This game is undeniably broken, meaningless and garbage after hitting 50. The so called PvP planet "Illum" is broken and is constantly being exploited by both factions farming each other for valor in the center of the map on a daily basis. Now to top it all off, they've just announced a nerf to "Battlemaster" gear so that it's (and quote) "not very far off from the normal level 50 gear." lol ... This game is a complete and total failure, and in my opinion isn't ever going to be much of anything.
I'm sure they'll most likely maintain a 300-400k pop for awhile, merely due to the Star Wars fanatics and WoW-rejects but seriously, if you're expecting anything fun out of this game after reaching level 50 then don't waste your time.
In regard to the 1.7 million subs. I'll say this. First off, it was 1.7 million subs on Dec. 31st. Which means that's how many people were playing "BEFORE" the pay period started after the "free month." EA is full of shit, and the next quarters ratings will prove that.
<<>> Also, our guild did a server wide calculation just last week. We all logged in, flew to every planet on the server and recorded the number of players and these numbers were this past Friday at 7:00pm PST. Total number of players at that time was 422 Imperial and 311 Republic, and for the record, our server read "Moderate" on the server list. 3 hours later, at 10:00pm PST we did it again. Below are the numbers.
Conclusion anyone?
733 total players at peak times = Moderate
583 total players at 10:00pm PST = Light
What's considered "Heavy?" By these numbers it would be somewhere between 950-1100 total players. That's spread out amongst 2 factions and 12 planets. 42% of those numbers were in Imperial and Republic Fleets alone. So where does that leave the 12 planets? 200-400 people divided by 12? ....
So my question is, if SWTOR has 1.7 MILLION subs. Where the "EFF" are they at? I'll tell you, they've all either quit or they are just logging in now to complete daily's/weeklys and logging back out. Why? Because there's nothing else for them to do, and from the looks of it, there never will be.
Eeurpean servers look to be worse then the US.. lots of people crying for mergers on the EU side. Cant say im suprsised though.. holding my hopes that this STORY garbage will do an epic dive, so Developers stop this COPY CAT bullshit they have been pulling for the last decade... things need to change..
Thank you. Any post I attempt to make on any aspect of Swtor and my disappointment with it always takes me to considering the story aspect and why it's unnecessary in MMOs and clearly not a sustainable form of long term content. So it's nice to hear others coming to the same conclusion.
MMOs, in my opinion, should offer a well crafted world in which players unfold their own stories through interacting with the world, tools, community & content. Story was *not* missing from MMOs, it was there all along in any game that offered players enough room to go live through their own. Every one of those stories that players bring back will be more important and memorable than any pre-determined developer story forced down players throats.
A players personal story of their experiences playing a game will always trump a forced story the developers insist you play through every time.
I may sound like a broken record, but I don't see people retelling tales of the Bounty Hunter class story in years to come the way they would with the specific adventures they shared with their friends.
On the brightside, I get the feeling we won't have to sit through years of Swtor clones considering that what their linear forced story brings to the table isn't worth the restrictions of a heavy handed narrative.
As for the numbers representing success or failure depending on which side you're on, I don't need those statistics to determine if a game failed me personally. Swtor absolutely failed me as an MMO by offering up a mediocre take on mechanics that have been old for years, decorated with a more severe linear path through *their* experience.
It amazes me that, with over a decade of MMOs to examine, dissect and learn from, SWTOR is the best they could do. They're clearly not trying.
I'd love to see more games on the horizon that are being built out of passion, creativity and a strong desire to see a labor of love through to completion because they believe in it, rather than another generic heap that's the product of reverse engineering spreadsheets to pinpoint the most lucrative systems to include in their lifeless MMO emulator cash grab.
one thing, whoever claims this game is "broken" should wake up, seriously.
leave it and get on with your lives, stop bothering us with your nonsense, this game ain't broken.
you don't like it, fine, but that is NOT what is meant by "broken"
sorry, to scatter your dreams.
the game is working just fine for me. next.
all those kids seriously start to piss me off, it's not that hard, you like a game, you play it, you don't like it, you play something else, and if there is NO GAME YOU LIKE... maybe you should start to think about it.... do sth else than gaming? play tennis, find a GF, maybe that's more your thing :>
you do NOT have to play a game to be cool, nomatter what your schoolyard sais ^^
if you are a dork, you will still be a dork when playing "the new mmos", right?
I understand your perspective, but understand this is a forum about MMOs, and often MMO fans discuss occurances in the industry whether they're positive or negative or even currently playing a specific game or not.
MMOs are a pretty inclusive hobby, as such the discussions will often touch on development or why specifically people do or do not like certain games, as well as a number of other areas. Trying to keep people from discussing an occurance on the MMO landscape is a fruitless pursuit.
People will discuss every aspect of the MMO genre for years to come, you can't arbitrarily decide a game you like is off limits. You're entitled to make your opinion known of course, I personally enjoy reading different takes on various aspects of MMOs even if they're not directly in line with my perception of the situation.
I'm shocked another PvP player that is upset about something in an MMO. Just go back to console PvP, it takes more skill and everyone is the same/balanced.
Edit: It's like me ignoring some fantastic PvE sandpark and playing a PvP console game and crying about that PvP console game.
OP, how is game broken were you bored the entire time you played it, I find there is mainly an issue with you if you will devote a 2weeks to a mnth to something that is boring.
Sinlge Player is a blast, but If you want to group up for the social levels you can, I have a lot of fun in the WZ and illium is not great but good god have I had some epic battles on that planet.
{mod edit}
Regardless though with servers, I have alwasy said with all MMO, they should never add new servers when there are wait times. becuase they over add them. And they should allow server transfers from the start once a month.
there is always a drop after everything, but that being said 300 people were in fleet last night on server and 100 were on tarsis. alone.
Agree totally with the OP on this one, I havnt bothered logging in for the past 2 weeks even though my subs are paid up until 21st Feb. For me FFXI was everything an MMO should be, I was never bored with it like i have got bored with most MMO's I have tried. An MMO shouldnt have you needing to reach lvl cap as soon as possible to enjoy it, we should be enjoying the journey to level cap with hobbies, crafting and other side quests/missions and fun stuff. Developers have got lazy and looking at the fast buck trend instead of giving players what they really need. SWtor feels rushed content wise, no real thought into PvP , lets make a PvP planet and hope people will fight each other. What to do now? Well for me I'm now hoping that GW2 can pull it off, if not then I'm retiring from MMO's.
This game is undeniably broken, meaningless and garbage after hitting 50. The so called PvP planet "Illum" is broken and is constantly being exploited by both factions farming each other for valor in the center of the map on a daily basis. Now to top it all off, they've just announced a nerf to "Battlemaster" gear so that it's (and quote) "not very far off from the normal level 50 gear." lol ... This game is a complete and total failure, and in my opinion isn't ever going to be much of anything.
I'm sure they'll most likely maintain a 300-400k pop for awhile, merely due to the Star Wars fanatics and WoW-rejects but seriously, if you're expecting anything fun out of this game after reaching level 50 then don't waste your time.
In regard to the 1.7 million subs. I'll say this. First off, it was 1.7 million subs on Dec. 31st. Which means that's how many people were playing "BEFORE" the pay period started after the "free month." EA is full of shit, and the next quarters ratings will prove that.
<<>> Also, our guild did a server wide calculation just last week. We all logged in, flew to every planet on the server and recorded the number of players and these numbers were this past Friday at 7:00pm PST. Total number of players at that time was 422 Imperial and 311 Republic, and for the record, our server read "Moderate" on the server list. 3 hours later, at 10:00pm PST we did it again. Below are the numbers.
Conclusion anyone?
733 total players at peak times = Moderate
583 total players at 10:00pm PST = Light
What's considered "Heavy?" By these numbers it would be somewhere between 950-1100 total players. That's spread out amongst 2 factions and 12 planets. 42% of those numbers were in Imperial and Republic Fleets alone. So where does that leave the 12 planets? 200-400 people divided by 12? ....
So my question is, if SWTOR has 1.7 MILLION subs. Where the "EFF" are they at? I'll tell you, they've all either quit or they are just logging in now to complete daily's/weeklys and logging back out. Why? Because there's nothing else for them to do, and from the looks of it, there never will be.
Eeurpean servers look to be worse then the US.. lots of people crying for mergers on the EU side. Cant say im suprsised though.. holding my hopes that this STORY garbage will do an epic dive, so Developers stop this COPY CAT bullshit they have been pulling for the last decade... things need to change..
Thank you. Any post I attempt to make on any aspect of Swtor and my disappointment with it always takes me to considering the story aspect and why it's unnecessary in MMOs and clearly not a sustainable form of long term content. So it's nice to hear others coming to the same conclusion.
MMOs, in my opinion, should offer a well crafted world in which players unfold their own stories through interacting with the world, tools, community & content. Story was *not* missing from MMOs, it was there all along in any game that offered players enough room to go live through their own. Every one of those stories that players bring back will be more important and memorable than any pre-determined developer story forced down players throats.
A players personal story of their experiences playing a game will always trump a forced story the developers insist you play through every time.
I may sound like a broken record, but I don't see people retelling tales of the Bounty Hunter class story in years to come the way they would with the specific adventures they shared with their friends.
On the brightside, I get the feeling we won't have to sit through years of Swtor clones considering that what their linear forced story brings to the table isn't worth the restrictions of a heavy handed narrative.
As for the numbers representing success or failure depending on which side you're on, I don't need those statistics to determine if a game failed me personally. Swtor absolutely failed me as an MMO by offering up a mediocre take on mechanics that have been old for years, decorated with a more severe linear path through *their* experience.
It amazes me that, with over a decade of MMOs to examine, dissect and learn from, SWTOR is the best they could do. They're clearly not trying.
I'd love to see more games on the horizon that are being built out of passion, creativity and a strong desire to see a labor of love through to completion because they believe in it, rather than another generic heap that's the product of reverse engineering spreadsheets to pinpoint the most lucrative systems to include in their lifeless MMO emulator cash grab.
Your right and you want SWTOR does that, through the course of adventures I was a brutal SOB in regards to the story, then after KIlling Jawas I actually felt bad and changed my ways.
This game allows for more connection through story then any game out there. This game is part wow part kotor 3 and thats not to shabby.
THe only way to craft a true world is like eve full loot and full pvp limited safe areas, but people tend not to like it as much.
OP, how is game broken were you bored the entire time you played it, I find there is mainly an issue with you if you will devote a 2weeks to a mnth to something that is boring.
Sinlge Player is a blast, but If you want to group up for the social levels you can, I have a lot of fun in the WZ and illium is not great but good god have I had some epic battles on that planet.
{mod edit}
Regardless though with servers, I have alwasy said with all MMO, they should never add new servers when there are wait times. becuase they over add them. And they should allow server transfers from the start once a month.
there is always a drop after everything, but that being said 300 people were in fleet last night on server and 100 were on tarsis. alone.
my server is not dieing.
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
I think those numbers that you calculated are only for ONE instance on the server. From what I remember, they divided the servers into various instances if the number on one planet was over 120. So it would be close to impossible to calculate the total number of users by just logging in unless there's a way to jump from one instance to another
also, you have to realize that this game hasn't even opened up to the Asian/Oceanic market yet and in case of most games (Aion, WoW, for example), most of their subs are from that region.
e.g. only 3.5 million WoW subscribers are from US/EU as far as I remember, 5 million are in China and the rest are in Oceanic regions
So if they managed to get 1.7 from EU/USA, they can easily double that as soon as they open to the Asian market sometime this/next year
Actually, when any of the servers read "Light - Moderate" there is but only one instance in the game. It's not until the servers read "Heavy - Full" do you ever see (1) and (2) on a map (meaning 2 instances). In which we haven't even seen that over the past 3 weeks. We took that into consideration when conducting our experiment. As I've stated earlier, for those of you that want to try and contradict it, DO YOUR OWN TEST. It doesn't take that much time.
agree mmo is never about the story, its always about the end game and replayability. i hope the other mmo dont follow the same footstep.
and this is the main reason i despise WoW. It made this kind of thinking the norm. I do agree an MMO needs replayability but it shouldn't just be about the endgame. It should also be about the journey getting there.
Synn , I 100% agree with you on this , End game is but one part of a game . Why rush to get there if you know its not going to be fun . In Vanlla WOW , The endless rep ginds and raids got so old . End game is just that End game .
Thank you. Any post I attempt to make on any aspect of Swtor and my disappointment with it always takes me to considering the story aspect and why it's unnecessary in MMOs and clearly not a sustainable form of long term content. So it's nice to hear others coming to the same conclusion.
MMOs, in my opinion, should offer a well crafted world in which players unfold their own stories through interacting with the world, tools, community & content. Story was *not* missing from MMOs, it was there all along in any game that offered players enough room to go live through their own. Every one of those stories that players bring back will be more important and memorable than any pre-determined developer story forced down players throats.
A players personal story of their experiences playing a game will always trump a forced story the developers insist you play through every time.
I may sound like a broken record, but I don't see people retelling tales of the Bounty Hunter class story in years to come the way they would with the specific adventures they shared with their friends.
On the brightside, I get the feeling we won't have to sit through years of Swtor clones considering that what their linear forced story brings to the table isn't worth the restrictions of a heavy handed narrative.
As for the numbers representing success or failure depending on which side you're on, I don't need those statistics to determine if a game failed me personally. Swtor absolutely failed me as an MMO by offering up a mediocre take on mechanics that have been old for years, decorated with a more severe linear path through *their* experience.
It amazes me that, with over a decade of MMOs to examine, dissect and learn from, SWTOR is the best they could do. They're clearly not trying.
I'd love to see more games on the horizon that are being built out of passion, creativity and a strong desire to see a labor of love through to completion because they believe in it, rather than another generic heap that's the product of reverse engineering spreadsheets to pinpoint the most lucrative systems to include in their lifeless MMO emulator cash grab.
You're very welcome, and what a great read. Enjoyed it.
Why are the moderators taking down and editing posts made by the public? Is this not a freely and openly opinionated forum in regard to various MMO's? What's with this?
Did Bioware or EA send you a butt-hurt email, along with a years contract of advertising? I don't recall saying or exclaiming anything that wasn't true. Can someone elaborate on this?
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
Have to agree on this one. I'm sitting at level 41 and I have no desire to go any further. I've done one flashpoint while levelling - can't find groups *ever*. Heroic quests? Same deal. I pick them all up, look for a group, never find one, and proceed to drop them all when I'm ready to leave the planet. Awesome. So, my entire levelling process has been done solo. In a "MMO". In 2012. Seriously?
Ilum? Total cluster..ahmm...you know. PVP in general? Not even gonna go there. It's been covered perfectly in this thread already.
All I can say is - help me, Arenanet. You're my only hope.
I'm stuck between bored, on the one hand (WoW), and severely disappointed on the other (ToR).
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
All I can say is - help me, Arenanet. You're my only hope.
Who do I send the drycleaning bill to? I just did a nostril ejection of some very nice wine all over my pants.
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
Have to agree on this one. I'm sitting at level 41 and I have no desire to go any further. I've done one flashpoint while levelling - can't find groups *ever*. Heroic quests? Same deal. I pick them all up, look for a group, never find one, and proceed to drop them all when I'm ready to leave the planet. Awesome. So, my entire levelling process has been done solo. In a "MMO". In 2012. Seriously?
Ilum? Total cluster..ahmm...you know. PVP in general? Not even gonna go there. It's been covered perfectly in this thread already.
All I can say is - help me, Arenanet. You're my only hope.
I'm stuck between bored, on the one hand (WoW), and severely disappointed on the other (ToR).
edit: schpelling etc.
how do you know about how bad illium is if your not lvl 50?
Also what time of day do you play? PVP is good fun, As for Heroics I always find groups, join a guild maybe.
And to date theres never been a game out there where you could not solo to max lvl.
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
Have to agree on this one. I'm sitting at level 41 and I have no desire to go any further. I've done one flashpoint while levelling - can't find groups *ever*. Heroic quests? Same deal. I pick them all up, look for a group, never find one, and proceed to drop them all when I'm ready to leave the planet. Awesome. So, my entire levelling process has been done solo. In a "MMO". In 2012. Seriously?
Ilum? Total cluster..ahmm...you know. PVP in general? Not even gonna go there. It's been covered perfectly in this thread already.
All I can say is - help me, Arenanet. You're my only hope.
I'm stuck between bored, on the one hand (WoW), and severely disappointed on the other (ToR).
edit: schpelling etc.
how do you know about how bad illium is if your not lvl 50?
Also what time of day do you play? PVP is good fun, As for Heroics I always find groups, join a guild maybe.
And to date theres never been a game out there where you could not solo to max lvl.
You can go to Ilum at 40. Not gonna kill much, but you can cap objectives etc. Lag is killer though.
I play at various times - same problems. And I'm in a guild, but they're all 50. I've talked to a ton of people who have the same problem though - no groups or long wait times. I was commonly waiting 2h, spamming LFG for _______ until I just said screw it and just dropped every heroic quest I picked up the minute I got it. Not worth the frustration and I'm a tank! lol I purposely rolled one to make grouping easier and it's made no difference. Never any healers.
As for being able to level to max solo, yeah, it's true - you can do it in almost every MMO. But I feel like I'm being forced to do it in ToR. As I hit 40, I found I was forced into planets 2-3 levels above me because of lack of XP (due to lack of grouping for heroics from 1-39). In any event, I stick by what I said. It's a huge disappointment for me. Haven't even logged in for over a week now and barely even think of it. That's not a good sign.
*Disclaimer: Don't bother flaming me unless you read the entire post, thanks. Also, I have unsuscribed with 12~ days of play time left.
If you hit endgame within a month of release, and start losing motivartion to log in - the game has issues. We can all agree on that point.
For the record, people in Flash Points that are on planets are absolutely counted towards the planet's total population. Not sure about Fleet and Fleet Flash Points. But that's not entirely important. I suspect the numbers stated are fairly close to accurate with a 10% margin of error.
Also, being a huge Star Wars fan I am sad to say that this game is not what many expected.
Will it get better? Of course it will. Warhammer made leaps and bounds to improve, but it's still dead.
Will it keep a large player base? Probably not. I define large by 500K+ this time next year.
I think suggesting the MAJORITY of players are HAPPY with SWTOR, especially considering its current state, is largely disingenuous.
I am a member of one of the largest Republic guilds on Kinrath Spider. Population has unquiestionably dropped and many of the people I would consider "committed" have already placed SWTOR on the shelf to collect dust - waiting for the next new MMO.
I'm certain many people will continue to play, but the impending release of other major MMOs is certain to constrict SWTOR and stagnate what and who is left.
Reasons for why SWTOR is disappointing:
1. PVP is largely unbalanced in terms of population, leaving Imperial players in a constant loop of Huttball and Republic players ( in the 50 bracket ) at a huge gear disadvantage due to the Ilum debacle. Some suggest this imbalance tends to be server specific, but in my case it IS reality and BioWare/EA is doing little to confront it. The Republic side gear issue will eventually even out, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating for current players.
2. The storylines become tedious. They are not engaging and from my experience, many players start Spacebar spam through cutscenes around level 25-30 because, frankly, they're bored.
3. Endgame PVE content has issues I've read about, but have not PERSONALLY experienced. If those encounter issues have been fixed in Operations, kudos to BioWare. However, Hardmode Flash Points - like Taravl V - still have issues making PVE frustrating also.
4. BioWare seems to be largely focused on pushing updates frequently, following the Rift model, the difference is Rift did this better - their content was not as consistently bugged as SWTOR's is.
5. FIX THE BUGS / ISSUES that are CURRENTLY causing bad press/forum posts BioWare. THEN focus on new content.
Reasons for why SWTOR is a solid game:
1. ........ so many current games do everything this game does, as well - or better. If you want Voice Acting, play Skyrim.
2. SWTOR's Warzones have absolutely and unquestionably elegant design. For the PVP-centric player, barring the bugs you may encounter while logged in, this could be a saving grace - but how many times can you capture a node/run a ball/plant a bomb before you've simply exhausted your ability to keep interest.
oh pretty colors..... and nothing more. BS stacks high with this one, and this post he's put on 2 other forums is loaded with it. One of them being the ToR forums where the mod's ripped him a new one and owned him with info that showed most of what he said was made up.
That being said, Sadly ToR is a work in progress, good game is there but needs work (as did WoW, EvE GW and 10 other titles that came out in the past 12 years). There are lots of problems and things need to be added/fixed. But the biggest problem with the game isn't the game. It is all the haters that like to make up stories, facts and use math that would make 2nd grader laugh and tell you that you failed.
Best thing to do is look into the game (not the posts about the game cause they are too polarized and lots of BS from fanboi's and haters) and wait awhile to see what it become. What ppl did with WoW and GW and look at them.
Originally posted by Laughing-man Sever load is calculated by the number of players taking up the servers' actual load. In other words, say 1000 people are in the starter zone, that means the server is offically "full" and no one can log on. Say there are 45 people in each zone of the game, game will read as "light" and let people log in. Load is determaned by how much stress is being put on the server, more people in the same areas = more server load.
So yeah your population guesses are completely unrelated to the server load that you see... Its like comparing how long a traffic jam will take to clear up by how many cars are involved in it... you aren't factoring in things like how many lanes of traffic, where the traffic is headed, what kind of cars they have etc... You are only using a tiny part of the data....
I don't know about this this.. every character needs to validate actions with the sever regardless of where they are in the game world?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Feel free to log in and conduct your own research. It only takes about 30 minutes to do it with five people. Those numbers not only are't made up, but they also include people in Heroics, Operations and Flashpoints. Warzones, I'm unsure of as I can't say for 100% certainty that they are included.
? It only takes like 5-10 min and 1 person to do a full population count on a server, 10-15 min if it's a server with like 3500-4k players logged in. Your method that you use is off, you should never base it on areas when possible, but on level ranges and classes. People travel between areas a lot, but they don't change classes and levels (or hardly) in the 5-10 min you're doing your count.
Originally posted by Mellkor
Originally posted by Laughing-man Sever load is calculated by the number of players taking up the servers' actual load. In other words, say 1000 people are in the starter zone, that means the server is offically "full" and no one can log on. Say there are 45 people in each zone of the game, game will read as "light" and let people log in. Load is determaned by how much stress is being put on the server, more people in the same areas = more server load.
So yeah your population guesses are completely unrelated to the server load that you see... Its like comparing how long a traffic jam will take to clear up by how many cars are involved in it... you aren't factoring in things like how many lanes of traffic, where the traffic is headed, what kind of cars they have etc... You are only using a tiny part of the data....
I don't know about this this.. every character needs to validate actions with the sever regardless of where they are in the game world?
What he's saying is incorrect. From what I've seen so far is that server status is determined by total population count. The population cap and population ranges linked to each server status can be different though for each server. I'm guessing a lot of the servers that were added later on have lower player caps than the older ones, but that's speculation I didn't verify. However, it can happen though that 1 server starts to switch to 'Standard' at 600, while another stays 'Light' until 850-900 and only then switches 'Standard', 1 server that switches to 'Heavy' at 1800 while another switches to 'Heavy' at 2100.
Ok, that's wonderful. Except the vocal majority of people totally disagree with you. 1.7 Million is "In the first month" meaning DEC 20th - JAN 20th. No matter how much you dont want that to be true it is. This game isn't failing by ANY measure.
Also your little census is so inaccurate lol. Flashpoints, Warzones, different instances of the same zone. They all play in. Even when you are in a group phase your not counted in the overall world tally. All you and your guildmates did was waste your own time haha.
Ok now call me a fanboy for speaking the truth. Go now.
lol. They sold 1.75 million copies in December. 1.7 million activated their accounts in December.
The financial statement cut-off date was 12/31/2011. The first subscription could not end before 01/20/2012.
What you're seeing is what appears to be a deliberate mis-representation by BioWare/EA. What they're supposed to do is use, as we call it in he Certified Public Accounting profession, a SUBSEQUENT EVENTS DISCLOSURE under FASB 165:
FASB Statement no. 165, Subsequent Events disclosures are required for interim and annual periods ending after June 15, 2009. The standard requires the disclosure of the date through which an entity has evaluated subsequent events and whether that represents the date the financial statements were issued or were available to be issued.
You see, some of us do this for a living. And, unlike you, we know the rules and what we're talking about. The 1.7 million subs is nothing more than an accouting and reporting artifact. One that was not properly footnoted or disclosed for the obvious subsequent events of the failure to renew events of late January which should be in the 'subsequent event' period.
But it gets better....
Something else, rather sleazy, that I noticed BioWare doing... As of February 3rd, 2012, they lowered the population necessary to get out of 'light' server load population and into moderate. They also lowered the cap when it came to heavy.
In one day the 'heavy' load went from 3% of server time to 30% of server time. One day. The FULL cap was not changed and it still averages less than 1% of server time and it only happens on Saturday's now.
So when YOU log in and see 'moderate' or 'heavy' populations in your server list.... You're being lied to... The redefinded them down, and by quite a bit...
This game is undeniably broken, meaningless and garbage after hitting 50. The so called PvP planet "Illum" is broken and is constantly being exploited by both factions farming each other for valor in the center of the map on a daily basis. Now to top it all off, they've just announced a nerf to "Battlemaster" gear so that it's (and quote) "not very far off from the normal level 50 gear." lol ... This game is a complete and total failure, and in my opinion isn't ever going to be much of anything.
I'm sure they'll most likely maintain a 300-400k pop for awhile, merely due to the Star Wars fanatics and WoW-rejects but seriously, if you're expecting anything fun out of this game after reaching level 50 then don't waste your time.
In regard to the 1.7 million subs. I'll say this. First off, it was 1.7 million subs on Dec. 31st. Which means that's how many people were playing "BEFORE" the pay period started after the "free month." EA is full of shit, and the next quarters ratings will prove that.
<<>> Also, our guild did a server wide calculation just last week. We all logged in, flew to every planet on the server and recorded the number of players and these numbers were this past Friday at 7:00pm PST. Total number of players at that time was 422 Imperial and 311 Republic, and for the record, our server read "Moderate" on the server list. 3 hours later, at 10:00pm PST we did it again. Below are the numbers.
Conclusion anyone?
733 total players at peak times = Moderate
583 total players at 10:00pm PST = Light
What's considered "Heavy?" By these numbers it would be somewhere between 950-1100 total players. That's spread out amongst 2 factions and 12 planets. 42% of those numbers were in Imperial and Republic Fleets alone. So where does that leave the 12 planets? 200-400 people divided by 12? ....
So my question is, if SWTOR has 1.7 MILLION subs. Where the "EFF" are they at? I'll tell you, they've all either quit or they are just logging in now to complete daily's/weeklys and logging back out. Why? Because there's nothing else for them to do, and from the looks of it, there never will be.
Me and my fiance felt the same way after getting to 50. The storyline was very enjoyable, other than that I was bored or pissed off after hitting 50. 2 cancellations
When you watch a Star Wars movie, is there end-game past the credits? No. Your only option is to watch it or PvP your family / friends for the remote. Or... you can do what BioWare says... "Play it again."
Comments
Thank you. Any post I attempt to make on any aspect of Swtor and my disappointment with it always takes me to considering the story aspect and why it's unnecessary in MMOs and clearly not a sustainable form of long term content. So it's nice to hear others coming to the same conclusion.
MMOs, in my opinion, should offer a well crafted world in which players unfold their own stories through interacting with the world, tools, community & content. Story was *not* missing from MMOs, it was there all along in any game that offered players enough room to go live through their own. Every one of those stories that players bring back will be more important and memorable than any pre-determined developer story forced down players throats.
A players personal story of their experiences playing a game will always trump a forced story the developers insist you play through every time.
I may sound like a broken record, but I don't see people retelling tales of the Bounty Hunter class story in years to come the way they would with the specific adventures they shared with their friends.
On the brightside, I get the feeling we won't have to sit through years of Swtor clones considering that what their linear forced story brings to the table isn't worth the restrictions of a heavy handed narrative.
As for the numbers representing success or failure depending on which side you're on, I don't need those statistics to determine if a game failed me personally. Swtor absolutely failed me as an MMO by offering up a mediocre take on mechanics that have been old for years, decorated with a more severe linear path through *their* experience.
It amazes me that, with over a decade of MMOs to examine, dissect and learn from, SWTOR is the best they could do. They're clearly not trying.
I'd love to see more games on the horizon that are being built out of passion, creativity and a strong desire to see a labor of love through to completion because they believe in it, rather than another generic heap that's the product of reverse engineering spreadsheets to pinpoint the most lucrative systems to include in their lifeless MMO emulator cash grab.
I understand your perspective, but understand this is a forum about MMOs, and often MMO fans discuss occurances in the industry whether they're positive or negative or even currently playing a specific game or not.
MMOs are a pretty inclusive hobby, as such the discussions will often touch on development or why specifically people do or do not like certain games, as well as a number of other areas. Trying to keep people from discussing an occurance on the MMO landscape is a fruitless pursuit.
People will discuss every aspect of the MMO genre for years to come, you can't arbitrarily decide a game you like is off limits. You're entitled to make your opinion known of course, I personally enjoy reading different takes on various aspects of MMOs even if they're not directly in line with my perception of the situation.
I'm shocked another PvP player that is upset about something in an MMO. Just go back to console PvP, it takes more skill and everyone is the same/balanced.
Edit: It's like me ignoring some fantastic PvE sandpark and playing a PvP console game and crying about that PvP console game.
OP, how is game broken were you bored the entire time you played it, I find there is mainly an issue with you if you will devote a 2weeks to a mnth to something that is boring.
Sinlge Player is a blast, but If you want to group up for the social levels you can, I have a lot of fun in the WZ and illium is not great but good god have I had some epic battles on that planet.
{mod edit}
Regardless though with servers, I have alwasy said with all MMO, they should never add new servers when there are wait times. becuase they over add them. And they should allow server transfers from the start once a month.
there is always a drop after everything, but that being said 300 people were in fleet last night on server and 100 were on tarsis. alone.
my server is not dieing.
Agree totally with the OP on this one, I havnt bothered logging in for the past 2 weeks even though my subs are paid up until 21st Feb. For me FFXI was everything an MMO should be, I was never bored with it like i have got bored with most MMO's I have tried. An MMO shouldnt have you needing to reach lvl cap as soon as possible to enjoy it, we should be enjoying the journey to level cap with hobbies, crafting and other side quests/missions and fun stuff. Developers have got lazy and looking at the fast buck trend instead of giving players what they really need. SWtor feels rushed content wise, no real thought into PvP , lets make a PvP planet and hope people will fight each other. What to do now? Well for me I'm now hoping that GW2 can pull it off, if not then I'm retiring from MMO's.
Your right and you want SWTOR does that, through the course of adventures I was a brutal SOB in regards to the story, then after KIlling Jawas I actually felt bad and changed my ways.
This game allows for more connection through story then any game out there. This game is part wow part kotor 3 and thats not to shabby.
THe only way to craft a true world is like eve full loot and full pvp limited safe areas, but people tend not to like it as much.
And the highlighted statement is all the reason SWtor should never of been called an MMO. Solable all the way to 50? give me a break, Epic battles on Ilum, who with the npc's? and you dare question the OP if he/she is trolling.
Actually, when any of the servers read "Light - Moderate" there is but only one instance in the game. It's not until the servers read "Heavy - Full" do you ever see (1) and (2) on a map (meaning 2 instances). In which we haven't even seen that over the past 3 weeks. We took that into consideration when conducting our experiment. As I've stated earlier, for those of you that want to try and contradict it, DO YOUR OWN TEST. It doesn't take that much time.
You obviously never even read the post lol. {mod edit}
Synn , I 100% agree with you on this , End game is but one part of a game . Why rush to get there if you know its not going to be fun . In Vanlla WOW , The endless rep ginds and raids got so old . End game is just that End game .
Why are the moderators taking down and editing posts made by the public? Is this not a freely and openly opinionated forum in regard to various MMO's? What's with this?
Did Bioware or EA send you a butt-hurt email, along with a years contract of advertising? I don't recall saying or exclaiming anything that wasn't true. Can someone elaborate on this?
Irony is strong with this one.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty -- Mahatma Gandhi
Have to agree on this one. I'm sitting at level 41 and I have no desire to go any further. I've done one flashpoint while levelling - can't find groups *ever*. Heroic quests? Same deal. I pick them all up, look for a group, never find one, and proceed to drop them all when I'm ready to leave the planet. Awesome. So, my entire levelling process has been done solo. In a "MMO". In 2012. Seriously?
Ilum? Total cluster..ahmm...you know. PVP in general? Not even gonna go there. It's been covered perfectly in this thread already.
All I can say is - help me, Arenanet. You're my only hope.
I'm stuck between bored, on the one hand (WoW), and severely disappointed on the other (ToR).
edit: schpelling etc.
Who do I send the drycleaning bill to? I just did a nostril ejection of some very nice wine all over my pants.
how do you know about how bad illium is if your not lvl 50?
Also what time of day do you play? PVP is good fun, As for Heroics I always find groups, join a guild maybe.
And to date theres never been a game out there where you could not solo to max lvl.
You can go to Ilum at 40. Not gonna kill much, but you can cap objectives etc. Lag is killer though.
I play at various times - same problems. And I'm in a guild, but they're all 50. I've talked to a ton of people who have the same problem though - no groups or long wait times. I was commonly waiting 2h, spamming LFG for _______ until I just said screw it and just dropped every heroic quest I picked up the minute I got it. Not worth the frustration and I'm a tank! lol I purposely rolled one to make grouping easier and it's made no difference. Never any healers.
As for being able to level to max solo, yeah, it's true - you can do it in almost every MMO. But I feel like I'm being forced to do it in ToR. As I hit 40, I found I was forced into planets 2-3 levels above me because of lack of XP (due to lack of grouping for heroics from 1-39). In any event, I stick by what I said. It's a huge disappointment for me. Haven't even logged in for over a week now and barely even think of it. That's not a good sign.
I skipped them all on my main. Didn't do a single one and I outleveled everything.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
oh pretty colors..... and nothing more. BS stacks high with this one, and this post he's put on 2 other forums is loaded with it. One of them being the ToR forums where the mod's ripped him a new one and owned him with info that showed most of what he said was made up.
That being said, Sadly ToR is a work in progress, good game is there but needs work (as did WoW, EvE GW and 10 other titles that came out in the past 12 years). There are lots of problems and things need to be added/fixed. But the biggest problem with the game isn't the game. It is all the haters that like to make up stories, facts and use math that would make 2nd grader laugh and tell you that you failed.
Best thing to do is look into the game (not the posts about the game cause they are too polarized and lots of BS from fanboi's and haters) and wait awhile to see what it become. What ppl did with WoW and GW and look at them.
I don't know about this this.. every character needs to validate actions with the sever regardless of where they are in the game world?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
? It only takes like 5-10 min and 1 person to do a full population count on a server, 10-15 min if it's a server with like 3500-4k players logged in. Your method that you use is off, you should never base it on areas when possible, but on level ranges and classes. People travel between areas a lot, but they don't change classes and levels (or hardly) in the 5-10 min you're doing your count.I don't know about this this.. every character needs to validate actions with the sever regardless of where they are in the game world?
What he's saying is incorrect. From what I've seen so far is that server status is determined by total population count. The population cap and population ranges linked to each server status can be different though for each server. I'm guessing a lot of the servers that were added later on have lower player caps than the older ones, but that's speculation I didn't verify. However, it can happen though that 1 server starts to switch to 'Standard' at 600, while another stays 'Light' until 850-900 and only then switches 'Standard', 1 server that switches to 'Heavy' at 1800 while another switches to 'Heavy' at 2100.lol. They sold 1.75 million copies in December. 1.7 million activated their accounts in December.
The financial statement cut-off date was 12/31/2011. The first subscription could not end before 01/20/2012.
What you're seeing is what appears to be a deliberate mis-representation by BioWare/EA. What they're supposed to do is use, as we call it in he Certified Public Accounting profession, a SUBSEQUENT EVENTS DISCLOSURE under FASB 165:
FASB Statement no. 165, Subsequent Events disclosures are required for interim and annual periods ending after June 15, 2009. The standard requires the disclosure of the date through which an entity has evaluated subsequent events and whether that represents the date the financial statements were issued or were available to be issued.
You see, some of us do this for a living. And, unlike you, we know the rules and what we're talking about. The 1.7 million subs is nothing more than an accouting and reporting artifact. One that was not properly footnoted or disclosed for the obvious subsequent events of the failure to renew events of late January which should be in the 'subsequent event' period.
But it gets better....
Something else, rather sleazy, that I noticed BioWare doing... As of February 3rd, 2012, they lowered the population necessary to get out of 'light' server load population and into moderate. They also lowered the cap when it came to heavy.
In one day the 'heavy' load went from 3% of server time to 30% of server time. One day. The FULL cap was not changed and it still averages less than 1% of server time and it only happens on Saturday's now.
So when YOU log in and see 'moderate' or 'heavy' populations in your server list.... You're being lied to... The redefinded them down, and by quite a bit...
Me and my fiance felt the same way after getting to 50. The storyline was very enjoyable, other than that I was bored or pissed off after hitting 50. 2 cancellations
hahahah ^^ Made me laugh xD