The sky has not fallen (yet)

[caladein]

That runs into its own set of problems though.  Namely why the hell are we talking about their deepest and darkest when my actions are otherwise abhorrent to them?

There are plenty of non-affection-requiring lines of dialogue that focus on the task at hand already, the affection ones become rather personal rather quickly.

[Lantyssa]

If your actions are abhorrent to them, a couple of trinkets shouldn't change that.  "I know how you hate when I kill entire villages, but I got you this really cool memorabilia.  We cool?"

[caladein]

Then we're at "no story for you".  Moreover, I have a lot easier time suspending disbelief over having to do something that symbolizes relationship building (as much as I'd like, "Go out for drinks with Vector." to be a conversation) then just having affection-style conversations trigger because I hit a certain planet with no effort made by me to court their favor.

It's an RPG, bars going up or down mean other things, that's just the language/limitation of the genre.  But dialogues proper are something I hold to a much higher standard.

[Sky]

So in addition to full light and dark path (and I guess grey path) stories, there should also be positive and negative affection stories. Which would be a lot of fun with Skadge!

But to be slightly more serious, the suspension of disbelief is pretty significant with companions, anyway. If Skadge hates me, why is he still on my ship? I would imagine at some point he'd engage in some conversations just because he's tired of sitting on the boat and looking for scavenged stuff on ebay.

[Ingmar]

That's unfortunately something they had to cut a corner on because people kept doing stuff like killing their companions off in beta and then being unable to progress, etc.

[Sjofn]

So in addition to full light and dark path (and I guess grey path) stories, there should also be positive and negative affection stories. Which would be a lot of fun with Skadge!

If I could change one thing about the companions - and this would've been a huge drain on resources and I am sure it's half the reason why they didn't do it this way - it would be having a friendship/rival system like DA2 had. It's not positive/negative exactly, it's "we are besties, we agree on everything!  " versus "our worldviews are wildly different but I respect you anyway." One of the best things about DA2, and one of the things I'm most hoping they realize worked really well from that game.

Like people bitch about how Tharan clearly hates them just because he gives minor rep hits when you start going "blah blah mystical jedi bullshit blah." But that would really just be a prime example of "different approach to the world, just a rival instead of an ENEMY," as he doesn't actually hate force users or anything, he's just a scientist and prefers. You know. Science to platitudes. But because it's just a "make number go up" system, people don't really see it that way.

[Kageru]

It's all part of the damage from trying to tell story in an MMO. Because the character is going to be long lived you can't limit what they end up with, so all the companion and companion missions need to be available. Whereas in a single player you could kill them, have them abandon the PC, have deeper stories and more romance options on the assumption that the player will play through again if they want to see different selections and outcomes.

[Nevermore]

Short little article.

Very short actually, and it's PC Gamer but what I found interesting (besides the size of the staff) is their goal was just 1,000,000 subs, which seems pretty realistic and probably a lot less than people thought their goal would be.

[Maledict]

I'm sorry but that's crap. Thats just back peddling at a horrendous rate to avoid embarrassment.

We had *numerous* indications from EA and Bioware about how big this game was supposed to be. You don't spend $200millon to be a distant second place to the leader, and they were very clear they were aiming for WoWs top spot in the genre before launch. This is just the same hand waving that happened in the recent EA conference call where suddenly TOR isn't even in their top 5 priorities despite previously being the game the entire company was betting on.

With reference to the actual article - every time I read about game development it just sounds awful. Spending the last 6 months cutting deaths from the game doesnt sound right I have to say. I u derstand the need to avoid feature creep and lock the final game down but that seems excessive compared to what we see their companies doing, and clearly didn't help their game be that much more stable in the long run either. As many have said they should absolutely have pushed back the launch date and got some of those vital features into the game for launch.

[Ingmar]

Note the article date of March 8th. It isn't backpedaling - at least not in the sense that it has anything to do with the numbers we just heard now.

[Rokal]

At peak, the team size was staggering: 280 QA staff. 140 artists split evenly between internal and outsourced staff. 80 engineers and programmers, 75 designers, 40 platform engineers and 30 producers to manage the team’s workload and organise.

Almost 650 employees (not including overhead) at the peak of SWTOR development. Pretty sure this dwarves the development team size for any previous Western MMO. It's no wonder they spent north of $200 million on the game.

[UnSub]

EA has always said over 1m is their magic number. What that doesn't say is over 1m active players means in terms of ongoing development and reinvestment. Or how long the active player base would need to remain 1m+ for SWOR to be considered successful internally.

[Kageru]

Note the article date of March 8th. It isn't backpedaling - at least not in the sense that it has anything to do with the numbers we just heard now.

They knew the retention rate long before it was announced and in much greater accuracy.

I agree, furious back-pedaling. You don't have a team that size, with this IP, to do an "experiment".

[Fabricated]

That much QA staff and you launch with a game THAT buggy? They really must've had their time table moved forward.

[amiable]

That isn't a "respec." 

Dual spec is what I meant.  Apologies for my imprecise langauge.

[caladein]

I know we all love our narratives here, but that 1m number is a lot older than March.  2 February 2011, same thing:

"We previously described to folks that 500,000 subscribers saw the game as substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing that we would write home about," he said. "[But] anything north of 1 million subscribers is a very profitable business."

[Kageru]

That much QA staff and you launch with a game THAT buggy? They really must've had their time table moved forward.

They probably outsourced it to China,

Q: "How many faults have you found?"
A: "How many would you like?"

Whether or not EA considers SWTOR profitable will become clear in the depth of their content patches. They're never going to acknowledge it as a failure as that will just drive population away and gain them nothing.

[Sky]

I know we all love our narratives here, but that 1m number is a lot older than March. 

Don't you know that substantially profitable means FAILURE at f13?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Nothing to do with pass/fail.  I have no doubt it will be profitable at 1milsubs(though I don't think they'll be staying above that for much longer)  but if anyone believes that EA/Bioware was estimating 1mil subs and anything more would be "happy extra" then you are just delusional.  1mil was the line for profit and the public motto but I can guarentee the game is seen internally as a failure for the investment.

[Paelos]

Depends on what they mean by substantially profitable.

If they spent $200M on the game, and that's been the standard estimates, and you had about 2M in box sales, then you can make the following projections since EA operates at a 60% gross margin.

$100M in box sales gross profits $60M, leaving $140M to cover by subs. At $13-$15 per sub, average pricing plans would be $14M for one million users. $14M at 60% is $8.4M, which would mean you need 16 or 17 months to get a breakeven gross on your initial money.

Also, I would estimate that the majority of the $106M increase in advertising from FY11 to FY12 is due to SWTOR. So that's another 12 months you have to cover in subscriptions to make money.

So yes, after two and a half years of sustaining subs at one million, the game is most likely very profitable. That's assuming they can sustain those levels.

[bhodi]

The real problem is that the game is too inflexible and slow in both attitude and content to hold the subscribers they currently have. At no point can I see subs increasing. Best case is that the subscriber count stabilizes.

What we're discussing here is how fast the descent, where the level-off is, and where the 'underwater' line is. Assuming the level-off is above the underwater line, the game will be profitable. I'm not sure you can consider it a 'success', though.

My personal opinion is that by this time next year, it'll be equivalent to vanguard. We've got a very strong lineup this year for this genre and so I'm pretty sure this game is fucked.

[Falconeer]

Look, the problem is that there's no way in hell they are gonna keep 1 million subs. Not with this game, not with what the game is now. Maybe 500k. Maybe. But I wouldn't bet on it. I'd say lots of you are still overestimating this silly little game with a huge IP. It didn't save SWG, and I don't see anything here that is indicating SWTOR's good health. You are all free to point me to it though, and no "_I_ am still having fun" doesn't count.

[UnsGub]

That much QA staff and you launch with a game THAT buggy?

All Test\QA teams find more bugs then can be fixed.

Management and development\content creators determine a game's technical quality.

[Threash]

They really screwed up in having the end of the story match reaching max level.  Chapter 1 took me to level 30 or so, then the next two got me to 50.  At that point you might as well roll credits and pop up an unsubscribe button for most people because their endgame is horrible.  Chapter three should have been their endgame, give players something to do at max level besides dailies, heroic dungeons and battleground farming.

[Numtini]

I can guarentee the game is seen internally as a failure for the investment.

Absolutely correct.

The bean counter argument "well, it met the requirements to break even after x months and produced a stream of income afterwards" is like the bargaining step in some Kubler-Ross model for a dying MMO.

[FieryBalrog]

I know we all love our narratives here, but that 1m number is a lot older than March.  2 February 2011, same thing:

"We previously described to folks that 500,000 subscribers saw the game as substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing that we would write home about," he said. "[But] anything north of 1 million subscribers is a very profitable business."

Outdated I believe. More recent quote:

Arvind Bhatia - Sterne, Agee & Leach, Inc. - Analyst
Then one last one from me, going back to Star Wars for a second. I think the only number in terms of profitability that you guys have talked about that I can rememberis that it takes about 0.5 million subscribers to be profitable on a sustainable basis month to month. Has anything changed in terms of the launch, the interest level, etcetera, that would make you want to update that or we should still work with that assumption?

John Riccitiello - Electronic Arts Inc. - CEO
That was me that made the comment a number of different times. What I basically said is 0.5 million subs, we could break even at the margin. 1 million subs would be meaningfully profitable, but nothing to write home about. It certainly would not make us feel good about the investments to date.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...Transcript.pdf

[caladein]

Outdated I believe.

I brought up that instance of it to counter the claim that the number was the result of "back peddling at a horrendous rate" and "furious back-pedaling", but that's a useful quote for the tea leaf readers.

[Crumbs]

I'd say lots of you are still overestimating this silly little game with a huge IP.

This.  It is kind of astonishing to watch.  

Is the advertising budget included in these development figures we're putting up?  Because that was a LARGE amount of advertising.  Going from covering the side of buildings to "play free this weekend" in less than a month's time has to be some sort of phenomenon.  But the sky is not falling...I know this because of the title of the thread  

[Lakov_Sanite]

Not saying they ever back peddled, I'm saying those quoted expectations are a lot lower than is realistic.

[ghost]

If your actions are abhorrent to them, a couple of trinkets shouldn't change that.  "I know how you hate when I kill entire villages, but I got you this really cool memorabilia.  We cool?"

Seriously.  The whole idea seems fucking idiotic to me.  Just let me pick the responses and reactions that my companions will have as a default and call it a day instead of having gifts that allow me to kill whoever I want/steal/act like a general douche.

[Sky]

That's actually a good idea. You could add an appendage to the line like the prefix for alignment gain:

 /I love puppies (Make +10, Skadge -10)
-Puppies are easy to sell on the GTN (Gault +10, Mako -10)
\ Mmm...puppies (Skadge +30, Mako -30)

[Kageru]

Depends on what they mean by substantially profitable.

If they spent $200M on the game, and that's been the standard estimates, and you had about 2M in box sales, then you can make the following projections since EA operates at a 60% gross margin.

I remember reading estimates Lucas takes 30% of the profit. Though obviously I don't trust the figure I'm sure he's taking a healthy slice which eats into EA's profits.

[Ingmar]

That's actually a good idea. You could add an appendage to the line like the prefix for alignment gain:

 /I love puppies (Make +10, Skadge -10)
-Puppies are easy to sell on the GTN (Gault +10, Mako -10)
\ Mmm...puppies (Skadge +30, Mako -30)

Bleh, that encourages you to play for the gain/loss rather than the RP factor. The light/dark thing is already annoying enough that way. I guess if you could turn it off like the light/dark thing I could choke it down.

[Lantyssa]

I turned all mine off.

[Sjofn]

I SHOULD turn mine off, I stopped looking ages ago.