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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire - Part 2
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Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I think they got out of it what they wanted and are probably playing other games and getting ready for GW2. This thread is pretty old at this point. It never said the game was dead or even dying, just that it had peaked and was losing active players( != dying).
I personally didn't hate the game, it just wasn't finished and it wasn't worth a sub to me. I loved leveling my first character. PVP was adequate. No group finder was the main reason I didn't sub. I definitely would have retried it this past free week if that was available to me as someone who never subbed. If I liked it after the free week I would have subbed, if not I would have waited for space combat.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
As Frodo said this thread was never about saying that TOR was failing etc.
The XFire number hasn't stabilised however; up until the new trial the number was still going down - especially expressed as a percentage. In addition the next cliff edge will be the end of the 6 month subs in .... August? (With the 30 days included and all the extensions it may even go into September).
The increase XFire TOR players - nah. The average hours played has shot up again indicating that there are lots of people new to the game who are playing TOR a lot. (Must be a lot to push the average hours played number up).
With the latest trial a rise is what you would expect. The talking point however would be how small a rise it is. Then again 50M+ 7 day passes have already been handed out so ....
XFire has behaved exactly as you would expect.
What we can infer however has become nuch harder because of all the f2p however.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
The charts being posted to this thread took time, effort and a willingness to give both. I'm not surprised that the person posting them got bored of it. It's too bad XFire doesn't let you easily plot and compare those numbers.
Nor everyone that posted in this thread wanted this game to die. I did want their subs to go down in the simple hopes that the devs would get their heads out of their asses and fix the game.
I would imagine, by your Q time/test theroy, that then STO has to be the most sucessful game in current history. I doubt I've ever been in a Q. in STO, for over 60 seconds. They ALL pop that fast in STO. However, that alone does not make it the "most sucessful game in history", far from it. STO has a meriad of problems all it's own and the sub-base and going F2P outlines those very well and correctly I might add.
I doubt that TOR is in such bad shape as closure is being talked about now between BioWare and LA. Unless, that 500K drop dead number was real that EA talked about pre-launch. But, even if it was then, things have a habit of CHANGING when the feet get pressed to the fire and the hard decisions have to be made. They've already talked about, pubicly, a F2P model, then retracted some of the statements made. And last but not least, there's that pesky LA contract completion date that has to be contended with. So, I would imagine TOR is very safe for now at least. Even the mighty SOE had to wait for that contract completion date to roll around close to shut SWG down.
You know, the large test is a personal one. If you enjoy TOR, by all means keep playing it. If you do not, then you'll take your gametime and money elsewhere. The threshold is probably different for everyone.
The 1 "good" thing that I hope comes out of TOR is finaly getting it thru developers/studios thick heads that WoW clones may not just be the way to go for insured financial sucess. Not a 1 of them was a WoW killer and none even came close. Most failed at even the attempt. Maybe now, we can get to some actual creativity back in the industry. And we, the players, can have some actual choice other than how a MMO is skinned again. That would be a win/win for every1.
^^^^
Good post.
"You know, the large test is a personal one. If you enjoy TOR, by all means keep playing it. If you do not, then you'll take your gametime and money elsewhere. The threshold is probably different for everyone."
Absolutely.
And the contract between EA and LA will play heavily on the long term future - again a key point.
As is how firm the 500k sub number is.
Forget about the 1M number to "make a profit but nothing to write home about" - that looks very unlikely. EA will want to cover their costs and - if they can make an "operating" profit. (i.e. ignore development costs, box sales etc. just focus on what the game costs to run / what has to be paid to LA vs. what it brings in. If they can get those two numbers 'close' TOR will continue with a few servers until such time as the contract with LA comes up for renewal. Possibly less servers than it currently has as well - there will be intense cost reduction pressure.
Xfire data can not be relied on. Not everyone uses it nor does anyone know what percentage of the population does. Therefore the only conclusion that can be made from a declining xfire number, is that less people are using xfire.
Facts: SWTOR subs are declining. <-- This is all we know for sure.
What we don't know: Exact number of subs. The breakeven point (i.e. number of subs to warrant continued operation of the game in its current state).
Opinion: I didn't know what the f*** xfire even was until I saw this thread. I dont use it. None of my friends (that play SWTOR) use it. I am a casual player in my late 20's that gets on the game 3 times a week, 4 if i'm lucky. Paying the monthly subscription is not an issue for me. Even if I didn't play the game for a month or two in all likelyhood my sub will continue. My friends are in a similar situation as me. Late 20's, early 30's employed, (not living pay check to pay check) and paying the sub is a complete after thought (it's $15 buck a month). I have met many people in game that have are in a similar situation
Bottom line: Because this game is star wars, there are many "older" players like my self that will give BW my credit card number and let them ding me for that $15 a month for a long time to come. My opinion is that there are many individuals like this that play this game, which will add to its longevity and keep a steady sub/player base.
Whatever the reason for the thread being started the majority of the posts were unconcerned about whather TOR was a success or failure.
As for stabilised? No we are seeing the same numbers but I suspect I am looking at a slightly longer timescale. Sure 5 weeks ago the number was 1474 - a 50% drop on the 2917 number 10 weeks ago. And in the subsequent '5' weeks pre-trial the numbers bumped along in the 1400 to sub 1500 number. I simply don't see that as evidence of having stabilised. And the next big cliff is the end of the 6 month subs.
Same with the trial. I simply see the number as very small.
So you're saying that just because not everyone takes a survey that it's not reliable? We don't even need to know what percentage of the MMO population does use xfire to draw a trend conclusion. All we need to know is the starting number of people using xfire/swtor and the current number. From there you can draw the conclusion that if 75% of the people that started playing SWTOR with xfire stopped, then it is likely that there is also a downward trend in overall SWTOR subs. That's all this thread is for. Basically it is a huge indicator of bad retention.
BTW breakeven point is ~500k subs and it is assumed that is after 1 year.
Bottomline; even if the game is Star Wars, if it's bad or boring people won't continue to pay for it. I know tons of Star Wars fans, people who played SWG from launch until it's demise, that have canceled their SWTOR subs. While I don't doubt there are more than a few people who will keep a sub just because it is Star Wars, they aren't going to keep the game afloat. SWTOR will either go F2P or be put on maintenance mode like WAR.
There has already been a response to your lack of knowledge - we all live and learn - but what I will add is this:
Every poster (myself included), imo, "dismissed" XFire to a certain extent. No one wanted to say that SWTOR was a disaster. So we spoke of trends and erred on the side of caution if any prediction at all was made.
Yet in the first 5 months the XFire number dropped about 80% and subsequemtly EA closed 90% of the servers.
It is very difficult to deny that XFire has has proved itself to be to accurate to simply dismiss. Subs have not simply declined they have been decimated. By EA's own data the game will not make a profit. And by EA's own data it probably isn't covering its operating costs.
But hey - roll on the $150 sub. They have your credit card details and it will be cheap entertainment yes? That way they can get by on 50k subs.
This just in! Game offers unlimited free trial and amount of people playing said game increases. Story at 11.
Joking aside...I think we all know that SWTOR didn't do as well as EA thought it would, and we really all know why. That said, if you're enjoying the game, then that's great. I myself didn't think it was a terrible game, I just thought it was a poor MMORPG...but the SP part was okay.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I think that people like to dismiss or discredit XFire when it doesn't agree with their argument
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
worse thing is that SWTOR shows no signs of having any kind of F2P or MT framework established or even conceptualized. so now that it's revealed that they have not made any money on SWTOR, and other projects can't make it up, they can't even go F2P. they're more likely to just shut it down.
Nah I think they'll go F2P before they shut it down.
I think they stand to gain a lot more in going F2P than they stand to lose by developing an F2P framework for the game. Besides, if EA has experience in anything, it's developing an F2P framework for a game that was supposed to be P2P
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
they just don't have the ground work to go F2P any time soon...a NGE style shakeup is more likely.
My lack of knowledge is mild in comparison to your lack of judgement.
The 4th line of my post suggests that I do agree with the fact that SWTOR subs are declining. I never questioned that. However, I don't beleive the rate of decline in use of Xfire is indicative of rate at which SWTOR subs are declining. I work in an environment where careers are made and lost over decisions made on RELIABLE data. And yes, decimal points DO count. In this respect I think it is irresponsible to say with 100% certainty that because Xfire decreased by "x", SWTOR subs decreased by "y" as the information to confirm same is not readily available. Yes this is splitting hairs, but I love accuracy.
And yes, it is cheap entertainment.
I think that you like to ride coat tails and refuse to read. As I did state as a FACT: SWTOR SUBS ARE DECLINING.
I discredit Xfire in this scenario because its not credible information. Understand? If not see my repsonse gervaise1
Would you care to say why it is not "creditable information" Tensor25?
What has been tracked is some data produced - in simple terms - by "a sample". After that it is simply a matter of statistics.
You are not the first to simply say "it is XFire it must be useless". And I would be surprised if you come up with a reason that hasn't been brought up in the last 6+ months - and discussed in some depth: sampling theory (self-selection, opportunity, stratified etc.) has been covered; time series; sample size, error margins; non-parametric methodology and Baysian statistics, who plays XFire etc etc. In simple terms the data is a sample with a margin of error and nothing has suggested that the error margin is so bad as to be "out of the ball park".
I will cover the obvious issue: the XFire graphs on the main XFire page are based on hours played. These almost always show a huge fall post-launch leading to a knee-jerk 'the game is failing' reaction from some folks. This thread - very quickly - recognised and avoided that by moving to track "the number of XFire users playing SWTOR".
And yes the margin of error is unknown. But like I said I suspect lots of us (me included) have probably been far to cautious - attributing huge margins of error and assuming that SWTOR had two and three times the subs that XFire was suggesting. At the end of the day however it looks like XFire may have been have had a smaller margin of error than anyone gave it credit for.
But please tell us why the data should be dismissed - but please remember this is not the XFire graph that gets published on the XFire website. Subs can indeed be going up even when the hours played is in decline. That is the typical lreason why people dismiss XFire. This is not what this thread has been about however.
people still use xfire?
Ahem, a thread with a total of 2365 posts and some dude comes up with this again.
You know, we never thought of that. Duh.
7/19/2012
Game Users
WOW 11,470
TOR 1,567
TSW 927
TERA 447
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
TOR had a slight boost due to the free Lv 15 trial, but dropped back down again.
I am not bothering with TSW as 1) it is just another story driven (single player) game 2) Another EA production 3) EU subs cost £12.99 whereas others incl TOR cost £8.99, but has 2 postives -1) Not another fantasy themed MMO and 2) Has no levels. I may try it later though.
Tera is just another generic fantasy themed MMO, so getting overlooked, but I may give it a go.
You also keep missing out EVE which has 997 players
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Xfire is worthless for raw numbers. SWTOR has a lot more than 3x TERAs players, but TERA appeals to an age range that is significantly more likely to use xfire so a greater % of their players use it. For trends though it can be useful, especially with a sample size as large as WoW or even swtor. For a game like Rift with only 200 xfire users, its mostly worthless.