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IceZaroth
Member Posts: 13
If you look at the polls carefully you see a pattern forming, SOE signing up swgemu devs to run pre-cu server, they know we dont trust them running it so why not sign up swgemu devs to run it for them kill 2 birds with one stone, doing maths hurts my head ... lets see: 3000+ account reactivations @ the monthly sub price minus(-) the money paid out to the swgemu devs to run it, Equals(=) a tidy sum left over monthly for soe and saves them face since its ther servers we'd be back on.
interesting thoughts there, but like im saying thats what my personal feels are no one elses.
Comments
Hauken Stormchaser
I want pre-CU back
Station.com : We got your game
Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!
After subtracting taxes, credit card processing fees and other account management related costs, it comes down to what? 10, maybe $20k.
Maybe that sounds like a lot of money, but that's probably less that a month's supply of printer toner costs at SOE.
The income from MMOs doesn't come from subscriptions.
=====================
-Just My Thoughts-
Max
Currently playing: Nothing
Most people think that Xeno left the Emu to work for SOE. He left almost the DAY they released the source. He also seemed to be the most talented dev they had. There's too much coincidence there. Now, with the two polls that came up after the remaining emu guys had a chat with LA, something is definately up.
SWG Tempest: Cardo Dycen RIP
Eve: Cardoh Dycen
I support random drug testing for all SOE employees
Thay aren't worried.
I hope you're not fooling yourself here.
They are not even remotely worried.
- Majority of SOE subscribers is not capable of seting up a client to work on emu
- Majority of SOE subscribers would not play on some home-brewn emulator
- Majority of subscribers would never ever even think of playing on some poor imitation.
- Major hype around emu comes from people who have also never played SWG, they just want free stuff
The SWG forums during this year have averaged 600-700 logins at any given time. The number is surprisingly stable, indicating majoirty of people login and leave browser open. The number of anonymous (not logged in readers) fluctuated between 1500 and 2700, depending on the time of day.
Judging from this, it's easy to see, that there's a major portion of subscribers who do not get involved into forums. Contrasted to 100k+ subscribers, 600 participating in the forums is positive 0. Since the number of users logged in does not exhibit fluctuations like users not logged in, it indicates that time of day doesn't really contribute to activity as concurrent users it does on live servers.
All I'm trying to say is, that emulator can only possibly attract a really small fraction of players. These are the most hard-core and die-hard fans. This creates a completely different community than that on live servers, and also serves as a huge deterrant to other possible players.
In addition, do not underestimate the inaccuracies of polls.
Too many people simply do not have the experience to realize the reality behind running such software at corporate level. The current lax structure simply does not scale or translate to running a reliable service. And yes, SOE is running a reliable service. Many simply cannot comprehend the ammount of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, and like to run double standards as well.
Look at mmorpg. Nothing particular happened, yet they simply lost a day's worth of posts. Not the first time, mind you, and this was during normal operation. How easy do you think it would be to maintain the server once it's on per-pay basis. How many would put up with various quirks? Everyone? Let's not be naive here.
Regarding numbers, here's a small snapshot of swg forum statistics.
Yes, I'm a moron.
Subscriptions cover the running costs, and if they're lucky, they can have some profit from that.
Box sales typically generate the profits, as well as the expansions.
In the end, it's one big bucket, but the running costs of MMOs are not 0. They are also not $100 per month. They are big.
Wow has 3000 GMs full-time. How much do they have to be paid, even when working for minimal wages? What is minimal wage anyway, $15000? $15000 + taxes + insurance + various other state plans (for western countries) that typically doubles the employers costs. But let's be generous. $20k per employee x 3000 = $60 million just for customer service salaries. Better hope they are not paid $50k-75k.
Then there's operation costs for hardware (they most likely replace the components in their 9000 servers daily, the bandwidth, building lease, power consumption, etc. I don't have the numbers on this, but the raw 1 bil income quickly becomes a tiny profit margin.
It's the suck ass ASP. I just can't stand ASP. *sigh* Windows servers.
Good post btw Rek. I think the numbers of resubs to a pre-cu server run by homebrew team would be considerably less than a pre-cu server run by SOE/LA with the SWGEMU team running the Dev.
AS you point out the average user is not computer savvy enough to get SWG to use an Emu server. If SOE/LA and the EMu team worked together they could make the frontend simple and easy.
As for money intake I'm not sure of the math. There are tons of expenditures, so many it makes my brain hurt thinking about it.
I would think SOE/LA could make a nice chunk of change from a Pre-CU server though.
Ok, rambled enough.