Darth Hater

While I can't comment on why most of the people who played SWTOR left, I will say this: my computer had barely enough ram to run the game, and I had to deal with constant hitching as the game suffered from page fault after page fault. I would have had to buy a totally new motherboard/cpu/ram to solve this problem. I would have spent the money to buy it, if the game had been compelling or interesting enough. Sadly, after about 3 months, I found my interest flagging, and eventually stopped logging in, except to raid. When I mentioned my intentions to quit at the end of my subscription time, most of my operations group agreed and raiding collapsed.

This game is too much like WoW. And I played WoW for 7 years. It just gets boring after a while. I want something new.

Question guys.

Why do you care about the numbers being 800k, 500k or 1 million subscribers.

I played wow for 11 years. That game had 11 million people at most. 10k on my server. Which means the everyone else was of no interest to me.

80% of all those people who was on my server was selfish kids who ninjaed everything they saw and didnt care about community. I am very happy this game doenst have 11 million players.

It's all about e-pen man... achievments, you know...

If your MMO of choice have got 10,000,000 subscribers... wow... you know?

xD

Or maybe something about having more subs = more money = more content... dunno.

"Last year we announced that the breakeven point was roughly 500,000 subscribers. And while we are well above that today, that’s not good enough."

I fail to comprehend exactly what they are trying to say here. Are they saying that by being well above the breakeven point, as in 'making a profit', it is not good enough? Either the true number is not as far above 500k as they'd like us to believe or the true greed of EA is something that cannot be satiated.

Considering they did not give us an exact number, I'm willing to bet that it's not as high as they'd like us to believe. But that doesn't rule out the latter being true as well. We all know it is.

This part also stood out to me: "BioWare™, a Label of Electronic Arts"

So, how does it feel BioWare, to go from being one the most renowned RPG game making companies ever to becoming just "a Lable of Electronic Arts"? Was selling your soul to the devil worth it now?

I didn't want to believe that this ship could sink. I really, truly didn't. But when I saw the water flooding in, I had no choice but to bail out. It pains me to see this happen to the game I once hailed as my dream-game-come-true. But if there was ever a chance that I would return one day, that will never happen now. GG.

They didn't want a reasonably successful or break even game, they wanted a World of Warcraft.

Quote from OneCharacter »

"Last year we announced that the breakeven point was roughly 500,000 subscribers. And while we are well above that today, that’s not good enough."

I fail to comprehend exactly what they are trying to say here. Are they saying that by being well above the breakeven point, as in 'making a profit', it is not good enough? Either the true number is not as far above 500k as they'd like us to believe or the true greed of EA is something that cannot be satiated.

They looked at the trajectory of subscriptions

Feb 1.7millio

May 1.3 million

Now(guesitmate) 800k

its a downward trend, they are looking at that seeing theres been no let up, if they dont do something they run the risk of going below the 500k. Its pretty much, lets stop doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome, theyre doing something different only time will tell if it works

they're hoping august content and F2P announcment stops the bleed and then the F2p option will at least help in steadying if not increasing revenue from it.

I agree 100% with you aallya. The number is going downhill, soon there will be Pandas, GW2, PS2... there is no way SWTOR could keep on being sub based MMO.

Lets wait and see what they will sell in the new "Legacy Shop System".

*-* Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. Yoda. *-*

It's not just the payment model that failed, it's a failture to prepare for burnout with the prevailing model of MMO: quest to max level and then faction grind/pvp while you wait for more content to be released.

I got tired of it in WoW, then went to EQ2, RIFT, and SWTOR.  Same old, same old, though admittedly I had more fun doing it in some of those games than in others.  I just don't think MMOs have gauranteed activity for months on end like they did when they were new... they are becoming like other genres where you give it a good run and then put it down for a few months while you do something else and take a break.

Edit: Didn't realize I was replying to someone.  Reply is unrelated.  Oops.  :P

Excellent point!!!

"Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3)."

this is the most telling quote on the future of TOR.  EA considers TOR a "miss" (as well they should).  i think we should all expect that the only real new content that will be released for this game going forward is what is already in the pipeline (aka Makeb).  EA will continue to milk what's left of their subs (and future f2p'ers) with a vanity/fluff cash shop until the numbers drop to the point of needing to shut down the servers.  we can all forget about expanding the space game, guild capitol ships, expanded class stories, new planets, new races, etc.

the focus isn't on making TOR the best mmo, it's on how do we make some cash while expending as few resources as possible.

Agree with you here, Unwarshed. To be honest, I've not expected of any of those things ('expanded space combat...'), even before this downbeat earnings call. What has been obvious for many months is that EA and BioWare fundamentally misunderstood what makes a MMO 'sticky' for players (whether subscription-based or F2P): good multiplayer design, good guild tools, and good endgame (content AND add-ons). It's NOT voice stories, not lore, and not long corridors/hallways/elevators with long load times. With so many basic MMO design flaws in SWTOR it's not going to draw MMO players, despite the protestations of the fan-boys on this site's comments board. 

I think that some of that is overboard, raxelicious.  I think some of the actual problems for people have to do more with the quality of the game and lack of communication between devs and playerbase.  I was contemplating quitting the game due to the absurd lack of content updates since the game's release (no, group finder is NOT content).  The last week has actually hammered things home for me that I can't deal with this game anymore.  On a Nightmare EV run, killing the pillars to knock the stacks off of Soa only took him down to 3 stacks and then stopped.  Twice during the Annihilation Droid I got knocked into the pillar so that I couldn't run out, couldn't be healed, and subsequently died.  In EC, a tank dies and gets thrown into the wall so that he can't be battle rezzed.  EC has been out for 3 months.  EV has been out for 8 months.  Why haven't these bugs been fixed?  Ability delay was supposed to be fixed months ago.  Server side lag is atrocious.  There are so many technical problems with this game that it makes it not fun.

All that and they can't even communicate anything with us.  The company is maddening.

me too, i called it before the first round of layoffs and that's why i immediately cancelled my sub right after JR's statement on where TOR stood within their game portfolio.  i knew they weren't going to support this game in any meaningful way right then and there. 

I was unsubbing anyway due to a myriad of reasons.  I also said that if they went F2P, I wouldn't want to be a part of the community anymore.  I already see a problem with the lack of actual content that's being put out.  They're talking about 1.4, but has anyone actually seen it?  I don't think them going F2P is going to help them put out content any quicker.

People have compared them to Turbine, but Turbine ruined its economy by allowing mats to be bought online.  They only put out actual content once a year in the form a new expansion.  And they don't spend the kind of money Bioware needs to spend in order to put the fully voiced quests in place.  I just don't see this as being a good thing for this game.

Can anyone believe that 40% of players had a problem with a subscription fee? I would have thought we would have heard more player outrage over subscription fees …. I think that’s a phantom number and wishful thinking.

IMHO, this game does not do well under a F2P model, most new players will just play this as a never ending single player Bioware game and since they intend to let you see the entire story 1 to 50 free, and there’s really no need to buy anything from a cash shop to see the story I don’t see it doing well.

If it was designed from the ground up as a F2P maybe or expect sweeping changes.