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Counting Subs the EA Way - A Parody
GrumpyMel2
Member Posts: 1,832
John Smith - "Ah well, so much for that."
1 Day Passes
E-mail from EA - "Dear Mr. Smith we are pleased to award you a FREE 30 days day time, in advance of our quarterly earnings report. Congratulations on maintaining an ACTIVE TOR subscription. We are pleased to retain you as one of our 1.7 Million LOYAL customers."
John Smith - "Dear EA customer service, thank you for your offer of the free 30 days, but I'm really not interested in continuing to play the game. Perhaps you could pass it along to some-one else who would have more use for it?"
1 Day Passes
E-mail from Thad at EA Customer Service - "Dear Mr. Smith, thank you for your generousity but it is EA's policy to offer a free 30 days to ALL who have canceled thier accounts in advance of our quarterly earnings report. Remember it costs you NOTHING to maintain your active subscription for the next 30 days. As long as you have the game installed you can login at any time over the next 30 days and enjoy all the EXCITING(tm) new things happening in TOR! We thank you for remaining a LOYAL customer."
John Smith - "Dear Thad, I appreciate the offer but I'm really NOT interested. In fact, I've already uninstalled the game from my hard drive, so I won't be playing it further and I've instructed my credit card company NOT to process any future payments to EA. So could you PLEASE de-activate my subscription!"
1 Day Passes
E-mail from Thad at EA Customer Service - "Dear Mr. Smith, I'm sorry to hear that you've uninstalled TOR from your computer but having TOR installed on your computer is no longer considered a requirement for maintaining an ACTIVE SUBSCRIPTION by EA. In fact, we are pleased to offer you an EXTRA 2 days credit on your account on top of your 30 free days since at one point you actualy DID have our game installed on your computer. Thank you for your loyalty as a customer and congratulations on maintaining your ACTIVE Subscription to TOR.
2 Days Pass
Jim Brown - "Dear Bioware, I am the Executor for Mr. John Smith. It is my sorrowfull duty to inform you that Mr. Smith has passed away this Tuesday. My records indicate that Mr. Smith had an active subscription to your service. As Executor, I am informing you to cancel that subscription forthwith as Mr. Smith is deceased and will have no further need of it. Thank you.
1 Day Passes
E-mail from Thad at EA Customer Service - "Dear Mr. Brown, at EA we are saddened to hear about the loss of Mr. Smith, he was a loyal customer. I am pleased, however, to inform you that it will NOT be neccesary to cancel Mr. Smiths subscription to TOR. Thanks to a new policy just implimented here at EA, you are no longer required to be a LIVING person in order to maintain an ACTIVE subscription to TOR. So you can insure Mr. Smiths survivors that his subscription is in no danger of lapsing and remains ACTIVE until our next quarterly meeting. Furthermore, I am pleased to inform you that I have been authorized to offer YOU a FREE 30 day buddy key to TOR. So congratulations on your new free 30 day ACTIVE Subscription to TOR. Welcome to the TOR community."
1 Day Passes
Jim Brown - "Dear Thad, I'm afraid as Executor I have a LEGAL obliogation to close all of Mr Smiths accounts, regardless of whether they are FREE or not. Therefore please close Mr. Smith's account immediately. If you fail to perform such, I will have no choice but to ask the Probate Court to issue an order REQUIRING you to do so. Thank You."
Thad at EA Customer Service " Jane, it looks like we've got no choice, we're loosing this one. [mod edit]
7 Days Pass
EA Spokesman at thier Quarterly Meeting - "... And finally we are pleased to anounce that ACTIVE subscription for our flagship new MMO, TOR, remain steady at 1.7 Million."
Comments
Thanks for the giggles, that's about how it feels when you call to close your account entirely too. I was so dispappointed in the game I called and made sure they wiped it out completely.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Thanks for the laugh
Actually prompted me to go check my SWTOR subscription and would you beleive it, apparently I have an active account, despite the fact that I havent paid them anything since 21 Jan 2012 and clicked the cancel subscription button about a week after that.
I have actually sent an email to SWTOR support asking them to deactive my account. LOL
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
coulda been funny, except the crux of your 'joke' is wildly inaccurate. BW offered 30 free days AFTER the end of the financial quarter, which ended at the end of March.
I know it sucks to be wrong, but there you go...you're wrong. But then to attempt to make a joke out of it...well, that's just...let's put it this way, I'm embarrassed for you.
MYSPACE ACCOUNT
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=80721225
Which FF Character Are You?
No.
Activision is walking a thin line when counting Wows subs but EA have them beaten here. Activating peoples accounts to better your numbers is a new low water mark for MMOs.
They need to face the truth, if they want more subs they need to improve the game, not fake the numbers.
Were did they say acitivating their accounts were counted as subscribers? They clearly defined subscriber in their investor call.
Activision actually lies about their subs since WoW is not sub based in Asia and they count them as subs.
They officially acknowledged what counts as "sub" in China, its no secret.
Fir those who dont know:
WoW is pay per hour in China, and they count every acount that has paid for at last an hour of playtime in a month as sub.
But EA...as it turns out, they count every account that bought the game as sub if the statements they made are true.
Every single person I know of who played SWTOR has unsubbed. Hundreds across a dozen or so guilds.
Their accounts have all been reactivated with the free month.
EA will count them as full "subscribers".
Fraud to fool shareholders. This is just another marketing exercise for EA.
If you read their investor call, they would not be counted.
I definitely don't need to look at their investor call to know if they're counting inactive players. Trust me, they're definitely counting inactive players. I am on a previously active server with 2nd best population on the east coast and it is very, very dead today. Over 30 minutes for a warzone queue pop. Less than 40 people on the fleet. Starting today with TERA, and continuing with Diablo 3, and then GW2, this game will definitely feel the pain of under-delivering.
In other news, SWTOR is going to have server transfers finally in mid-summer. Of course, this is after they promised they had them as a very high priority on Dec 23rd of last year, and then said they would have them in late April or early May. And kicker of it all, the transfers are not free in the face of Tera, Rift and GW2 all having free transfers.
Still have the same subs. Laughable. Just like their server transfers and the vasy majority of things they keep promising. I was in sales once too and know exactly what's going on here.
It's almost 1pm on the east coast. I hope it would be dead since people are working and at school.
How do Blizzard lie? You say they officially acknowledge what counts as sub in china and it is no secret. That sounds remarkably like truthfullness.
EA however, activating long dead accounts with free time and calling them active, just lol. OP thanks for the effort with the parody but it's really not necessary we can just look at reality instead.
I'll give you an update later today. I'm just saying I play the game on a daily basis and have played on two different servers. I know how many people are active. They are not counting accurately and anyone who plays the game knows people left. A lot of people. Bioware has to start delivering faster and with more integrity with regards to the timeframes they promise.
Anyway, I'll let you know later how things look today. Maybe I can play some PVP without waiting 30 min
From what I've read of their previous investor calls, I believe they WOULD be counted as "Subscriptions" .......
Hence language like ... "We have 1.7 million subscribers, the MAJORITY of whom have paid past thier initial 30 days"
Lets look at the sort of language they use in thier Q4 call. Note thier Fiscal Year ends on 03/31/12.... so that's what they would be reporting on....and they have to give accurate financials for THAT quarter....
NOTE IMPORTANTLY though....along with the report of the past quarter they usualy include what they call PROJECTIONS for the next quarter....with those thier allowed alot more leeway in what they can say and how they say it...since those come with a disclaimer of just being a projection and not an accounting.
I'd look closely at the language they include in these projections.....as I expect they are going to have a dissapointing report for Q4...and are going to want to find ways to pad that. Not sure when they've got thier report scheduled for this year, but last year it was May 4th. They'd be using data accurate to 4/30/12 to base these statements from. The timing of the 30 day free give away is a no brainer in that regard.... as they can use it in thier PROJECTIONS for Q1 2012. They wouldn't (IMO) actualy WANT it in thier Q4 report.....because that report is all about ACTUAL REVENUE/EXPENSES.... the 30 days free provides them NOTHING in that regard because it would produce NO REVENUE (hence "free") that they can show for it on thier balance sheets. It's value is for use in the fuzzy language they can use in thier Projections/Forcast to pad expectations on the next quarter.
Something to the effect of "Q4 didn't quite meet or expectations.... but things are looking brighter for Q1 2012 as we have X number of ACTIVE Accounts for our flagship MMO....a significant JUMP from where it ended Q4."
Not that other companies don't play similar sorts of games....... but yeah, at the very least we should get to lampoon them for it.
P.S. The main PR value here is not targeted at gamers to say "Hey look at all these Subs our game has, come play". It's about stockholders, many of whom don't even know what the letters "MMO" stand for.... EA's stock has been taking a beating lately. They probably don't have a great Q4 to report....and I expect people are already a bit shell shocked about the lay-offs.... so anything they can put in to soften the blow and make Q1 look like it's going to be brighter has PR value in trying to reduce the stock hemoraging..... heck look at that little bump they got just from that silly NCSoft rumor.
They don't lie. But they do extend the truth. Would you consider someone who plays for one hour a month an "active subscriber"? If you ran a business and gave away your services, would you consider the people who took something for free from you and cost you money "customers"? Hell, my wife watches one hour a month of football during the football season and I would call her quite the opposite of a football fan. And the government is able to say there's little to no inflation by adjusting their formula (they started not counting gas prices and food prices years ago). There's lots of ways to make statistics tell the story you want or sell things that aren't quite what they seem. This is what people who read into these statistics and actually understand what they are and aren't telling you are taking issue with. Both companies try to make the game look more popular than it really is and feed the hype machine. Politics, sales, and marketing hidden behind definitions and statistics.
Not sure that is correct in this case if they are upfront about their calculation of what they are counting as an active Asian sub.
+1 free monthly sub to keep their 1.7 bragging right not much diff than WoW's 10 million sub in china when most of them dont even play but owns a time card.