Dosen't matter how much you roll your 8-ball SWTOR is an epic fail.
Is it dead? no
Do people still play it? yes
The thing is, It's Star Wars, It's Bioware sure these two things should make an epic game, but sadly they took the cheesy fanboy route and made a game worth 10mill dollar but using 200 million dollars.
Just beacuse a game has players dosent make it a success.
Obviously if people play it they're having fun. I played GW2/WoW/FFXI/FFXIV/Rift/etc (still plan to play GW2 casually) but I see myself putting more time into SWTOR because I'm having more fun in it than other games. But I'm not calling those games fail or claiming they took the "cheesy fanboy route".
I can say SWTOR is a failure in Bioware's expectations/financially. But entertainment wise, I'd say no.
Compared to a majority of the MMO's launched the past few years, even 10 months out it's held onto it's sub base better than WAR, FFXIV, AoC, Rift, etc. I'm not going to argue with anyone over why it's a good game or not as that's purely opinion, but there's reason for having 500k-1mil subs this far out.
The Star Wars setting may have helped, but it's not the sole reason. Look at SWG, after it received a specific update it's subs plummeted and was barely keeping up 50k subscriptions before it was shut down. Most people play games for there own merit, not setting.
So you’re saying that it has held it subs better then Rift? A game that is still P2P with no F2P even being discussed, and that has an expansion on the way.
SWTOR sold over 2 million copies and publicly stated they had over 1.7 million subs.
Rift at most (if I’m remembering right claim 1.2 million copies sold.) Although, I can't find that number and they have never released sub numbers, either way these number are still far less than SWTOR.
So, again you’re saying that a game that lost over a million subs in less than a year is doing a good job holding onto them?
I would also like to add that 500k-1mill subs at this point is being pretty generous.
Rift lost there subs faster than SWTOR percentage wise. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png Going by that chart, Rift lost more than half of it's subsriptions 5 months in. SWTOR kept more than half that far after launch.
I won't make up anything to make SWTOR look better, I'm no fanboi. In fact I'd say I'm the opposite. I stayed away from the game for a good half year after it launched purely on the hate it was getting. After playing it a few months, I have to say a lot of it (not all) is just unfounded.
And Trion did hint at F2P. They were questioned on an alternate payment option since it's becoming prevelant in other games, and they replied with they're busy on the expansion and not to look forward to anything like that until they're well after the launch and hands are free.
The problem is with investment versus return, I can't begin to speculate what either game spent in development, but we do know that costs on SWTOR were very high due to the tremendous amount of voice acting. I could develop a game and lose more than 80% of my customers and still be profitable if I make back more than my investment, and be highly profitiable if I can retain that 20% for a sustained period of time.
I don't know if SWTOR made back their initial investment, but I don't think they made the kind of profits they were expecting, and that's problematic in and of itself if that is the case.
The problem is with investment versus return, I can't begin to speculate what either game spent in development, but we do know that costs on SWTOR were very high due to the tremendous amount of voice acting. I could develop a game and lose more than 80% of my customers and still be profitable if I make back more than my investment, and be highly profitiable if I can retain that 20% for a sustained period of time.
I don't know if SWTOR made back their initial investment, but I don't think they made the kind of profits they were expecting, and that's problematic in and of itself if that is the case.
Hence why I agreed earlier that SWTOR was a fail financially. I only linked sub numbers to prove it didn't lose it's players as fast as other big MMO's released the last few months/years, so obviously people are enjoying themselves to keep playing.
The problem is with investment versus return, I can't begin to speculate what either game spent in development, but we do know that costs on SWTOR were very high due to the tremendous amount of voice acting. I could develop a game and lose more than 80% of my customers and still be profitable if I make back more than my investment, and be highly profitiable if I can retain that 20% for a sustained period of time.
I don't know if SWTOR made back their initial investment, but I don't think they made the kind of profits they were expecting, and that's problematic in and of itself if that is the case.
Hence why I agreed earlier that SWTOR was a fail financially. I only linked sub numbers to prove it didn't lose it's players as fast as other big MMO's released the last few months/years, so obviously people are enjoying themselves to keep playing.
Oh I'm sure there are people still enjoying the game, I've enjoy some of my experiences with it. But that can be said for a number of games, SWG, Vanguard, STO.
We know that Rift cost less than $100M because that is all Trion had - and a lot of that was used for other stuff!
After 1 month it seems entirely likely that SWTOR lost somewhat less - on a percentage basis - than other games; and assuming this is so I would put thise down to people playing through the class stories.
After 3 months - hard to say.
At the 6 month mark however - on a percentage basis - SWTOR lost more than WAR, AoC, Rift and others (based on management statements, financial reports etc.). WAR, for example, still had 300k+ of its 800k subs 6 months out.
We know that Rift cost less than $100M because that is all Trion had - and a lot of that was used for other stuff!
After 1 month it seems entirely likely that SWTOR lost somewhat less - on a percentage basis - than other games; and assuming this is so I would put thise down to people playing through the class stories.
After 3 months - hard to say.
At the 6 month mark however - on a percentage basis - SWTOR lost more than WAR, AoC, Rift and others (based on management statements, financial reports etc.). WAR, for example, still had 300k+ of its 800k subs 6 months out.
The chart linked above makes it clear AoC lost more than SWTOR 6 months in. WAR lost 500k of it's 800k peak while Rift went from 600k to 350. With what we know SWTOR went from 1.8 mil to 500k-1 mil, so without exact figures it's too close to call.
Either way, it's subscription losses are not drastically worse than other freshly launched MMO's. It's Xfire charts are basically a copy of GW2's when first months are compared, if that testing pool is to say anything. A failure in Bioware's expectations, but far from it if you consider games like Rift a success in retention rates.
Dosen't matter how much you roll your 8-ball SWTOR is an epic fail.
Is it dead? no
Do people still play it? yes
The thing is, It's Star Wars, It's Bioware sure these two things should make an epic game, but sadly they took the cheesy fanboy route and made a game worth 10mill dollar but using 200 million dollars.
Just beacuse a game has players dosent make it a success.
Obviously if people play it they're having fun. I played GW2/WoW/FFXI/FFXIV/Rift/etc (still plan to play GW2 casually) but I see myself putting more time into SWTOR because I'm having more fun in it than other games. But I'm not calling those games fail or claiming they took the "cheesy fanboy route".
Good that you find SWTOR fun, sadly 80% who bought it didn't.
We know that Rift cost less than $100M because that is all Trion had - and a lot of that was used for other stuff!
After 1 month it seems entirely likely that SWTOR lost somewhat less - on a percentage basis - than other games; and assuming this is so I would put thise down to people playing through the class stories.
After 3 months - hard to say.
At the 6 month mark however - on a percentage basis - SWTOR lost more than WAR, AoC, Rift and others (based on management statements, financial reports etc.). WAR, for example, still had 300k+ of its 800k subs 6 months out.
The chart linked above makes it clear AoC lost more than SWTOR 6 months in. WAR lost 500k of it's 800k peak while Rift went from 600k to 350. With what we know SWTOR went from 1.8 mil to 500k-1 mil, so without exact figures it's too close to call.
You (or the chart liked above) are not comparing like with like.
SWTOR went from 2.4M to 500k-1M not from 1.8M - think you mean 1.7M. You are excluding those who decided not to sub beyound the 30 day period from the sWTOR numbers but including them for the other games.
If you compare like with like SWTOR, on a % basis is worse. A like for like comparison with WAR, for example, would be 500k down to 300k. Same goes for the other games.
Unmitigated failure. And now that they've lost most of tehir developers, they can't possibly deliver content and add things like multiplayer space combat that isn't on rails.
You (or the chart liked above) are not comparing like with like.
SWTOR went from 2.4M to 500k-1M not from 1.8M - think you mean 1.7M. You are excluding those who decided not to sub beyound the 30 day period from the sWTOR numbers but including them for the other games.
If we're going by actual units sold over the game's lifetime, then it'd be a whole other argument and what we said up until now holds no merit. Again, I'm not padding numbers just stating facts.
The failures of SWTOR are pretty obvious, and widely discussed in detail.
The most glaring is that Bioware focused most of it's resources on the story, which was done in a very single-player oriented fashion (which is what Bioware is known for), and then tacked on the MMO part on top. This results in a WoW-clone, with some pretty good story elements, but fairly lackluster MMO features.
The game isn't bad, but it's not great either. And that's not a success for one of the most expensive and ambitious undertakings in MMO history. It's an alright game, and they are improving it. For people who like starwars, and endgame raids it's a nice, casual, themepark MMO.
However, once you look passed the starwars, a lot of the problems start to flare up.
I really wanted to like this game, and I had some fun w/ it for the first month or so, but it's just not a good enough game. The PvP isn't very good, the PvE is kinda bland, the story is decent, but not upto par w/ Bioware's other games, and the raids, while fun, have a lot of issues and got old fast.
You (or the chart liked above) are not comparing like with like.
SWTOR went from 2.4M to 500k-1M not from 1.8M - think you mean 1.7M. You are excluding those who decided not to sub beyound the 30 day period from the sWTOR numbers but including them for the other games.
WAR never had a peak of 800k subs that was the number sold in the first quarter; 500k was the peak subscribers.
The correct comparison to "1.7M down to 500k-1M" for SWTOR i s "500k down to 300k" for WAR. And on a percentage basis SWTOR is worse.
Same with AoC, Rift (probably) etc. The comparison being made is for WAR, AoC, Rift etc games sold to subs with initial subs to subs for SWTOR. On a like to like comparison SWTOR % retention is very poor.
WAR never had a peak of 800k subs that was the number sold in the first quarter; 500k was the peak subscribers.
The correct comparison for "1.7M down to 500k-1M" for wAR is "500k down to 300k". And on a percentage basis SWTOR is worse.
WAR's peak subscribers was 800k. The game sold 1.2 mil in it's first quarter which is actually lower than SWTOR's 1.8 mil peak subs and 2.4 mil sold in first quarter percentage wise. I'm not going to go back and forth with someone giving random numbers that mean nothing, so bowing out here.
WAR's peak subscribers was 800k. The game sold 1.2 mil in it's first quarter which is actually lower than SWTOR's 1.8 mil peak subs and 2.4 mil sold in first quarter percentage wise. I'm not going to go back and forth with someone giving random numbers that mean nothing, so bowing out here.
BUSTED.
You have no facts, even EA put a disclaimer on 1,7 m number and said that mora than half ARE SUBSCRIBERS and rest are still in their 30 initial days.
And yes you have to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges, comparing apples to oranges makes no sense just like you.
SWTOR sold 2,4m (prolly more now) and its down to 200-300k after 7 months (free month everyone got cant be counted here). Biggest failure in history.
Enjoy.
P.S. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png is full of crap for most of the games, since most of the games never released any numbers. Have they corrected their numbers when EA has put a disclaimer on 1,7 m? Nope. BS. Turbine never released ANY numbers for LOTRO, where did they get those? Yes, out of there.
WAR never had a peak of 800k subs that was the number sold in the first quarter; 500k was the peak subscribers.
The correct comparison for "1.7M down to 500k-1M" for wAR is "500k down to 300k". And on a percentage basis SWTOR is worse.
WAR's peak subscribers was 800k. The game sold 1.2 mil in it's first quarter which is actually lower than SWTOR's 1.8 mil peak subs and 2.4 mil sold in first quarter percentage wise. I'm not going to go back and forth with someone giving random numbers that mean nothing, so bowing out here.
Smoke and mirrors.
What you are not doing is reading EA's results with the care they need. The wiki is wrong as well by the way - see below.
WAR had 1.2M retail sales (to Amazon, GameStop etc.) not 1.2M through sales. Mark Jacobs himself posted and clarified the difference.
Think if WAR had had sold 1.2M in the quarter i.e. by the end of September that would have meant that it had sales of 1.2M in its first week. Anyone say fastest selling western subsciption game of all time? Not only that but if it only had 800k subscribers by the end of September then 400,000 rushed out to buy a bookstop!
Anyway just see the EA press release - link below - stating that WAR had week 1 registrations (through sales) of 500k.
Subsequently EA announced 750k registrations.
The 800k number was for something called current players. Best guess was that this was cumulative registrations.
Not for nothing did EA get follow up questions about SWTOR. People clarified that the 2.1M number that EA gave out in Feb was through sales. They clarified that the 1.7M number (not 1.8 which is a random number) was based on the industry standard definition of people in their 30 day period and current subscribers rather than "registrations" - which will be closer to the 2.1M number.
BUSTED.You have no facts, even EA put a disclaimer on 1,7 m number and said that mora than half ARE SUBSCRIBERS and rest are still in their 30 initial days.And yes you have to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges, comparing apples to oranges makes no sense just like you.SWTOR sold 2,4m (prolly more now) and its down to 200-300k after 7 months (free month everyone got cant be counted here). Biggest failure in history.Enjoy. P.S. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png is full of crap for most of the games, since most of the games never released any numbers. Have they corrected their numbers when EA has put a disclaimer on 1,7 m? Nope. BS. Turbine never released ANY numbers for LOTRO, where did they get those? Yes, out of there.
That mmodata chart is only half reliable, I agree, part facts, part estimation. You're not doing much better, btw. I cannot see much foundation by source for your figures. From what I've read so far on various googled internet spots, WAR seemed to have had 800k players in its first month, and SWTOR something like 1.7-2 mln. I didn't see any figures of current SWTOR sub numbers, from what I found of WAR figures it had 300k subs after 6 months. If you have any other figures with reliable sources, feel free to share the numbers with the source that found them included.
WAR's peak subscribers was 800k. The game sold 1.2 mil in it's first quarter which is actually lower than SWTOR's 1.8 mil peak subs and 2.4 mil sold in first quarter percentage wise. I'm not going to go back and forth with someone giving random numbers that mean nothing, so bowing out here.
BUSTED.
You have no facts, even EA put a disclaimer on 1,7 m number and said that mora than half ARE SUBSCRIBERS and rest are still in their 30 initial days.
And yes you have to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges, comparing apples to oranges makes no sense just like you.
SWTOR sold 2,4m (prolly more now) and its down to 200-300k after 7 months (free month everyone got cant be counted here). Biggest failure in history.
Enjoy.
P.S. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png is full of crap for most of the games, since most of the games never released any numbers. Have they corrected their numbers when EA has put a disclaimer on 1,7 m? Nope. BS. Turbine never released ANY numbers for LOTRO, where did they get those? Yes, out of there.
It was a clarification of the 1.7M number (not 1.8!!!) rather than a disclaimer. Anyway here is the link and the quote otherwise you might not be believed
Source: 8 Match EA Inc. Wedbush Securities Inc Technology, Media 7 Telecommunications Conference. link below, available from EA Investors page. Speaker EA CEO John Riccitiello
Quote: Star Wars, this is an area that I think has got a lot of people anxious. I've heard from investors today saying that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have isunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about – just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers.
Obviously the chart is counting free months as subscribers. We can debate if they should be counted or not, but it comes down to how you want to see it. Do you want to see the glass half full or empty?
My sources stand for free months counting, yours otherwise. No one is "busted".
SWTOR was and is a good game, however once Vanguard decided to go F2P I went there, and then I discovered TSW which is similar to SWTOR but a bit better, so now I play a traditional mmo in Vanguard and A story driven mmo in TSW---best of both worlds
I find it odd that the discussion has devolved into an argument of the exact percentage diffrences between the underperformance of WAR and SWTOR (both EA titles through acquisition). Instead of contrasting their sales and retention specifics, perhaps the discussion would be better serve by discussing their similarities, or how EA's experiece with WAR informed their descions with SWTOR both prior to and following SWTOR"s launch.
Originally posted by tiefighter25 I find it odd that the discussion has devolved into an argument of the exact percentage diffrences between the underperformance of WAR and SWTOR (both EA titles through acquisition). Instead of contrasting their sales and retention specifics, perhaps the discussion would be better serve by discussing their similarities, or how EA's experiece with WAR informed their descions with SWTOR both prior to and following SWTOR"s launch.
I wouldn't call it devolved. It's discussing if SWTOR failed or not compared to recent MMO launches, the point of the thread.
What do you think EA gleaned from Warhammer? How did that experience affect SWTOR's development and descion to restructure to a Freemium payment model?
Remember, Warhammer was rushed out the door by EA, similar to SWTOR.
Warhammer experienced a cascade event of cancelled subscriptions, simlar to SWTOR.
Warhammer's staff was greatly reduced, much like SWTOR.
Warhammer's content release was greatly paired back, much like SWTOR.
Warhammer's "expansion" was essentially a raising of the "Reknown" cap; what implication does that have on SWTOR?
Warhammer has a strange in game cash shop, many items considered pay to winish; what implications does that have on SWTOR?
Warhammer has an endless trial, much like SWTOR.
Et cetera.
Warhammer is in maintence mode, what implication does that have on SWTOR.
Mythinc was dismatled, what implication does that have on Bioware.
Originally posted by Paddyspub Imo, the only game that has failed as hard as SWTOR is WAR. Great potential (IP, developer, budget) but getting in bed with EA, I think, ruined it.
Even if you put = between them, remember that SWTOR is 3-4 times magnitude of WAR, so it hurt EA 3-4 times more than WAR
Comments
Obviously if people play it they're having fun. I played GW2/WoW/FFXI/FFXIV/Rift/etc (still plan to play GW2 casually) but I see myself putting more time into SWTOR because I'm having more fun in it than other games. But I'm not calling those games fail or claiming they took the "cheesy fanboy route".
The problem is with investment versus return, I can't begin to speculate what either game spent in development, but we do know that costs on SWTOR were very high due to the tremendous amount of voice acting. I could develop a game and lose more than 80% of my customers and still be profitable if I make back more than my investment, and be highly profitiable if I can retain that 20% for a sustained period of time.
I don't know if SWTOR made back their initial investment, but I don't think they made the kind of profits they were expecting, and that's problematic in and of itself if that is the case.
Hence why I agreed earlier that SWTOR was a fail financially. I only linked sub numbers to prove it didn't lose it's players as fast as other big MMO's released the last few months/years, so obviously people are enjoying themselves to keep playing.
Oh I'm sure there are people still enjoying the game, I've enjoy some of my experiences with it. But that can be said for a number of games, SWG, Vanguard, STO.
We know that Rift cost less than $100M because that is all Trion had - and a lot of that was used for other stuff!
After 1 month it seems entirely likely that SWTOR lost somewhat less - on a percentage basis - than other games; and assuming this is so I would put thise down to people playing through the class stories.
After 3 months - hard to say.
At the 6 month mark however - on a percentage basis - SWTOR lost more than WAR, AoC, Rift and others (based on management statements, financial reports etc.). WAR, for example, still had 300k+ of its 800k subs 6 months out.
The chart linked above makes it clear AoC lost more than SWTOR 6 months in. WAR lost 500k of it's 800k peak while Rift went from 600k to 350. With what we know SWTOR went from 1.8 mil to 500k-1 mil, so without exact figures it's too close to call.
Either way, it's subscription losses are not drastically worse than other freshly launched MMO's. It's Xfire charts are basically a copy of GW2's when first months are compared, if that testing pool is to say anything. A failure in Bioware's expectations, but far from it if you consider games like Rift a success in retention rates.
Good that you find SWTOR fun, sadly 80% who bought it didn't.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
You (or the chart liked above) are not comparing like with like.
SWTOR went from 2.4M to 500k-1M not from 1.8M - think you mean 1.7M. You are excluding those who decided not to sub beyound the 30 day period from the sWTOR numbers but including them for the other games.
If you compare like with like SWTOR, on a % basis is worse. A like for like comparison with WAR, for example, would be 500k down to 300k. Same goes for the other games.
SWTOR never had a peak of 2.4 mil subs, that was the quoted amount they sold in the first quarter. 1.8 mil (some say 1.7) was there peak subscribers. I was comparing to %, not actual hard numbers as well.
If we're going by actual units sold over the game's lifetime, then it'd be a whole other argument and what we said up until now holds no merit. Again, I'm not padding numbers just stating facts.
The failures of SWTOR are pretty obvious, and widely discussed in detail.
The most glaring is that Bioware focused most of it's resources on the story, which was done in a very single-player oriented fashion (which is what Bioware is known for), and then tacked on the MMO part on top. This results in a WoW-clone, with some pretty good story elements, but fairly lackluster MMO features.
The game isn't bad, but it's not great either. And that's not a success for one of the most expensive and ambitious undertakings in MMO history. It's an alright game, and they are improving it. For people who like starwars, and endgame raids it's a nice, casual, themepark MMO.
However, once you look passed the starwars, a lot of the problems start to flare up.
I really wanted to like this game, and I had some fun w/ it for the first month or so, but it's just not a good enough game. The PvP isn't very good, the PvE is kinda bland, the story is decent, but not upto par w/ Bioware's other games, and the raids, while fun, have a lot of issues and got old fast.
WAR never had a peak of 800k subs that was the number sold in the first quarter; 500k was the peak subscribers.
The correct comparison to "1.7M down to 500k-1M" for SWTOR i s "500k down to 300k" for WAR. And on a percentage basis SWTOR is worse.
Same with AoC, Rift (probably) etc. The comparison being made is for WAR, AoC, Rift etc games sold to subs with initial subs to subs for SWTOR. On a like to like comparison SWTOR % retention is very poor.
WAR's peak subscribers was 800k. The game sold 1.2 mil in it's first quarter which is actually lower than SWTOR's 1.8 mil peak subs and 2.4 mil sold in first quarter percentage wise. I'm not going to go back and forth with someone giving random numbers that mean nothing, so bowing out here.
BUSTED.
You have no facts, even EA put a disclaimer on 1,7 m number and said that mora than half ARE SUBSCRIBERS and rest are still in their 30 initial days.
And yes you have to compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges, comparing apples to oranges makes no sense just like you.
SWTOR sold 2,4m (prolly more now) and its down to 200-300k after 7 months (free month everyone got cant be counted here). Biggest failure in history.
Enjoy.
P.S. http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png is full of crap for most of the games, since most of the games never released any numbers. Have they corrected their numbers when EA has put a disclaimer on 1,7 m? Nope. BS. Turbine never released ANY numbers for LOTRO, where did they get those? Yes, out of there.
Dragnon - Guildmaster - Albion Central Bank in Albion Online
www.albioncentralbank.enjin.com
Smoke and mirrors.
What you are not doing is reading EA's results with the care they need. The wiki is wrong as well by the way - see below.
WAR had 1.2M retail sales (to Amazon, GameStop etc.) not 1.2M through sales. Mark Jacobs himself posted and clarified the difference.
Think if WAR had had sold 1.2M in the quarter i.e. by the end of September that would have meant that it had sales of 1.2M in its first week. Anyone say fastest selling western subsciption game of all time? Not only that but if it only had 800k subscribers by the end of September then 400,000 rushed out to buy a bookstop!
Anyway just see the EA press release - link below - stating that WAR had week 1 registrations (through sales) of 500k.
Subsequently EA announced 750k registrations.
The 800k number was for something called current players. Best guess was that this was cumulative registrations.
Not for nothing did EA get follow up questions about SWTOR. People clarified that the 2.1M number that EA gave out in Feb was through sales. They clarified that the 1.7M number (not 1.8 which is a random number) was based on the industry standard definition of people in their 30 day period and current subscribers rather than "registrations" - which will be closer to the 2.1M number.
WAR 500k press release: http://investor.ea.com/common/mobile/iphone/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=336899&CompanyID=ERTS&mobileid=#
750k press release: http://investor.ea.com/common/mobile/iphone/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=339653&CompanyID=ERTS&mobileid=#
P.S. SWTOR's sales as reported 1st Feb in EA's Q3 fiscal report were 2.1M; EA then reported sales of 2.4M on May 7th in their Q4 fiscal report.
That mmodata chart is only half reliable, I agree, part facts, part estimation. You're not doing much better, btw. I cannot see much foundation by source for your figures. From what I've read so far on various googled internet spots, WAR seemed to have had 800k players in its first month, and SWTOR something like 1.7-2 mln. I didn't see any figures of current SWTOR sub numbers, from what I found of WAR figures it had 300k subs after 6 months. If you have any other figures with reliable sources, feel free to share the numbers with the source that found them included.Quote:
It was a clarification of the 1.7M number (not 1.8!!!) rather than a disclaimer. Anyway here is the link and the quote otherwise you might not be believed
Source: 8 Match EA Inc. Wedbush Securities Inc Technology, Media 7 Telecommunications Conference. link below, available from EA Investors page. Speaker EA CEO John Riccitiello
Link: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/2095254944x0x551670/86a5c9a0-1ee8-480f-887b-04bf50c8d268/ERTS_Wedbush_03082012_Transcript.pdfQuote: Star Wars, this is an area that I think has got a lot of people anxious. I've heard from investors today saying that we must have 800,000 subscribers. I heard 600,000 yesterday. So what I think a lot of people have isunderstood is we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago. What that was about was the fact that only about – just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers.
Obviously the chart is counting free months as subscribers. We can debate if they should be counted or not, but it comes down to how you want to see it. Do you want to see the glass half full or empty?
My sources stand for free months counting, yours otherwise. No one is "busted".
I wouldn't call it devolved. It's discussing if SWTOR failed or not compared to recent MMO launches, the point of the thread.
OK.
What do you think EA gleaned from Warhammer? How did that experience affect SWTOR's development and descion to restructure to a Freemium payment model?
Remember, Warhammer was rushed out the door by EA, similar to SWTOR.
Warhammer experienced a cascade event of cancelled subscriptions, simlar to SWTOR.
Warhammer's staff was greatly reduced, much like SWTOR.
Warhammer's content release was greatly paired back, much like SWTOR.
Warhammer's "expansion" was essentially a raising of the "Reknown" cap; what implication does that have on SWTOR?
Warhammer has a strange in game cash shop, many items considered pay to winish; what implications does that have on SWTOR?
Warhammer has an endless trial, much like SWTOR.
Et cetera.
Warhammer is in maintence mode, what implication does that have on SWTOR.
Mythinc was dismatled, what implication does that have on Bioware.
I guess this could be its own thread.
Tbe Repopulation will be what SWTOR shouldve been.
Even if you put = between them, remember that SWTOR is 3-4 times magnitude of WAR, so it hurt EA 3-4 times more than WAR