd before you could start to earn the income and your revenue stream was dropping before you were in a position to have paid the investment back.By mine, I guess, and I'm still playing it. Despite this, however, it's very apparent to me how shallow character, class, and story choices are in this game, which is odd coming from a development studio like Bioware, which toutes choice as being the pennacle of what story telling is in the gaming medium. On top of this, and I'll exclude any relation or comparison people may wish to draw to previous MMO's, EA Bioware created an extremely linear game that offers almost no deviation from the two possible activities they provide players: PvE or PvP.
The particular problem I encountered with this dychotomy is that their combat system simply isn't fun to use, and being forced to use it in everything you do gets old pretty quickly. Not to mention the serious problem you create for yourself as a devloper when you're designing a linear MMO, which is to say that anything linear has an unarguable beginning and end, as opposed to a personal preconception that MMO's are supposed to be games we can play "forever".
I also found the class story's interesting until around about level fifteen (for all of them), where I was completely bogged down by the sheer number of side quest bullshit, almost all of which is inconsequential, that I stopped caring completely and spacebar'ed my way from 15ish to 47 on one character, and 15 beyond 30 on multiple others.
To me, this game brought together the failings of modern linear MMO's and SRPG's and combined them, rather than stay true to the design concepts and mechanics (aside from pause-combat) of their previous single player series, KOTOR. There's absolutely nothing that makes me think of TOR as a unique or special game, but it's certainly a game.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Agreed, but how many people bought boxes? 5 mill? lets say 2 mill just as a number. 2m x 60, just go with the basic, thats 120 million bam, not CE, jsut basic 60 box or DD, it's been out 4 months now? i'm losing track, 4 months times an average of 1.7 million at 15 bucks each, another 100 million, thats 220 mill give or take a large amount of money
Are they even yet? nah probably not, but 1 or 2 more months and they turn a profit, not too shabby.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Does Lucas get any percentage of the box sales? Or has the use of the IP been included into the dev costs?
So, your 500k figure is probably closer to what SWTOR has these days. Although, if you count inactive subs (people who are still subscribed but don't play anymore) they probably have more. Maybe even 800k but anything higher than that I'd find very hard to believe.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
"Any game we don't like."
That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.
Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.
Not if you had spent over 200m usd before you could start to earn the income and your revenue stream was dropping before you were in a position to have paid the investment back.Agreed, but how many people bought boxes? 5 mill? lets say 2 mill just as a number. 2m x 60, just go with the basic, thats 120 million bam, not CE, jsut basic 60 box or DD, it's been out 4 months now? i'm losing track, 4 months times an average of 1.7 million at 15 bucks each, another 100 million, thats 220 mill give or take a large amount of money
Are they even yet? nah probably not, but 1 or 2 more months and they turn a profit, not too shabby.
2 million at 60$, now how much did production cost, distribution costs, wholesalers margin, retailers margin, any LA licensing fee. Let's be generous and say EA get 40$ that's 80m + say 1.5m*12.5$ average subcost to 20feb + 1.2m *12.5$ to 20march +1.0m * 12.5$ to 20 April = 126m usd. So they are 75m short of breaking even (discounting the profit the money could have made if used wisely) with a reducing income stream.The analysts don't agree with you.
Quote from Massively circa 1 Feb 2012:
Electronic Arts' stock appears to be in a bit of trouble following Star Wars: The Old Republic's launch. The company's shares fell by almost 3% to $17.75 US this morning after a stock analyst working with Brean Murray Carret & Co. "cut his price target on the stock to $22 [US] from $28 [US]." In a note to his clients, analyst Todd Mitchell wrote that he felt some "creeping concerns" regarding The Old Republic's performance so far; he added that "initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions." Now we just get to sit back with some popcorn and see whether BioWare can get its business together in time to make a recovery, so take a seat.
Share prices continue to fall and were as little as $15.36 this week compared with the already poor figure of $17.75 in February.
For boxes sold at retail outlets, less than half goes back to the developer.
The percentage is less than that (in the 25% range) for digital distributors.
And that is not counting the box being sold at a discount, which it now is.
And then it gets split. So, there is some disconnect with your math.
One of the EA reps came out at some point and said they needed 1 mil subs for most of a year to be considered "profitable" while with 500k subs they would basically be breaking even...
If you are going to give an economics lesson you might want to factor in some minor details like the cost of the goods they sold, the cut of the stores that sold them, the cost of the servers and bandwidth they use, paying customer service and GMs and developers, the ongoing advertising... and so on, and so on.. You are clearly confusing revenue with profit. Their monthly profit is a fraction of your napkin math.
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Actually yes.Many businesses go into a venture knowing they won't turn a profit for at least 2 years.
Simple math shows a conservative estimate of $120 million made in box sales(we don't know how many CE were sold) and a conservative estimate of 60 million made in subs. The game hasn't even been out half a year yet and they've alreaday come close to paying off the production costs.
So yes, I'd be happier than a pig in sh*t.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft