Too little, too late?Follow

I think it will pick back up. It's launch was absurdly large, but in reality the profit in MMOs is in the long run.

They had a very successful launch, which paves the way for future success--the feelings towards the game are generally favorable. WoW didn't even start to actually get popular until Burning Crusade. TOR might not be looking at 10 million subs anytime in the immediate future, but I wouldn't be surprised if it hit 2-5 mil in the next 5 years, assuming they continue with content updates and their aggressive advertising campaign.

Yes, if you count China WoW had 5 mil after one year. If you don't, it had 2 mil. And it took about 6 months for it to hit 1 mil, with some extremely active marketing.

Realistically, WoW has 5.5M subs. It's ridiculously disingenuous to include Chinese players in those stats for several reasons. For one, there is no such thing as a WoW subscription in China. They pay for blocks of game time (which are actually pretty small), so numbers can end up vastly inflated very, very easily. We have absolutely no way of knowing how they count who is "subscribed" to the game. Plus, even ignoring this use of "subscribing", they... aren't. Blizzard licenses the game out to a Chinese company that hosts it and manages Chinese operations. Blizzard has shockingly little control over the whole system.

I have no clue what kind of market SW has in China. But I wouldn't be surprised if "sub" numbers would skyrocket if they licensed the game out the same way Blizz did. But as far as I'm concerned, WoW China is a legitimately different game that EU/US WoW. Yeah, fine, WoW might have 10M players. But it's like saying that there are 6K professional football matches a year (random number). Sure, it might be true, but it's not like it's necessarily telling you something about the professional leagues.

Okay, that's a bad analogy, but I'm really quite tired.

And I haven't seen any of this doom and gloom screaming about TOR. Populations on the transfer servers is healthy and active. The older servers will get merged to get them back up. There have been some pretty big content announcements to keep players interested.

At the 6th month period, WoW had about the same or slightly more subs than TOR has now. Sure, the trend was in the opposite direction, but we aren't nearly low enough to be counting it out yet. Because what I'm seeing is a huge number of people who ARE coming back to try the game again now that some time has passed. It's not like all those subscribers were gone for good, and there's still a sizeable market for expansion.

It was actually 3.5 million NA/EU/etc, with 1.5 million players in China for 5 million total.

Edit - I will fudge and include Taiwan, but excluding China, 7.2 million play WoW currently.

/facts

Edited, Jul 21st 2012 11:18am by bodhisattva

I finally actually read the articles you linked, and I kinda fail to see why we should put any faith in them. At all.

For one, EVERYTHING in the TOR section is conjecture. And for a journalistic article (nvm it's an op-ed, I mean c'mon), it's pretty atrociously opinionated. Failed to make much of an impact? How exactly are they measuring that? "...it’s perhaps a bit unclear as to how much EA had riding on The Old Republic." They don't even specify to what extent it IS clear, which means that the only reason the sentence was phrased this way was to seed suspense.

Modest following of a million or so? A million players is wildly successful for an MMO, and TOR peaked at around 1.7 M and (according to Bioware) is still above 1M iirc.

Quite literally the ONLY piece of actual evidence in that piece is that the Executive Producer was fired. Well, one thing everything I'm seing online agrees on is that Vogel was let go (or left--we don't know what happened) BEFORE any of the other layoffs. And BioWare's response is reasonable, even if I wouldn't trust it to be 100% true--the staff they needed to create the game, and the staff they need to run/manage the game/new content aren't necessarily the same. And even if they are, you don't need as many of them.

Then we get him saying EA is failing because Battlefront isn't beating COD in fan numbers. Last I checked, being #1 in sales and being successful weren't the same thing.

Vastly exaggerated ME3 stuff. Moving on.

PR stuff. EA has ALWAYS had terrible PR. And they just keep growing, because they have their fingers in enough pockets that it just doesn't really matter. Sucks, but it's the truth. Boycotting EA at this point means missing out on a huge number of the big title releases, so most gamers won't do it, bad PR or otherwise.

Everyone is jumping into social games--they can be extremely profitable. His "own private theory" is just dumb as hell.

So, no, I don't see any reason to see his opinion as being relevant, and it's far from substantiated fact. Hell, it's way less detailed than most op-eds even tend to be.

The last article you linked suggests that they expect 1.25M subs by March of 2013. We don't know if that's an estimate based on shrinking, growth, or what. But that's far from bad.

I see absolutely no reason to run around screaming about the sky falling. At all.

I can't take anything Paul Tassi says on Forbes seriously after his abysmally poor coverage of Diablo III's hacking "problem". Articles found here and here show he apparently takes forum gossip as gospel in his rush to create a new article every few days.

Since Bioware added the trial to level 15, I've been playing through the first 15 levels of all the classes I didn't really get into on the beta. I still think the Agent/Smuggler could be better, but I also found I really like the Bounty Hunter gameplay. It also helps that you actually get your healing companion first. SWTOR is a good game, but the only thing it really has going for it is the IP. It doesn't have 7 years of development that WoW has, it doesn't have the frantic pace of new content that RIFT has somehow sustained, the combat isn't as interactive as GW2 and TERA, and the graphics are good but not exceptional (clearly better than WoW but middle-of-the-pack for current releases). BW does an exceptional job of telling a story, so there is that, but I don't think that translates into long-term players. I would play SWTOR as a single player game all day long. I don't want to pay a sub for a single-player story, even if there are 8 unique story-lines (excluding shared worlds/quests).

Personally, I would love to see WoW shed at least half of it's player base. Not because I want WoW to fail, but because I want there to be a lot of competition between developers for good ideas. I would love a game with a mix of DAoC's RvR PvP, GW2's gameplay and dynamic events, WoW's add-on support and end-game activities, expand on RIFT's soul system so each class can fill each role, with maybe something from The Secret World's skill tree (literally hundreds of skills, but you can only choose 7 actives and 7 passives). Differentiate between the classes by resource model: rage; energy; mp; a dual resource system like monks (MoP) or demon hunters (D3), or maybe one based on CDs.

I can appreciate that approach, because I enjoy it too, but I think devs have avoided that because it almost alienates a subset of players. Not everyone likes being the support type, and if you have that class in game you need to balance content around it. DCUO sorta dealt with that by giving everyone the ability to swap into damage or class-specific role on a whim, but I just don't see how it would work in TOR.

Having said that, I sure would like to see more of it. The holy trinity gets tiresome after awhile.

I mentioned CDs as a resource because I play an enhance shaman.

GW2 has Damage, Support, and Control, although I didn't get far enough in the last beta weekend to do much. I played an engineer, and the best comparison I could make would be to take a druid, without bear form or resto-spec heals. You have some buffs, some of your attacks apply useful debuffs, and a few heals that won't save anyone that's doing something stupid but still manage to help. In other words, Maz would thoroughly enjoy it.

On an unrelated note, one other thing that really stood out was the fact that you can drop a profession and pick it up again later without losing your recipes and skill level.

I guess it could work, I just hate having to follow a rotation. My playstyle is far too erratic for me to do it. You should see me playing my Juggernaut/Guardian. I'm all over the place, mashing buttons that aren't mashable(?) and such. Total faceroll on the keyboard. I hate the idea that you have to hit your abilities in a specific order or the entire thing just falls apart.

That's why I switched to the Assassin. Well, that and... LIGHTNING!



Sounds interesting. I've been looking through some LPs of GW2 and I can't figure out if I'm liking or disliking the game. The combat looks fun, with some attacks unlocking better attacks (like a combo system, or a castsequence macro built into the game). It might have been the quality of the videos people have uploaded, but I just felt like there was too much... stuff... on the screen.

Will have to look at some more videos.

Looks like they're going to a limited F2P option. Seems like essentially the single player content will be F2P, but you'll need to sub or purchase access to multiplayer content. I'm honestly surprised they'd make this switch so soon. Then again, making the switch while you still have a million+ players means a million+ players getting all their friends to come play for free.

I typically don't like these models for MMOs, but that's generally because I never feel like I'm really getting anything out of playing a partial game, even if it's free.

Since TOR has such a fleshed out single-player game, it might actually be really attractive in ways other MMOs aren't.

I'm starting to seriously wonder if the subscription model for an MMO can even survive. The only game on the market I can see remaining sub for the long haul is EVE, and that's because the nature of the game is VASTLY different than other ones out there (and technically, you can play for free, as long as you're able to make 350-400M ISK, the in-game currency, per 30 days).

The majority of WoW's population don't play via a subscription, and iirc the population drop for the game is very heavily centered in Western markets.

Someone can feel free to make another thread about this, I just figured I'd put it here.

Well, Bioware only confirmed today that numbers were below 1M. And considering the numbers we last heard were somewhere around 1.3M, and those weren't that long ago, I don't think it was a "wildly optimistic" assumption.

In any case, it seems that the game won't be fully F2P in a meaningful way. It's more like an extended take on WoW's current system. It'll allow for free play up to level 50, but that's not going to be cap soon enough since it's going up. Everything else will require you to pay.

I don't think MoP will hit harder than D3. The general consensus in the chat seems to be that people went to ToR because of MoP. If they left WoW because of pandas then I doubt a lot of them will go back for pandas.

As for GW2, I'm not sure. ToR is a sci-fi game where GW2 (and WoW) are fantasy games. A lot of people I've talked with seemed bored with the fantasy approach. Swords, magic, dragons and all that. My main reason for not being absolutely thrilled about GW2 is that it's another fantasy game. The game looks amazing, but I've killed dragons and skeletons and ghosts for the last ten years. ToR was a nice change for me.

If I get bored with end-game content, I'll roll a new alt. I'm six months in and still haven't hit end-game, though I'm getting close to it on my Assassin.

MoP and GW2 will no doubt pull a number of subscribers from ToR, but I don't think it'll be as bad as people say.

D3 was bad. Planets went from 200+ to 50-ish in one night and never really recovered (are people still farming playing D3?) until the server merges. That was a game that people had been looking forward to for ten years, though. I just don't think MoP is going to pull that many people. The die hard WoW players, sure, but a lot of people are under the impression that MoP is going to be a hilariously underwhelming expansion.

I guess time will tell. I might leave ToR to go play MoP, but only to see how messed up my class has become. I don't imagine I'll go back to WoW full-time again. Once you get a whiff of the 2nd generation MMO games out there, it's not very tempting to return to 2004.

And it's a very tempting offer for some of us as well.

Honestly facing $40 for a new WoW expansion versus $15 (the eventual reduced price for the game apparently, which comes with a free month of time) for SWTOR, it's easy to sit there and wonder if WoW is really going to be worth the money. I mean they're rolling out a lot of new stuff, but the underlying core of the game is still old. So now it's got Pandas, but it's still WoW really. A year ago I was weighing the same decision, and the AP and D3 looked to be the better deal. This time, I'm not as sure. Well, not sure enough to download the free trial at least.


Edited, Aug 3rd 2012 8:12am by someproteinguy

http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/10/technology/star-wars-free-play/index.html


Not really a lot of new information there, but someone linked it on MMO Champ forums.

Somehow, I'm ok with game company investors being told that.

For anyone who may have missed it...

Interview Linky = http://vid.buffed.de/video/10222/SWTOR-Interview-mit-Bioware-zur-Zukunft-des-Star-WarsMMORPGs

Post #7 does a nice paraphrase = http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=521304

(links aren't working this morning for me for some reason...)

Listening/reading to all that had a few impressions. Probably the most heartening is they're aware of some of the pitfalls that can happen in a badly structured F2P environment. You kind get a feeling that things didn't go at all the way they envisioned, they didn't respond as well as they could have, etc. but they have enough invested in this thing they don't want to give up on it yet. Will be interesting to see ultimately how they end up structuring F2P over the next year or two, how much more money it will actually bring in, etc. Also, yeah, a corporate person being upbeat about their product, I know I know...

Edited, Aug 16th 2012 8:12am by someproteinguy

Part of me thinks they pretty much got what they should have been expecting, given that they already had subscription numbers from SWG to look at. Basically it's a decent 2nd tier MMO with a smaller group of very loyal fans. Assuming they don't muck it up too bad, as with the previously mentioned game, there's still plenty of life left in it. How this got hyped as a 'WoW killer' though, is beyond me.

My biggest gripe about server consolidation is that we went to having wait times at peak hours. *grumble grumble*

Got to keep all my names though, so that's a plus.

So can we talk about how terrible the new project animation is? Because it is. They took my favorite animation and mangled it.]

@Protein, you have a wait now, but when the game goes F2P sub players get queue priority when logging in. So unless there are enough Sub players to bring the pop to high all by themselves, you're set if willing to continue paying. Of course, that only makes it worse for you if you don't want to...

Wait hasn't been much of a problem since the first night thankfully. Only occasionally at peak hours. Funny you mention F2P though. That was partly my concern. I mean, if paying accounts are in a queue at peak hours, how are free accounts going to be able to play? I mean, they didn't leave much room for those accounts on the new servers.

I mean, I'm all for encouraging subscriptions and stuff, but if people can't get online to begin with, they can't get hooked.

BioWare would rather expand the window than shorten the drapes.

The Project change is thanks to PvP Sages bitching about not having an instant cast ranged attack for preventing node caps. Apparently Telekinetic Throw does not count as instant cast because it's channeled or something. My Assassin is looking forward to his 30m instant cast as well...

Edited, Oct 4th 2012 6:36pm by Mazra

Anyone remember this article?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-01-star-wars-the-old-republic-could-attract-upwards-of-50-million-monthly-players-says-wedbush

I want to be an analyst when I grow up. It's apparently easier than being a weatherman.

They're assuming Titan will fall through and a lot of WoW players will jump to TOR?

Guessing is fun! I should totally be an analyst. Hmm... I've looked over the numbers carefully and I can with 100% certainty say that the sky could potentially rain fire and water could potentially turn to blood within the next 2,000 years. Now gimme my money!

Did Blizzard mention what Titan is? Well other than it'll be a MMORPG.