Predictions: 1m+ players 3 days out; how about in January 2013?

[Rokal]

No. Even just with US numbers a year after launch, WoW exceeded the global population of everything other MMO that it was compared too (Runescape wasn't really part of that comparison, except in some Powerpoints). EQ1 never got close to 1mm. SWG neither, and that one was the first that some people thought could do it. WoW got to 1mm handily, and that was on a like-by-like subscribers comparison alone. Then their EU numbers grew to the same level. After that, the rest of their global number included "everywhere else". But the markets and sub-license arrangements of questionable equivalency only made up half of the global number, which itself far exceeded the rest.

I'm not arguing that WoW was only successful due to the Asian numbers, I'm saying the Asian numbers greatly inflated what we saw in press releases. We won't see another MMO doing "9-12 million" without the Asian market, though we could very well see one that is more profitable with 6-7 million between NA/EU. I think the reason it did so well in NA/EU is, again, because it appealed to customers beyond the pre-existing MMO community. The key to re-creating WoW's success is expanding the audience again to customers that might actually be looking for fun gameplay. I think this is exactly Blizzard's plan with Titan. Really, we aren't disagreeing with each other.

[Sky]

WoW got all of the traditional MMO players. The rest of the folks in this umbrella/medium found their niche in some other diku-inspired title like LoTRO or CoX, are on the sidelines waiting for GW2, or are playing something completely different like Eve. There aren't another 12mm gamers out there looking for something just like WoW but aren't playing WoW. They're already off playing other genres, or aren't core gamers at all and giving Zynga all their eyeballs and some money along the way.

I was waiting for TOR. EQ2 just got old and I like the scifi setting. GW2 looks great and I'll probably check it out, but I don't see any long-term stickiness, because I'm not really a big mmo player. If I feel the need to play an mmo for the foreseeable future, it's TOR. Kind of how I was with EQ2, I didn't have much interest in any mmo between that and TOR.

A friend just bought this for me to play with her. Never have I jumped through so many hoops to download a game and seriously....I just gave you $60 and I have to download 25gigs at 30k/second?

I'M SURE YOU WILL HAVE AN ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE WHAT COULD GO WRONG

[Sky]

Also,

A friend just bought this for me ....I just gave you $60

This.

[Paelos]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her. Never have I jumped through so many hoops to download a game and seriously....I just gave you $60 and I have to download 25gigs at 30k/second?

Technically you gave them nothing. But at least you are going to play a game you are going to complain about, so baby steps.

Good for you!

[Draegan]

No MMOG will escalate to the next level until it stops being about buttonmashing combat.

Aren't all video games button mashing?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Well DL speed must have picked up while I was sleeping so it was ready to go when I woke up.  Played for a couple hours and my opinion hasn't really changed, it's a fun single player game and they probably should have just made kotor 3-6 out of it but they're after that MMO $$$

Outlook past 30 days: Unsure.

[Draegan]

Well DL speed must have picked up while I was sleeping so it was ready to go when I woke up.  Played for a couple hours and my opinion hasn't really changed, it's a fun single player game and they probably should have just made kotor 3-6 out of it but they're after that MMO $$$

Outlook past 30 days: Unsure.

We'll bet better off if you just save us the time and say the game sucks and it'll be never as good as WOW.  Then you can never post in this subforum again and everyone will be happy.

It's not a single player game just like WOW isn't a single player game.  You just want it to be that so you can be a grumpy internet asshole.

[Paelos]

No MMOG will escalate to the next level until it stops being about buttonmashing combat.

Aren't all video games button mashing?

Depends. Do you think of Skyrim as button mashing really? To me, it's more involved than that. The combat is more fluid and engaging than target, 4-3-5-4-1-1-2-3-5-4-1-1-2, loot.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Never said the game sucked, stop creating a monster to slay oh white knight of SWTOR.  WoW was fun, evolved the mmo to it's peak, it's dated now and waning so I'm waiting for something to up the ante, thus far SWTOR took several steps forward and several steps back so it's kind of a wash but I'm having fun with it.

[Sky]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her.

it's a fun single player game

She must be thrilled.

The multiplayer dialog is maybe my favorite feature of the game I don't get to enjoy nearly as much as I'd like, especially now that my play time is back to normal. With holo participation, turn-ins are a snap.

[tmp]

Depends. Do you think of Skyrim as button mashing really? To me, it's more involved than that. The combat is more fluid and engaging than target, 4-3-5-4-1-1-2-3-5-4-1-1-2, loot.

My Skyrim fights were generally rmb-rmb-lmb-rmb-rmb, loot.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yes, I have really enjoyed duoing in this game, perhaps more so than LOTRO.

[Crumbs]

The original prediction of 400k sounds good. 

But if we're going to talk about "waves," the only wave I can see this week is the wave of customer dissatisfaction.  I can't say it's unwarranted.  There's a difference between "normal amount of bugs at launch" and "bewildering things that made it to live and only get worse with patches."  I'm beginning to wonder if the lead designers of this game are Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

[Lakov_Sanite]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her.

it's a fun single player game

She must be thrilled.

The multiplayer dialog is maybe my favorite feature of the game I don't get to enjoy nearly as much as I'd like, especially now that my play time is back to normal. With holo participation, turn-ins are a snap.

I lol'd. 

Well like I said I only played a couple hours this morning. Tonight when she logs in we'll see how it duos and it could very well be a whole diff experience.

[01101010]

The original prediction of 400k sounds good. 

But if we're going to talk about "waves," the only wave I can see this week is the wave of customer dissatisfaction.  I can't say it's unwarranted.  There's a difference between "normal amount of bugs at launch" and "bewildering things that made it to live and only get worse with patches."  I'm beginning to wonder if the lead designers of this game are Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

I BRING YOU ALL THE MIRACLE PATCH! keep in mind one man's miracle is another man's tragedy...or something...

[01101010]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her.

it's a fun single player game

She must be thrilled.

The multiplayer dialog is maybe my favorite feature of the game I don't get to enjoy nearly as much as I'd like, especially now that my play time is back to normal. With holo participation, turn-ins are a snap.

This might be something to shoot for with a bunch of people's alts once people reach max burn out. Find a day or two a week which everyone is on or can make time for and just remain in group progression. Once the group ends, go back to your other characters.

[Ingmar]

No MMOG will escalate to the next level until it stops being about buttonmashing combat.

Aren't all video games button mashing?

Depends. Do you think of Skyrim as button mashing really? To me, it's more involved than that. The combat is more fluid and engaging than target, 4-3-5-4-1-1-2-3-5-4-1-1-2, loot.

I think you're nuts. Skyrim combat is barely acceptable. I like MMO combat a hell of a lot better than that.

[Secundo]

I give it less than 500k subs in one year.

This game feels somewhat similar to DCUO. It's great fun solo for a month or two but the game is bad at supporting communities.
It feels a lot like any of those 4-player coop games I often play on steam; Left 4 dead, Badlands etc..

Of course the live team could change all this given a year, but it's a lost opportunity for sure.

[Hutch]

The original prediction of 400k sounds good. 

But if we're going to talk about "waves," the only wave I can see this week is the wave of customer dissatisfaction.  I can't say it's unwarranted.  There's a difference between "normal amount of bugs at launch" and "bewildering things that made it to live and only get worse with patches."  I'm beginning to wonder if the lead designers of this game are Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

I don't know why, but for a second there I thought that Zero Mostel was the name of Richard Pryor's character in that See No Evil, Hear No Evil movie.

Then my brain unspooled the correct reference.

[El Gallo]

SAN FRANCISCO –  Shares of Electronic Arts Inc. fell nearly 3% to $17.75 on Thursday morning after an analyst with Brean Murray Carret & Co. cut his price target on the stock to $22 from $28, citing concerns about the recently released online multi-player game "Star Wars: The Old Republic." In a note to clients, analyst Todd Mitchell wrote that "creeping concerns" about the performance of "Star Wars" -- which was released in late December -- is causing him to trim his earnings estimates for the 2013 fiscal year. "Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions," Mitchell wrote.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/01/19/ea-falls-on-broker-concerns-about-star-wars/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxbusiness%2Ftechnology+%28Internal+-+Technology+-+Mixed%29

Not super helpful for bets in this thread since we don't know what the sales or churn expectations were.  

[Paelos]

Certainly it's one of the few times I've seen an analyst actually reference gameplay concerns in an earnings estimate.

[Montague]

SAN FRANCISCO –  Shares of Electronic Arts Inc. fell nearly 3% to $17.75 on Thursday morning after an analyst with Brean Murray Carret & Co. cut his price target on the stock to $22 from $28, citing concerns about the recently released online multi-player game "Star Wars: The Old Republic." In a note to clients, analyst Todd Mitchell wrote that "creeping concerns" about the performance of "Star Wars" -- which was released in late December -- is causing him to trim his earnings estimates for the 2013 fiscal year. "Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions," Mitchell wrote.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/01/19/ea-falls-on-broker-concerns-about-star-wars/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxbusiness%2Ftechnology+%28Internal+-+Technology+-+Mixed%29

Not super helpful for bets in this thread since we don't know what the sales or churn expectations were.  

Translation: I read the General Discussion forum.

[UnSub]

EA's been making a lot of noise for a while about SWOR, it being their biggest project ever. Thus far it has failed to meet pre-launch hype, which is what the market is responding to.

[Kageru]

Plus valid concerns about retention and Lucas hoovering up a nice fat slice of the profits dragging profit expectations down.

... the idea of Lucas getting money and control is the best argument for having made a Mass Effect MMO.

[Rendakor]

I think they've floated the idea of a Mass Effect MMO already, but I can't imagine them doing it before ME3 comes out.

[Kageru]

I'm pretty sure they're smart enough not to develop two MMO's at the same time, so I doubt they've invested any time in a ME MMO after they decided to go with star wars. At the very least they'll wait and see how things play out.

Reading the forums it sounds like they'll probably lose a lot of the PvP or PvE "achievement" oriented gamers and MMO veterans (although WoW is weak at the moment). The real challenge is whether they can keep the bulk of the casual, story oriented, bioware fans or star wars groupies happy enough to keep paying a monthly sub. These people probably aren't going to be hardcore raiders or extremely into PvP but keeping them fed with content will be an interesting challenge. You can already see some people who have "finished the game" with a character considering themselves as being done. It will be very interesting to see how Bioware addresses this in terms of new content generation.

An old official estimate I read was 1.8 million subs over the year. Which is more optimistic than most of the ones here.

And I expect that if sales and retention are poor the Asia/Pacific local servers will never eventuate and we'll have waited months to join fully matured US servers.  Which to be honest they should have done in the first place. The only reason for local servers is for a twitch / PvP game which SWTOR mostly isn't.

[Amaron]

I mean big arcs specifically involving those companions. 

The JK companion Kira has a fairly big deal part in the main story line.  I expected more of that but in general it seems to be the exception rather than the rule.   They could of easily put in a bunch of quests that required particular companions at least.   A lot of the voice dialog is there.   It's like they didn't want to do the cheap part of making quests and more elaborate side stories.

[ajax34i]

Reading the forums it sounds like they'll probably lose a lot of the PvP or PvE "achievement" oriented gamers and MMO veterans[...]

Do we still believe that the majority of players don't even read the forums?  In EVE, the ratio is, what, 1000 forum users to 250k accounts, and no clue what it is in WoW...

[Margalis]

Box sales numbers to me are lower than expected. (Than what I expected anyway)

Anecdotally I know a guy who was jazzed to play but ended up not even getting it after he heard it was mechanically just WoW. Another guy I know asked me if I was playing, I said no, then he said none of his friends were playing and expressed surprise because he thought it was going to be huge. I know a few people who I'm sure will stop playing in a few months.

I don't like predictions because I don't know anything about worldwide release plans but the game doesn't appear to be any sort of WoW-killer, at this point it looks to be moderately more successful than WAR.

[Kageru]

Do we still believe that the majority of players don't even read the forums?  In EVE, the ratio is, what, 1000 forum users to 250k accounts, and no clue what it is in WoW...

I doubt that Eve number if you mean active accounts. And it's guaranteed that forum users are a subset of the user base.  it's just the best sample you can get feedback from without :effort:

And as long as you look at broad trends and numbers of content, rather than specific, it's still somewhat representative (though self-selected to be the more extreme cases).

I cannot believe how unbelievably crushed all of us are. My guild just killed Hard Mode SOA after 4 hours of horribly buggy attempts. The 3rd crystal in phase 3 never popping the immunity. People going into mind traps @ the beginning of phase 3 and not being able to get out.

We FINALLY get him down after 4 hours and we get NO LOOT from the kill. Please bioware, I know all that we are going to get is automated responses from your CS (as I have never received anything but), so PLEASE look into this and give my guild some tangible reward for our efforts.

(Source). The long tradition of cloth caps from raid bosses continues.

[Paelos]

Lord, hard mode content already?

Some people are really trying hard to smash their balls in a vice.

[Nebu]

Lord, hard mode content already?

The game has been out 6 weeks (including head start) and it takes about 3 weeks to get to 50.  It's not crazy to be doing hard modes.  I work 12hrs a day and have still had time to level to 50 and do hard modes the last few weeks.

[Paelos]

Hard mode raids?

[Nebu]

Hard mode raids?

We don't raid, but are raid ready for well over a week.  We've not run the raids because they are buggy and don't often give loot for the effort.  

Keep in mind that many guilds were running them weeks ago because there was a bug where hard mode raids would spawn normal mode mobs.  People exploited the hell out of this using resets until they got normal mode mobs.

Edit: I believe that this bug was fixed a week or so back. 

[Kageru]

Anyone surprised there's a substantial number of players racing for game and server firsts has never watched an MMO community at work before. That post was from today, so it's a current kill, though I've no idea where hard-mode SOA sits on the ranking.

Mind you extending the content through intentionally buggy raids was an old SOE standby.