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MASSIVE population drop in last 2 weeks!
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listening to TESO dev's talk it is like deja vu all over again on many topics.. perhaps after TSW and GW2 release and this game really crashes hard they will adjust their game plan with TESO, but who knows...
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Cognitive dissonance.
Re: SWTOR
"Remember, remember - Kakk says 'December.'"
The subscribtion numbers dont reflect the people playing the game.
My estimate 2 weeks ago was by about 50.000 active players.
I wont go far over 30.000 for today and i think even that is too mutch ...
Free 30+ days for everyone ended recently.
Now only ones that actually pay can play, if they bother to.
Are you drunk?
Nah, probably a Fatman resident.
You may want to consider the basics of creating a PC game: it takes time, especially with MMOs!
So any effect we may see today (and of dcourse expect to influence the next generation of MMOs) may actually only show in two generations from now.
Or do you really think that a developer would really rather send the whole thing he and his team had been working on for 4 years back to the drawing board for a complete overhaul? (can anybody name the big "success" story that springs to mind?)
If the company is small-ish enough, they can still use the game as a showcase, if it's a big company, well, if their marketing team sees a likely fail here, the whole thing may get canned to save further costs.
And never forget that a lot of MMOs hail from Asia where the rules ae slightly different ;-)
They started in 2005, iirc there was a survey from BW back then about MMO.
Thing is, you cannot really deliver 2005 game in 2012 and think its gonna be it.
They could have listened to people that warned them WoW gravy boat has sailed, and think of endgame in different way than they did. It doesnt seem that they spent too much time on endgame content anyway. And its part of the reason why all talk of "saving it" fails - they didnt react on trends on market in time, so any true changes could come in 2 years (if we presime they are already deep in developing 1st expansion).
And yes, things can get canned, i wouldnt be surprised if Copernicus (Kingdoms of Amalur MMO) was scrapped for that exact reason. From what is known (and by Kingdoms of Amalur game) it was supposed to be WoW clone.
As i said before, devs will have to sit down and think of new stuff, new ideas and new solutions, as time of lazy "we will just copy WoW" are past (in a way that time never existed, no WoW clone was successful enough no matter how well done it was, even with biggest and well known IPs like LOTRO/SW)
First a very simple question: does it matter how big the population on the server is or how many subscribers there are?
The first to the players as obviously they are not happy on ghost town servers
(please note that I frankly consider anybody who cries about too low a population on his server a rather, well, RoC censored set of words. If I watch something on TV and I don't like it, I'll flip the channel! Why is it so impossible for gamers to say "dang, I picked the wrong server, well, I guess I better pick another one and maybe start there with a new character class.")
The latter is relevant to the game company: if they see their money coming in below a certain threshold, you better assume the smoke actually means the house is on fire!
So, of course we have now seen drops in active population on servers.
But with everything that has been going on (already mentioned releases and betas) it's normal for people to not spend as much time in one game but instead sample the other flavors.
Will they come back?
That is what many SWTOR quiters said they'd do by going back to WoW. Yet WoW still had a fair enough loss in subs.
To be honest, I think ANet is playing a bit of a game with SWTOR on this one as with persistant BWEs long before release they obviously tempt people to rather log into the new (and free) experience that is GW2, maybe even to the point that some people will forget to renew their SWTOR sub in favor of "free food".
But at the ame time, once GW2 is released its numbers will actually hurt SWTOR very little: everybody who favored GW2 over SWTOR will by that time actually have quite their sub, ready to go with GW2.
Potentially, we may even see an increase in subs again after the GW2 release: those people who quit SWTOR but upon release actually found it wanting... and instead opted to go back to a classic of their choice.
So, to be honest, if you have the money, I'd consider SWTOR to be a good investment, at least as a secondary game: assuming that you haven't played all classes, there is something you can do.
Plus: BW has been rather generous with "trinklets" over the last couple of months, whether new titles, new pets, or 30 free days for people that met certain criteria, I'm sure they'll keep this going.
And finally, as said above, it's the community who can fix the population issue, the question is just whether they are willing to get their hands a bit dirty or rather just be whining...
Because it took a solid month or 2 before this became as issue? By then lots of players had multiple 50's and were reluctant to leave their legacy/credits and start all over again.
Some people, like myself, actually get into a game more than just playing toon pong. Some people jumped through hoops to reserve their names. Some people find the "reroll or stop bitching" philosophy a slap in the face.
The fact that some people, including BW, don't understand why people are not willing to reroll is the exact reason why they don't understand their target audience.
I was like WTF when i read this, then I saw your name..........
You have any idea what a Frankenstein (or rather his monster) you'd get if people always listened to the newest trend?
Right now we have 3 factions and WvW as the big trends.
Which by the way are based on a game from 2001, so maybe you should be careful throwing your "but it was a 2005 game, it doesn't work in 2012" mindset around.
SWTOR's biggest issue was/is that people didn't get the alt system clear enough as the basis that SWTOR is build upon:
if people were still working their way thru creating new characters by following their storylines, nobody would see a big issue.
Instead kids today want to be at the top in no time so creating a second (or heaven forbid 3rrd, 4th 6th 8th) character if they've already completed the game once is pointless to them.
Where is the mistake here: BW not saying "let's dump the whole storyline idea" or BW/EA's marketing not making things more obvious?
I'd love to say the latter... but fact is that SWTOR pulled in huge numbers of box sales, numbers that - even considering the falling subs - probably make them more money than bringing out SWTOR as a niche product fitting its design.
Anyhow, back to the Frankenstein monster: can you imagine how things would be in SWTOR if suddenly somebody had heard the rumour of the 3 faction system being the next big thing and everybody had dropped everything just to try and squeeze a 3rd faction into SWTOR?
You will have the same now (or in a few years) when all the 3 faction and WvW "clones" crawl out of the woodwerks, only to see that WvW on a server base is too shallow to really keep the longterm battleseeker and is of little relevance to the quick fix battle-ADDs.
While 3 factions just flying 3 different colours but nothing else makes for little point at all in creating involving faction warfare.
Listening to what is trendy (or people think is trendy) is not always the basis for longterm success.
Sometimes it's to actually copy the classics! ;-)
Summers have always been the largest lull point for MMOs. Nice weather, family vacations, summer romances....among many other distractions that keep people out of their homes and away from any MMO. On top of that, your data is anecdotal at best. I just renewed myself. I'm one of many who jump around to different MMOs as my whim takes me. I get bored with one, I move to another, get bored, move on to yet another, get bored, come back full circle all over again.
All MMOs fluctuate, they even merge servers, but rarely does that ring their death knell. If games like Vanguard, Istaria and Ryzom can survive for years before going F2P, then SWTOR will have no problems doing so.
I'll give you the kids part but it stops after "today", the rest of that....WUT?
We don't get the system? How about the system sucks and we get it perfectly. They created a game thats only content is leveling toons. On top of that only about 10% of each toon leveling is different than the one before it if it's in the same faction. The only variety is one toon on this faction and one on the other. There's not even variety in the missions. They are all kill X this many times and return. That is fun? let me ask that again. Is that fun?
I think the people that have given up has seen the big issue clear as a bell. The game is not designed to STAY fun.
Hey what's that?
Idk something I was messing with.
How does it work
It's nothing really, you just slide pictures of your alts into a kinda family tree thing,
1 week later
"THE LEGACY SYSTEM!"
True.
All my SWTOR friends aren't really talking about SWTOR when I jump into voice chat anymore. They seem more focused on Diablo 3, so I think Diablo 3's shadow devoured SWTOR.
lol. I think more thought went into the design of Hot Pockets than went into the design of the stupid Legacy system.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Considering the legacy system is one of the major factors preventing people from rerolling on more populated servers ... yeah it was a bad system at a bad time making a bad situation even worse.
Hot Pockets though ... definitely a marvel of modern technology.
unfair comparison ? lol
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I don't think this was a normal fluctuation. In the week following D3's release the most populated EU server literally halved in concurrent players, ever since it's been declining steadily. For example a few weeks ago there would be two instances of the fleet with 200+ on each, now we have one instance with around 100 people on it. Now i know it coincided with the free month ending but that's a massive drop. I think a lot of people were just waiting for something new to come along so they had something to play when they left.
I only log in every so often to sell crap on the auction now and tbh i don't even know why i bother doing that.
i left in april, declining population and declining guild and no matter how much i tried i lost my fanboi ways and just ended up hating the game, mainly becouse i spent 130 on the ce edition for a really poor game which i did sort of see coming when they announced and showed off the flash space game on rails, i just hoped the rest would be better but take away the great storyline system and you left with a below average mmo.
on further reflection the best star wars mmo was shutdown, i had 3/4 years on/off subs in that game and now see it was a far better game, just wish they had relaunched that with graphics update lol
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
I didn't leave to play D3 or Tera or anything else, I left because I was bored with ToR. It's not always the case that better games come along to steal subscribers, sometimes the fault is with the game itself.
True enough, but better games coming out certainly doesn't help!
Well, isn't that precious?!
Okay, if you are such a big hero character, ever considered to try helping those people who feel alone on their server and have only 1 lvl50 (if at all)?
All it takes is less than 10 secs to roll a random toon on another low pop server, then go to Fleet and fire off a bit of spam telling people who'd like to start a new character on a different server (read: yours) that you'd support them.
Who knows, maybe you can even get a guild behind that movement?
But no, you'd rather sit on your arse and whine and tell BW to fix it.
You know, I'd perfectly well understand if BW doesn't care about their "target audience" if the target audience is like you.
Ever considered words like community and communicate?
Thanks for putting the "me" in "team", little surprise if things are all bad...
But what I really don't get is this: so it took a month or two before servers started to low pop, and by that time you had multiple lvl50s.
Now, if I could believe that you a) created lvl50 for all 8 classes, b) within 1-2 months, c) by doing each classes full storyline and not just spacebarring thru it, maybe I'd show a tear.
But more importantly I'd tell you to stop the whine! Because according to you - assuming that you started playing SWTOR at release or shortly after - you've been sitting with all of your lvl50 characters on a low pop server for 3+ months.
Do the math: 3 months of no fun on a low pop server vs 1 months of "re-rolling" (with spacebar as obviously you have already done the stories) on a high(er) pop server followed by 2 months of having fun... tough choice...
and guess what: eventually server transfers would come... so you could actually make things easier on you and just fasttrack one or two favs as "re-rolls" on a new server and in turn have spend even more time having fun on the new server...
I'm sorry if you feel that suggesting that rather than moaning and bitching about your server being empty you should "re-roll" is for you a slap in the face, but maybe it's something you need?
Because, well, let's face it: you picked the server, not BW. I picked a server I was fairly sure would always have a fairly high population. And now, after 5 months running and even losing a good chunk of players do to the opening of APAC servers, my server has one of the strongest populations in NA. Must be that I'm exceptionally lucky, right? *rolls eyes*
Oh, and one more thing: I love this "but I reserved my name" game...
sorry, but in what way do e.g. server transfers help you there?
If you want to transfer your character "imadumbblonde" (a name that is so dear to your heart, it was a must to reserve it as the very first thing you did when you started SWTOR) over to server X and there is already a character by the name of "imadumbblonde", what makes you think BW will give you the priority when it comes to that name? Maybe because that "imadumbblonde" is just a lvl10 toon that hasn't been touched in 3 weeks while yours is obviously an actice lvl50 char?
Get real, it's first come, first served, so all of you characters may end up as "imadumbblonde1", etc. *gasp* or even with a completely different name *eek*
Now, a few words from a player with long hair and a long beard: "time changes perspective"
See, I've been playing MMOs for over a decade. I've been playing computer games where you use your own in-game handle for almost 20 years. I've been playing pen&paper RPGs for 30 years.
Obviously, in all of these games you are giving your characters a name.
Number of times me or my friends have used RL names or RL nick names for their characters: 0
We used either gamer handles that stuck or names fitting the characters.
And yes, especially with RPGing (both PC and p&p) that meant a lot of different character names!
So, maybe you should have a closer look at your toons and check if maybe that cool name you were so proud of that you had to have it "reserved" straight upon start, might not be, well, you know, really just dumb and you should go for a better name instead?
Because what makes life a bit easier is if you think that rather than "this toon is me" it's "this toon is my role".
But hey *shrug* I'm sure you'll find your own happiness...