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The Ratings Game
Kehn
Member Posts: 180
I’m listing a few interesting rating figures taken at the time of writing this post. Anyone care to have a crack at analyzing them? I figured it might be fun to toss around a few ideas or whacked-out theories regarding these numbers.
Top three user rated MMORPG games and SWG:
Eve Online user rated 8.3 based on 4060 votes
Guild Wars user rated 8.3 based on 3379 votes
World of Warcraft user rated 8.2 based on 5953 votes
SWG user rated 6.5 based on 2142 votes
I don’t have any hard subscription numbers, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, last I heard I think Eve was somewhere around 125K accounts, WoW has nearly 6 million, and I have no idea about Guild Wars subscriptions. I believe SWG had around 250K subscriptions at peak. I know the numbers are muddled now with the all-access pass so I’ll intentionally leave my guess on SWG’s current subscriptions out of this post so it doesn’t dominate the thread.
Comments
Both, Eve and GW (1.75 mil sold copies at last report) have loyal customer base and receive fair service. Those that dislike the games, don't tend to badmouth them.
Wow is McDonalds. It's everywhere, but people don't care, it's dime-a-dozen, why bother talking about it, since everyone knows what it is.
SWG was official forum-centric, so there was reasonably little outside opinions, until NGE cause public outcry, and spread all over the internet. I believe many of the SWG reviews come from post-NGE.
mmorpg.com is nothing, it's just another forum, with certain bias. Just like VN boards for DAoC (i think).
MMORPG.com is one of the first sites listed when searching for MMORPG's on any major search engine .. so it is something ...
and those reviews for SWG i would suggest are PRE-nge players ... and i think thats what you meant too
Star Wars Galaxies got currently about 800 - 2000 subscriptioners left
pre-NGE it was 200 - 300k
pre-cu it was about 500.000 - 800.000 subscriptioners
SOE and NGE-Star Wars Galalaxies:
Raph Koster: "It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
Does anyone know if my sub number for Eve is way off, or have a number for GW? 125K was what I thought I last heard for Eve, but like I said I'm not certain of any of the subscription numbers.
I believe you're right. I think I got confused with pre-NGE subs, but now that I think of it I think the game had much higher numbers right after launch.
EnB Exiles
GuardiansOfOrion.com
EVE and WoW are the top 2 MMOs out there. GW ranks up there as well.
SWG is one of the worst.
Plain and simple really.
Look at what some of these people are saying:
"No more bumbling around with a
terrible skill based system you can jump right into the class you want
to be. No more waiting 6+ months to try and be a jedi."
yes, yes, put me on rails please! Who the hell enjoys building a custom character template anyways? And if this is supposed to be alike living in the SWG universe, I guess it would be raining jedi everyday, right? You know what? Might as well get rid of all the other 8 pointless professions, it's all about the jedi right?? Right....
-virtual tourist
want your game back?
So more and more people say it sucks everyday.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Here’s may take:
I like MMORPG. I think the site is pretty well respected and I’ve heard more than a few gaming friends reference it when talking about MMOs. The numbers I listed are of a pretty good sample size so I think it’s ok to try to read into the numbers a little.
The thing I found most surprising was that SWG has fewer votes than Eve and GW. Considering the game has had a higher numbers of subscribers and the history/controversy in SWG, I’d have actually expected the game’s vote count to be more inflated than either of these two games, especially with dissatisfied customers. I’ve only rated the game once, and I did so honestly, but considering the level of emotion around the game I wouldn’t be surprised to see accounts created just to trash the game. This doesn’t seem to be happening. Apparently most of the former players have walked away and not looked back. (Insert daily “get over it and move on” comment here.)
I don’t know too much about GW. I tried it during the beta (I think it was the beta, but I used some code a buddy had to get in) but I’m burned out on fantasy and the game seemed too simple for me so I wasn’t interested. Perhaps the player base is similar to Eve’s but I haven’t even visited the GW forums here so I can’t venture a guess. Eve on the other hand appears to have a very loyal and defensive player base. The Eve forums here are about the opposite of SWG’s when it comes to fans vs. haters. I suppose with loyal players comes more enthusiasm to promote the game by doing stuff like voting here. I tried Eve years ago but didn’t care for the game enough to play it over EnB or SWG.
I haven’t even tried WoW but I was still surprised that they could have so many subscriptions yet have such a smaller percentage of voters here. Maybe the game is the McMMO of games but I’ve known lots of folks that play the game and speak very highly of it. I would have expected more votes to have been cast for WoW.
In response to a few comments here:
I deliberately compared SWG to the top three games here. I don’t disagree the game is crap now (IMO) and I wasn’t trying to hold it up to the top games, I just wanted to make some sense of the ratings, votes, and subs. Well to be honest, I thought I’d get a few whacky analyses and it’d fun to see what people came up with. I think SWG held an overall rating around 7.7 for a while Pre-CU. And as I said earlier, I’d have expected SWG’s rating to have tanked lower too, but it seems not enough people give a rat’s arse. If I hadn’t seen the numbers first I’d guess the game to be rated somewhere around 4.5 to 5.
True, you can only vote once, but you can edit your rating from the game’s rating page. I provided the links too. If you rated the game pre-CU or CU and wish to adjust it accordingly go nuts. I’m sure my buddy Pirrg wants to bump it up to all 11s after publish 28.
EnB Exiles
GuardiansOfOrion.com
MMORPG.com is the trusted source not only for customers but also for the industry. I recall when SWG was being created, the developers visited MMORPG.com daily (sorry can't remember where I saw this, it was long ago).
You can always go back and change your vote.
I believe SWG's highest rating was 7.9, never quite reaching 8.0 and occured during its original release June 2003.
SWG had 250K - 300K active accounts during 2003 (can't verify this, just what I have read numerous times). Today I can't guess accurately but I would put the active accounts at 25K-50K (using my innate ability to read markets).
P.S. The reason VN boards have so much DAOC "forumage" is because camelotherald.com does not provide forums on their site
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis